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back to article iPhone conquers half the (smartphone) world

Apple's iPhone now accounts for 50 per cent of worldwide smartphone usage, according to a new report. But off in the distance, there's an Android approaching. The latest traffic figures (PDF) from AdMob - the mobile ad-servicing shop recently acquired by Google - are less kind to Symbian and Palm. According to the report, …

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  1. John Square
    Paris Hilton

    Android requests figures....

    ... I wonder if there's an overrepresentation of Android in this graph: Admob supported apps seem much more common on the Android platform than on the iPhone. Certainly the apps I use most frequently on my Magic are all Admobbed, whereas the iPhone my other half uses seems not to have anywhere near as many.

    SO is this just a measure of presence in the software ecosystem of Admob, multiplied by the utility of the application than a platform's marketshare?

    As a sidebar- Android is rather good, though, so I'm not knocking it. I think exposure is the way to go to build share: all of the iPhone users I know who are coming up to contract renewal are looking to shift to the X10 as their next handset, and the iPhone is starting to look a bit primitive in the design stakes by comparison. It still looks classy, yes, but a bit primitive.

    Paris, 'cos primitive\classy\etc.

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    From iPhone to Sony Ericsson???

    I think anyone who shifts from an iPhone back to another manufacturer's smartphone is in for an unpleasant surprise. I work in the mobile industry, and for the last five years or so I've had the opportunity to get my hands on the latest smartphones rather early. I have to confess that I'm slightly biased against WinMo, mainly due to poor experiences with early versions; but since I got an iPhone myself, I look at the latest new stuff that comes through our business and I'm hardly even tempted to pick it up and play with it anymore. People who use an iPhone get so used to the features and intuitiveness (OK, call me a fanboi) that I'd think they'd die of frustration trying to go back to one of the other interfaces, however slick - even my simple business Nokia which I love seems *less* intuitive now I've been using the iPhone for a while. I'll give the X10 a look when we get one but if I can't get all around it blindfold in less than 10 minutes it'll go back in the box...

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  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Let's get a little historical perspective on Windows Mobile's performance:

    "There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It's a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I'd prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get."

    Yep, that's Steve "Crystal" Ballmer 2.5 years ago, bang on the money as usual.

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  4. Adam T

    Ads on iPhone/iPod touch

    I've got rather a lot of apps (research, cough), and surprisingly few of them have advertising in them - certainly none of the paid apps have advertising at all.

    Reports of intense piracy are probably pushing Admob's numbers for Apple devices up fast, as devs try to mitigate the damage by trying out (if not entirely relying on) advertising. If it pays, it'll only get better.

    Personally I'm amazed it pays at all, but I guess Admob's numbers aren't likely to correlate to click-throughs...

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  5. Neur0mancer
    Happy

    "broze"?

    Eh?

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  6. g e

    Or maybe....

    iphone users just use the interweb more than blackberry users, etc

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  7. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Natch?

    I wonder if Apple should bring out another, more expensive version of the iPhone to increase its own product range to 2 iPhones each in competition with the other?

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  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Canalys figures

    A reference to the data from Canalys might be useful here. They claim the iPhone's market share was 13.7% in Q2 and 17.8% in Q3:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone#Operating_systems

    http://www.canalys.com/pr/2009/r2009112.htm

    Of course it may be that iPhones get more use than others. My personal experience is that iPhone owners are constantly fiddling with them ...

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  9. Anonymous Coward
    Coffee/keyboard

    Skewed figures, surely!

    Following on from the 1st post it's obvious that AdMob Apps are only really available on iPhone and Android - so those 2 systems will show up more. Symbian, Palm and WinMo devices don't have many (if any) apps that would show up in these figures.

    Most of the 'lite' apps I've used on the iPhone use AdMob adverts. Paid apps of course won't have adverts, so the idea that pirated apps will increase numbers may not hold true.

    Figures will also be skewed towards larger screened devices where space can be spared to ads.

