iPhone takes half of US smartphone traffic: report

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 25 March 2009 03:46

Your IT - Mobility

Apple's iPhone is responsible for practically one third of the traffic associated with smartphones worldwide and half of it in the US, according to a new report.

We've known for some time that iPhones are responsible for a huge chunk of mobile web use. According to AdMob, the iPhone is taking a growing share of a growing market.

AdMob's February 2009 figures show that smartphones were responsible for 33 percent of worldwide traffic, up from 26 percent six months ago.

And the iPhone's share of smartphone traffic hit 33 percent, up from four percent in August 2008. In the US, its traffic growth has been even more pronounced, rising from 10 percent in August to 50 percent in February.

On this measure, the iPhone is leaving other smartphones in the dust in the US. The closest rival is RIM (BlackBerry) on 21 percent, down from 32 percent. The only other top five platform to show an increase in share in the period is Android, which went from nowhere to 5 percent in six months.

Worldwide, iPhone was the only top five platform to gain share. The big loser has been Symbian, falling from 64 percent to 43 percent.

One of the problems with such reports is that different companies measure different things.

AdMob's analysis is based on ad serving for "more than 6000 mobile web sites and 1000 applications".

The focus on mobile web sites could result in an underestimate of actual iPhone traffic, as iPhone users tend to make relatively high use of regular sites. On the other hand, AdMob does claim to serve ads to some very popular iPhone applications.

So let's compare AdMob's numbers with Net Applications' Market Share report. Please read on.