Following up on last week’s statistics, two more interesting reports were released last week. The first I’d like to highlight is from Chetan Sharma, a consultant in the mobile industry. He reports on mobile statistics quarterly, and his latest report indicated that mobile phone penetration is the US is nearing 100%. The number needs to be taken with a grain of salt as a lot of people these days are carrying two phones (me included), so the real number is likely lower – probably around 75-80%. Still yet, even at 80%, it’s clear that the mobile market in the US is nearing saturation and that brands and companies who do not have a mobile marketing strategy are missing out on a great opportunity to connect with consumers.

The other interesting report was released by the Gartner Group. The first statistic to highlight from the report is that mobile device sales grew 13.8% last quarter, so the market is definitely healthy and growing. A more telling statistic was that Android surpassed the iPhone in units sold worldwide last quarter, and outsold RIM in the US. As I pointed out in last week’s wrap-up, Android just keeps on rolling. Units sold is a clear trend of future overall marketshare, so I would expect to see Android make more gains in overall handset marketshare in the coming quarters.

Speaking of Android, two new Android handsets of note were released last week – the Motorola Droid 2 on Verizon and the Dell Streak on AT&T. The Droid 2 is a refresh of the original Droid while the Streak is an interesting “hybrid” device. I say “hybrid” because it sports a 5″ screen which makes it much larger than what people consider a phone but smaller than the new tablet form factor established by the iPad. It seems like an awkward tweener size, so I’m expecting it to be a device people will use a companion to a simple flip phone rather than their primary device. Either way, the diversity of Android devices in terms of screen sizes, features and form factors is exactly why Android is dominating the market. As opposed to the one size fits all Apple approach and the flavor of the month QWERTY keyboard BlackBerry approach, Android devices are available in all sorts of shapes and sizes at all types of price ranges. It’s easy to find an Android device that has the features you want to fit your budget.

Finally for this week is a fun survey that was released by dating site OK Cupid. The survey talks about how to make yourself look more attractive in digital photos (seems like it would be important for online dating). So what does this have to do with mobile? Well, about halfway down the page is a claim that iPhone users have more sex than Android and BlackBerry owners. So here’s the question, are the results of the survey accurate, or do iPhone users just tend to stretch the truth more than their smartphone counterparts?

One company that is seeing declines in market share is RIM with their BlackBerry platform. BlackBerry has been the dominant smartphone in the US for what seems like forever. However, unless you are addicted to email or are a business user, BlackBerry’s hardware and overall user experience lags behind the iPhone and Android. As BlackBerry users are coming off contract, it’s obvious they are switching platforms. BlackBerry attempted to stem their losses with last week’s launch of the BlackBerry Torch 9800. While it closed the gap on features, it still does not put it on the same level as the iPhone or Android. At this point, RIM needs to stay focused on its bread and butter, the enterprise. As I pointed out in an article last week, RIM cannot serve both enterprise users and consumers with the same platform. They have a dominant position in the enterprise that they need to protect. So while the consumer market is where all the media attention is, RIM needs to stay focused on who’s paying their bills.

In the end, I see Android winning the market share game by dominating the middle and low end of the smartphone market, Apple winning the high end of the market, which is the most profitable, and RIM winning the enterprise. Left on the outside looking in are Nokia, Microsoft and HP. I’m not so sure that any of these three can carve out a piece of the market as I don’t think the smartphone is big enough, at least today, to support more than three strong companies.

With the hot summer handset releases behind us, who is the worldwide leader in the market? According to Strategy Analytics, Nokia (remember them?) sold the greatest share of the 308M handsets sold in Q2. Nokia’s share was 36.1%, follwed by Samsung at 20.7%, and LG at 10%. RIM, the only dedicated smartphone maker in the top 5, came in fourth at 3.6%. So while smartphones grab all of the media attention, the low-end of the market accounts for all the volume. If the market is largest at the low end, then why are all the manufacturers chasing the smartphone market? Because that’s where all the profits are. For example, Apple is nowhere to be seen on the market share list, yet they are far and away the most profitable mobile phone company.

