Android Overtakes Windows as Most Popular OS for Internet Usage: StatCounter

It seems like the inevitable has finally happened as according to the latest Internet usage statistics shared by StatCounter, an independent Web analytics company, the number of users browsing Internet from Android has overtaken the number of users browsing the Internet from Windows.

As per the data shared by StatCounter, Android gained the top spot in terms of worldwide OS Internet usage market share with 37.93 percent. The firm says that this market share puts Android marginally ahead of Windows (with 37.91 percent market) for the first time. Notably, the stats shared by the firm are for total Internet usage across desktops, laptops, tablets, and mobiles.

"This is a milestone in technology history and the end of an era," Aodhan Cullen, CEO at StatCounter said in its release. "It marks the end of Microsoft's leadership worldwide of the OS market which it has held since the 1980s. It also represents a major breakthrough for Android which held just 2.4 percent of global internet usage share only five years ago," he said.

Some of the key factors highlighted by Cullen as the reason for this increase in market share for Android include growth of smartphones to access the Internet, a decline in sales of traditional PCs, and the impact of Asia on the global market.

As smartphone shipments have been constantly growing in markets such as India and the mobile devices keep on becoming more and more affordable compared with PCs, it hardly comes as a surprise that Android is now being used to access Internet more than Windows. The seemingly complicated process to access Internet on Windows in comparison with mobile devices as well as lack of portability offered by the former might be some of the reasons behind the astronomical increase in Android's market share in recent years.