TOUCHSCREEN DEVICES ACCOUNT FOR MOBILE WEB USE WELL BEYOND THEIR MARKET SHARE, says AdMob in the latest installment of its monthly mobile metrics report. The company collects the data from its wide-ranging ad network, and says that half of the top ten devices on its network have touchscreens – a far higher figure than their actual market share, reflecting the ease with which consumers can get on the web with them.

The company also found that featurephones still drive 60 percent of its ad requests from the US. It accounts this to the pervasiveness of unlimited data plans there, in contrast to other regions around the world, where such plans aren’t in such wide use, or are mainly limited to smartphones. Source

The bottom line: First, some kudos to AdMob on the second anniversary of its useful analytics reports. When they launched in September 2007, the company had 1.6 billion ads served. Last month, it served 10.2 billion. That’s some hefty growth. Second, the high use of featurephones serves as a reminder to content providers and web developers that there’s still a market beyond iPhones, Pres and Android devices.

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THREE-FOURTHS OF EUROPEAN CONSUMERS WANT A SINGLE ADDRESS BOOK FOR ALL THEIR SOCIAL NETWORKS, according to a new survey from Critical Path, which has a single-address book solution for sale to operators. The company’s survey found that 75 percent of those surveyed “found the task of updating their contacts across their social networks frustrating”, and a slightly higher percentage wanted a solution that would sync them. Source

The bottom line: Address book fragmentation is a real issue for users who navigate multiple social networking services, and want them all to come together seamlessly on their mobile device. And operators like Vodafone, which recently took the wraps off its 360 service that does exactly this, realize this – and so too do device manufacturers (see Motorola’s BLUR service on its new Android devices).

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USERS’ SATISFACTION WITH THEIR SMARTPHONES IS VERY SEPARATE FROM THEIR SATISFACTION WITH THEIR SERVICE PROVIDER, according to a new survey of American mobile users from the CFI Group. The study found that the iPhone platform received the highest user satisfaction ratings (83 out of 100, 8 points higher than Android and Pre – presumably they meant WebOS), while AT&T had the lowest level of satisfaction among the top four US operators. AT&T scored a 73 among its non-iPhone users, but the score dropped to 69 among iPhone users. Source

The bottom line: Given the widespread complaints about AT&T from iPhone users, this report shouldn’t be too surprising. But it also shows how device exclusivity and operator branding can be a double-edged sword. While certainly the iPhone has driven users to AT&T, it may have not a lot of damage to its reputation by not being able to deliver a good experience to them. Consumers have become increasingly savvy to the multiple brands that live on their mobile device, and when they encounter a service issue, they point fingers at the operator, not the device maker.

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THE AUGMENTED REALITY MARKET WILL BE WORTH $350 MILLION IN 2014,  says ABI Research, up from just $6 million in 2008, thanks to the increasing capabilities of smartphone platforms. This $350 million will be divvied up among mobile apps ($190 million) and AR-based ad revenues ($160 million), the company says, as developers and marketers seek to capitalize on the technology. Source

The bottom line: AR still faces a lot of issues before it’s a huge commercial success – and many of them are the same as other location-based ad models which still haven’t come to fruition. There’s no doubt that there are some useful and cool potential applications of augmented reality, but as usual, there’s still a big leap to turning them into commercial revenues.

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ANDROID DEVICES WILL OUTSELL THE IPHONE BY 2012, according to recent predictions from Gartner. The firm says Android will be the second most-popular smartphone OS at that point, after Symbian, making up 18 percent of the market. Blackberry will come in third with about 14 percent, and iPhone in fourth at 13.6 million. Source

The bottom line: As long as Apple pursues what is, essentially, a single-device strategy, it won’t be the market leader when it’s up against other platforms found in a variety of form factors from multiple providers. At some point, if Apple wants to lead the market – at least in number of devices shipped – it will need to change course and increase the number of models in the marketplace.

Tags: AdMob, Android, iPhone, mobile analytics

This entry was posted on Friday, October 30th, 2009 at 11:53 pm and is filed under Data Points, Mobile Research. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.