BlackBerry’s StatCounter win over Apple might not mean much

StatCounter recently published a report which shows BlackBerry taking over Apple’s share in terms of mobile web usage. The data was compiled from 15 billion monthly page views from 3 million sites. From the results we can see a decline in iOS web usage while there’s a steady increase in the usage of BlackBerry phones to surf the web. Android is also slowly rising, but is in 3^rd place behind the other two giants. And from the report, StatCounter’s CEO came to the conclusion that developers should not be developing solely for the iPhone. This would be true if the declining numbers meant that less people were using iOS to surf the web, unfortunately that isn’t the case. Firstly, StatCounter takes stats from webpage hits. With many sites now coming out with apps for iOS, users don’t have to resort to using browsers to view the content of their favorite sites anymore which probably explains the decrease in webpage hits. On the other hand, BlackBerry users who don’t have apps for their favorite sites still need to use their browsers to access them. And let’s not forget RIM’s declining grasp on the smartphone OS share- if anything, developers should be developing for the operating systems that are overtaking BlackBerry. But then again, who’s to say? Developers will pick the platforms most lucrative to them, and that is decided by the market- not stat pages.