Mobile Business Profitability lies beyond the iPhone | MMA Global

Mobile Business Profitability lies beyond the iPhone

May 28, 2010
Submitted by Netbiscuits Inc.

Netbiscuits metrics report reveals how mobile device usage for Internet access varies by market, industry, and time

Kaiserslautern, May 18, 2010 — Which devices really matter for your mobile strategy? Netbiscuits, the world’s leading development and publishing platform for mobile Web sites and apps, today published a report that sheds light on current device usage trends on the mobile Web. The report provides segmented statistics from 2009 to early 2010 for various industry verticals and markets around the world, including the USA, UK, Germany, Australia and Malaysia. The data was generated from the 2.5+ billion page requests that Netbiscuits’ mobile publishing platform serves each month.

The report shows how mobile Web sites are accessed by hundreds and thousands of unique mobile devices. It proves that the mix of devices varies strongly by market, by industry, and over time and gives evidence that not only smart phones but also Web-enabled feature phones, music players and gaming consoles are highly relevant mobile Web access devices. The report reveals that the majority of mobile Web site requests come from the Long Tail of devices even in those markets were Apple’s iconic iPhone is by far the dominating mobile Web access device.

“Today thousands of unique devices are used for mobile Web access. The vast majority of them generate a share smaller than 1% of all page requests”, says Michael Neidhoefer, CEO of Netbiscuits. “However the impact of these devices should not be underestimated. Netbiscuits stats show that in most cases the major amount of all page requests is generated by this Long Tail of devices. Optimizing your mobile service only for the few devices that dominate your market, industry or target group intentionally locks out the majority of your potential users and limits the profitability of your mobile business.”

In April 2010 Netbiscuits handled more than 2.5 billion mobile page requests coming from 2,585 unique devices, globally. Among them only Apple was able to claim a remarkable share: 30.69% of all page requests were generated by the iPhone, 8.16% by the iPod Touch. Eleven more devices from BlackBerry, Motorola, Android, Palm and Nokia had a share between 3.53% and 1.07%. Each of the other 2,572 unique devices generated less than 1%. While Apple devices generated 38.85% of all mobile page requests in April 2010 the other 2,583 devices generated 61.15%. So nearly two thirds of all requests to the Netbiscuits mobile publishing platform were processed by the Long Tail of devices.

“To set up a sustainable mobile strategy you should launch a mobile Web site first”, Michael Neidhoefer adds. “Based on Netbiscuits this site will give your customers immediate access to your content and services on any Web-enabled mobile device worldwide. The metrics of this site will show you exactly for which platforms it is recommendable to set up an App in addition. To help our customers setting up these Apps most cost- efficiently we created Netbiscuits Hybrid Apps. These Apps which are based on a mobile Web site are available for all major App platforms, including Apple, Android, BlackBerry, and Windows.”

To download Netbiscuits’ Mobile Web Device Report free of charge, please follow this link: http://www.netbiscuits.com/mobile-device-report