IPhone's Safari Leads Mobile Browsers In U.S.

March 19, 2008 7:44 a.m. EST

Dublin, Ireland (AHN) - A study has revealed that the Safari web browser, the default for the Apple iPhone, dominates the U.S. charts as the top mobile phone browser, while landing in second place in the U.K.

Studying gathered data from 71 million page views in the U.S, the Ireland-based web tracking software StatCounter said that the U.S. users of the iPhone and the iTouch have lifted the shares of Safari's mobile version from 0.14 percent to 0.23 percent since December.

"The key message is that iPhone is more than living up to its claims of being a user-friendly Internet browser, unlike many other cell phones," Aodhan Cullen, StatCounter founder and CEO, told Computerworld.

A significant spike in the usage of the mobile Safari occurred during the holidays - an incident that Cullen linked to people trying out the Web features of their iPhones, which they got as Christmas presents.

Safari also gave a notable performance in Britain, according to StatCounter, coming in at No. 2 with 0.06 percent of the overall browser market. The software trailed Nokia, which had 0.15.

The two other browsers trailing Safari were Blackberry, with 0.02 percent, and Sony Ericsson, with 0.01, as reported on Apple Insider.

Despite Apple's market share, StatCounter said that it still came in second in the global market, with 0.08 percent. It currently trails Nokia, with 0.25 percent.