If Android is so hot, why has Java ME overtaken it?
Ranked by Internet market share — rather than unit sales — Google is now No. 3 — Data: NetApplications. Chart: PED — From the perspective of NetApplications, which has been measuring browser usage data since 2004 …
Context & Ripple Effects
Through 2011 the Android story was written in unit-share terms: comScore had the platform climbing steadily from its early gains against the iPhone to a claimed 40 percent of US smartphones by August. Fortune's piece introduces a second scoreboard — NetApplications, which has tracked browser usage since 2004 — where the ranking flips: measured by internet market share rather than units sold, Google sits at No. 3 and Java ME, the runtime on hundreds of millions of legacy feature phones, is ahead of it.
The gap matters because the two metrics answer different questions. Unit share counts devices shipped; usage share counts who actually reaches the web. An earlier Quantcast comparison of Android growth against iOS already hinted that installed-base leadership and traffic leadership need not coincide, and this data sharpens the point.
First-order effects
- Android's headline dominance in handset shipments does not translate into proportional web traffic per NetApplications, giving developers and advertisers a reason to discount unit-share numbers when deciding where to concentrate mobile web effort.
- Google's positioning as the mobile internet leader takes a rhetorical hit: rivals and skeptics can now cite a long-running measurement firm showing Java ME ahead of Android in actual browsing.
Second-order effects
- Competing measurement houses — comScore on units, NetApplications on usage, Quantcast on traffic — become strategic references, with each platform camp citing whichever methodology flatters it.
- If legacy Java ME handsets still generate outsized browsing volume, mobile web tooling and ad targeting aimed at those devices retains value longer than an Android-first narrative would suggest.
Third-order effects
- The industry's definition of 'mobile market share' splits into two currencies — shipped units versus internet usage — and platform victories will be contested metric by metric rather than settled by one number.
- Sustained divergence between device sales and actual usage would push advertising and developer economics toward usage-weighted measurement, weakening the feedback loop that lets high-shipment platforms convert share into ecosystem power.
The trend: Mobile platform competition is shifting from a single unit-share scoreboard to a contest over which metric — devices sold or internet usage — defines market leadership.