iPhone OS overtakes Symbian as most popular mobile web browser

The iPhone's OS has overtaken the Symbian OS as the most popular mobile web browser, claiming 38% of data requests against Symbian’s 37%, according to Admob. Although not necessarily a sign of the total traffic shifted by the browsers, Admob’s content is widely spread throughout the web.

This is an alarming sign of quite how much iPhone users surf the web in comparison to their Symbian contemporaries, especially when you consider the tens of millions of Symbian devices in circulation and quite how long the OS has been around for.

It’s also worth noting that Admob adverts do feature in a great many iPhone games and applications, which may make up a chunk of Admob’s figures. However, back in January, Google also commented that iPhone traffic was rivalling that of Symbian devices, even though the iPhone only represented 2% of the smartphone market at that time, with Symbian claiming 63%.

Is it ease of use alone that makes the iPhone browser quite so attractive? We’ll have to see whether upcoming touchscreen-oriented updates to non-iPhone browsers let other ends of the smartphone market claw back some presence.