Android now 25% of mobile web use as iOS lead erodes

Devices running Google's Android mobile operating system now account for 25 percent of mobile web consumption in North America, up 2 percent month over month and an 18.6 percent year-over-year increase, according to new data published by web metrics firm Quantcast. Android's gains come at the expense of Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) iOS, which now represents 56 percent of mobile web consumption, down 0.3 percent month-over-month and 11.4 percent year-over-year; Research In Motion's (NASDAQ:RIMM) also slipped, dropping 0.6 percent month-over-month and 1.6 percent year-over-year, and now accounts for 9.0 percent of mobile web use. Rival operating systems make up the remaining 10 percent, down 1.1 percent month-over-month and 5.7 percent year-over-year. Quantcast adds its research is based on more than 4 billion mobile pageviews reported during August 2010.

The Android platform now represents 17.2 percent of the global smartphone market, overtaking iOS as the world's third most popular smartphone OS and edging past BlackBerry to emerge as the top-selling OS in the U.S., according to data published last month by research firm Gartner. Worldwide sales of Android-powered devices topped 10.6 million in the second quarter of 2010, up from just 756,000 a year ago, at which time Android made up only 1.8 percent of the global smartphone market.

In early August, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said sales of Android smartphones now total about 200,000 each day. "People are finally beginning to figure out how successful Android is," Schmidt said, noting that Android device sales totaled about 100,000 per day just two months earlier. He added that the leap in Android activations corresponds with increasing revenues resulting from mobile search: "Trust me that revenue is large enough to pay for all of Android's activities and a whole bunch more," Schmidt said.

For more on Android's mobile web growth:
- see this chart
- read this Quantcast Blog entry

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