iOS global usage falls behind Android for the first time

For the first time, overall usage of iOS as an operating system has fallen behind its main competitor from over in Mountain View. While it’s well known that the majority market share in terms of install base has long been held by Android, this is one figure in which iOS has been top dog for quite some time. But at least according to research from Net Applications, that’s no longer the case. More people now use Android, too.

These “system share” figures are grabbed by way of monitoring the huge amount of traffic going across Net Applications’ network. Specifically, in the month of July, iOS saw a drop from 45.61% of traffic to 44.19%. Android, meanwhile, jumped just as much from 43.75% to 44.62%. Interestingly, Windows Phone saw a decent jump this Summer from just under 1% in April to 2.49% last month.

Notably, Apple is about to release a slew of new products after many months of near silence on the hardware side of things. On the Android side, there have been a huge number of flagship handsets announced in the last few months (LG G3, Samsung Galaxy S 5, etc.) and it’s clear based on this data that they’re being received very well. We’ll have to wait and see what happens to these numbers when Apple introduces a slew of new iPhones and iPads this Fall.