Following Apple’s blowout December quarter during which it shipped a record 37 million iPhone handsets and 15.4 million iPad tablets, a significant shift has taken place. iOS’s share of U.S. Web traffic as observed during a six-month study conducted by leading ad network Chitika has surpassed Apple’s Mac OS Web traffic share for the first time. Read on for more.

Chitika monitored traffic across its network between mid-August 2011 and early February, and compared the volume from Apple’s iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices to traffic from Mac computers. The study covered hundreds of millions of ad impressions and it used user agent data to determine Web traffic share for each platform. According to Chitika’s data, iOS’s Web traffic share finally topped Mac OS earlier this month.

“The data shows that the web market shares of iOS and OS X have been converging steadily since August,” Chitika’s Gabe Donnini noted in the firm’s report. ”iOS has been posting regular gains, and has experienced an overall growth of nearly 50%, whereas OS X has seen its market share decline by 25% since a high point in September. February marks the first point where a reversal in position can be seen in the respective operating systems. iOS passes Mac OS with 8.15% of all web traffic, whereas Mac OS only sees 7.96%.”

The trend observed by Chitika is likely to continue, and the disparity between iOS Web traffic and Mac OS traffic will almost certainly grow. Apple’s MacBook line of notebook computers saw growth recently that outpaced the rest of the PC industry, but the growth in Apple’s PC division pales in comparison to its mobile devices.

The proliferation of iOS devices around the world is expected to continue as Apple releases its iPad 3 early next month and a completely redesigned next-generation iPhone later this year.

According to a new report from NetMarketShare, the iPad accounts for 1% of global web traffic and 2.1% of web traffic in the United States — a figure that’s 53 times greater than its nearest tablet competitor, the Samsung Galaxy Tab. Similarly, its traffic is 76 times greater than that of the Motorola XOOM, and 306 greater than the BlackBerry PlayBook. In the United States, the iPad owns 25.5% of the mobile browser market, which is a smaller chunk than Android’s 31.6% share and the iPhone’s 35.2% market share. The research data is compiled from more than 160 million visitors accessing Net Applications’ network.

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Well, kind of. Our boys at Clicky (awesome site analytics service, by the way) released a report this morning compiled of data from over 150,000 websites which have their tracking code installed. It’s a pretty large sample size, and what they found was that the DROID, less than a week old, already accounts for around 25% of all Android traffic they see in the United States. We’ll let you guys tear this apart in the comments…

Thanks, Sean!

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