Sources of mobile internet statistics

Anyone writing about mobile or doing a pitch or business plan needs up to date statistics.  For the mobile internet industry, this can be a real issue as there are real gaps in the data at the moment - for example in the mobile web there is no equivalent of Comscore, compete.com or even Alexa to help give an insight into the level of traffic different sites are getting.  Thankfully, the mobile internet ecosystem is becoming increasingly developed and there is some good info and data out there if you know where to look.  This post gives a quick run down of the different sources of free mobile internet statistics and data out there.  We will try and update this if you have got any others leave a note in the comments. 

Mobile companies

The best mobile internet companies like admob, opera and bango are very good at releasing data and information into the wider market.  These guys know that if they can help grow mobile overall by providing useful information and data then everybody wins. 

Admob - Mobile Metrics Report

admob have been real leaders in the mobile market in terms of being open with their data and helping to make it available to others. They provide a monthly Mobile Metrics Report on trends in mobile internet that they see across their massive network of sites.  If you want to get an idea of what the most common devices, networks and countries are on the mobile internet then this should be your first port of call.

Opera - Mobile Browsing report 

Opera run probably the most popular mobile browser for people that really know the mobile enough to download a specialist browser.  Their Mobile Browsing report is full of good information for the UK and US markets particularly their lists of the top 10 most browsed sites on mobile. 

Measurement agencies

M metrics has been brilliant in establishing itself as the leading provider of mobile metrics and data - the Barb or Rajar or hitwise of mobile if you like.  Anyway most of their stuff is premium data that you can't get for free, however, they do publish lots of free information on their RSS feed, in their press centre.  Unfortunately they don't seem to run a blog, which is a shame. 

Nielsen Mobile is the mobile wing of Nielsen which runs measurement for lots of other media like PC web, TV etc.  They publish some data on their web site although this is quite limited.   

Industry Organisations

For some reason, The Mobile Data Association publishes most of its data on the Text.it site which used to be the source for SMS related stuff.  Anyway, they provide good statistics on UK mobile internet use in the quarterly Mobile Trends Report and loads of statistics on texting and picture messaging usage, as well as mobile internet data, in their media section.   This is a fantastic resource of data on the UK market. 

The Mobile Marketing Association publish a few bits of info in their Resources section.  Basically a load of longer briefing style pdfs which do have a few stats in but are generally more focused around explaining different issues.  Would be nice to see a few nuggets of info and data published by these guys along the lines of what the Mobile Data Assocation does.

Research agencies, blogs and others

The big TMT information providers like Informa, Jupiter, Forrester Research all cover mobile but cost a lot of money to subscribe to the full service.  However, you can often pick out the key headline stats on mobile market sizes and so on from their press releases and free information on their sites. 

Moconews.net generally publishes any important new mobile stats or forecasts that come out from the

Mobile Entertainment magazine publishes stats on popular content and other useful info and is available online and as a free pdf download

Are there any other good sources of mobile stats out there that we've missed?

Comments

[Scott]

You can also check out the Mippin blog from time to time (http://blog.mippin.com). We do our best to bring to light some interesting usage stats and are happy to respond to requests.

[Benedikt]

That's a good list, many thanks!

[james]

Hey mippin crew - you are right - remember the stats you published on channel effectiveness - great stuff was meant to add it to the list but forgot

thanks B

[Nico]

Hi that's a pretty good list, issue remains one of definition of what actually are Mobile Sites / pages that are counted, on/off portal etc - but we'll get there :-)

[Dorthe]

Admob changed their website, the statistic is now availlable on a dedicated sub domain http://metrics.admob.com/

[Roberto]

This is so good info!! I´ve been serching the web seeking for mobile internet stats 2 hours approx. today without success..Many, many thanx

[Dorthe]

The Opera statistics is now availlable under this url: http://www.opera.com/smw/

(and the Opera-links in the text are a bit broken)