Speaking of market share, a report on mobile search was released by StatCounter last week. At the top of the heap was Google, with a whopping 98.29% share of the market. I’m not sure how accurate the numbers are, but even if they are off by 20%, that’s still a dominant share of the market. If that doesn’t convince you that you should have a mobile presence that Google can index, then you’re losing lots of business to your competitors who do have one - without even knowing about it! Both Yahoo! and Bing, the two other big mobile search providers, account for just 1.25% of the market. On the bright side, I guess Yahoo! and Bing’s share can only get bigger, because it certainly can’t get any smaller!

Finally, just to kick start everyone’s favorite rumor mill, I am going to jump on the bandwagon and say that AT&T’s iPhone exclusivity may be coming to an end this year. Why? Well, AT&T made a statement that they are going to be the premier vendor for Microsoft’s latest mobile operating system, Windows Phone 7. I don’t understand why AT&T would back a competitor to the iPhone unless their exclusivity is coming to an end. It’s time to place your bets. I say that the iPhone is available on another carrier for the holidays, and I’ll predict T-mobile over Verizon since T-mobile’s GSM technology is the most compatible with AT&T and Apple, out of spite, wants to stick it to Verizon for their Android promoting, iPhone-bashing ads. What do you think? Feel free to sound off in the comments!

In the US, AdMob is reporting 10.7M iPhone OS and 8.7M Android devices accessed its network in April. That is a ratio of 1.2 iPhones for every one Android device. In the rest of the world, 16.8M iPhone OS and 2.9M Android devices accessed its network in April. That is a ration of 5.8 iPhones for every one Android device.

Why the big difference? The iPhone does not have a carrier exclusive relationship in the rest of the world as it does here in the US with AT&T. In fact, lets look at the ratio of iPhones to Android devices in a few select countries to show just how dominant the iPhone is in countries with no exclusivity:

Source data: AdMob Mobile Metrics Report, April 2010

I sure hope that Apple is getting paid well by AT&T, because the data confirms what I pointed out earlier this month – Apple is losing the opportunity to dominate the US smartphone market through its exclusive AT&T arrangement.

Head over to the Admob blog at metrics.admob.com to download the April 2010 Mobile Metrics report and the country specific data.

By signing a long-term contract that could last into 2012 according to Engadget, Apple has left the door open for its competitors by failing to service 75% of the US market, especially when surveys show that nearly half the people on Verizon would buy the iPhone if it were available.

The potential pitfalls of the exclusivity became evident today in an NPD research report showing Android as the number 2 smartphone OS behind RIM, the makers of BlackBerry. What do RIM and Android have in common? They are available on all four carriers and have handsets that come in multiple form factors at prices ranging from free to $299 on contract. By contrast, Apple is available on one carrier, has one model, and starts at $99, with the most people having to pay at least $199 to gain access.

While the AT&T arrangement may be a sweetheart deal for Apple, it could become the Achilles heel for the iPhone. As Android continues to proliferate the mobile landscape, Apple could find itself in an uphill battle when the exclusivity finally ends for the following reasons:

1. Mobile phones are bought on contract
People get locked into their phones for two years, at least. Even if the iPhone AT&T exclusivity ended tomorrow, many people would be forced to wait until their contract expired to get access to the handset

2. The gap between the iPhone and its rivals has narrowed
The Android Marketplace is rapidly catching up to Apple’s App Store. In fact, nearly all major productivity apps are available on both platforms, as well as most good games. In addition, the Android hardware is nearly equivalent, if not better than the iPhone. If you don’t believe it, then you have not put your hands on Verizon’s latest Droid model, the HTC Incredible.

3. It’s all about mindshare
Android is proliferating in much the same way rabbits multiply. The shapes, sizes and price points are out there to fit anyone’s taste. While I will never bet against the Cupertino propaganda machine, mindshare is shifting to the new game in town. Couple that with the fact that Android is migrating to devices other than phones like tablets, set-top boxes, TVs and appliances, and you begin to envision a world where it’s better to have an Android device over an Apple device.

Would marketshare be different without iPhone exclusivity? Results in countries where the iPhone is available without an exclusive carrier have demonstrated just how dominant the iPhone can be. Apple has turned away from that opportunity here in the US.

To give credit where credit is due, Apple is printing money these days. While you can’t argue the strategy to this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple is lamenting its decision to tie itself to AT&T two or three years from now.

