Android Steals Share From Everyone In Web Browsing

Sales numbers are a good sign of how well a device is doing, and Android has nothing to complain about there. Web browsing though is a better indication of how much usage the device is getting. Here too Android has nothing to complain about. In fact, it is the only smartphone platform showing growth.Quantcast has published their August 2010 "OS Share of Mobile Web Consumption" and the picture for most platforms isn't surprising. Android now commands 25 percent of the mobile web browsing market. It grew two percent in August and nearly 19 percent this year.

RIM's Blackberry has gone from a high in the twelve percent range a year ago to nine percent today. It will be interesting to see if the Torch with Blackberry 6.0 can move the needle. Having just been released, the device and updated platform aren't materially impacting the August results.

Quantcast doesn't bother breaking out platforms like WebOS, Symbian and Windows Mobile, instead lumping them into the "Other" category, which has shown steady declines for the last twelve months to the ten percent range today.

What is a bit surprising is how iOS is faring. It was near 70 percent last year and has declined to 56 percent this month. The downward trend was only slowed, not stopped, when iOS 4 was released with the iPhone 4 in late June. Two full months of the new phone on the market and its share continues to decline, though at a slower pace than during the previous twelve months.

As I said here, it is still early in the smartphone game. Two years ago Android was just dipping its toes in the water with T-Mobile's G-1 handset. Today it is a solid number two and by some measures, number one. How long will it last? Just a year ago, most people were saying the iPhone had won the war. Clearly that wasn't the case.