AdMob today published its Mobile Metrics Report for February, signaling out the three main categories of devices in its network; smartphones, feature phones and “mobile Internet devices,” to analyze traffic trends by category.
The stats follow the same trends as previous reports, in that smartphones account for a majority of traffic in AdMob’s network. In February, smartphones accounted for 48% of AdMob’s total worldwide traffic, up from 35% in Feb. 2009. In absolute terms, smartphones traffic increase has been substantial- reporting 193% growth over the past year.
Feature phones, however, continue to decline as prices drops and increased interest in mobile app consumption fuel upgrades to smartphones. Feature phones declined from 58% to 35% of AdMob’s total traffic in February, but although the share of traffic from feature phones as a category declined, in absolute terms, traffic grew 31% year-over-year.
The “mobile Internet device” category, which includes the likes of the iPod Touch, Sony PSP and Nintendo DS gaming systems, and other “connected devices,” showed the strongest growth of all three categories, increasing to 17% of overall traffic in AdMob’s network in February 2010. In absolute terms, however, mobile Internet device category traffic increased 403% over the past year.
In terms of mobile operating systems, there remains to be surprises as iPhone, Android and Symbian still rule the landscape as seen through AdMob’s network. Over the last year, the iPhone increased its share of smartphone requests from 33% to 50% while Symbian’s share of requests fell from 43% to 18%. Though Symbian remains a top OS worldwide, it’s not a favorite among smartphones which explains its falling numbers in terms of ad impressions.
Android was the fastest growing operating system in the AdMob network year-over-year, again no surprise there, with Android’s share of smartphone requests increasing from 2% in February 2009 to 24% in February 2010. The top five Android devices worldwide, by traffic, were the Motorola Droid, HTC Dream, HTC Hero, HTC Magic, and the Motorola CLIQ.
