Tuesday 18th March 2008

- StatCounter research finds iPhone is number one mobile browser in US number two globally
- MS Internet Explorer faces close competition from open source Firefox

Tuesday, 18th March 2008: Apple has increased its share of the Internet browser market in the US by 64% between December and March according to StatCounter, which provides organisations and individuals with a free website visitor statistics tool.* Globally iPhone/iTouch has more than doubled its share of the Internet browser market from 0.03% to 0.08%.

In March iPhone and iTouch increased their share of the total browser market in the US from 0.14% in December to 0.23% according to StatCounter which tracks in excess of nine billion pageloads per month over its network of two million websites. If one excludes iTouch from the figures then iPhone's market share of Internet browsing in the US (0.18%) is still well ahead of Nokia (0.01%). However, Nokia still maintains a significant lead over Apple in the global market with 0.25% to 0.08%.

"The key message is that iPhone is more than living up to its claims of being a user friendly Internet browser, unlike many other mobile phones," commented Aodhan Cullen, founder and CEO of StatCounter. He said that iPhone web browsing peaked in the US on Christmas Day at 0.07%. "Presumably this was due to people trying out their new Christmas present combined perhaps with not accessing PCs that day."

The StatCounter analysis finds that Microsoft Internet Explorer still leads the browser market overall with 44.5% market share in the US. But it is facing real competition from open source based Firefox which grew to 43.9% of the US browser market. Globally Internet Explorer is well ahead at 59% with Firefox on 33%.

The StatCounter analysis was based on a sample of 372 million page views globally from December 07 to March 08, including 71 million US page views.

Ends

* Note: Figures include iPhone and iTouch

Press queries to:

Mary O'Brien/Jacinta Ryan (Simpson FTPR) Tel: +353-1-2605300/+353 86 8330809

About StatCounter

StatCounter, a free online visitor stats tool, was founded in 1999. It offers its members the chance to grow and improve their online businesses by allowing them to monitor the number of hits to their website; the geographical location of visitors; the various pages a visitor views; keywords used to find the site plus other features.

StatCounter currently has over 1.5 million members and tracks in excess of 9 billion pageloads per month over its network of 2 million websites. A Google PageRank 9/10 site, StatCounter was recently named by web information company Alexa as one of the most visited sites in the US. For information on this real-time, user-friendly, and free visitor stats tool, please visit www.statcounter.com