Despite being available for less than a month and being handicapped by Apple, Google Chrome for iOS has managed to snag 1.5% of the browser market share for Apple's mobile OS, according a new report from online advertising network Chitika.
Launched late last month at Google's I/O conference, Chrome for iOS is an attractive and well-designed browser that's unable to operate at its full potential due to a few roadblocks put in place by Apple. Instead of using its own rendering engine, Chrome, like all other browsers made for iOS, must use the same Webkit engine used by Safari. Worse: all third-party browsers must also use an out of date JavaScript engine, which slows performance considerably.
Even with those troubles, Chrome seems to be thriving. Chitika says Chrome for iOS continues to see moderate growth, as the most popular third-party browser (image 2). If you look at the above chart, you'll see that the rest of the non-Safari traffic comes from people arriving on websites via an app like Facebook or Twitter.
It's important to remember, however, that these results are gleaned solely from websites that use Chitika's ads.
[via TechCrunch]
