Heh. Internet Explorer, for reasons unfathomable to any modern web designer, still rules the desktop with a massive, if waning browser share. In the mobile space, however, things they are a different.

Net Applications (via CNet) is reporting that the iPhone owns 66.61% share, which compare to Java2ME (RIM’s OS) 9.06% and WinPho’s 6.91%, Android and Symbian’s 6.15% each, and Palm’s 2.37% and the assorted others’ at 2.75%.

No doubt rivals will gain share as the overall market increases, and new products like the Palm Pre hit. What’s interesting, however, is that the WebKit engine beneath Safari is also powering Android’s Chome Lite and will also be powering the Palm Pre, making WebKit’s share of the market extra impressive…

It should also be noted that, when looking at these numbers, even with 16+ million iPhones on the market, the sheer usability of Mobile Safari has to be factored in. Simply put, on many platforms the browsers are still crippled from a rendering standpoint, and frustrating from a interaction standpoint. Make it usable and people will use it, who’d a thunk it?

No doubt other platforms will be addressing this in future updates… but will it be enough to catch Apple’s lead?

(Thanks to Phil from sibling site WMExperts for sharing!)

What a great start to 2009! Net Applications (a leader in tracking website applications) has just released their monthly survey for January 2009. The news? The iPhone accounts for 0.48% of all Internet traffic! This is amazing considering that the Mac has 9.93%. Compared to one month ago, the iPhone”s share of Internet traffic has grown by 9.09%.

This is quite an achievement for the iPhone since it is only available on one carrier in the use and limited to one model. What is particularly interesting about this is that Windows Mobile, Google’s G1, Symbian and BlackBerry are rolled together into the “other” category that accounts for 0.45% of Internet traffic. 

(via Apple 2.0)

Confession: We don’t have any idea where Net Applications really gets their numbers from either. Ars Technica says they:

Collect [web metrics] data from an “exclusive on-demand network of live stats customers” compiled from some “160 million visitors per month”

But they could just as soon be reading runes or casting the bones. However they get them, if we can assume it’s a consistent measure, then iPhone is still on the rise, going from just under 0.2 in July to hitting 0.3 in August. Doesn’t sound particularly big? Well, it confirms the numbers Casey cited last week, and its out of all operating systems everywhere, and it’s for tiny little MobileSafari.

In other words, in the very big pond, our tiny 3G fish is putting on some serious weight.