iphone statistics

iphone internet and appstore statistics

There are more and more data and statistics coming in showing the extent to which the iphone is becoming the dominant mobile internet device and mobile software ecosystem. 

Here's some of the recent numbers out there for anyone researching it, or just for general information:

iphone internet statistics

The iphone is generating 67% of total mobile internet traffic - Net Applications has a brilliant interactive tool that lets you view the share of browsing by mobile platform here http://marketshare.hitslink.com/mobile-phones.aspx?qprid=55&sample=31

Admob data shows that the iphone represented 48% of total smartphone ad inventory on their network in December 2008, with the ipod up 3.4 times on the previous month

http://www.admob.com/s/solutions/metrics

The Taptu White Paper on touch search also has some good analysis showing that iphone users have far higher usage pattern than users with other phones and that Apple shipped 2.3m iPhones in 2007 and 13.7m in 2008

http://taptu.com/whitepapers/whitepaper2.html

iphone appstore statistics

- 25k apps on the appstore up from 20k a month ago, only 1/4 of downloaded apps are free -   The majority of apps are also paid-for, with only 6000 of the total priced as free - 148 apps has a great tracking tool for apps in the appstore  http://148apps.com/10000/

- games is the biggest category on the appstore at 6k but books is the third most popular - another great tool giving a lot of different breakdown of the content on the appstore http://mobclix.com/appstore/1 

- iphone and itouch are accounting for 3% of traffic to the BBC iplayer internet TV service according to an interview in mobile entertainment magazine   http://www.mobile-ent.biz/features/146/INTERVIEW-Richard-Titus-Controller-of-Future-Media-BBC

iphone platform

There's a must-read ppt below by teemukurppa which covers the reasons why the iphone is such a powerful platform

- 20 m iphones but all have flat rate data plans and at least 50% of users know about apps = 10m customer base

-  1bn java phones but only 0.01 % have data plans, 10% know about apps = 1m customer base

Platform = Stage. How to choose a mobile development platform?

View more presentations from Teemu Kurppa.

Comments

[Alex Kerr]

The iPhone as a platform is great, but it really needs to be put into perspective. The presentation you link to does not look reliable - some of the numbers are wildly wrong for a start. E.g. J2ME had shipped on over 2.6 billion phones several months ago, not 1 billion. Symbian has shipped on over 250 million phones, not 100 million. Now, many S60/J2ME will be retired, but I can't believe to the extent given by the numbers in this presentation, especially given handset and subscriber growth and the traffic in 2nd hand phones (e.g. to developing nations).
I also want some proof or corroboration of the 0.01% have data plans and 10% know about apps. How earth does the presenter know these figures? These are questionable even without his other glaring errors.

Also, at this point in time, I'd say Ovi Store is a potentially far greater platform than iPhone, the numbers will vastly, vastly outweigh iPhone and it will be on S40 too. Yes, it could all go horribly wrong, but I think iPhone may find it's position at the top of the appstore tree seriously upended.

[james (mjelly)]

All good points Alex and thanks for your comment. I am going to publish it in a seperate post. The thing that really convinced me about the iphone is the level of mobile browsing it is now accounting for - hopefully this is more about touch screens + flat rate data than anything unique to the iphone. If so, that means there is a load of growth coming to mobile web as other devices catch up.

[Teemu Kurppa]

Hi Alex and James, the presentation is mine, and the figures warrant an explanation. During the presentation, I emphasize that this is more of a thought game: exact figures are not important, order of magnitude is.

That said, there's my own research behind the numbers in question and they take into account some facts that PR material of platform providers don't. First, there's absolutely no point to lump different Symbian platforms together (250M): developing and distributing apps for NTT Docomo phones is totally different game than doing it for S60. UI work is usually the biggest part of an end-user application, reusing a few bits of engine code is a marginal saving. They are two different platforms.

Second, even S60 is not one platform from a developer perspective. It's far from easy to support all old platform versions. I know from experience that supporting S60 2nd edition in addition to S60 3rd ed. is a considerable amount of work and most of the companies don't do it.

What about Java then? 2.6B phones out there, sure, but talk to any Java ME developer and you understand how hard it is to support even a good percentage of them. 1B is more like an order of magnitude number.

A more explanation about the numbers in comments of my blog:
http://dirtyaura.org/blog/2009/03/10/mobiledevcamp-slides-platform-stage/#comment-443

In any case, Alex I really appreciate people like you that question numbers.

What about Ovi Store: I've high hopes for it as a Co-Founder of a company developing mobile apps. But it really depends how Nokia can execute on all levels: how many deals with operators are done (not easily scalable task), in how many countries (for the volumes, only sensible billing option is a phone bill based one), and how good is the user experience of Ovi store for both end-users and publishers.

Cheers, Teemu