Google commands more than half of iPhone’s Web traffic

A new report from Chitika Research shows that Google has even more significant presence on the iPhone than you might have thought. Chitika's findings show that across the Internet as a whole-not just iPhone or mobile Internet-Google search accounts for about 31 percent of Web traffic. According to Chitika, Google searches alone account for more than 50 percent of all Internet traffic from mobile device running the iPhone OS.That means Google outstrips all other traffic, including other search sites and all visits to Websites in the phone's browser.

Google has doubtlessly attained an even more commanding position on the iPhone because it's the default search provider in the iPhone's Safari browser. There has been no shortage of ink spilled about the growing rivalry between Apple and Google. Some iPhone users tend to search for sites via Google rather than type in full URLs.  But what happens if Google loses its prime location on the iPhone and iPod touch, as a recent BusinessWeek report suggests? And the Mountain View search behemoth has just released its Google Voice Web app, entirely bypassing Apple's App Store. The mobile Web market is changing rapidly, though, and Google's own Android OS is capturing a bigger piece of the pie. If a tit-for-tat ensues, we could very well see Google search get demoted on the iPhone, and with that could come a sudden change in fortunes for Google's mobile advertising.

The iPhone now accounts for 54 percent of total smartphone traffic. All of this should make the coming year unpredictable and pretty interesting. Android has snagged 27 percent. One final word about the data: Chitika is a search-based online advertising network, and the company derived its numbers from a sample of traffic through that network. With 700 million impressions to analyze, one can assume that Chitika has used a fairly representative sample, but the report doesn't include a detailed methodology.