AdMob, the world’s largest mobile advertising marketplace, has released some interesting data about mobile web browsing and the devices that are doing it the most.
The data captures some trends that I think alot of people in the mobile industry are already are aware of, namely if the on phone browser is bad then mobile browsing won’t happen that much. AdMob goes a step further to provide some hard numbers to support this and shows some concerning downward trends in mobile browsing activity on Nokia and RIM devices, but big uptick trends in mobile browsing from iPhone, Android and Palm Pre.
This will make our atfollow.com product managers happy seeing they are focused on providing a mobile browser based real time data following service on iPhone, Android and Palm Pre devices.
Data from AdMob…
“In August, AdMob found that 40 percent of queries came from iPhones, up from 33 percent six months ago. Android users hitting AdMob sites grew to 7 percent of users, up from 2 percent in February. The Palm Pre — which only just launched in June — had 4 percent of traffic in August.
While those new entrants to the mobile market are growing their share of mobile online usage, the established phone makers are losing share.
Users of Nokia’s Symbian phones who hit AdMob’s ads dropped from 43 percent in February to 34 percent last month. BlackBerry users fell from driving 10 percent of traffic six months ago to 8 percent in August. Windows Mobile phones went from generating 7 percent of hits to AdMob sites in February to 4 percent in August.”
The big opportunity still rests in the hands of Nokia and RIM who have about a 60% combined marketshare of smartphones shipped globally. Get a good browser and you are serious contenders to keep that number growing. RIM has made some moves to acquire some new browser engineering talent of late and Nokia is now shipping a Mozilla based browser with the new N900. We will see if their next gen smartphones keep with this trend.
There is an amazing new initiative going on in Vancouver, Canada called Wavefront.
As per the website… “Wavefront is the commercialization centre accelerating the growth of British Columbia’s growing cluster of more than 1,000 wireless and new media developer companies. Wavefront improves speed-to-market and delivery of mobile applications and devices by providing emerging companies with a suite of WaveGuide™ training, mobile industry advisory, testing and incubation services that facilitate commercial engagement with mobile network operators and enterprise companies around the world.”
Kontexto has joined Wavefront and will use the facility as a small office and a device testing center for our mobile services including atfollow.com. As a company with operations in the UK and Canada, Wavefront is an excellent choice for us to get involved with the Canadian wireless community. Getting your hands on several handsets in one central environment is a godsend for wireless app developers. Our developers are definitely looking forward to using the facility.
The Palm Pre smartphone has been receiving stellar reviews on the whole across the web Engadget, Gizmodo, CNET.
In a recent article by The Globe and Mail Palm’s plan for Pre apps the question is posed as to how Palm intends to make this device a consumer success given it only has about a dozen or so apps available at present versus tens of thousands of apps for competing devices like the iPhone™.
On the surface it seems like the classic chicken and egg scenario for Palm.
Not enough apps, consumers don’t want the device. Not enough consumers with the device, developers won’t build apps for it. But can Palm make the Pre a legitimate contender to the iPhone™ with only modest growth in apps? I think they can and here is why.
The mobile browser.
Tons of services can now be experienced in the mobile browser with the same quality as a downloaded software app. Just the way desktop apps have given way to the browser, the same can happen on mobile devices.
In the case of @follow™, we made the decision to build a browser based service instead of native apps for each mobile platform such as iPhone, Android, Palm, Windows Mobile, RIM and Symbian. It’s not to say we won’t roll out native apps over time for specific platforms, but in order to get on as many devices as possible with the same exact code base, going after the mobile web browser was the correct choice for us.
This is why I think the Palm Pre is wide open for creative web developers. Hunt through the Apple app store and pick a bunch of apps that can be recreated as a web app, build them and right away you have Palm Pre owners as an audience.
One thing that gets us going at Kontexto is building things we want to use, but can’t find anywhere else.
Our whole team surfs around all of the Social News sites on the net either using an RSS Reader or going to the actual websites, nothing special, but really repetitive.
After doing this over and over and more and more from our mobile devices, it was obvious that we needed to make it easy to follow all social news sites in a single click from any mobile browser.
We needed to make the experience real time, so that when we were dipping in and out of the social news stream on our iPhone’s and Gphone’s we were assured of the most recent stories at that moment in time.
A quick video below shows you how you can use @follow™ on your iPhone or Gphone™ to follow all the social news sites in real time.
In the spirit of the real time web, we have been posting as frequently as possible during the development of @follow™ our real time web following service. @follow™ lets you follow streams of content in real time on just about any type of information.
We have updated the design and navigation of @follow™ to make it easier to select and view real time information streams. Right now, there are about 16 information streams that are live, hundreds more will be added in the next few weeks.
An ‘information stream’ at this point is a collection of disparate data points that stream into a single real time view. I am including some early preview screenshots of @follow v.1 below…
This is an @follow™ I set up to follow the Real Time Web 09 conference attendees. All the attendees blogs and twitter feeds are updated in real time into this stream…
You will be able to keyword filter on an information stream to uncover specific items…
Basic directory to one click navigate real time information streams…
As you can see, we are intentionally making this a narrower ‘vertical’ type design for use on mobile web devices like the iPhone™ and Gphone™. I will get into more details in the coming days about the icons on the left and deeper functionality of @follow™.
Quick post today to share some screen caps of the @follow™ real time filter we just put in place to help our users laser in on specific items of interest.
In a nutshell, @follow™ lets you follow bundles of information in real time on any device. You can dip in and out as you like to see what is happening right now on pretty much anything you choose.
We have had a bunch of requests for a quick keyword filter that lays on top of any information bundle so @followers can keyword search in real time. It will get prettier, but the functionality to perform real time keyword search is now in place.
I am using The Guardian Twitter stream in the screencaps below. The Guardian on Twitter is now visible in one central stream on @follow™.
So it is official now it seems. Michael Jackson has died today. If there was ever an individual who could command a real time response across the world it is him. It just so happened that I was working on @follow, our real time following service, as he was being rushed to the hospital.
I thought I would use @follow to ‘follow’ his health status as it unfolded in real time, exactly what the service is intended to let one do. I video screencasted a bit of what I was doing over the short span of about 20 mins from the time he was en route to the hospital. The video is only about 2 mins or so.
It was bound to happen and there are probably 1000’s of other events that have done this already, but imo, the future of sports is real-time fan reporting and real-time fan coverage.
The US Open Golf Tourney is being Twitted real time here:
