In a major turn-around, Android smartphones now account for a majority of mobile web traffic in the U.S and Canada, with close to a 51 percent share. That’s a massive change from May of this very year, when Apple owned 72 percent of smartphone traffic, compared to only 26 percent for all Android phones.
The results are according to a new study by ad network Chitika.
Apple accounts for 46 percent of all mobile phone traffic in the U.S and Canada, and bitter rival Samsung’s phones add up to 17 percent. Just one month after its introduction, the iPhone 5 accounts for three percent of North American mobile web traffic single, er, phonedly, compared to the Galaxy S III’s 2 percent. (The iPhone 5 surpassed the Galaxy S III in just three weeks, as we reported last week.)
The more interesting information is in the platform numbers, however.
BlackBerry is still holding on to 2 percent of web traffic with its fingernails, and Windows Phone is a tiny little thin slice — but probably poised for growth — at just 1 percent. But getting the Android numbers out requires a bit of digging.
The 43 percent slice in the chart includes all of Apple’s other phones: the 4, 4S, iPhone 3s, and all the way back to the very first iPhone, released in 2007. (Amazingly, some of them are still in use.)
The 15 percent Samsung chunk includes all of its smartphones, which are almost all Android-based.
So the really interesting part of the graph is the big 37 percent terra incognita slice labeled “Other Smartphone.”