The map below depicts the percentage of mobile Web traffic from devices that have the ability to install a QR Code Reader.
In their most lucid dreams the Wright Brothers may have thought of flying to the Moon or having an entire city floating in the sky, but the thought of having instant access to all of the world’s knowledge probably never crossed their minds. This implausible power belonged in the realm of gods. Now with the Hertzian space expanding upwards we find ourselves with this power. What mobile devices are used for these flights of networked fancy?
It appears Apple has done an even better job in the air than it has done on the ground. Over 90% of in-flight mobile web usage that PercentMobile has measured in the last 3 months has come from Apple Devices. The newly released iPad ranked first with a solid 41% — no surprise considering its extra long battery life. The iPhone ranked second with 38%, with the iPod adding an additional 15%. It also hasn’t hurt that Apple has made it drop dead simple to toggle on Airplane Mode and WiFi from each of these devices.
Lets start with the CEO searching and share dropping Finnish giant. Once globally perceived as the mobile industry leader, Nokia is now struggling with its quickly aging operating systems and number pad phones. While it currently has a stronghold in the largest and most populous countries, most of those phones are quite old and many will soon need to be replaced. The large majority are inexpensive phones with less profit margin and no attractive digital media store.
A phenomenon, Apple rose from nothing in the summer of 2007 to a mobile superpower with amazing interface concepts, fantastic web experience, attractive applications and its iTunes digital media store. It speaks to their success that nearly everyone is trying to copy them.
It used to be that the most recognizable feature of a businessman or politician was their suit. Now it is the symbiotic relationship with their BlackBerry device. Joining their ranks are teenagers who pump out text messages quickly thanks to BlackBerry’s built-in QWERTY keyboard, optimized for “thumbing.” An indication of BlackBerry’s success is that several companies such as Nexian, ZTE, Tianyu, Videocon and ti-phone are attempting to clone these iconic devices.
The South Korean Conglomerate brand is found on everything from Chips, LCD Displays, Refrigerator, and Ships to the shirts of the English Premier League Team the Chelsea Football Club. Their mobile phones run Bada OS, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Android and their own proprietary Operating System. It is perhaps the most diverse cell phone company, which is not surprising given its mothership nature.
Mobile phones with WiFi connectivity began to appear in 2006 with the Nokia N93. Now, most Smart and Experience Phones come equipped standard with WiFi. Their promise is faster speed and cost-free mobile browsing. Downsides include heavy battery usage, and not all user interfaces make it easy to select a WiFi network. The map below shows how actual users of WiFi-enabled mobile phones take advantage of the WiFi feature. Please note that we have excluded Non-Phones such as iPad, iPod, Sony PSP, etc. from this map.
Last but not least, let’s have a look at the average release date of mobile devices used by country. Most countries in the Americas and Western Europe have newer devices, while most countries in Asia and the Middle East have slightly older devices, and many African countries have the oldest devices.
“
But all these “big boys” [Google Analytics and WebTrends and others] have simply “added on” mobile analytics to their tools. The result is that they suffer from both a lack of imagination and, this is important, truly great databases when it comes to devices and carriers and other unique mobile information.
Not Percent Mobile.
They have two incredible benefits:
1. A really expansive and accurate database and detection mechanism when it comes to mobile platforms.
2. A really simple UI and reporting layer, even your mom will understand the data.
” —Viral, Social, Sentiment, Mobile: 4 Cool Web Analytics Tools | Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik
Avinash Kaushik, Author - Web Analytics 2.0 & Web Analytics: An Hour A Day | Analytics Evangelist - Google | Co-Founder - Market Motive Inc
Just as with the world at large, the mobile ecosystem is in constant motion. It grows and changes, sometimes significantly, sometimes subtly, every day. We want you to easily learn and understand those changes happening right now on your Site using Mobile Analytics by PercentMobile.
With this post the team is excited to introduce to you a new feature called ‘Trending’ which, after being used extensively internally, is now available for free on every Mobile Analytics Report for every user.
Using the feature ourselves has quickly and easily given us insight we couldn’t have gotten before on the mobile ecosystem at large. The results can be viewed in our recently published post “Second Quarter 2010 Mobile Ecosystem Highlights” where we gathered trending highlights on Operating Systems, Phone Types and WiFi Usage over the past 6 months.
For example, using the Trending feature we were able to observe a 95% increase in Android OS usage in the US (and a 94% increase in Europe respectively) across our network of tracked sites, which otherwise would not have been easily possible. Being able to perceive changes like this yields almost immediately a call to action in terms of consideration of the Android OS platform overall. We find this very exciting to know. It’s beautiful.
Click here or image above for full view.
With Trending you are now able to observe changes in most of your Reporting-dimensions.
To get you started, we would like to ask you:
If you are already using PercentMobile, we highly recommend you sign in to your Reports right now and check out what insights your new Trending feature can offer you. If you are new to PercentMobile, get started to track your Sites by registering today.
We hope you will enjoy this new level of comprehension of your mobile ecosystem. Our objective always has been to make things simple and understandable so you can concentrate on what really matters to you.
With best wishes,
Your PercentMobile team.
Second Quarter 2010 Mobile Ecosystem Highlights
PercentMobile Reports on the iPad now contain a nice map as well.
“Oh, and there’s also AdMob’s incredibly flakey “Mobile Metrics” reports. They do such a hatchet job on those it must drive Apple nuts”
— Anti-Competitive AND Potentially Creepy - @drbarnard (via @rafer)
…and Cult of Mac on AdMob, “Don’t be surprised to see a report six months from now showing Apple’s mobile web traffic dropping by half or more. All of which suggests that a mobile ad network isn’t the best source for reporting the totality of mobile web traffic. Wouldn’t it be nice if all the mobile carriers got together and shared what they knew?”
So who’s report on the OS war is closer to reality? AdMob showing their parent company Google winning with Android? Or, Apple’s sources of statistics that show a very different story.
As an independent mobile analytics provider we perceive the ecosystem differently. We ran a report on a sample of the mobile Web traffic that flows through PercentMobile’s network.
…and Blackberry (RIM) does better then anyone gives them credit for.
“The Interactive Advertising Bureau has launched a task force to recommend standards and best practices for display advertising on tablets and e-readers. An earlier effort by the IAB produced a set of specifications for display advertising on the Web that soon became industry standard. By bringing uniformity to display inventory, as well as creating standards for measurement, the IAB eased the way for publishers and marketers to buy and sell advertising.”—
IAB Aims to Create Standards for Advertising on Tablets - ClickZ
Rafer sez:
With what we’ve learned over the intervening decade-plus, publishers shouldn’t adopt these advertiser and ad-network friendly standards. The value creation in standardized media is very uneven and publishers are the ones left holding the short end of the stick.
