Cross-platform digital media consumption is on the rise in Europe, fuelled by growth in the adoption of smartphones, tablets and other non-computer web-enabled devices (collectively termed 'connected devices'), according to research just released by comScore. Connected devices drove 4.6% of total digital traffic in August 2011 across five leading European markets (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK).
Smartphone usage continues to increase dramatically -- in the three months up to August 2011, over 91 million mobile subscribers across these five countries reported using smartphones, an increase of 46% on the previous year. As for operating systems, Apple's iOS (which incorporates iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches) accounts for over 30% of all mobile and connected devices in use in the five countries. Symbian comes second, with almost 29% of all devices in use, followed by Google's Android platform at almost 24%.
Not surprisingly, there are differences in the types of devices in use for each platform. The report finds that nearly half of the iOS share of the market is driven by the iPad and iPod Touch, whereas Symbian's share of the market is driven exclusively by Symbian smartphones. Tablets only account for 16% of the Android platform share.
The report also compared the amount of browser-based traffic coming from each operating system and found that iOS is significantly ahead of other platforms, generating more than 60% of all connected device traffic. Again the iPad is a strong driver, accounting for over 40% of all iOS traffic, despite the fact that less than a quarter of iOS devices in use are iPads.
Android ranked second in traffic delivery with a market share of just over 20%, while the RIM platform on the BlackBerry accounted for 8% and Symbian accounted for just over 2%, suggesting that Symbian smartphone users are less likely on average to consume digital media on their devices.
More information on the report can be found here.
Image of iPhone courtesy of William Hook via Flickr.