AdMob serves north of 10 billion ads per month to more than 15,000 mobile websites and applications. Thus, although its data is about ad rather than page impressions, it can be taken as a pretty robust indicator of how web usage habits are developing and changing over time. Android is the big standout of its most recent figures, with Google loyalists now constituting a cool 42 percent of AdMob's smartphone audience in the US. With the
EVO 4G and
Galaxy S rapidly approaching, we wouldn't be surprised by the little green droid stealing away the US share crown, at least until Apple counters with its next slice of magical machinery. Looking at the global stage, Android has also recently skipped ahead of Symbian, with a 24 percent share versus 18 percent for the
smartphone leader. Together with BlackBerry OS, Symbian is still the predominant operating system in terms of
smartphone sales, but it's interesting to see both falling behind in the field of web or application usage, which is what this metric seeks to measure. Figures from Net Applications (to be found at the
TheAppleBlog link) and
ArsTechnica's own mobile user numbers corroborate these findings.
posted March 29th 2010 10:18AM
What about Symbian?
@nemuro
What about it?
@nemuro Symbian's US share is in the "Other" category, netting it less than 3 percent of total market share as determined by AdMob's numbers.
@nemuro
Symbian is mostly used on budget smartphones and those mostly have no mobile internet include. So not a lot of people with symbian use internet.
Also, I don't think this is a comparsive test. Because Admob is part of Google. Thus Android has a lot more chance of having their adds. Also a LOT of iPhone apps that use internet don't have adds at all. Actually, I think 80% of the time I use internet on my iPhone there are no adds at all.
@Bernd
N95 is no budget or small to me
@htd
True. This data is _only_ for US. Symbian rules everywhere else.
@Fox318 I think symbian is still there but admob failed to put it there coz its still minuscule. As for admob, some may say that this could be bias especially when google bought it 3 months ago. http://bit.ly/admob-google-wise-acquisition
But still, this chart tells it all. I'm for android here. For now, let's wait till apple release its guns this year (iphone 4g, ipad) then let's check the charts again.
@nemuro
From where I see it, Symbian matches iPhone Browsing data.
http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-ww-monthly-200903-201003
For NA, iPhone is still a king.
http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-na-monthly-200903-201003
@Bernd
Except you're wrong. Out of the 67 million or so smartphones sold by Nokia for example - and that excludes the Symbian phones made by Sony, Fujitsu and others - about half were N or E series. The rest were 5 and 6 series all of which browse the web comfortably.
What they don't do is browse the crappy US centric ad infested websites which AbMob monitor.
@MarkAnderson So, Engadget would be one of those crappy websites then?
@Nate Dogg
Dunno, you tell me.
@nemuro Will the iPad's browser share be included with the iPhone's?
@nemuro
Engadget, this statement is wrong: "AdMob's stats for February, 2010, show a huge gain for Apple's iPhone OS to nearly 50 percent of the mobile operating system share, while Symbian declined to 18 percent."
Please check it and correct as appropriate. "Nearly 50 percent of the mobile operating system share" should read smarphone operating system share. Symbian owns the mobile operating share for now.
@nemuro There are no Symbian numbers from AdMob!
The Engadget post has a big hole int it:
http://blog.tube42.se/?p=592
@Fox318 win
I remember AT&T before you, Mr. iPhone.. so fast.. powerful. Sigh.
@Mekkakat
I guess those 2 year contracts are ending. If this keeps steady Android will be the #1 OS in a few months...
I
@Mekkakat
Sorry about my wording meant to say #1 use of web OS.
@Googlesucks
Well if you are going to say Google purposely gimped stats then just say so. Funny how they seemed accurate enough until now.
@Seph Lol, based on what stats? I live in Europe (London) and I can count the amount of people I've seen using an Android phone on one hand. On the other hand I see iPhones and Blackberrys every day. Hate to break to ya, but Android ain't so hot in these parts.
@sonola777 you see blackberry phones everywhere. In europe, asia and the US. It rules the roost in the business world...hence I have to carry one along with my (850/1900/2100 band) Nexus One.
@LAY Accurate till now is perfectly logical, it's a matter when googles ownership makes it's influence.
@Mekkakat
I love it how people think that when a company buys another company the CEO walks in the next day and tells them to make Android appear on top of everything. Business world works very slowly, even Google. Just the amount of time it takes for them to cover their asses before they do that takes longer than the time they have spend owning the company
TLDR; Even large businesses can't make newly bought companies change over night.
@sonola777
London hardly represents Europe. It's a major urban capitol with lots of business, particularly financial industry, where BB has always been, and remains, a bit of a status symbol. I agree that Android seems relatively uncommon in most of Europe though.
This should really be a wakeup call to MS and RIM; those devices simply aren't very good at browsing the web, where the iPhone and Android are great at it. You can go on all day about how "real businesspeople need BB email" but, frankly, that's about as outdated as saying "real video editing is done on a Mac". It's simply not true that the platforms that excelled at a certain task 5 years ago are still the best choice.