Combining those results with other reports from around the web has led me to the following conclusions:

1. For those who thought the desktop internet was huge, the mobile internet is going to blow it away.
   Mary Meeker and crew’s latest Internet Trends Report reinforced and built on the positive mobile internet outlook from their December mobile internet report. I recommend reading both reports if you are thinking about or doing anything mobile. My key takeaways from their latest report are
          1) mobile will be bigger than the desktop in five years,
          2) there will be 10x more mobile internet devices sold than desktop internet devices, and
          3) mobile usage is more about data (web usage, texting, etc.) than voice.
2. Websites will need to be not only accesible but also usable over mobile devices.
   Nielsen is one of my favorite research companies because their notes are concise and to the point. A recent Nielsen study looking at the penetration rates of smartphones versus feature phones projects that smartphone will overtake features phone by mid-2011. Why is this important? Smartphone users access data and the mobile internet a lot more than feature phone users.
3. While Apple still dominates mobile web traffic, your applications need to work across all platforms.
   Quantcast puts out a lot of great information on both desktop and mobile internet usage. They recently reported on mobile marketshare for both operating systems and handset manufacturers. Comparing the two reports against Apple’s results is interesting. In operating system market share, Apple has declined from a peak of over 75% in January 2009 to just over 60% in March 2010, while selling more units. Over the same period, Android’s market share has increased from under 8% to 17.1%. Android’s reach is expanding – rapidly.
4. RIM’s mobile web share will improve, and overall usage for the mobile web will follow.
   comScore’s February 2010 Mobile Market Share Report reinforced both Apple’s results and the Qunatcast numbers, with one major addition – BlackBerry maker RIM still leads the race with 42% of the market. Apple’s been holding steady at 25%, and Android is quickly gaining on both at the expense of Palm, Windows Mobile and others. RIM’s low mobile web share shows just how poor their platform is for web browsing, but rumor has it that BlackBerry 6.0 will sport an improved webKit-based browsing experience. When that occurs, more BlackBerry users will use the web, and there are a lot of them.
5. I expect growth rates in mobile internet usage to accelerate during the second half of this year. 
   Just like last quarter, the mobile web continues to grow with no signs of slowing. We’ve seen a better than 20% year-over-year increase in traffic to mobilesites that we host. All leading indicators, such as smartphone market share and shipments, point to increased usage of the mobile internet.

 If you haven’t put a mobile strategy in place for your marketing efforts, or worse yet, if you haven’t even looked at your web presence on a mobile phone, feel free to contact us. We’d be more than happy to answer any questions you have and help you develop an effective mobile presence for your service or business.

Follow us on Twitter (@aumnia) or like our Facebook Page for the latest news and updates from Aumnia.

The consensus for number of smartphones sold worldwide last quarter was between 50 and 55 million, a 30% year-over-year increase compared to the same period in 2008. For the year, smartphones sold totaled approximately 174 million units, a 15% increase from 2008. What is most impressive is that this is all happening in a down economy, when people should be spending less, not more, on mobile handsets!

Even more interesting, this week at the MWC in Barcelona, Google CEO Eric Schmidt reported that 60,000 Android-based handsets are being sold per day. Pretty amazing, until you consider that based on last quarter’s sales numbers of 8.7 million handsets, Apple sold over 95,000 handsets, per day! Now realize that the two leaders in the samrtphone space, Nokia and RIM, sold 20.8 million and 10.7 million handsets each, and it’s pretty clear that smartphones are flying off the shelves these days!

Given the impressive rise in smartphone sales, it should come as no surprise then that mobile analytics company Bango reported 600% growth in traffic to mobile websites. As more users purchase smartphones and use their smartphone’s web browsing capabilities, increases in mobile web traffic will continue. We’ve seen it on our own client’s mobile websites. Mobile web traffic has been up significantly over the last three months.

The bottom line, it’s time to stop thinking about taking your site mobile and to just do it. Given the increasing usage of the mobile web and the cost of lost business in this economy, you can’t afford not to have a strong mobile web presence, especially given how affordable it is in the overall scheme of your online presence.

Data sources used for this article: Strategy Analytics via IntoMobile, IDC via Mashable, comScore, Canalys

The iPhone has created a lot of buzz around mobile. Since our business revolves around the mobile internet, I get a lot of requests for more specific growth rates and usage numbers. In other words, “show me data, not hype!”

Below is a list of reports that quantify just how rapidly the mobile internet is growing. I’ve included a little background about and a couple of highlights from each report.

