Despite reports that RIM’s market share has been eroded by the growth of Android, data gathered by analytics firm StatCounter suggests web usage on BlackBerry handsets has actually grown at the same pace as Android. As Android and BlackBerry show parallel growth from the third and fourth positions, respectively, web usage on the iPhone has slid behind Symbian and within 10 percent of BlackBerry.
This data is in conflict with Gartner Research, which recently released a forecast suggesting Android and iOS will both surpass BlackBerry in OS share by 2011. That being said, web usage on each platform can increase or decrease independently of handset shipment numbers.
The introduction of BlackBerry OS 6 brought a WebKit-based browser better suited to web browsing, however the StatCounter graph shows RIM’s web share following a positive trend before OS 6 arrived on the market. StatCounter accumulates global visitor data from more than 3 million websites.
