According to data from StatCounter via Phandroid, in addition to becoming the most dominant mobile device in the world, Google has now overtaken Opera to become the most popular mobile web browser as well, over the last year (February 2011 – February 2012).
Figures from the online measurement service show that February saw use of Android‘s Robot browser overtake Opera to take the top spot for the first time.
The chart below, which plots the use of mobile Internet browsers over the last twelve months, indicates significant growth from Android which had only just overtaken BlackBerry to fourth place one year ago.
Opera, which is particularly popular in both Asia and Africa, now sits in second place having been overtaken by Android and the firm will look to increase its share with the newly released developer beta version of its Opera Mini Browser that aims to provide users with a more advanced and social mobile Web experience. Although the Scandinavian company does not own its own devices like Google, its popularity comes from it being preloaded onto other firm’s feature phones like Samsung.
StatCounter breaks out usage of the iPhone and iPod Touch, which might otherwise see Apple‘s browser rank first. However, considering the advantage that Android has over Apple with more than 300 million Android devices world wide, an increase of of 250%, the fact that the iPhone ranks so closely shows that its users are proportionally more likely to browse the Web than Android owners.
Other trends see Blackberry’s share of web browsing continue to fall while Nokia has also seen its browser account for less web browsing over the given period. Will this change with the launch of Nokia’s Lumia 800? Read the review here.
It should be said that measurement is so often an imprecise science, especially when it comes to the Internet and mobile, and StatCounter‘s figures are approximations based on surveys of Internet users. However, the gist of the data serves to illustrate that Android is growing massively and, if not now, it is soon likely to be the mobile Web‘s most used browser.
Source: The Next Web
