RIM just blew out their quarterly results and their stock was up more than 20 percent today.

Their results demonstrate that consumer demand for smartphones appears to be holding up despite the down economy.  This news isn’t exactly surprising to us, we have seen an ever increasing percentage of our total ad requests come from smartphones. In February smartphones generated 33 percent of our US traffic.

You can get a snapshot of RIM’s success by taking a look at some of the data in our February Metrics Report.  While the Curve and Pearl still generate most of RIM’s traffic in the AdMob network, the Storm, Bold, and Flip have quickly made an impact.

Taking a look at a trended view of RIM’s device distribution by share of requests, it’s easy to see the shift in RIM’s user base to newer devices.

In particular, the Storm quickly made an impact at Verizon.  We blogged back in December about the success of the Storm, and it is now the top device used to access the mobile Web on the Verizon network.

RIM has certainly hit its stride, with the success of its newest devices and this week’s launch of their application store.  97 percent of ad requests from RIM devices come from version 4.2 of the RIM OS or higher, which means that nearly everyone with a BlackBerry has access to the BlackBerry App World at launch.  Take a look at the February Metrics Report for more info on RIM, Symbian, and Windows Mobile or sign up to receive future reports.

Mike F
Product Marketing

Today we released the January Mobile Metrics Report, our monthly look at traffic and handset trends within our network.  This month we featured US WiFi usage by geography and data from our Western European region.

We previously found that approximately 8 percent of our US mobile traffic was generated over WiFi networks, and with an ever growing list of WiFi capable devices on the horizon, that number is sure to keep climbing.  This month, we found that WiFi usage in the US is spread broadly across the country, but the West and Northeast regions heavier usage per person than the South and Midwest.  The report includes the percentage breakdown for the top 20 market areas and top 10 states – be sure to take a look.

Last month we highlighted the huge increase in iPod touches on our network after Christmas.  Building on its strong December, iPod Touch growth outpaced iPhone growth in January and now represents 40 percent of Apple requests, up from 20 percent in September.  This growth is global as well – below is a graph showing the distribution of iPhone and iPod touch request by country (in order of descending number of requests).

Canada and Mexico actually had more usage from the iPod touch than the iPhone.

Visit the Metrics homepage to download the report in its entirety or sign up for our monthly distribution list.  And we are always looking for feedback, send us your thoughts at metrics@admob.com.

Mike F.
Product Marketing

Today we released the October 2008 AdMob Mobile Metrics Report, our monthly view of the mobile traffic from our network of 6,000 publishers worldwide.  Worldwide requests increased 14 percent to 5.8 billion and we saw greater than 5 percent growth in all of our Top 10 markets.

The iPhone has finally taken over the top spot in our network, with a 4.1 percent share of worldwide requests.   In this month’s report, we highlight the wide distribution of iPhone traffic worldwide.  37 percent of traffic comes from outside of the US, with 19 countries sending more than 1 million requests in October.

We also announced that we saw more than 4.5 million unique iPhones in October (based on the serial number and other unique identifiers), this represents a reach of 1 in 3 iPhones in the world.   There were 236 million pageviews from iPhones in October – which means each iPhone in our network generated an average of 52 page views.

We have seen particularly explosive growth following the launch of our unique ad units for iPhone sites and applications in July 2008.  The engaging nature of the iPhone combined with these interactive ad units has gotten both brand and performance advertisers excited and they are running campaigns. In fact, in the last month alone 16 brand campaigns ran on our iPhone network.

Also included in the October Mobile Metrics report is a feature on Latin America and the Caribbean, a region that has doubled in size for us over the last year.  The feature breaks out the top handsets and manufactures for eight of AdMob’s top markets in the region including Puerto Rico, Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil.

Email us at metrics@admob.com if you have any comments on the report or would like to be placed on our email distribution list.

Jason Spero

This month marks the one year anniversary of the AdMob Mobile Metrics Report, our monthly snapshot of the handset data we see from the billions of ads we serve each month.

AdMob’s network has experienced explosive growth in the past year, more than tripling in size.  When we put out the first Mobile Metrics Report last summer, AdMob had just celebrated serving the 5 billionth ad in our history, and this past month alone we served nearly 5 billion!

This growth has truly been worldwide.  Take a quick look at the list on page 3 of report at the growth by countries.  We found it particularly exciting that of the Top 20 countries in this month’s report, 15 of them had their traffic at least double from September 2007 to September 2008.

The iPhone has been a big part of the mobile growth story over this past year, with a real spike in the last couple of months. We see consistently strong usage of this popular device across all of the markets it is available in.  In fact, 40 percent of the 103m iPhone requests are from outside the US, with 14 countries – including Canada, the UK, Japan, and France – sending more than 1 million requests in September 2008.

This international strength is why the iPhone is higher in the worldwide rankings (#4) than in the US (#7). We know there continues to be a lot of interest in the iPhone and will provide a geographic breakout of iPhone traffic in the coming months.

Visit www.admob.com/metrics to download any of the AdMob Mobile Metrics Reports from the past year or send an email to metrics@admob.com to sign up for the monthly email distribution list.

We love to get feedback, so send us an email and tell us what you do or don’t like about the report.

Jason Spero
VP Marketing

Today we released AdMob’s August 2008 Mobile Metrics data. This report provides a snapshot into the manufacturer and device level data we see from the billions of ads we serve in our network each month.

The feature section in this month’s report focuses on smartphones.  The percentage of traffic generated from smartphones has been growing rapidly throughout our network; 25.8% of our worldwide requests now come from these devices.  Nokia dominates the worldwide smartphone market with 62.4% share.  The US market is much more fragmented, with RIM leading the way with 31.2 percent.  Download the August report for more details.

There have been many stories written recently about smartphones, with several research firms (including Gartner, IDC, and NPD Group) putting out notes and share estimates.  For clarification purposes, I wanted to point out the difference in methodology between the market share numbers in the Metrics Report and the market share numbers calculated in many research reports.   Neither methodology is inherently better or worse than the other, but it does affect how you interpret the results and the conclusions you can gather from the data.

The Metrics Report calculates market share based on the share of traffic we see from a device.  In other words, it takes into account the number of devices and the relative usage of the devices when calculating share.  It takes into account all devices actively accessing the mobile web, not just those purchased in a specific timeframe.  This method of tracking market share will most closely resemble the traffic you would see on your mobile site.

Many research reports are based off handsets sold during a specific time period.  For example, this Associated Press article (based on IDC figures) states that Research In Motion had more than a 50% market share in Q2 ‘08 while Apple lost share due to customers waiting to purchase the 3G iPhone.  Calculating share based on handsets sold does help to understand which devices are more popular over a certain time frame, although it doesn’t take into account relative usage of the devices.

Depending on how you are using the data, both methodologies can shed light on the adoption of various devices.  Visit www.admob.com/metrics to access the August 2008 report or any of our archived reports.  Send us an email at metrics@admob.com with any and all feedback you have or if you want to sign up for our monthly distribution list.

Jason Spero
VP Marketing