• Quantcast Mobile Web Trends Report - Quantcast is an analytics firm that tracks traffic through websites. From its statistics, mobile web viewing now accounts for 1.26% of pageviews in North America. While not a large number, it represents an increase of 110% through 2009. It’s also interesting to note that iPhone, BlackBerry and Android devices account for 85% of mobile web traffic in North America. The full report is worth downloading and reading, as well as this summary by Techcrunch.
• Net Applications - Net Applications is another web analytic firm similar to Quantcast. Their statistics indicate that mobile web viewing accounted for 1.35% of internet pageviews in December 2009, double the number from February 2009, and a 30% increase from November 2009. Interesting that two independent data sources have arrived at nearly the same set of numbers.
• Neilsen 2010 Fact Sheet - Neilsen provides market research to media companies. Their research shows that 60.7M people used the mobile internet in the US (33% increase over 2008), 25% of devices sold during Q3 2009 were smartphones, and 40-50% of the devices sold in 2010 will be smartphones.
• Opera mini Monthly Report - Every month Opera issues a report showing the amount of pageviews and data they have processed through their dedicated mobile web browser, Opera mini. For December 2009, the statistics show a 228% year-over-year growth in mobile page views and a 128% growth in unique users. These numbers are impressive, since they reflect people using the Opera mini browser, which leaves out nearly all iPhone and Android users.
• Morgan Stanley Mobile Internet Report - Morgan Stanley issued an absolute behemoth of a report last October that could arguably be called the definitive state of the mobile internet. Be warned – it’s a huge report. In it, Morgan Stanley asserts that mobile will be 10x bigger than the desktop and will be adopted much faster. They show comparison adoption graphs illustrating how mobile is being adopted 8x faster than equivalent desktop technologies. If you’re looking for a quick overview, Techcrunch did a great summary of the report.

Now that you know the numbers, have you checked a mobile device to see what your mobile presence looks like? If not, you need to, and fast. A market survey performed by Gomez, Inc. last October found that poor mobile web experiences impact consumers’ brand perceptions and traffic. Yes, I know it’s yet another report to read, but it’s worth checking out.

Now’s the time to get ahead of the curve and start optimizing your website and online content for the mobile environment. Otherwise, you risk losing customers and possible business to those that have.

Feel free to contact us for assistance planning and implementing your mobile strategy.

Given it is was the end of a calendar quarter this week, a number of interesting data reports were released. First up were two market share studies that provided some great insight into not only the handsets people are using, but also how the handsets are being used. In one, Comscore, who conducts monthly surveys of mobile subscribers over the age of 13, reported the following numbers for the 3-month period ending July, 2009:
     -32 million Americans own a smartphone, while 200 million own a “non-smartphone”
     -BlackBerry is the clear market leader with over 13 million users followed by Apple with over 6.5 million
     -Apple and Windows Mobile have nearly identical market share (although I suspect that Apple and Windows Mobile are on very different growth trajectories)
     -Symbian (Nokia) and Android are both around 1 million users each
In the second report, AdMob released their August 2009 Mobile Metrics Report. The iPhone leads with a 40% market share, followed by Symbian at 34%. BlackBerry has only an 8% share, Android 7%, and webOS (Palm Pre) and Windows at 4% each. Technically speaking, this report is not a handset market share report like Comscore’s but indicates the types of devices that are accessing AdMobs worldwide mobile advertising network, and therefore the mobile internet. In addition, it’s report is a worldwide study versus ComScore’s US-centric report. These reports indicate to me that iPhone users enjoy a much better mobile internet experience, amd more likely to use the mobile internet, given their smaller handset market share, and that Nokia, while seemingly forgotten in the US, is still a very important mobile player on the worldwide stage. It also shows that BlackBerry and WindowsMobile have some serious improvements to make in their mobile browsing experience.

To follow-up on the iPhone and marketshare, an analyst at Morgan Stanley expects that Apple could nearly double the number of iPhones sold once exclusivity arrangements that Apple has cut with carriers expire. From all the buzz on the internet, the quality (or lack thereof) of AT&T’s network is holding back sales or driving people away from the iPhone/AT&T to other carriers. With articles circulating on the internet that AT&T is dropping 30% of its calls in New York City (confirmed by the Apple Genius Store), you know the network has issues. The real question is will the iPhone effect last past AT&T’s exclusivity, or will another handset emerge that will kill the iPhone’s popularity and make the end of the AT&T exclusivity a moot point?

