Revisiting the iPhone’s Browsing Market Share (Part II)

Back in September, I reported that according to AdMob, a mobile advertising marketplace, Apple's (AAPL) iPhone seemed to trail Symbian, Windows Mobile (MSFT), BlackBerry (RIMM) and Palm (PALM) handsets in both worldwide and US share of smartphone traffic. This was in direct contrast to other web browsing marketshare statistics where iPhone seemingly comes out on top. I also received hate-mail from iPhone-junkies. But looks like there is an explanation. Jason Spero, VP of Marketing at AdMob, proffers an explanation:

With regards to the iPhone question: we serve ads on our partner’s mobile sites, so when the users surf the “regular” web on the iPhone that traffic isn’t included in the Metrics report. Much of the tremendous growth we are seeing in iPhone requests are coming from the creation of iPhone specific mobile sites. This traffic is included in the report and these sites represent a growing part of AdMob’s business. As content owners look to improve the mobile experience, we believe more and more mobile specific sites will be created and the mobile web will continue its strong growth in the face of more handsets having the ability to surf the “regular” web.

One additional point of clarification – the report doesn’t state that a Motorola RAZR user is more likely to surf the mobile web that an iPhone user, it simply states that our publisher sites see more traffic from RAZRs than iPhones. The mobile web existed and was seeing explosive growth well before the iPhone hit the scene –many millions of these devices are still in heavy use today.

The short answer is that regular web-surfing (which is what most iPhone users do, I reckon) is not included in AdMob’s report. The AdMob-reported iPhone numbers refer to ads served out by AdMob when users visit iPhone specific mobile sites. 

According to AdMob’s September report, iPhone is giving the other platforms a run for their money even here! iPhone is now ranked 4th globally in terms of the total number of ad requests served by AdMob -ahead of Nokia N95/N80/N73, BlackBerry 8100/8300 and Pal Centro. Only Motorola’s (MOT) RAZR/KRZR and Nokia (NOK) N70 is ahead and not by much.

Disclosure: none

Comments

[Azazello:]

good information is value, dusty catch-phrases of the "hate-mail" and "iPhone-junky" sort will stop me on my tracks to read on.
This is no way to say I am sorry for the slant.
Good-bye self-explainer!

2008 Oct 23 05:45 AM

[Martin Hill:]

Well, according to Net Applications (which isn’t restricted to tracking only a limited number of cut-down mobile-web only sites) in September 2008, compared to all other mobile platforms, the iPhone/iPod Touch together now has a web browser marketshare of about 70% or
- 6 times greater than Windows Mobile/WinCE,
- 12 times greater than Nokia’s Symbian and
- 36 times greater than the PlayStation Portable.
- Blackberry and Palm don't even get on the graph and no other mobile platform comes close.
- The iPhone is even thrashing non-mobile platforms such as the Nintendo Wii (36x smaller), PS3 (16x smaller) etc.

marketshare.hitslink.c...

Then there is Google’s discovery a little while back that 50 times more searches occur from Apple‘s iPhone than any other mobile handset. Google “thought it was a mistake and made their engineers check the logs again,” said Vic Gundotra, head of Google’s mobile operations:

www.ft.com/cms/s/667f1...

Of course, Google plays on a far larger stage and is definitely not limited to mobile-only websites unlike AdMob.

blogs.computerworld.co...

As you say, the reason Admob is recording a much lower percentage of iPhones using mobile sites is of course because the vast majority of iPhone users browse the real web, not neutered mobile-only sites which most other phone users are restricted to.

-Mart

2008 Oct 23 11:19 AM

[Martin Hill:]

Well, according to Net Applications (which isn’t restricted to tracking only a limited number of cut-down mobile-web only sites) in September 2008, compared to all other mobile platforms, the iPhone/iPod Touch together now has a web browser marketshare of about 70% or
- 6 times greater than Windows Mobile/WinCE,
- 12 times greater than Nokia’s Symbian and
- 36 times greater than the PlayStation Portable.
- Blackberry and Palm don't even get on the graph and no other mobile platform comes close.
- The iPhone is even thrashing non-mobile platforms such as the Nintendo Wii (36x smaller), PS3 (16x smaller) etc.

marketshare.hitslink.c...

Then there is Google’s discovery a little while back that 50 times more searches occur from Apple‘s iPhone than any other mobile handset. Google “thought it was a mistake and made their engineers check the logs again,” said Vic Gundotra, head of Google’s mobile operations:

www.ft.com/cms/s/667f1...

Of course, Google plays on a far larger stage and is definitely not limited to mobile-only websites unlike AdMob.

blogs.computerworld.co...

As you say, the reason Admob is recording a much lower percentage of iPhones using mobile sites is of course because the vast majority of iPhone users browse the real web, not neutered mobile-only sites which most other phone users are restricted to.

-Mart

2008 Oct 23 11:19 AM

[Martin Hill:]

Ai yi yi yi, not sure how I managed to post three copies of my comment. Apologies all. :-(

-Mart

2008 Oct 23 11:22 AM

[PK de C'ville:]

"I also received hate-mail from iPhone-junkies."

Easy to say. It's a meme. On your 1 you did receive 3 aggressively expressed comments from Apple fans, 1 from a Windoze guy, and 7 well behaved folks expressing skepticism with your mistaken conclusion.

I commend you for correcting yourself on the significance of AdMob, but I really didn't see much 'hate mail'.

2008 Oct 23 11:42 AM

[dvd:]

Apology accepted :-) ...great post, more informative than original article!

--David

2008 Oct 23 11:47 AM

[KenC:]

Dude, the reason why people ragged on you is because, EVERYONE KNEW that Admob only counts "mobile web" numbers. You seemed to be the only person who did not realize that.

2008 Oct 23 03:39 PM

[Eye Forget:]

Admob should buy an iPhone. They would then understand their market a whole lot better.

I can render a complex web page on my iPhone about 4 times quicker than my old Windows "Smart"phone. That is if the page even loads in IE.

Anyone who uses Admob's data to make a business decision is a fool.

2008 Oct 23 07:16 PM