Traffic from Android smartphones jumped from two percent to 24 percent in the past year, gaining on Apple’s iPhone, which rose from 33 percent to 50 percent. AdMob said overall smartphone traffic soared to 48 percent of traffic, while the use of feature phones declined to 35 percent. Apple’s iPod touch led the growth in mobile-device traffic.
Google-owned AdMob is offering new data that suggest Android devices are Apple’s largest competitor. Not surprisingly, especially given the growing number of devices powered by Android, the open-source platform is gaining ground in the smartphone market.
But what does this mean for the iPhone? Could Android phones collectively become the iPhone killer? Or will the iPad revitalize the Apple OS?
In February, the leading smartphone operating systems in the AdMob network were the iPhone OS, Android and Symbian, respectively. Over the last year, the iPhone increased its share of smartphone requests from 33 percent to 50 percent, mostly at the expense of Symbian. Symbian’s share of requests fell from 43 percent to 18 percent. It appears Symbian also lost momentum to Google’s Android.
Android was the fastest-growing operating system in the AdMob network year over year. Android’s share of smartphone requests increased from a mere two percent in February 2009 to 24 percent in February 2010. According to AdMob, the top five Android devices worldwide, by traffic, were the Motorola Droid, HTC Dream, HTC Hero, HTC Magic, and the Motorola CLIQ.
Growth of Smartphones
AdMob also looked at the overall growth of the smartphone market. In February, the company said smartphones accounted for 48 percent of its worldwide traffic. That’s up from 35 percent in February 2009. Android and iPhone traffic drove most of the increase. In absolute terms, smartphone traffic soared 193 percent over the last year.
While smartphone traffic increased, feature phones declined from 58 percent to 35 percent of AdMob’s total traffic. Noteworthy is the fact that while the share of traffic from feature phones as a category declined, feature-phone traffic grew 31 percent year over year in absolute numbers.
Samsung, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and LG Electronics were the top manufacturers of feature phones in the AdMob study. Specifically, the top feature phones from each manufacturer were the Samsung SCH R350, Nokia 3110c, Sony Ericsson W200i, Motorola RAZR V3, and LG CU920.
Measuring iPad’s Impact
Finally, the mobile Internet devices category experienced the strongest growth of all, increasing to account for 17 percent of traffic in AdMob’s network in February. The iPod touch is responsible for 93 percent of this traffic. Other devices include the Sony PSP and Nintendo DSi portable game players. In absolute terms, mobile Internet device traffic increased 403 percent as the world waits for the impact of Apple’s iPad.
Apple will roll out its iPad on April 3, so it’s too soon to tell how the new tablet device will impact mobile web traffic. Analysts are shying away from making estimates on how many iPads Apple will sell. But if the iPod touch and the iPhone are any indication, AdMob’s next report will show some traction for the fledgling iPad.
Source: Sci-Tech Today
