AdMob, the world’s largest mobile advertising marketplace, has announced that the iPhone is now the #1 device worldwide, displacing the Motorola RAZR, and in a regional feature focus highlighted traffic from Latin America and the Caribbean has more than doubled in the last year (this is all covered in the October 2008 AdMob Mobile Metrics Report). Information Week reports here.
The iPhone experienced strong traffic worldwide to become the #1 device, with 37 percent of requests coming from outside of the US. It enjoyed explosive growth across AdMob’s network after the company launched its ad units for iPhone sites and applications in July 2008. There are currently more than 400 applications and sites in the AdMob’s iPhone Network. In October 2008, AdMob reached more than 4.5 million iPhones, one out of every three on the market!
Following on from the AdMob announcement, it makes perfect sense that this is one area that is really getting huge. I was at the first Amsterdam iPhone Dev Camp recently, and there is another mobiledevcamp this weekend in Amsterdam. (will check it out tomorrow and report back)
What I’ve noticed though is that Apple is not communicating efficiently the reason why apps are accepted or not. At Mobypicture we’ve had some trouble getting our Moby app into the store; in fact, we didn’t hear back for two weeks. We offered it again and then found out, almost a month later, that we had to change some things.
It’ll be interesting to see the implications of iPhone apps for targeted advertising, because Apple knows exactly which apps are bought – everything goes through their store, meaning they can get to know a lot about the iPhone users.
I will keep an suspicious eye on it for you, to be continued….
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If anything this is just a reminder as to how international the mobile comms market has become. US companies relying very heavily on customers in other parts of the world. This is a levelling of the playing field. You just don’t need to be in Silicon Valley, or catering to an American audience anymore. In fact you could just ignore that slice of the market entirely, and still make a tidy sum.
I quite badly want to see more European startups hitting the big time. When you think about it, you just need the development expertise. VC funding is rarely necessary.