Mobango has been busy compiling its stats, and has concluded that in 2009, it passed 100m visits to its mobile site worldwide. Apparently over 60 per cent of all users coming to Mobango connected through Nokia phones. Out of the top 10 phones used to connect to Mobango, eight were Nokia phones. SonyEricsson and Samsung took a joint second place with 12 per cent each. Motorola and LG devices were also popular.
Against the widely held view that smartphones are driving the use of applications, this data is another indicator that consumers across various handsets and regions are driving the application boom.
“We forecast that we will quadruple in size in 2010 given current trends. The best is in front of us and mobile content and applications will conquer the mass market users in 2010 and 2011,”Fabio Pezzotti, CEO of Mobango, said.
The operators from which users are accessing the Mobango store are, not surprisingly, dominant players in the emerging countries such as Airtel and Aircel in India, as well as the more innovative players in the US, such as Cricket Wireless and T-Mobile.
“Our data shows clearly that operators have their future in their hands. If they choose to extend the right offering to their customers, for example affordable mobile internet usage fees and open carrier portals, then customers will come. What we see at Mobango is that it’s economics like this which influences the usage patterns of applications. Clearly, If carriers open up they are able attract a base of early adopter subscribers to their networks, regardless whether it’s in the US or in India”, Pezzotti added.
Mobango’s early adopter target group is composed by youth and young adults, from 16 to 34 years. We’re told that over 60 per cent of Mobango users download applications and games form the Mobango application store, the others sharing user generating content, social networking features, backup functionalities, browsing and discovery. With over 1.1 million pieces of content fully optimised for over 2000 phones, Mobango claims to offer the largest catalogue of user-generated contect, application and games for mobile device users.
Me personally, I’m not always sold on stats, but these are some pretty big claims – and I could well believe the app market will continue to explode in to 2010!