PercentMobile Maps - 2nd Quarter 2010
Welcome to our first round of PercentMobile Maps. Our goal is to introduce you to the wonderfully diverse global mobile ecosystem. All maps are based on second quarter 2010 visits to sites that are tracked with our mobile analytics system.
Nokia Devices Web Usage
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.
Apple Devices Web Usage
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.
BlackBerry Devices Web Usage
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.
Samsung Devices Web Usage
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.
WiFi Usage
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.
Device Age
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.
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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.
”Trendspotting with PercentMobile
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:
- Have WiFi-capable Devices been growing on your Site?
- And what about iPads and other Non-Phone mobile devices? Can you find out if they’re becoming a growing audience of yours?
- How are older Feature-Phones doing compared to highly interactive Experience-Phones?
- Is traffic from iPhone OS Devices such as the iPhone, iPods and iPads growing or slowing?
- Has your Site become more popular with owners of RIM OS Blackberry Devices?
- Can you find a former unknown-to-you Network Operator climbing up hundred-fold within the last month?
- Which country has dropped interest in your offering and which country is showing growing interest?
- Have you noticed a drop or rise in WiFi usage and can you imagine why that is?
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.
11% of Web Traffic Worldwide is Now Mobile
Mobile traffic to sites designed for the desktop Web have increased over the last 6 months from 8.3% to 11%, a 32% increase.
PercentMobile’s Take On @drbarnard’s, “Anti-Competitive AND Potentially Creepy”
“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?”
PercentMobile’s Take
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.
This is what we saw:
…and Blackberry (RIM) does better then anyone gives them credit for.
PercentMobile on, “Mobile OS web-browsing share” by @marcoarment
reblogged from: marco
Some people are criticizing John Gruber’s piece on iPad and Android browser share because Apple-product owners are more likely to visit his site (a bias he clearly acknowledged). I was curious to see more widespread numbers, so I got permission to post Tumblr’s OS percentages from Google Analytics for the tumblelog network.
This includes most human visits to all Tumblr-hosted blogs, not the tumblr.com site itself, to best represent “average” people online who happen to come across Tumblr-hosted sites, not just Tumblr members. Granted, this still isn’t perfect, but it’s probably the biggest and least biased sample that we’ll be able to find in the indie-Mac-pundit world.
Left: Including “normal” computers. Right: Only mobile devices.
Sample from May 9-15, 2010, as measured by Google Analytics.The most surprising part of this, to me, is how well the Macintosh is faring against Windows. But in the mobile space, Android is actually doing quite well, given its tiny installed base relative to iPhone OS. My premise in this post may have been completely wrong.
The iPad is putting up an especially impressive performance given that it’s only available in the U.S. so far, has only been on sale for 6 weeks, costs at least $500, isn’t subsidized, isn’t always in your pocket, and isn’t being given away in two-for-$99 sales by the largest cellular provider in the country.
PercentMobile:
@marco (and Tumblr), thanks for the breath of fresh air.
Most of the numbers we see online are from mobile analytic services that primarily report on people visiting apps or ads on iPhone, Android, or Blackberry devices. Traffic from the rest of the mobile ecosystem is usually underrepresented and as such marginalized.
The data from the tumblelog network can certainly provide a more realistic sample.
Unfortunately, improving the sample is only part of the equation. The other part is correctly collecting and processing that tumblelog data. Google Analytics is not mobile-specific enough to get the job done.
The report you share shows that Smartphone traffic to tumblelog sites represents approximately 93% of tumblelog mobile device traffic. Trends across PercentMobile’s network of sites tells us that the Smartphone crowd should more likely weigh in at around 47%-68% of total mobile traffic. As such, we suspect considerable Feature Phone (and lesser device traffic) is present but not counted. What does that mean to Tumblr? Hard to place a number on it since we’re at arm’s length to your data but you may have up to 2X the mobile traffic you think you have.
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
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.
