iPhone leads mobile web usage

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 28 May 2009 05:30

Your IT - Mobility

A new report shows that the iPhone is still punching far above its weight when it comes to mobile web usage. But watch out - so is Android.

Back in March, iTWire compared mobile ad serving operator AdMob's figures with Nat Applications' Market Share numbers.

This month, AdMob has done the work for us - its report for April 2009 relates the company's own measurements to sales figures from Gartner and Net Applications' numbers regarding web browsing.

But first. let's compare AdMob's own numbers with Gartner's.

It turns out that the iPhone is a serious overperformer: 8 percent of handset sales, but 43 percent of mobile web use.

Only one other platform managed anything similar. Android phones took 1 percent of the market and 3 percent of mobile web use.

Symbian, RIM and Windows smartphones were all underachievers in terms of web use, and Palm came out even.

The point to note here is that AdMob delivers ads to iPhone and Android applications as well as to web pages. The company doesn't split out the two categories, but does admit that applications "are responsible for a significant portion of [iPhone and Android] overall ad requests."

So maybe AdMob is overstating the case for those two platforms?

No. When Net Applications' figures (which only consider regular web pages, not in-application ad requests) are added to the mix, both iPhone and Android shine more brightly.

The iPhone accounts for 65 percent of mobile HTML use (more than eight times its market share), while Android soaks up 9 percent (nine times its market share). Again, no other platform outperforms on this measure.

It's time for some scepticism - please read on.