PingDom: Android is the leading OS only in South Korea

As you may know, today's StatCounter published its fresh report based on web analytics about mobile users. Unfortunately, StatCounter can monitor only web traffic, but not the way the smartphones are being used. However, the results of such research can offer many different data that can be organized in different ways.

For example, a vendor of network server monitoring tools Pingdom also took the Statcounter's results but analyzed only mobile OS usage, including the stats for iPod touch (iPad wasn't included). It was found that though the sales of Android-based smartphones have overtaken the sales of the iPhone in the US, such a statement does not take into account the fact that iPod touch is the most popular portable media player, and it is also based on iOS, which makes the latter the most popular mobile OS in the country.

PingDom also found that iOS is more popular than Symbian in Australia, Europe and North America, while Nokia's operational system is more widespread in Africa, South America and Asia, and that can be explained by not only popularity of the company's cheap phones. The collected data is based on the web traffic usage, which means that Symbian users at least have web-browser installed on their mobile handsets and an access to the Internet.

Here is what it was noted in the report about BlackBerries and Android:

"BlackBerry’s strongest region is North America, but it is still behind iOS there. Android might be growing fast, but it’s still far from dominating any part of the world."

And here are some more facts on using phones in relation to different nations:

• Symbian phones generate only 1.36% of all US traffic, while iOS generates 35%. Android has 23% share, and RIM has 32% (lower than iOS because iPod touch is taken into account);
• Symbian OS remains to be the most popular platform in more than 100 countries; in 75 of them it generates at least a half of all the mobile web traffic;
• iOS leads in thirty countries; 21 of them has 50% of mobile web traffic generated by Apple's operational system;
• BlackBerry is the most appreciated OS in four countries, and only Dominikan Republic of it has more than 50% of its mobile web traffic generated by RIM's platform;
• Android is the leader only in South Korea, where Samsung has been continually selling its smartphone Galaxy S.