And for the last bit of data, Neilsen released a very interesting report this week on mobile internet usage. While stating the obvious year-over-year growth of the internet (which was 34% if you don’t check out the report), it shows that women, seniors and teens are the demographics that are driving the growth. Since these groups generally represent the late technology adopters, it indicates that mobile internet usage is hitting the mainstream. Combined with new features that link Google’s Local Seach desktop results to the mobile environment – see post from earlier this week - companies really need to start looking at their mobile presence to make sure users are getting the right mobile experience.

To finish off this week, I wanted to touch on an important safety issue – texting while driving. There have been numerous reports lately on the dangers of texting while driving, and I’m happy to see that the federal government has issued its own notice to its employees. Anything that furthers the awareness of the issue is a good thing in my opinion. The issue also hit close to home as my kids were first hand witnesses to an accident in front of my house earlier this week involving a cellphone distracted driver. Luckily, no one was hurt, except for some minor car damage. To prevent texting while driving (and accidents in front of my house), I noticed a new technology tool called TXTBlocker has been released. I can’t vouch for how effective it is, and I am sure it will be the first of many solutions that will come to market. Using tools like TxtBlocker feel a little too “Big Brother” for my taste, and it’s a shame we need to create and pay for technology to prevent stupidity. Please, whatever you do, DON’T text and drive. – end of public service announcement for the week -

As Devesh does, here is a list of other articles I found interesting this week:
-iPhone is not the end of innovation (puts some perspective into the iPhone’s seemingly insurmountable dominance of the mobile market)
-BlackBerry desktop released for the Mac
-Essential tips for making your mobile site work better

And some fun articles for this week:
-Man arrested for threatening to shoot iPhone
-A train map of Google’s investments (not mobile really mobile related, but too entertaining not to post)
-Steve Jobs gets a taste of his own medicine – a parody of the famous Apple Super Bowl ad from 1984 (has Apple become what it once despised?)

Well, I hope you enjoyed this week’s wrap-up and my attempt to match Devesh’s edge, although it looks as though I have to work on the brevity part. If there is anything that I missed, don’t be afraid to drop a comment below – we’d love to hear from you. If you missed Devesh this week, I expect that he’ll be back next week to put his usual, entertaining spin on the week’s mobile events.

The article shows a recent snapshot of the growth in mobile internet usage and discusses some of the key issues that have slowed its growth. Some of the reasons for slow growth are self-inflicted by the carriers themselves with oppressive rate plans and handset software control, but some are related to the fundamental usability of internet sites on mobile devices. The post reinforces other statistics we have seen on mobile internet growth and usage as well as many of our beliefs on today’s limitations of the mobile internet.

While the data and the post paint a great picture for our mobile business, it is possible that Google could be presenting an optimistic picture of the mobile landscape with their post. Google has a strong underlying reason to see the mobile internet grow and to create hype about it – it’s another place for them to create ad revenues, and very profitable ad revenues at that. Mobile ad revenues have the potential to be highly profitable because they can be location-aware. In other words, based on where you access the mobile internet, you will be targeted with ads that are specific to businesses in the immediate area. For example, imagine you are looking at the internet on your phone and seeing ads for businesses that located right across the street from you.

I am certain that Google will tap into the location-based capabilities of mobile devices to provide location-aware ads on mobile internet sites, especially as revenue from traditional (desktop) internet advertising tops out. Google will look to find additional sources of ad revenue to fund growth. For the local businesses, mobile advertising will be an extremely valuable medium and will be a lot more relevant to small businesses than advertising on the traditional internet where you have no idea where the customer is located. I see location-based advertising as one of the primary reasons why Google entered the handset operating system market with its Android operating system. I would not be at all surprised if the Android operating system does not already have, or will have, the capability to locate your mobile device to serve up targeted, local advertisements.

Regardless of Google’s intentions, statistics and information from many other sources are pointing to similar growth rates in mobile data plan subscriptions, smartphone sales, and mobile internet usage. I have to admit, I am a bit curious as to how businesses of all sizes will embrace the mobile internet. Will they treat it as an extension of their current website? Will they treat it as a separate medium? It will definitely be interesting, and fun, to see how the mobile internet evolves.