iOS Rules Mobile Web Browsing, Say Reports

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If you’re reading this right now on a mobile device, according to the results of a recent survey that ran fully one year and covered tracking across the mobile web, chances are your device of choice is an Apple device packing some version of iOS. At least, that’s the word that’s come back from said survey, and the nearest competitors aren’t looking good at all, especially by comparison.

Basically, the folks at Net Applications set out some tracking software to see what operating systems were powering web hits, and have been running the survey since October of last year. And the numbers that have resulted show Apple’s iOS is long out in front, with the most recent numbers showing Apple’s iOS taking up about 61 percent of all the hits entirely, and their nearest competitor, Android, showing up with 18.9 percent.

The numbers themselves are telling for several reasons, perhaps the biggest of which is the changes in share. Net Applications followed several different platforms–iOS and Android, of course, but also Symbian, Java ME, Blackberry, and the mysterious catch-all known as “other”–and what’s happened here is not only Apple gaining supremacy, but also the relative polarization of platforms. There were only two gainers in the survey: iOS and Android. Every other category fell, and some, like Java ME, significantly more than others. Blackberry’s fall, meanwhile, was comparatively static, losing just over one percent over the year. Of course, when you start at 3.71 percent and drop to 2.48 percent, it’s not exactly a cause for celebration.

And what we have here, based on these results, is what looks like at least the start of a market in which there is essentially only Apple and Android. Though they didn’t actually do anything to make it happen like that, aside from the obvious point of providing users a product they wanted to use, it’s looking like there may be fewer choices in the market in the future as the lower-tier providers lose ground.

But what do you guys think here? Think that we’ll see a day when there is really only Android and Apple to choose from? Or will Blackberry and Symbian and the like stick around? Or, as a third option, will the makers of the devices that run all those other platforms stick around but go to Android and Apple? And how will Windows Phone fare here? Whatever your opinion, we want to hear it down in the comments section below!