In Defense of BlackBerry…
Over the past several years, the public mobile metrics reports by AdMob (a mobile advertising network that is in the process of being acquired by Google) have been instrumental in proving the relevance of the mobile web. AdMob’s March 2010 Mobile Metrics[1] report illustrates the rise of Android OS[2], a mobile operating system open sourced by their soon to be parent company, Google. According to the report, mobile web usage of the Android OS now eclipses usage of iPhone OS in the US. While we cannot confirm this, the rise of Android OS can be supported by our own data and by the mere fact that in the first 4 months of 2010 alone, 20 new Android OS Experience Phones[3] entered the market worldwide.
PercentMobile sees US mobile Web usage very differently from Admob.
In the March 2010 AdMob Report, they state that the BlackBerry RIM OS[4] has a mobile web usage share in the US of a mere 4%. This is in a country where RIM leads in total smartphone subscribers[5], has a long standing history in the corporate world, and where its president was almost inseparable from his BlackBerry during the election media blitz. At PercentMobile, our numbers state that RIM OS represents 22% of US mobile web usage, composed of Verizon customers with a 44% share and Sprint PCS, T-Mobile and ATT with shares from 18% to 14%.
How Can This Be Explained?
There are multiple factors that can influence the numbers like the entropy of site demographics used for the analysis.
One of the most outstanding factors is that BlackBerry Internet traffic is routed through RIM’s proxy servers in Canada. AdMob mistakenly identifies this mobile web traffic as originating in Canada rather than the US. This contributes to a significant undercount of RIM OS share estimates in the US market.
Another example of the same type of misidentification occurred when we recently tried to log into Facebook from a new T-Mobile BlackBerry Bold and got a security warning that we were logging in from an unknown location and therefore could not be granted access. The next morning, we got a message from Facebook stating that somebody from Canada had tried to log into the account while we were in NYC.
In order to identify the source of a RIM OS request, a mere lookup of IP address of the request is insufficient. It is necessary to look beyond the RIM proxy in order to determine the true source network operator.
At PercentMobile, our mobile-specific business rules are designed to present you with the actual source networks of your visitors rather than the locations of service proxies such as RIM, Novarra, and Opera.
Our Findings
We come to the conclusion that iPhone OS leads mobile web usage in the USA with 48% followed by RIM OS with 22% and Android OS around 5%. We feel that it is imperative that analytics reports are as accurate as possible, and question why AdMob has not corrected their underexposure of RIM OS in the US - a terrific operating system with a large user base and significant share of the mobile Web ecosystem.
References
- http://metrics.admob.com/2010/04/march-2010-mobile-metrics-report/
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_operating_system
- http://analytics.percentmobile.com/public/the_rise_of_the_experience_phone
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_In_Motion
- http://metrics.admob.com/2010/04/45-million-us-smartphone-users-comscore/
How We May Use Mobile Phones (or Login Will Replace Sim Cards)
Several months ago we participated in, “mobile trends for the next 10, a collaborative outlook” - curated by Rudy de Waele (@mtrends). As part of our contribution we predicted, “Login will replace Sim Cards.” What follows is a reboot of a conversation we started a year ago and hope you want to have today.
Have a look in your closet or suitcase. You have multiple shirts, jackets, sweaters and a decent amount of socks and underwear. Depending on the occasion, the weather, the time of day, the mood, how well you slept or other conditions you choose a configuration of your clothes. If you slept bad you might choose your very soft sweater, a favorite since 10 years; if you feel super stellar and had a good morning workout you might put on a real modern combo you just got last week. If you have an important job interview you will surely put yourself in clean, respectable clothes. Or maybe you have a date so you will put yourself into something interesting or mysterious. This is not to say that these changes of mood are only reflected in your clothes, of course your whole mannerism is different as well. But that is not the point. Point is, you choose your clothes in anticipation of things to come.
Now imagine for a second a world in which you have to choose a single style that you must wear without mercy for a year straight. What does that kind of relation to an object remind you of?
… it is your beloved mobile phone …
Once chosen, you most likely have to stick with it for a long time. You take it everywhere and use the same phone for all occasions. What’s wrong with that? Nothing really, our phones are born of studies to determine the most popular features for a certain demographic. That’s how most consumer goods come to life. For you as a customer there is always a compromise, a device will fit most of what you desire but not everything. And that is not all, some of your selection criteria are transient and mutate over time; one day you wish had mini projector build in with a very big qwerty keyboard and the other you wish you had one of those real small phones whose battery can last for a week. A super rare Maywa Denki phone shows off your style at a nightclub but its no good to the meeting with your landlord as he might get freaked out by the screaming pulsating exterior color. At the sober business meeting that involves your whole team you don’t want to draw attention with your device, you want to blend in and be a team player, isn’t that the reason you are wearing a suit?
