Netbiscuits has published a report that sheds light on current device usage trends on the mobile web. The report provides segmented statistics from 2009 to early 2010 for various industry verticals and markets around the world, including the UK, US, Germany, Australia and Malaysia. The data was generated from the more than 2.5bn page requests that Netbiscuits’ mobile publishing platform serves each month.

The report reveals that the majority of mobile website requests come from the ‘long tail’ of devices, even in those markets were Apple’s iconic iPhone is the dominant mobile web access device.

“Today, thousands of unique devices are used for mobile web access,” says Netbiscuits CEO, Michael Neidhoefer. “The vast majority of them generate a share smaller than 1 per cent of all page requests.” “However the impact of these devices should not be underestimated. Netbiscuits stats show that in most cases, the major amount of all page requests is generated by this long tail of devices. Optimizing your mobile service only for the few devices that dominate your market, industry or target group intentionally locks out the majority of your potential users and limits the profitability of your mobile business…To set up a sustainable mobile strategy, you should launch a mobile website first.”

In April 2010, Netbiscuits handled more than 2.5bn mobile page requests coming from 2,585 unique devices, globally. 30.7 per cent of these requests were generated by the iPhone, 8.2 per cent by the iPod touch, while 11 more devices from BlackBerry, Motorola, Palm, Nokia and Android handset makers had a share between 3.5 and 1.1 per cent. Each of the other 2,572 unique devices generated less than 1 per cent of requests. While Apple devices generated 38.9 per cent of all mobile page requests in April 2010 the other 2,583 devices generated 61.2 per cent. 

The Netbiscuits ‘Mobile Web Device Report is available as a free download here.