WiFi usage growing rapidly in US and UK — MobileMonday Global: Industry News

^{Worldwide iPhone requests grew 52 % from October to November} WiFi usage growing rapidly in US and UK

18 Dec 2008 at 17:17 GMT Timo Poropudas

AdMob, the world's largest mobile advertising marketplace, today highlighted growing WiFi usage in the US and the UK in its November 2008 Mobile Metrics Report. Worldwide iPhone requests grew 52 percent month over month to 359 million in November, giving the iPhone 6.3 percent of total requests. In the US the iPhone is now the #1 device with 9.9 percent of requests.

The iPhone has by far the most WiFi usage, with 42 percent of requests coming in over WiFi instead of a mobile operator network. The inclusion of WiFi on popular new smartphones such as the G1 and BlackBerry Bold indicates WiFi usage will continue to grow in the coming months. WiFi only devices such as the iPod Touch and Sony PlayStation Portable also generated significant traffic.

AdMob statistics are based on its own service of more than 4.0 billion mobile banner and text ads per month. Other highlights from the November 2008 report:

• In the US, 8 percent of total requests in November were on WiFi networks, up from 3 percent in August. 42 percent of iPhone requests are made from WiFi, notably higher than most other WiFi capable phones which average between 10-20 percent. iPhone WiFi usage is generally higher on iPhone specific sites and applications than on normal mobile sites.

• In the UK, 8 percent of requests in November were on WiFi networks, up from 4 percent in August. After the iPhone and iPod Touch, the Nokia N95 and other N series phones are the leading WiFi devices.

• Worldwide requests were flat in November at 5.8 billion. Requests from North America, Western Europe, Latin America, and Eastern Europe each increased more than 10 percent month over month. These increases were offset by a decline in Indonesian inventory.

• The G1 (HTC Dream) generated 15 million requests in November and already represents 7 percent of all T-Mobile traffic. Android had a 2 percent share of smartphone operating system traffic in the US.

AdMob stores and analyzes handset and operator data from every ad request in its network to optimize ad serving. Each month, the Mobile Metrics Report aggregates this data to provide insights into major trends in the mobile ecosystem.