As Androinica’s Christopher Smith pointed out yesterday, things are
really looking up for Android lately. Not only has Android essentially
caught up with iPhone in the widely watched AdMob OS market share
statistics, but Android has just become the hottest smartphone
platform in a recent consumer demand survey conducted by Changewave.
I am most interested in the AdMob statistic because consumer demand
can change from week to week, while consumer habits are much more
predictable after extended periods of observation. The results?
Android users surf the web a lot. More than any other platform on a
per user basis. Consider this: in the most recent sales data provided
by comScore, Android’s share grew by an amazing 153.6 percent (far
more than any other platform), but still has less than 1/3 of the
iPhone’s total sales share. So for Android to match iPhone in AdMob’s
market share rating is incredible. By my rough guesstimate, each
Android user spends 360% more time surfing the internet (and therefore
seeing AdMob ads) than each iPhone user. The other contenders–RIM,
Palm, and WinMo–have rates that are too low to even bother compiling
the data.
What can we conclude from this data? One could speculate that the
difference may be related to the carriers involved. Perhaps AT&T and
Blackberry plans discourage browsing, at least in comparison to
Android device plans. I wouldn’t know, but I’m sure others have done
the plan comparisons. iPhone folks will undoubtably say that iPhone
apps are in general much better than Android apps, so iPhone users
have more to do with their phones than surf the web. Maybe. But the
most interesting take for me is that this outcome is exactly what
Google wanted from the Android platform. Here is a quote from a recent
New York Times article about Google’s intentions in regard to Android:
“Google, on the other hand, wants smartphones to have open,
nonproprietary platforms so users can freely roam the Web for apps
that work on many devices. Google has long feared that rivals like
Microsoft or Apple or wireless carriers like Verizon could block
access to its services on devices like smartphones, which could soon
eclipse computers as the primary gateway to the Web. Google’s
promotion of Android is, essentially, an effort to control its destiny
in the mobile world.”
As the owner of a Nexus One, I can say that my phone has replaced my
laptop for most of my web browsing. The combination of the
News/Weather widget and my constantly updated RSS feeds through FeedR
meet most of my web browsing needs on a daily basis. This, it seems,
is what our friends at Google were hoping for. Add in the
long-promised Flash capabilities for Android, and look for these
statistics to jump up even higher.
http://androinica.com/2010/04/04/latest-android-consumer-data-is-all-part-of-googles-plan/
--
Salam,
Agus Hamonangan
http://groups.google.com/group/id-android
Japri: [email protected]
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