The iPad has become the favored device for slurping up media in the U.S., overtaking the iPhone in August, according to new figures from an Internet research firm. Apple’s iOS also is the overwhelming choice for U.S. media consumption with Android a distant second.
According to comScore, 46.8 percent of Internet traffic is via the iPad versus 42.6 percent for the iPhone. The report also confirms what most iOS users already new: 97.2 percent of tablets online are iPads, perhaps one of the most telling reasons why rival devices have such a difficult time catching consumers’ attention.
If you measured only mobile phones, the iOS versus Android horse-race doesn’t appear too terrible for the Google operating system: Apple leads 43.1 percent to 34.1 percent. However, if you add in all iOS devices — including the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch — Apple’s lead is even wider: 58.5 percent versus 31.9 percent in the United States. All of which makes Google’s decision to concentrate Android’s effort internationally more sense. One wonders how long it will take for Apple’s U.S. lead to spread globally, however.
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
