Tue, 04/27/2010 – 04:29 AdMob, which still hopes to be acquired by Google, issued its March 2010 Mobile Metrics Report. The report focuses on the Android ecosystem –34 devices from 12 manufacturers — and the different Android OS versions in the market. While AdMob is not synonymous with the mobile Internet, its traffic reflects tremendous Android growth and is likely directionally consistent with the rest of the market. The iPhone remains the top device, however the cumulative traffic on AdMob’s network generated via Android handsets now appears to exceed the iPhone in the US market. According to AdMob “Motorola and HTC were the leading Android device manufacturers with 44 percent and 43 percent of respective traffic.” In particular the Motorola Droid was the single leading Android handset in the US, generating “32% of Android traffic” on AdMob’s network in the US. Now for the charts: US Market: Compare AdMob’s US data from March 2009: Note the that RIM (22% of smartphone traffic in March, 2009; 7% in 2010), Palm and Windows Mobile are either gone from the charts above or trending aggressively downward. Palm as it stands is dead; Windows Phones will come out in Q4. But RIM must be concerned. The company has the second largest share of smartphones globally, after Nokia, and the largest in the US. It seems to be growing subscribers at a heatly pace, although it’s last earnings report missed analyst expectations. However RIM’s share of Internet usage lags — a leading indicator of future sales in our view. RIM is working on an improved mobile browser and Internet experience. Consumer demands are changing and RIM will need to be more competitive in that arena going forward in order to grow — or even maintain — its handset share. ___ Related: I was careful above to qualify the Android vs. iPhone remarks by saying that these data were reflective of AdMob’s network. This post from Business Insider takes issue with a TechCrunch characterization that generalizes too much from the AdMob data: No, Android Did NOT Just Pass iPhone In Mobile Web Traffic While I’ve never said that AdMob and the mobile Web are the same, I’ve seen them as “directionally consistent” in terms of trends. But here’s a key point about the potentially changing composition of the AdMob network that I had not thought about carefully:

While Android’s user base — and Web traffic consumption — is growing and could eventually rival Apple’s, AdMob’s ad request data is NOT a proxy for mobile web usage in general.  

Why not? Because AdMob’s statistics include an important variable that can cause significant fluctuations: AdMob’s publisher relationships with web sites and apps, which cause different types of ad requests over time as the publisher network changes.  

For example, if AdMob were to add more Android apps — and therefore, more Android ad requests — to its publisher base, or if it were to lose iPhone apps from its publisher base, that would affect its ad request statistics. In other words, Android and iPhone ad request stats could shift significantly from quarter to quarter with nothing else changing but AdMob’s publisher relationships. And to some extent, that’s what’s happening. After speaking with AdMob, we understand that AdMob is seizing a big percentage of the new Android-app ad market. At the same time, it is likely losing share of the iPhone ad market, which is becoming much more competitive as other ad networks like Millennial, JumpTap, and Google catch up to AdMob’s early lead.