What caught my attention, though, was that the most popular application by far on Android is the browser. There are two ways to take that. One is that the browser is, hands-down, the favorite because it ships on every single copy of Android. However, other applications ship with Android, and even though Apple carriers many more iOS apps, 70,000 is hardly a tiny number.
The other possible interpretation, and one that I suspect might be accurate, is that Android users gravitate toward the Web over apps, the opposite of what seems to be the inclination of iPhone and iPad users. If that is the case, then mobile has split into two camps, with each gravitating toward a different approach to meeting their needs.
Call it the Open Web versus Curated Ecosystem if you want, but in plainer words, it means that we’ve got two substantial mobile markets, neither of which would be caught dead using the other’s choice of tool. If the two platforms lean one way or the other as well, then there may be a natural balance that will require both platforms to satisfy consumers. All the talk of whether Apple or Google wins might be nothing more than the pastime of marketers and pundits.
