Mobile Web's Explosive Growth
Mobile ad firm AdMob has revealed the dramatic changes the mobile industry has seen in their latest Mobile Metrics Report, released just this morning. Believe it or not, it was only a year ago that the Motorola RAZR scored as the number one phone here in the U.S. while the iPhone was the only touchscreen device to even make the list of top ten handsets. Only a year later, and so much has changed. Now half of the top ten are touchscreen devices, six include Wi-Fi capabilities, and six have mobile application stores. And as you would expect, this new crop of super-powered phones are making heavy use of the mobile web.
Key Takeaway #1: iPhone Still the Top Smartphone Worldwide and Has Traffic to Prove It
Among the devices making the heaviest use of the mobile web are the iPhone and its non-smartphone counterpart, the iPod Touch. The data traffic created by these two handhelds has increased 19 times from September 2008 to this past month and now accounts for 43% of all smartphone requests worldwide. In the U.S., that percentage is even slightly higher, with iPhone traffic accounting for nearly half (48%) of all smartphone requests.
Apple devices (iPhone and iPod Touch) also claim the top two spots on both the U.S. and the worldwide charts of top handsets. However, feature phones like the RAZR v3 and Samsung's R450 are still making the top ten list as well and account for 60% of ad requests in the U.S. - a figure that's likely due to the unlimited data plans available with each of these devices.
Key Takeaway #2: Watch Out! Android is Rising Fast
Now climbing up the charts, Google's Android, the newcomer to the mobile operating system game, is beginning to have an impact on mobile web traffic as well. From August to September of 2009, the percentage of smartphone traffic generated by devices running the Android OS grew a whopping 13% over the course of the month. That's a dramatic increase in such a short period of time and gives credence to recent reports that Android is poised to become the number two smartphone in the worldwide market. While still far behind the iPhone OS in terms of traffic with only 17% of U.S. traffic and only 10% of traffic worldwide, Google's mobile OS is already beating out competitors like RIM, the maker of Blackberry devices, and Windows Mobile. It has also claimed two spots on the top 10 chart of handset models in the U.S with the HTC Dream coming in at number 3 and the HTC Magic coming in at number 10. Worldwide, the Dream is also number 3, but the Magic only makes it to spot number 15.
Key Takeaway #3: Outside of U.S., Mobile Web Strong in India, Indonesia, U.K., Philippines
When looking at the number of ad requests by country, the U.S. is still dominating with 47.3% of all requests coming from the States. The next nearest country, India, only comes in at 6.5%. Rounding out the top five are Indonesia, the U.K., and the Philippines. These numbers point to heavy mobile web use in each of these countries as compared with the rest of the world.
When grouped by larger regions, North America is number one with 49.5% of requests, most of that from the U.S., and the second largest region is Asia, accounting for 25.3% of requests. Western Europe, Africa, and Latin America follow with 9.4%, 5.3% and 5.0% respectively.
Looking at just percentage increases in traffic growth, a different picture appears. Latin America is showing a large percent increase year-over-year at 0.6%, second only to North America's 1.1%. Other regions in the top five, while still accounting for large numbers of requests, actually saw slight decreases in growth (less than 0.5%) over the past year.
Smartphones are Taking Over, Mobile Web Grows
While none of the data included in this report is all that surprising, it's interesting to see actual numbers put to the reported trends. We can now see the disproportionate amount of web surfing done by iPhone users, no doubt thanks to the phone's Safari web browser, a vast improvement over the browsers included in many other mobile devices on the market.
It's also worth noting how fast Android is moving up the charts right now. It could very well be the next contender to the smartphone crown, especially given the company's plans to continue spreading its OS across numerous devices worldwide. As Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently declared, "Android adoption is about to explode." Also, AdMob noted on an earlier blog entry that there are already 12 Android phones available through 32 carriers in 26 countries. By the time they release their next Mobile Metrics report, those numbers are sure to have increased.
What all this means to the consumer is that smartphones are now edging out feature phones as the devices of choice. More phones than ever come with the advanced capabilities like touchscreens, full-featured web browsers, and Wi-Fi. With features like these, more people will begin to surf the mobile web and download mobile applications. This, in turn, will drive related changes in mobile platforms, communication, e-Commerce, and more, all of which are bound to see similar upward trends over the coming months.
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Very interesting report. I continue to be surprised at the fact that mobile web is so popular in countries outside of the U.S., when consumers in the U.S. seem to be more hungry for mobile multimedia content than anyone else. At least it seems that way to me, but apparently that's not the case.
There is no discussion of how AdMob's market position impacts the stats. That is, extrapolating from AdMob's data the author makes conclusions about global mobile web usage shares by region and also by specific manufacturers. However, unless AdMob has a comparable market position in American, European, and Asian markets a comparison across markets may only reflect only its relative weakness or strength in that market. AdMob's traffic per manufacturer or traffic per country does not match with data provided by the ITU or even publicly available data from telecom providers and handset manufacturers. For example, there is no mention of Korea or Japan both of which have much higher levels of mobile web usage than the US. Also, according to these stats Europeans access the mobile web less than Americans. Again, this does not reflect the majority of publicly available data and must be a reflection of AdMob's market strength.
I am really surprised at this growth. I guess mobile computing should meaningfully grow only when mobility increases - that is when business people begin to travel more. But is this traffic from this segment? I would be surprised if so.
Or is this becoming a fashion?
I have always found laptops more convenient to read/write info. Thats why this comment. Comments about my comment are welcome.
The stats are definitely interesting and do show huge growth... to be completely honest I didn't expect anything less... iPhone/iTunes/App Store ecosystem and the Apple marketing machine have done wonders for mobile content consumption which is of course driven by education, discovery and retention.
And Drew: I couldn't agree more regarding Admob's report. It clearly has some trends that skew it as Admob is not the only mobile ad serving network. Admob's data is a great resource - and if I was them, I'd be building this as a core part of their offering as I am sure the state of CTR on mobile websites is not enough to keep the coffers greased!
My bet is that Nokia will fall further behind as it current looks on the graph's above (OVI is a bad attempt at an app store) and Android, once it kicks in properly, will really give Apple a run for its money...
But - if its about $$$ - then Google will win!
Fantastic news for Mobilers like me :) i have ful faith in Iphone and Android which are going to take mobile world to next level.
Well this is a little bit old, surprise surprise Google Bought Admob for 750 Million Dollars now.
Admob is such a potential advertising firm that's when shaked-lightly could produce an extremely big (ROI) Return of Investment to BIG G
Will Admob be The New Adsense for Mobile?
You gotta love the timing of Google - having a recent release of Android powered Phones then buying this mobile-advertising firm.
Where is Samsung on the chart? It is claimed to be number two manufacturer on the page 8 of the report, while being absolutely absent on the chart....
I agree, Samsung is totally missing on the chart here in South Africa most people use Samsung and I keep that in mind when i develop my sites.
Samsung is most definitely 'Other'. While Samsung might be huge in south africa, HTC still owns about 80% of the smartphone marketshare (at least for Windows Mobile. Also, Samsung has one of the worst internet browsing exeriences, in my opinion. I wouldn't doubt if they are only 4% of global mobile traffic.
2010 will be a very interesting year for the iPhone v. All Others and especially Android. Google's Android OS is the equivalent of Windows in the 80's/90's. By running it's OS across any carrier and any hardware Google hopes to have the kind of unstoppable leverage MS has in the PC market. Will be interesting to see how Apple's proprietary hardware/software philosophy is updated in this battle. My prediction for end of 2010 is for Goog to fill Microsoft's shoes and have an inferior product and user experience, but gain dominant market share.