Apple’s iOS retains dominant position in US, UK, despite Google's Android: StatCounter

Apple's iOS operating system continues to retain its dominance in the US and UK, despite Android's emergence as the most popular operating system worldwide, according to figures from web analytics firm StatCounter.

The firm's Internet Wars Report which dissected 15 billion page views over 12 months, has yielded a number of interesting findings.

Samsung devices are now the most widely used handsets used to access the internet, worldwide, with the Korean firm seeing worldwide internet usage of its devices increase 6 per cent over the last 12 months to 25.47 per cent, pipping Apple (25.09 per cent).

However, in the UK and US internet usage from Apple's iOS platform was higher, as it emerged the preferred OS. In the UK, 47.97 per cent of users connected to the internet via an Apple device whereas the figure for the US was higher with 54.84 per cent of page views coming from an iOS smartphone. Samsung came second in both markets.

The biggest loser, though was Nokia, having led the worldwide market in June 2012. When it came to internet usage, the Finnish firm had fallen to third place. According to StatCounter around 21.96 per cent of mobile users worldwide accessed the web from a Nokia device.

Meanwhile, according to Statcounter, in May 2012 Chrome became the browser leader in terms of internet usage worldwide, but had now overtaken Internet Explorer for the first time in the US. June saw Chrome take the number one spot in the US at 34.02 per cent (up from 23.84 per cent 12 months ago). The same period saw IE decline to 32.46 per cent from 40.89 per cent.

The rise of both Chrome and Samsung could largely be attributed to Google, whose Android operating system powered the majority of the smartphones now bought globally. In the UK, figures from Kantar Worldpanel showed that 30 per cent of all phone sales were Apple, as against 57 per cent for Android.

Figures for mobile web usage in America, however, showed how much ground Samsung had yet to cover to challenge Apple. iPhone and iPad mobile web usage increased over the past year to 54.84 per cent, from 50.45 per cent.

In contrast, Samsung, was up at 18.3 per cent, in a steep rise from 12.65 per cent. In the UK, Apple was up at 47.97 per cent from 43.04 per cent, even as Samsung increased to 20.45 per cent from 12.69 per cent. BlackBerry, though, fell from 27.83 per cent to 16.15 per cent.