September 12, 2010
While working at Mediumrare, we toyed around with some ideas of mobile apps and most of the time, it would be an idea for the iPhone. Now, as a developer, I loved the SDK that Apple prepared for Developers in order to create apps for iOS. However, it’s also important to understand your audience. Although Apple boasts about having a huge chunk of the pie in regards to mobile device market share, it shouldn’t be accepted at face value.
Today I came across a very interesting presentation titled Rethinking the mobile web. It brings up points that we shouldn’t disregard other mobile devices just because the iPhone has taken North America by storm. The presentation states that globally the iPhone has <4% of market share.
However, I was taken aback when I came across a map which laid out the distribution of different mobile operating systems per country:
If you’re developing mobile apps in Canada, then it seems the device to develop for is the iPhone/iPod touch. Data from StatCounter Global Stats indicates that the device has an 86% market share in Canada. The accuracy of the data is unknown but it does help put things in perspective and it’s not hard to believe that the iPhone has that much dominance in Canada. At my university, I have observed that a lot of students own an iPhone or iPod touch.
If you’re involved with developing for mobile devices or interested in the topic, I’ve embedded slides from the presentation below:
Your statistics are based on data from statcounter.com which is derived from a very limited sample of website analytics data. Only data from sites USING statcounter.com’s tracking tools. This data is dangerously misleading, it does not represent a complete picture.
From what I’ve seen at the U of C, 86% percent market share for Apple can’t be correct, especially when the map seems to claim that Blackberry use is negligible. If it were true, I wouldn’t feel like such as outcast for not having BBM…