While half of all iPhone and iPod Touch use
takes place in the United States, use of these devices grew more quickly abroad in
2009 than it did at home, according to a recent AdMob report that judged use by
how often devices requested AdMob ads.
The Apple mobile devices are used in 23 countries, including the United Kingdom, France, Canada and Germany, which represent 8 percent, 6 percent, 4 percent and
another 4 percent of users, respectively. However, it's Japan, which represents 3 percent of iPhone and iPod Touch
users, France with 6 percent and Australia with 3 percent that have the fastest-growing adoption
rates among the top 10 countries using the Apple devices.
"Although the United States remains by far the largest market for Apple devices,
we've seen faster growth of Apple users from outside the U.S," AdMob wrote
in a Dec. 18 blog post. "In
November, 50 percent of the unique iPhone and iPod Touches that requested an
AdMob ad were outside the United States, compared to only 39 percent in January 2009."
In the report, citing data from Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, AdMob wrote,
"Sales of the iPhone and iPod Touch continued to be strong in 2009, and
analysts believe that cumulative Apple sales of the two devices could reach 78
million by the end of 2009." (In May, Munster
was among those predicting that Apple was at work on a tablet device.)
The report also found smartphones to be generating 48 percent of all mobile Web
and application traffic—up from 30 percent a year ago—and the percentage of
Wi-Fi requests from U.S. devices to have tripled over the year. In November
2008, AdMob said, 8 percent of requests in the United States were made over a Wi-Fi network, although by November 2009
that had grown to 24 percent.
Additionally, it was the iPhone, more than any other smartphone, racking up
those Wi-Fi requests. In the United States, 36 percent of iPhone traffic was over Wi-Fi, while
Android devices used Wi-Fi hot spots less than 10 percent of the time, AdMob
found.
U.S.
iPhone provider AT&T offers subscribers access to its over 24,000 hot spots,
while Motorola Droid provider Verizon only began offering subscribers Wi-Fi
access in December, and even then it was for netbooks and notebooks, but not
smartphones. In December, McDonald's
announced that it will begin offering free Wi-Fi to customers in January.
Android device use skyrocketed during the year, as new devices came to market.
While six months ago T-Mobile's G1 accounted for 92 percent of Android traffic,
in November, the same device (aka the HTC
Dream) accounted for 37 percent of requests. The Motorola Droid was responsible
for 22 percent, the HTC Magic for 21 percent and HTC
Hero for 9 percent of Android requests worldwide, according to AdMob.
"Traffic from Android devices has increased dramatically over the last
year, particularly with the new devices launched in the last two months,"
stated the report, which shows ad requests from Android devices rising from 20
percent in October to 27 percent a month later.
"As the number of Android devices proliferates around the world, the
popular Android handsets may vary from region to region," the report said.
"In the United
States,
the Motorola Droid quickly became the No. 2 handset with heavy marketing
support from Verizon. In the United Kingdom, the HTC Dream, HTC
Magic and HTC Hero make up 92 percent of Android requests."
In November, 88 percent of Android traffic was generated in the United States, while the second-largest market, the United Kingdom, had 4 percent of requests. Data from research
company IDC has also shown European
customers to be slow to warm to Google's Android OS.
Worldwide in November, AdMob reported that Apple was the top manufacturer, with
38.4 percent of ad requests coming from Apple devices. Nokia followed, with
16.3 percent of shares, and Samsung came in third with 11.1 percent.
The
iPhone OS also led in requests, with 54 percent of ad requests worldwide.
The Symbian OS followed, with 19 percent of requests, and with 16 percent,
Android came in third, beating out Research In Motion's OS, from which 6
percent of requests came.
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