iPhone Traffic now Less Than Android Traffic

Forget the iPad.

Apple’s hold on the SmartPhone market is finally slipping, as in March more traffic ran over the airwaves through SmartPhones based on the Google Android operating system than to iPhone devices.

I’ve made it pretty clear how I feel about the iPhone, and I’ve been a loud supporter of Android since I started using a Droid last November. But there’s only the slightest tinge of “I told you so” in me telling you about this.

Keyboard issues are purely subjective; I need the physical keypad that iPhone lacks, and I find it easy to use the Droid’s on-screen keyboard but impossible to use iPhone’s. But I speak for no one else on that issue and I’ve been clear that the iPhone is beautiful, well engineered, and even better in those regards when you move up to an iPad. But the iPhone isn’t a serious business tool. Android is, and when you combine that with Google’s brilliant bait-and-switch marketing it’s easy to see why the tide is turning.

No, I don’t think Google’s recent business practices are OK. But then again I’m no fan of Apple’s, particularly as it relates to making developers’ live even more difficult with the advent of iPhone OS 4.0 . For me, a SmartPhone is a tool, and the business change you sign up for when you pick one needs to reflect the way you approach business.

Android is just better than iPhone when you compare how they work to how people operate in the real world. The SmartPhone business is changing, and Android is at the center of that change.