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  10. eugene
    Thumb Down

    Smartphone = internet ads?

    The whole article is based on the premise that "smartphone" equates to "visiting a mobile website with an admob ad".

    Sure looks like a sensationalist headline - the article states "...does not represent the traditional view of market share blabla", but the headline reads "...conquers half the smartphone world".

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  11. Il Midga di Macaroni
    Linux

    Of course they're skewed figures...

    ... what's interesting is why. It means iPhone app devs are no longer happy to do it for free out of service to the planet, and that iTards are happy to look at ads. I know if I see ads on any Android app I'm interested in, if it's not VERY unobtrusive I get rid of it straight away and either find another or write it myself.

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  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Block!

    Symbian and Palm have the best ad blocking technology, huh? Might have to look into them...

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  13. Gaius
    Stop

    Maybe...

    ... BlackBerry users have better things to do than browse ad-laden websites?

    And iPhone users don't?

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  14. Matt 13

    tosh!

    Or, if you look at things the other way round... iPhone users are less bothered about their software being filled with adverts!

    while the winmob and Blackberry users (professional types i guess, as opposed to trendies!) are a little more selective with what they are force fed!

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  15. Richard 102

    Blackberry

    I used to carry one for work. I was unable to put any unauthorized app on it, so these numbers might reflect that. Still, if you're writing apps, that's useful to know. Even if there are three times as many Blackberries as iPhones, that means little if the Blackberry users can't/won't/don't put an app on there.

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  16. Mick Sheppard

    Not surprised about Symbian

    To be honest I'm not surprised about Symbian. I'd have replaced by 9200 with an E90 if Nokia had kept the same OS. Instead they dumbed it down and made it just another business phone losing the great messaging client. Nokia went for mass market, and that will be its downfall.

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  17. E Haines

    Windows Mobile

    According to the graph, Windows Mobile seems to be a rounding error. Hmm....

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  18. Steve Evans

    Skewed...

    True title should be...

    iPhone users suffer more ads than other smartphones!

    I'm sure it was only a couple of weeks ago I saw a graph of smartphone OS use (probably on here) which had Symbian at least double the iPhone.

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  19. Steve Evans

    And now for some less skewed figures from Gartner...

    According to figures released on 12th Nov, 09 by Gartner, world’s leading information technology research and advisory company, Microsoft’s mobile OS witnessed a downfall from 11 % of the global smartphone market in Q3 2008 to 7.9 % later this year. The iPhone’s share saw a rise to 17.1 % from 12.9 %, and RIM’s share had risen from 16 percent to 20.8 percent. Symbian’s market share fell with 10% from 49.7 % to 44.6 % over the same period The new open-source Android operating system did not have any market share in Q3 2008, however, in Q3 2009, it had managed to capture 3.9 % of the smartphone market. Palm’s WebOS had 1.1 %, and other Linux-based mobile operating systems had 4.7 %

    17.1% != 50%

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  20. Daniel B.
    Boffin

    BlackBerry fields forever...

    I keep hearing about the iPhone mopping up the smartphone market with the competition, yet I haven't seen the mythic hoards of iPhones in the street. In fact, only 2 coworkers have iPhones... wait, make it 1, because the other one is in fact a dual-SIM hiPhone. However, what I have seen a lot these days are either blackberries (both the Curve/Bold models and the skinny Pearls), the Samsung Messenger (builtin wifi, pre-installed MSN Messenger, and QWERTY physical keyboard for your chatting pleasure), some Palms and a lot of iPAQs.

    The iTouch would be more successful, though; it seems that the look & feel works fine for those who want an iPod, but sucks for those who want a phone.

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  21. Vince

    Not much use as a statistic

    This sort of statistic isn't necessarily representative of smartphone share though.

    Ignoring the obvious issues of admobs coverage via different OSes/handsets, other issues exist in this data as it ultimately is based on web browsing. That isn't what defines a smartphone though.

    I own a few handsets and they don't all get used for web browsing - so it isn't entirely representative.

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