AdMob issues April smartphone web usage report; iPhone dominates HTML, Symbian needs a new browser

By on May 27, 2009 at 12:01 PM
General May 27, 2009

AdMob, a leading mobile ad service provider, issues mobile metrics and analysis each month and today it has released April data. Key points from AdMob’s press release:

  • While Gartner estimated global smartphone sales represented 12 percent of total device sales in 2008, 35 percent of AdMob’s worldwide ad requests in April 2009 came from smartphones. This means that smartphones accounted for nearly 3 times more usage than their relative market share.
  • The iPhone OS had 8 percent of the smartphone market, but generated 43 percent of mobile Web requests and 65 percent of HTML usage.
  • The Android OS share of the smartphone market was less than 1 percent, but generated 3 percent of mobile Web requests and 9 percent of HTML usage.
  • The Symbian OS had 52 percent of the smartphone market, but generated only 36 percent of mobile Web usage and 7 percent of HTML usage.
  • Usage of mobile Web sites greatly out paces usage of HTML sites on smartphones running the Symbian and RIM Operating System (OS).
  • 24 percent of US requests were made over a Wi-Fi network. The top five Wi-Fi devices in terms of usage were the iPhone, iPod touch, Sony PSP, HTC Dream (G1), and HTC Dash.

There are definitely some interesting takeaways here — the most interesting to us is actually the Symbian stat. Symbian has 52 percent of the market but generated only 7 percent of HTML usage. 7 percent! Conversely, the iPhone holds about 8 percent of the smartphone market but accounts for 65 percent of mobile HTML usage. Even Android, which accounts for 1 percent of smartphones worldwide, topped Symbian with 9 percent of HTML traffic.

The Webkit-based S60 browser is certainly capable of displaying HTML but as we’ve commented on numerous occasions, it’s clunky and slow. We really (REALLY) hope this will be a particular area of focus as the Symbian Foundation continues work on Symbian^2 because S60 5th Edition hardly addresses the issue. Oh and RIM, your browser is even worse… But you know this.

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  • http://numetheus.shutterfly.com Christopher Cox

    @123abc
    That is what I said! The browser identification will tell you what browser/platform. The first page said unknown just because that script doesn’t just output the identification, it makes it easy to read and was not updated with with string for the J2ME/MIDP Opera Mini browser, so it will say unknown.

    The second link just printed the identification string and it tells you that you are using Opera Mini. J2ME/MIDP IS the platform because Opera Mini was not written for Blackberry. It is a J2ME/MIDP application that will run on any device that has J2ME/MIDP, so the same software will run on any phone including dumbphones that can run that type of software. So yeah, like I said in an earlier message … they can’t tell what HARDWARE platform you are running, so they should include a separate stat for just the browser. Opera Mobile and Skyfire are different animals. They are NOT java mobile applications and should list CE as the OS. Most people that run opera on Windows Mobile devices use Opera Mobile and not Mini.

  • 123abc

    @Christopher Cox

    First of all, when I say platform, I meant the Operating System Platform… not software platform. If you look at the AdMob x axis, it is basically listing OS platforms.

    Again, the user agent string for Opera Mini doesn’t disclose the OS platform. The reason I say this is because the PHP Browser detect link I posted in one of my previous posts showed the user agent string, but it also showed this further on down the page:

    Platform: Unknown
    Browser: Opera
    Version: 9.6

    It says platform unknown. Try it for yourself.

    Now you have me confuse on a couple of points.

    First of all, Opera Mini is available for Blackberry. I don’t know why you say it’s not written for it. The beauty of Java is that if you write a mobile application, it will run on a wide variety of devices… so when you write for one, you are basically writing for all devices that support Java… including Blackberry.

    Second, you cannot list “CE as the OS” for Opera Mobile because it also runs on Symbian UIQ and S60. Skyfire runs on S60 too and Blackberry in the future. You can bet that these browsers would also be ported over to the iPhone if Apple didn’t have a Vulcan Deathgrip over the AppStore. (Yeah, I just watched Star Trek).

    BTW, here is the user agent string for Skyfire using the PHP browser detect link in my previous post.

    ——-
    Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT5.1; en-US; rv:1.0.1.20) Gecko/20080829

    Using the above string, the script detected the following values:

    Platform: Windows
    Browser: Firefox
    Version: 2.0.0.20
    ——-

    Again, user agent string means nothing.

    Seems like more and more people are using Skyfire. It got voted the 2009 Webby Award – Peoples Voice Best Mobile Application.

  • http://techtips.timlaytonllc.com Tim Layton

    I was very interested to learn about the new skyfire 1.0 release for windows mobile enabling flash via the browser. This is a huge leap forward and I think this will just keep getting better and better.

  • Renuka

    Hi,

    I want to integrate admob in my third party blackberry application. Can anybody tell me how to do that?

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