The December 2009 AdMob Mobile Metrics Report breaks down, by region, trended manufacturer share across all mobile devices, smartphone OS share, and the top handsets and smartphones in the AdMob network. Regional highlights include:
• Africa: Nokia’s share remained fairly steady in 2009, generating more than 50% of requests throughout the year. In Q4, Samsung and Sony Ericsson devices generated 18% and 9% of requests, respectively. Symbian was the dominant smartphone OS generating 87% of smartphone requests and accounting for nine of the top 10 smartphones in Q4 2009.
• Asia: Nokia continues to be the leading manufacturer in Asia by a wide margin with 53% of requests in Q4 2009. After launching in several countries in Asia in 2009, the iPhone had a strong Q4 and doubled its share of smartphone requests to 27%.
• Eastern Europe: Nokia’s share decreased slightly throughout the year to 35% in Q4 2009. Apple, Sony Ericsson, and Samsung devices generated 23%, 12% and 9% of requests, respectively. Eight of the top 10 smartphones in the region were Nokia devices, including the 6300, N70, and N95.
• Latin America: Several device manufacturers had significant share in Q4 2009, Apple led with 39%, Nokia had 15% and Sony Ericsson had 11% of device requests. The Sony PlayStation Portable was the number three device in December 2009. Although it only generated 8% of smartphone requests, RIM had three of the top 10 smartphones in the region.
• North America: In Q4 2009, Apple lead with 40% followed by Samsung with 17% and Motorola with 11%. The iPhone generated 54% of smartphone requests in Q4 2009. Android share grew throughout the year reaching 27% in Q4 2009, by far its highest penetration in any region.
• Oceania: Apple’s share increased dramatically throughout 2009 and its devices are responsible for the vast majority of requests in the region. The top 10 smartphones in Q4 2009 included the Apple iPhone, HTC Magic, HTC Hero, BlackBerry 9000 and six different Nokia models.
• Western Europe: Apple made strong gains in manufacturer share in 2009. In Q4 2009 the Apple iPhone and iPod touch generated more than half of total requests from the region at the expense of Nokia, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson. Android had a strong Q4 2009 and generated 8% share of smartphone requests, second only to North America in penetration.
Apple’s iPhone OS dominated the North American, Australian and Western European markets. Over that same time period, Apple shipped an incremental 26M iPhone units (Gene Munster/Piper Jaffray Apple Research Note dated 1/6/2010). The majority of iPhone requests are generated inside applications.
Note: AdMob’s definition of a smartphone is a phone that has an identifiable Operating System. Although it runs the iPhone OS, Apple’s iPod touch was not included in this analysis because it is not a phone.
AdMob publishes the Mobile Metrics Report to provide a measure of mobile Web and application usage from our network of more than 15,000 mobile Web sites and applications. 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.
More info in the full report (.pdf) here.
Source: AdMob
Wow, that’s impressive!
There’s a lot of blue in those graphics!
Tsk, just a rounding error.
Although it runs the iPhone OS, Apple’s iPod touch was not included in this analysis because it is not a phone.
Egad – wouldn’t including it make sense, all things considered? That would paint a far more accurate picture of Apple’s dominance. (Of course, in the interests of keeping Apple’s competition relatively clueless, perhaps it’s better this way…)
Very interesting.
I wanted to complain that there was a hint of bias in the text of the report, but the sea of blue dissuaded me. Nokia(red) rules in Africa (so?) and Asia (OK, a concern) and is doing well in Eastern Europe. Apple is doing well in Latin America, Western Europe and North America. Complaining about a mild snub in the text would just be childish.
Does the fact that Apple is doing well in the TOTAL market suggest that the portion of that occupied by Smart Phones is growing?
At a robust 3%, I like Ballmer’s strategy. I like it a lot.
@DLMeyer
It actually just means that despite all the iphone “killers” and feature phones, that supposedly have way better specs, no one can use the internet without wanting to commit suicide from the horrid user experience.
Apple’s real unit share of the total market is approx 1.5-2% that 36% of all ad requests are made by apple simply means that its the only phone people actually use daily to surf the web.
So if they are not including the iPod touch, why are they mentioning the Sony PSP in Latin America?
@Joe
Since Google bought AdMob, they stopped considering the iPod Touch because it makes Android look better.