AdMob Stats Reveals Smartphone growth

Mobile ad network AdMob has released its February 2009 Mobile Metrics Report. The report shows that, despite challenging economic conditions, Smartphones continued to gain significant market share worldwide over the past six months, rising from 26% of requests in August 2008, to 33% percent of requests in February 2009.
The launch of the HTC Dream (G1) and BlackBerry Storm propelled increases in Android and RIM Operating System (OS) requests in the US. This growth is based on mobile web usage, not the number of handsets sold, and, says AdMob, demonstrates the high consumer engagement with these touchscreen devices. The top handsets on AT&T and Sprint are also touchscreen devices, the iPhone and the Samsung Instinct.
Other highlights from the February 2009 AdMob Mobile Metrics Report include:

  • Worldwide the top five smartphones are the iPhone, Nokia N70, BlackBerry 8300, Nokia N80, and Nokia N73. The top five US smartphones are the iPhone, BlackBerry Curve, BlackBerry Pearl, Palm Centro, and HTC Dream (G1).
  • The BlackBerry Curve has overtaken the Pearl as the number one RIM device. The BlackBerry Storm is the number one device on Verizon with 14% of requests.
  • Symbian lost market share, but is still number one worldwide with 43% of requests. The top 10 Symbian devices have not changed in the past six months.
  • The Samsung BlackJack II is the top Windows Mobile device worldwide. Six of the top 10 Windows Mobile devices are from HTC. 
  • Android accounts for 5% of the US Smartphone market.
  • The iPhone generated 33% of Smartphone traffic worldwide and 50% in the US.
  • 97% of BlackBerry requests came from their OS Version 4.2 or higher. These devices will all have access to BlackBerry App World when it goes live.
  • Symbian and Windows Mobile have a significant percentage of their user base on devices running old versions of their OS. These devices many not have access to their application stores when they launch later this year. 

AdMob stores and analyses handset and operator data from every ad request in its network to optimise ad serving. Each month, the Mobile Metrics Report aggregates this data to provide insights into major trends in the mobile ecosystem. You can access the full report, and previous months reports, here.