Data hogs: iPhone accounts for 50% of global smartphone traffic
By Will Park on Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at 4:35 PM PST In Android, Announcements, Apple, BlackBerry OS, HTC, Nokia, Palm, RIM (Research in Motion), Research, Symbian, Web OS, Windows Mobile, iPhone OS
The iPhone is a data hog. Just ask AT&T (NYSE: T) and their strained 3G data network. Data-hungry iPhone users seemingly aren’t able to satisfy their thirst for online information. They’re so ravenous for the all things internet that, according to AdMob, the iPhone accounts for 50% of all smartphone web traffic around the globe. Here, in the US, the iPhone pulls down 55% of all smartphone traffic, mostly through AT&T’s 3G network. That’s a lot of data!
It’s not just the iPhone, either. The smartphone boom has raised Android awareness high enough to boost traffic from Android smartphones to 11% worldwide. In the US, the effect is even more pronounced – Android handsets are responsible for 20% of all smartphone traffic in America. Compelling new Android offerings like the Sprint HTC Hero and T-Mobile (NYSE: DT) myTouch 3G (as well as their European variants) have helped drive up Android market share. Android is fast closing the gap between itself and the iPhone platform.
But, it’s not all roses and rainbows in the smartphone sector. Nokia (NYSE: NOK) has long led the mobile phone market in terms of market share, but has recently been losing share to the likes of iPhone and Android smartphones. The Finns (Nokia) are responsible for 24% of worldwide traffic, with the Symbian platform sending out 25% of all worldwide smartphone web requests. The BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) OS dropped to just 7% of global smartphone requests. Windows Mobile fared even worse, claiming just 3% of global requests. Palm (NSDQ: PALM)’s webOS, despite a European launch of the Palm Pre, dropped down to 2% of the world’s smartphone traffic.
The moral to this story? Smartphones are on the rise. But, it’s not enough to just run a smartphone operating system – consumers are flocking to intuitive touchscreen platforms with desktop-class web browsers. The iPhone and Android platforms obviously meet these criteria. Nokia, BlackBerry, Palm and Microsoft should be asking themselves why their offerings don’t.
[Via: AdMob] (PDF link)
“consumers are flocking to intuitive touchscreen platforms with desktop-class web browsers.”
By that logic, the N900 should have no problem then.
Nokia has to get those damn things to market already. They were supposed to launch in October, got delayed to November, and this time next week it’s going to be December, yet very few retail units are in the wild.
The fact that Symbian didn’t even appear in the graph would suggest to me that the US market is hardly representative of the situation globally.
Thet title of this blog post is totally wrong. The AdMob statistics doesn’t tell much about the true mobile internet usage. I guess it is meant to promote AdMob (and iPhone & Android) business.
AdMob statististics is totally biased. It is based on data from the sites which have AdMob advertisements and data from iPhone and Android applications. Because of this it is no suprise that iPhone has so big share, although in reality it is much much smaller. In reality, Nokia and Symbian share is much bigger. The data also totally neglects the fact that most Nokia users use Opera browser which totally skips the AdMob ads.
To get another view, check e.g. http://www.opera.com/media/smw/2009/pdf/smw042009.pdf