News

Devices running RIM and Android generating increasing traffic

Networks & Network Services
According to new research, new devices from RIM are generating an increasing percentage of the total number of requests for the platform. The recently launched RIM devices that are gaining traction are the Tour and new versions of the Curve (8900 and 8520). The older 8100 Pearl series has seen its share of RIM traffic steadily decrease from 28% in April to 16% in October. However, the 8300 Curve series has maintained approximately 44% share over the last six months.

AdMob, a growing mobile advertising network, looked at the major mobile operating systems and the distribution of requests across top devices that run on them in the October 2009 AdMob Mobile Metrics Report.

Worldwide requests from Android devices increased 5.8 times since April 2009 in the AdMob network. The HTC G1 has continued to experience strong growth over the past six months and the launch of new devices is driving significant incremental growth in Android traffic. The Motorola Droid already represented 24% of all Android requests in AdMob's network two weeks after it launched.

Highlights from the October 2009 AdMob Mobile Metrics Report include:

In October 2009, 70% of iPhone OS requests came from the iPhone while the remaining 30% came from the iPod touch.

In the US, the RIM 8300 Curve and 8100 Pearl series devices have consistently remained in the Top 20 devices over the last two years. In the UK, the 9000 Bold and 8900 Curve have seen strong growth and are now the number 10 and 11 devices, respectively.

In the US, Android had 20% share of smartphone traffic, up from 7% six months before, and the HTC Magic (myTouch 3G) and HTC Dream were both Top 10 devices. In the UK, the HTC Dream, HTC Magic, and HTC Hero are all Top 10 devices in the AdMob network.

The Motorola CLIQ has also seen fast pickup since its launch at T-Mobile in the US and generated 6% of Android traffic on 18 November.

The top Symbian and Windows Mobile devices have not changed in 2009 and both platforms have lost smartphone share. One of Nokia's first touchscreen models, the 5800 XpressMusic, is the one of the few newcomers to the list of Top 20 Symbian devices in 2009.

AdMob stores and analyses handset and operator data from every ad request in its network of more than 15,000 mobile Web sites and applications to optimise ad serving. Each month, the AdMob Mobile Metrics Report aggregates this data to provide insights into major trends in the mobile ecosystem. The AdMob share is calculated by the percentage of requests received from a particular handset; it is a measure of relative mobile Web and application usage and does not represent handset sales.