The holy grail of the phone universe is still one device that does it all: Phone, Music Player, Route Planer, Web Browser, Still Camera, Video Camera, Chat Client, Compass, Projector, Office Document Viewer, FM Radio, Game Platform, e-book, Travel Guide, baby monitor, Waterproof, biometric security, Ultrasonic Mosquito Defense, Heart Beat Monitor, Lie Detector, etc . Still, we know how that can end with features galore that confuse and are hard to find when you need them the most.
So, why don’t we have multiple phones? Why can’t we just take the one that fits our mood or the occasion, same as we do with our clothes? Can we not do that already? Certainly you can: just sync your phone first with your laptop or server (this usually doesn’t include your media, call list etc), open the back of your phone and take out the batteries to get to your Sim Card, do another phone surgery and insert your Sim Card to the new device all the while making sure you keep track of each small piece for the next time; not what we call a seamless transition. There is no guarantee that the Sim Card even works and can be considered a violation in your terms of usage. Imagine somebody telling you that combining your D&G shorts with your Nike sneakers is a violation of the terms of usage punishable with 5 years in style prison.
Now, simply take a phone in your hand and start using it. You already do that with scissors, cameras, pens, notebooks, silver ware, and books. You don’t think, you just start using it. You have a drawer with your favorite devices and take the one you want for today. As easy as that. How do I tell the phone that today is its day? One way would be signing in with your username and password, the phone you used in the past gets deactivated. Or if the phone has a fingerprint or iris scanner I could use that for signing in. How about wearing a piece of jewelry with an RFID chip embedded to reprogram the phone when touched by your ring. Your virtual SIM-card. That would be great since you probably wear the jewelry all the time just like the key to your apartment. You need to have some security measures for your devices so that not everybody can touch them and take them over. That might require a list of people allowed to use your devices such as your friends. Using a pen as an analogy again, you ask your friend to use his pen to make notes if you need to. Or ask your brother if you can have its car for the weekend. If you should need to borrow a friends phone to use and access your data for a while, why not?
Let’s discuss some of the consequences of an approach like this. A new richness in form and functionality where design doesn’t need to meet the neutral ground but can go in all kinds of directions. Manufacturers could sell even more phones with the barrier of the one to one relationship broken down. And it hopefully will open the market to new niche manufacturers.
Used Photos
1. photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/perspicacious/3228112810/
License
“How We May Use Mobile Phones” by Stan Wiechers is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at http://www.merkwelt.com/people/stan/how_we_may_use_cell_phones.html
The Rise of the Experience Phone
Until the day we lay mobile phones to rest and have Internet access directly via our brains as in Geoff Ryman’s Air, we need to occasionally update our mobile device taxonomy.
Over the last several years, the mobile industry has labeled any phone with features considered advanced at the time of its release under the umbrella of “Smart Phone.” There have been many articles stating the approaching market saturation of this class of devices. Based on our own aggregate Mobile Web usage analytics, we see a 70% Smart Phone saturation in the US alone. It is becoming increasingly apparent to us that the label is becoming less and less important in a world where most new phones are “Smart Phones” or better. As we see it, there is an awkwardness with this “or better” category. It makes no sense to casually toss this new breed of devices that is redefining our relationship with entertainment, friends, and how we interact with the world around us into the same category that never mustered a fraction of the same transformative potential. We hope you agree.
At PercentMobile, we define this new breed of devices as Experience Phones.
What is an Experience Phone?
Experience Phones share several characteristics with Smart Phones: High bandwidth, WiFi capable, High quality camera, Push email, Video and music playback, and the like. The definition of a device as an Experience Phone is not intended to be rigid. Rather, we hope that by grouping features that resonate well with the majority of people in the industry, we can free ourselves to think beyond the outdated term of “Smart Phone.”
What singles out Experience Phones from Smart Phones is a set of features that lay the foundation for richer user experiences:
Intuitive Gesture Based User Interfaces.
Experience phones go beyond the first generation of touch-based interfaces that required the user to actually press the screen and support subtle finger based touch gestures to interact with user interface components. Experience Phones employ highly accurate capacitive touch screens and are powered by high speed mobile chipset’s.
