Analyst Gene (Oh Grandpa!) Munster of investment bank Piper Jaffray says Apple’s share of the mobile web in the U.S. is not only dominating their competitor Android, but is also growing at the expense of Google’s OS. He believes this shows iOS users are generally more engaged with their devices than owners of rival handsets.
In a research note furnished to AppleInsider, Piper Jaffray noted that the third party data analysis from Investing Analytics showed significant growth in iOS Web share over the past three months. Android’s presence, while still substantial, is shrinking.
The study included mobile traffic for 10 of the top 100 mobile websites, including Answers.com, Tumblr, ChaCha, Examiner, LinkedIn, Bleacher Report, Hubpages, White Pages, Squidoo and Dictionary.com.
“For the second straight month in our tracking of the data, iOS gained on Android as a source of mobile traffic,” said Munster. “We believe the traffic data continues to demonstrate that iOS is not only the leading platform in the U.S., its users are generally more engaged with their mobile devices.”
For the month of April, iOS represented 69% of mobile traffic from the sites being monitored. That was up 2.6% from the March average of 66.4% and a 3.7% rise from February’s figures. During the same timeframe, Android lost some of their share of the web traffic, seeing it drop from a 29.7% share, down to 26.5%.
Three things that Munster believes contributes to Apple’s dominance in the United States: The iPhone’s position as the most popular smartphone platform in the U.S.; iOS users greater engagement with their devices over their Android using brethren; the iPads dominance in the tablet marketplace.
When broken down by device, the iPad has slowly gained on it’s smaller iOS counterpart. For February, Apple’s handset accounted for a 61.1% share of mobile traffic. By April, however, the iPhone fell to 58.30% while the iPad grew to a 41.7% average, up from from 38.7%.
Munster says his firm expects to see iOS continue to lead in mobile traffic generation in the U.S. for at least the rest of the year.