Plenty of "real" business people getting real business done with push email on Android and iPhone.
@sonola777 - it depends where you work. most of the people I know who have an android device are tech heads(including myself)
My aunty has an iphone. She is a hairdresser :)
@sonola777 All this says is that Android phones get more ads. Thanks but I can do without ads.
Wow Android is a monster.
@pauldovi
Shouldn't someone bring a lawsuit against them before it's too late? /s
@pauldovi
Safe to say Android has already left iPhone OS in the Surfing USA dust.
@Kinte Kunta
ahhh, I'm guessing that data ends on 2/28, today is 3/29...look at the trends
@etwashoo Are you really this stupid? First of all, Android has about 20 different models it sells by different manufacturers. There is only one iPhone, so comparing the web-traffic apples for apples, isn't very accurate. Second, the Android OS is crap. Third, all of the latest Android OS builds and devices have debuted in the last 6-8 months, so of course they should be faster devices with more bells and whistles. Just wait for the new iPhone and 4.0 OS. It'll, once again, smoke all of it's competitors
@StickyD
"Are you really this stupid? First of all, Android has about 20 different models it sells by different manufacturers. There is only one iPhone, so comparing the web-traffic apples for apples, isn't very accurate"
What does the fact that apple only has one or two handsets have to do with anything?
I mean, this isn't a graph showing what phone is most popular, this is purely a graph showing what OS is generating mobile web traffic.
@pauldovi - Correction, Android is an Autonomous OS
@StickyD - While reading your post, I pictured a hot-headed Steve Jobs writing your post, lol.
@StickyD
I can't see what ANY of your comment had to do with web traffic market share?
What does the number of models have to do with market share? What does the quality of the OS have to do with it? What does it have to do with the release dates? I am really puzzled by your comments. My best guess is they are preemptive?
@StickyD
Thanks for that inciteful commentary. Now direct you back to the graph at the top of the page.
@StickyD
Correction 3 iPhones, at least 2 iPod Touches (I don't know how many there are).
@StickyD So in short:
Because Apple wont license their OS, it isn't fair when others are smart enough to?
Android in your opinion is dumb.
And then you assume that they have gone up so fast because everyone is really waiting for the vaulted iPhone 4.0 GS LMNOP with kung-fu grip?
But the idea of people just using Android more because they like it is just to extreme?
@etwashoo
correction: of course that's "insightful" (and I missed "Now I WILL direct...)
@vman81 You guys really are fucking stupid! If there are 20 different manufacturers selling Android devices, of course there will be more web traffic from their devices. Let's do some quick math...........if there are 175 million iPhones in the world and 300 million (combined) different Android devices, naturally there is going to be more web traffic from Android. That's the beauty of statistics........you can spin the results many different ways to get your point across. Fucking idiots!
@StickyD
I wasn't aware that the article (or anyone) was trying to draw a conclusion other than what is painfully obvious by the graph...
That's what she said
@StickyD You're a moron.
@StickyD So angry....
@LAY I never said Android is dumb. It's a cookie-cutter OS that's designed to work on many different phones. Therefore, it will perform better on some devices than others. Personally, I'd rather have an OS that is solely built around one device for optimal performance. Android has improved, but to spin these statistics to make it look like iPhones are irrelevant is juvenile and reckless. My point was that, people tend to flock to the latest and greatest offerings and technology. Look at the chart........is it ironic that Android started gaining steam on web OS traffic right around the Droid and Nexus One releases while the iPhone's WEB OS peaked at the release of the 3GS? Hmmmm............Wanna talk statistics? Let's compare how many Nexus One's were sold based off how many iPhone's were sold or how many Droids were sold vs. the iPhone 3GS. Neither one came close to the 3GS! However, combine the two and you have more devices than the 3GS, hence the more web traffic than the iPhone. You guys really need to pull your heads out of your ass!
@StickyD
Just because you want to be limited to one manufacturer, doesn't mean we do. So, the rest of us will compare OS's because we like CHOICE and OPENNESS. I know, I know it's difficult concepts for Apple fans (not saying fanboi's) to grasp.
@Kinte Kunta
"That's if the rate is still the same, go take a class in statistics."
No need to. I have a Math major with an emphasis in Statistics. I took EVERY statistics course offered at Minnesota State. So, GTFO.
@StickyD People like you make me sick.
Android is at about 4% marketshare, apple is 20 something %. That's sales. There are many more iPhones then all the android devices put together. There are also two currently available iPhone models. And another one that is not available anymore. And many different extremely popular iPod touch models. So your there's only one iPhone comment is patently wrong. However, these statistics are some what skewed, because a lot if the time people are using data on there iPhone there are no adds.
@etwashoo Don't know what school you went to, but you need to go back for reseats. Look at the chart again, very slowly.
@sonola777
You look at the chart and, based on that information, make your best estimation on who has the highest "Mobile OS Traffiic Share: US" on March 29, 2010. Do you think the world is flat because you can't see past the horizon?