March 2009 Metrics Report

Today we release the March 2009 AdMob Mobile Metrics Report, our monthly look at trends in the AdMob Network. Please download the PDF of the report here.

At our iPhone meetup earlier this month there was a lot of discussion from the developer panel on which platforms they currently support and others they might support in the future. So for this month’s feature, we took a look at the growth of Android.

There is no doubt that Android is growing fast and has made an impact since its launch. The HTC Dream (G1) generates 2% of our US requests and is now the #4 smartphone behind the iPhone, Blackberry Curve, and Blackberry Pearl. Android growth accelerated after our launch of ad units in apps at the end of January, which likely reflects strong consumer usage of applications on the Android platform.

However the question we get most often is – how does Android’s growth compare to iPhone’s growth at launch? Our best answer: both grew more quickly than the market, but iPhone growth was much faster than Android. To put some numbers to this, we found that Android traffic in the US grew an average of 47% per month since it launched five months ago while iPhone traffic in the US grew an average of 88% per month in the five months following the launch of their App Store. See the report for more details on the comparison.

The much faster iPhone growth is not surprising given the far larger installed base of iPhones and the huge marketing push from Apple. In March 2009, we received 8 times more traffic from iPhones in the US today than Android. When you layer in the worldwide footprint, and the fact that the iPod touch is also there, you can see how huge of a headstart the iPhone platform has.
Android vs iPhone March 2009
However when you consider that there are 1-2 million of the G1 sold in the US compared to the approximately 15 million of the iPhone sold in the US today, the ratio makes sense. As more Android phones launch around the world and the Android OS moves to other devices such as netbooks and Mobile Internet Devices, this gap is likely to close.

The early Android data from our network suggests that the consumer appetite for apps is strong and a major factor in growth as more than half of our requests from each platform come from applications. And these apps are not just games, but movie apps, sports apps, news apps, and more that are likely to replace some browser activities. This means that yes, application stores on other platforms can be successful.

Remember that these results are only from our network. If you are new to our Mobile Metrics report, please read our earlier blog post for more info.


Source: http://metrics.admob.com/2009/04/march-2009-metrics-report/