Apple has secured the third spot in Cloudflare’s Global Internet Services rankings for 2025, reinforcing its position as one of the most widely used digital ecosystems on the planet. The ranking comes from Cloudflare’s Radar Year in Review, an annual report that analyses global internet trends using data drawn from one of the world’s largest DNS and network infrastructures.
Cloudflare’s Internet Services ranking measures the relative popularity of major online platforms based on global DNS query data. In simple terms, it reflects how frequently users around the world are accessing and interacting with large internet services. In 2025, Apple finished the year firmly in third place, despite a competitive and often volatile year across the broader tech landscape.
According to the report, Apple overtook TikTok early in the year and maintained its third-place position consistently through the first half of 2025. Around July, Apple began alternating positions with Microsoft, reflecting shifts in usage patterns as Microsoft’s services performed more strongly than they did in 2024. Even with that mid-year fluctuation, Apple closed out 2025 ranked third overall.
TikTok, which Apple had surpassed earlier in the year, ended 2025 in tenth place. Cloudflare’s data notes that TikTok’s performance was affected by an unstable year shaped by regulatory pressure and uncertainty in several key markets. While some of that regulatory drama appears close to resolution, the impact on traffic and usage trends was clearly visible in the rankings.
Beyond service popularity, Cloudflare’s report also offers insight into mobile traffic patterns, an area where Apple continues to show gradual but steady gains. In 2025, iOS devices accounted for 35 percent of global mobile internet traffic, while Android devices made up the remaining 65 percent. Although Android still dominates overall, Cloudflare noted that iOS increased its share by two percentage points year over year, signalling slow but consistent growth.
The distribution of mobile traffic varied significantly by region. Monaco stood out as a major outlier, with iOS responsible for around 70 percent of mobile traffic. At the other end of the spectrum, 27 countries recorded Android usage above 90 percent of mobile traffic. These included markets such as Papua New Guinea, Sudan, Malawi, Bangladesh and Ethiopia, where lower-cost Android devices remain far more accessible across a wide range of price points and form factors.
Cloudflare explained that its mobile traffic analysis is based on User-Agent data included in web requests, allowing it to calculate the share of traffic generated by different operating systems throughout the year. The company noted that Android’s global lead is largely driven by its broad availability across devices with varying capabilities and price ranges, particularly in developing markets.
The 2025 Radar Year in Review also highlighted several broader internet trends beyond Apple’s performance. Global internet traffic grew by 19 percent over the course of the year, with a noticeable acceleration beginning in August. Satellite internet provider Starlink saw its traffic double in 2025, expanding usage across more than 20 new countries and regions.
In the AI and search space, Anthropic recorded the highest crawl-to-refer ratio among leading platforms, while Google continued to dominate global search traffic. Other search engines such as Yandex, Bing and DuckDuckGo followed at a significant distance, underscoring Google’s continued grip on search behaviour worldwide.
Taken together, Cloudflare’s findings paint a picture of a maturing but still rapidly expanding internet ecosystem. Apple’s third-place finish reflects the enduring strength of its integrated services, even as competition intensifies and usage patterns shift across regions and platforms.
Discover the latest Business News, Sensex, and Nifty updates. Obtain Personal Finance insights, tax queries, and expert opinions on Moneycontrol or download the Moneycontrol App to stay updated!
