Web surfing on Motorola Razr still outranks iPhone

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Friday, 17 October 2008 19:43

IT Industry - Market

The latest statistics from mobile metrics firm “AdMob” shows that mobile ads served on a to the iPhone puts it in 4th spot globally, and 7th in the US, while Motorola’s thin Razr sits in top spot in both places. What’s going on?

Given that the Motorola Razr is often given away free of charge with a mobile phone contract in the US, it should come as no surprise that it continues outselling the Apple iPhone, according to Information Week, even as Motorola tries to sell its handset business.

Motorola managed to make a profit this year, largely by cutting costs, and Apple’s profits on the iPhone are clearly much higher, but it’s still surprising to see Motorola’s RAZR models are used by more people to surf the web.

Although the RAZR’s browser is vastly inferior to that of the iPhone, it’s clearly still good enough for most people, and users are always able to upgrade to the sort-of iPhone-esque Opera Mini browser, which is free to download and works on virtually any Java capable phone.

AdMob’s September 2008 report is its latest and celebrates its first anniversary, showing that ads served to mobile devices have tripled in that time.

Admob says that monthly ad requests in “AdMob network” tripled from 1.6 billion in September 2007, rising to 5.1 billion in September 2008.

It also notes that this growth is “widely distributed with 34 countries sending more than 10 million requests in September 2008, compared to only 16 countries in September 2007”, with “more than 6,000 mobile sites and applications are now in the AdMob network. 4,308 publishers reqested ads in September 2008, more than twice as many as a year ago.”

According to AdMob’s data, US figures show the Motorola RAZR and KRZR continuing to be incredibly popular phones and maintaining the top two positions in the US.

Unsurprisingly, 16 of the current Top 20 devices are new from the September 2007 list, delivering an “improved mobile web browsing experience including larger screen sizes, faster network connections, and other enhanced capabilities”, with 6 of the Top 20 US phones having “XL screen sizes”, double the number at this time last year.

Mobile web traffic from WiFi devices such as the Sony PSP and Apple iPod Touch has also been increasing. The Sony PSP was the number 13 device in September 2008 with 1.6% share of requests.

The top 20 US phones and UK stats on phone usage are on page 2, with the UK and global top 20 lists on page 3, followed by smartphone OS request percentages on a global basis.