Two-Thirds Of Google's Mobile Traffic Comes From iOS
September 21, 2011
An interesting tidbit was picked up by 9to5Mac, from today's Senate Judiciary hearing, when former Google official Suzanne Michel testified.
Reportedly, as much as two-thirds of Google's mobile traffic comes from Apple's iOS platform, and not from Android as you would expect. Indeed, despite Google search being all over Google's own devices, and even with them having dedicated buttons for search at the bottom, iOS users still seem to search more and generate most of the traffic.
Why is this important? It shows that somehow iOS has more presence on the Web, and is still very important to Google, who's still ready to pay for the privilege of being the default search engine. It's such a big deal that Google revealed how Yahoo and Microsoft also bid to become the default search engine on iOS. This goes in the same direction as data released earlier today by Boingo that suggests airport Wi-Fi is mostly used by iOS devices as well.
The point of the data seems to confirm the theory that while Android is doing well, its users might primarily be using these devices as dumb-phones. Yet, there also could be many other explanations for this.
What is yours?