"First, so what? No, let me rephrase that: So fucking what? Since when does web development mean leaving 50% of your mobile users out in the cold? Since when is “I only support browsers with a large market share” a valid argument? (Answer: since we have an iPhone up our ass.)"
A device has more than 3x its market-share in traffic-share and we are supposed to ignore that? That doesn't seem realistic. This gap between market-share and traffic-share speak volumes about how far behind the other platforms are in UX.
Maybe developers aren't just obsessed with the iPhone: maybe they just don't want to develop for something that makes thier work look like shit.
* Those usage numbers (50% of mobile browser traffic)
could be a US-only statistic
* People on other browsers might not browse the web as much because
not enough effort is made to making web content usable on those
browsers.
Viewing your argument alongside the second point poses a possible chicken-and-the-egg problem. No one is using other mobile browsers because the experience sucks, but the experience sucks because not enough development is done to make it bearable (or pleasant). Not enough development time is being spent to make the experience bearable or pleasant because no one is using those other mobile browsers.
I guess I can bolster this with the usage scenarios that are probably happening:
People get their phone and try to use the mobile browser, but the experience sucks so they give up (or only use it whne they really need to get some info from the web).
Developers look at the usage statistics, see that no one is using the other browsers and proudly declare that the people whole own phones with those other browsers don't want to access the information that they are presenting to the world, so therefore there is no point in targeting them as an audience.
The problem is that this is the wrong conclusion to make. Just because people aren't accessing your content in a certain way does not mean that they don't want to.
No, you're not supposed to ignore that the iPhone has 3x its market share in mobile traffic. But you're also not supposed to ignore the other 50% of mobile traffic.
A device has more than 3x its market-share in traffic-share and we are supposed to ignore that? That doesn't seem realistic. This gap between market-share and traffic-share speak volumes about how far behind the other platforms are in UX.
Maybe developers aren't just obsessed with the iPhone: maybe they just don't want to develop for something that makes thier work look like shit.