Apple’s iOS platform’s dominance of the tablet and smartphone sectors has lead to a massive share of the mobile web traffic in the United States, and the lead shows no signs of shrinking.
A new report from Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster features an independent analysis of traffic for 10 of the top 100 mobile websites. The data led Munster to conclude that iOS users are “generally more engaged with their mobile devices.”
Piper Jaffray examined Answers.com, Tumblr, ChaCha, Examiner, LinkedIn, Bleacher Report, Hubpages, White Pages, Squidoo, and Dictionary.com. iOS averaged more than 65% of all traffic for these sites in February and March, with Android grabbing under 30%.
Notably, iOS gained share from February to March, inching up from 65.3% to 66.4%. Google’s Android OS saw its share of traffic slip slightly from 29.7% to 28.7% over the same period.
The iPhone was the consumer of most of the iOS traffic, grabbing approximately 60%. The iPad did make strides however, with the Apple tablet taking 39.7% of iOS web traffic.
Munster attributes Apple’s lead in the mobile web space to the iPhone’s #1 spot in smartphone activations at both Verizon and AT&T. The iPhone accounted for almost 80% of AT&T smartphone sales in Q4, and grabbed more than 60% of sales at Verizon.
The report suggests that iOS users are also more engaged with their phones on a daily basis than Android users.
The report concludes that iOS is likely to continue to lead in mobile traffic generation in the U.S. through the rest of 2013.