Integrated Full Web Browsing Capabilities.
Advanced CSS and JavaScript support, allowing the ability to load Dynamic Web applications with Ajax capabilities properly. Browsers of Experience Phones typically rival your PC Browser and are standards-compliant. HTML5 support for local data storage, GPS access and Video playback are becoming increasingly more supported.
Seamless Extensibility.
Mobile application discovery and delivery has moved from being a novelty to an imperative feature. Application delivery on Symbian and Windows Mobile Smart Phones was not centralized enough and was too complicated to understand for the average user. Conversely, Experience Phones make it easy to enhance your device with 3rd party applications and widgets using centralized application stores with a clear installation process, helping to make what was once a rare activity into a consumer-friendly procedure.
Sensors.
Experience Phones have a wide range of sensors that allow the device to determine the physical context of the user. Compasses, GPS, RFID Readers, Ambient Light Sensors, Proximity Sensors and 3-Axis Accelerometers are all commonplace.
Smooth Integration.
Experience Phones need to be better than just the sum of their pieces. Hardware, software, UI and network services must integrate clearly and easily so that the user is able to focus solely on the task at hand. When any of the comprising pieces are lacking, the overall experience suffers and the user is thrown back to having to “figure things out”. An Experience Phone has to “just work right”.
What Devices are Experience Phones?
Apple disrupted the status quo in 2007 when it launched the iPhone — the first device that meets our definition of an Experience Phone. This placed intense pressure on existing mobile phone manufacturers to respond or be left behind. That response was mostly taken in the form of a new class of devices that run Google’s Android OS. In the first 3 months of 2010, we have seen Android usage increase steadily with the release of 19 new phones across several manufacturers, while other contenders have emerged or been announced such as Windows Mobile 7, MeeGo and the first bada OS device.
In 2010, we are witnessing the rise of the Experience Phone!
Experience Phone and Experience Phone Logo by PercentMobile.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Mobile is Flattening the Rhythms of Our Lives
“To not have a keitai (mobile phone) is to be walking blind, disconnected from just-in-time information on where and when you are in the social networks of time and place.”
- Mizuko Ito, Tokyo, 2003
It is clear that the billions of “always on” mobile phones have altered the balance of personal time versus social time. Withstanding group pressure and not being always available seems almost impossible — it’s the new taboo. But it’s not just social exceptions. Ever wake in the night and check emails, text messages, Tweets, and perhaps even foursquare check-ins? Welcome to the club.
We recently noticed at PercentMobile another traditional boundary to give way to the pressure of those billions of mobile phones. The weekend. Traditionally, Internet usage drops around 21% on weekends, but on mobile phones we’re seeing that weekend Internet usage drops only about 9%. Mobile phones are flattening the rhythms of our lives. Enjoy with caution.
PercentMobile Live from Las Vegas (CTIA) - All About Analytics
Broadcast from CTIA Wireless featuring Bango, PercentMobile, Motally, Localytics, and Distimo.Hosted by Debi Jones, Telefonica.
Andrea Trasatti at WordCamp Ireland With Useful Mobile Stats for Bloggers
Mobile for Bloggers
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5% is the average Percent Mobile audience of a Blog
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30% of mobile traffic to blogs is via Wifi
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30% of Mobile Web usage for blogs comes from non-phones
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(i.e. the iPod touch, PSP, Archos, etc - expect iPads soon!)
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50% of mobile devices visiting blogs are smart phones
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90% of referral traffic to blogs comes from search engines
(Source: PercentMobile, March 2010)
WordPress on Mobile at WordCamp Ireland, Andrea Trasatti
This weekend I traveled to the beautiful Kilkenny to talk with developers and designers about mobile. Of course mobile is my bread and butter, but I thought it would be a good challenge to talk about it to people that have never worked on it or maybe still see it as a niche and something that is not SO interesting.
It took me quite a bit of time to collect all the information I needed and I wanted to be sure I was prepared to the questions that would come up. The event was about blogging and WordPress, so I thought some metrics about mobile in general and then some specific about blogs would help (thank you to PercentMobile!) me set the stage and then I dived into WordPress and plugins. In a nutshell there are a number of good plugins to create basic mobile blogs, but there is still way too little good design and there is a lot of space for innovation. Check out my presentation embedded here or on slideshare and let me know what you think.
View more presentations from Andrea Trasatti.
Don’t forget to check out WordPress Mobile Pack.
