Sarah Perez reporting for TechCrunch on the latest mobile market-share numbers, where iOS accounts for about half of usage:

Of course, it may not be fair to compare iOS directly with the other mobile platforms, given that the iPad accounts for a good bit of Apple’s market share in this slice of mobile data.

Slightly odd comment, given that the same isn’t said about Android devices. Bizarrely, though, depicted a pie chart splitting elements separates the iPad, iPhone and iPod (i.e. devices) but on the Android side separates flavours of the OS (Android 2.2, Android 2.3, etc.). That isn’t very fair, and yet it’s what you get when accessing the OS versions pie chart in the associated Net Applications report. This is roughly equivalent to the desktop version listing iMac, MacBook Air and Mac mini on the Mac side and Windows 7, Vista and XP on the Windows side. Bonkers.

UPDATE: Net Applications has responded to a query about the above:

Our reporting online goes 2 levels deep.  Currently, Apple is a unique case in that it is the provider of both the hardware and OS, and the same OS is used on multiple devices.  We had to make a decision which way to report Apple data – with OS version numbers or device type as the second level of or online reporting.  Most feedback we’ve received has been that device type is more intriguing than OS version number

So the reasoning is “this is what people want”, which means direct comparisons aren’t possible, thereby rendering the data somewhat meaningless. Still, the press seems happy to compare Apple to every other Android manufacturer rather than separating out each vendor—mixing and matching data and massaging figures to a publication’s agenda is how things are all to often. It’s a pity, then, that some of those providing the data aren’t really helping.