On Tuesday we reported that Apple was the most coveted brand in emerging markets even though most consumers in those countries couldn't afford Apple's products. What was surprising about the report was that there were stats that compared Google Play to Apple's App store. Now you would think that with Android outselling iOS devices up to 3 or 4:1, depending on what analyst reports you're reading these days, that Android would have an equal lead in app store sales. But as it turns out, in most of the larger emerging markets like China and India, Android is only ahead by a few percentage points instead of being an equal 3 or 4:1 ratio.

So while junk phones are being thrown into the smartphone numbers by the "powers that be" in the market, the dismal Android facts against iOS aren't standing up. How can you have so many more Android devices in North America and still only represent about a third of the web traffic?

How can Android be so marginally ahead of Apple in App store stats in emerging markets when Android is so dominant in these regions? It's because Android "dumbphones" aren't used to surf the web or buy developer apps. They're used to make phone calls and little else.

So once again, Wall Street's divine law of "sales volume" of Android products being more important than iOS products that consumers actually use on the web that drive sales to developers is being shown for the scam that it really is. The stats just keep bearing out the fact that shipping tons more Android devices isn't meaning anything to the bottom line of developers and OEM's for that matter. But let's just keep pretending that's so.

The web traffic chart by Chitika noted above makes it clear. Regardless of Wall Street's magic wand and trickery to make it look like Android matters, the facts still show that it doesn't. It's magic Pixie Dust marketing from Samsung and others to convince the public that Android matters. But it doesn't. That's why Samsung is hoping to sell Tizen OS over time, because they know that the lower-end consumer really just wants cheap hardware and bare bone features like email. The only magic surprise to Android is that it delivered 99% of mobile device malware. That's Android's best-selling secret (wink-wink).

Look, if Android really mattered, that chart would be reversed by now with 65% of web traffic for Android. But it's not.

If Android really mattered, then the Google Play Store would be 3 to 4 times the sales volume for developer apps over Apple's store. But the reality needle doesn't go there.

Chitika notes that "Looking at the Web traffic from all North American users of both operating systems, iOS users generate 65% of the total, and Android users the remaining 35%. Put another way, 85% more aggregate Web traffic is driven by iOS devices as compared to Android devices in North America. These figures are similar to what we observed in an identically framed study back in late-2012, with two percentage points in share moving from iOS to Android over that time frame.

In terms of the sample for this data set, Chitika Insights examined tens of millions of North American Android- and iOS-based online ad impressions cataloged within the Chitika network from February 26 through March 4, 2014.

In the end, iOS rules North American web-traffic because consumers who own Apple's artfully crafted devices actually love to use them … on the web … where they rock.

About Making Comments on our Site: Patently Apple reserves the right to post, dismiss or edit any comments.