AdMob Oct. 2009 metrics report examines top devices on major mobile OSs

SAN MATEO, USA: AdMob, one of the world's largest and fastest growing mobile advertising networks, examines 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.

The iPhone, Palm and RIM OS's all run exclusively on devices manufactured by those companies, while the Android, Symbian and Windows Mobile OS's run on devices from a variety of manufacturers.

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 percent in April to 16 percent in October. However, the 8300 Curve series has maintained approximately 44 percent share over the last six months.

The Android Operating System is a relative newcomer, having turned one year old in October.

Worldwide requests from Android devices increased 5.8 times since April 2009 in the AdMob network. The HTC Dream (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 percent 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 percent of iPhone OS requests came from the iPhone while the remaining 30 percent 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 percent share of smartphone traffic, up from 7 percent 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 six percent of Android traffic on November 18.
* 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 analyzes handset and operator data from every ad request in its network of more than 15,000 mobile Web sites and applications to optimize 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.

See additional detail on methodology of the report at http://metrics.admob.com/2009/10/placing-admob-metrics-in-context/.