APPLE DOMINATES MOBILE AND HTML SITE TRAFFIC

AdMob (www.AdMob.com) released mobile metrics for April which showed that 43% of mobile requests to mobile sites and 65% of mobile requests to HTML sites originated from iPhones. iPhone represents an estimated 8% of the total installed base. AdMob reports that 3% of mobile requests to mobile sites and 9% of mobile requests to HTML sites originated from Android phones, which have an estimated 1% of the handset market. iPhone and Android devices are the only platforms for which share of traffic to mobile and HTML sites exceed their handset share.

The relation between mobile traffic to mobile sites versus HTML sites is reversed for Symbian and RIM devices. Symbian handsets, which have 52% of the market, generate 36% and 7% of the requests to mobile sites and to HTML sites, respectively. RIM handsets, which represent 17% of the market, generate 9% and 3% of the requests to mobile sites and to HTML sites, respectively.

Windows handsets, which represent 12% of the handset market, originate 3% and 6% of requests to mobile and HTML sites, respectively. Palm, which represents 2% of the handset market, originates 2% of requests to both mobile and HTML sites.

One conclusion from this information is that development of mobile sites is much more important for publishers who are interested in reaching Symbian and RIM users, and much more important in regions, such as Europe, where Symbian devices predominate. HTML sites are much more important when targeting iPhone and Android users. We think it is likely that mobile web sites will fall out of favor with publishers as the share of more-capable Internet handsets increases.
-Stuart Whitaker

MOBILE APPS FORECAST TO REACH $ 25 BILLION BY 2014

Juniper Research (www.juniperresearch.com) forecasts that the total market for mobile applications, retail, and Value Added Service (VAS) revenue will increase by almost three times from 2009 to $ 25 billion in 2014. VAS includes subscriptions, premium events, and additional content. Juniper expects that by 2011, the majority of all app-related revenues will come from apps delivered via app stores rather than from non-store channels, and that the real value of non-store revenue will decline from 2012 onwards. Operators need to develop app store partnerships to share in the app store revenue.
-Stuart Whitaker

YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR: FREE IPHONE APPLICATIONS HAVE HIGHER INTEREST BUT LOWER RATING THAN PAID APPS.

Our review of the Apple iPhone App Store downloads finds that free applications continue to evoke much higher interest, as measured by the number of “ratings” the top twenty-five free and the top twenty-five paid applications have received, though the rating “score” is significantly higher for the paid applications than for the free applications. The top twenty-five paid applications have received 31,965 ratings with an average rating of 3.8. The top twenty-five free applications have received eighteen times as many ratings as the paid applications—588,718 ratings, with an average rating of 3.0. Games and entertainment dominate both the free applications, which finds twenty free applications in these two categories, and the paid applications, which finds twenty-one applications in these two categories. (Table available). -Stuart Whitaker