What they found, while focusing on Android use, that, while most users access mobile web content through applications, as opposed to simply using the mobile web and one of the available browsers. That being said, while app use is greater than mobile web use in the Android environment, quite a few Android apps don’t get used at all.

The popular ones are used extensively. The others? Not as much:

Perhaps more surprising, despite the hundreds of thousands of apps available for Android, a very small proportion of apps make up the vast majority of time spent. In fact, the top 10 Android apps account for 43 percent of all the time spent by Android consumers on mobile apps. The top 50 apps account for 61 percent of all time spent.

Clearly, the idea is to be have an Android app that’s in high demand, otherwise, it will probably sit on the proverbial shelf, collecting dust and not a lot of users. Nielsen even presented a pie chart to visualize the app usage breakdown:

Clearly, the goal is to create an application that already has high demand, or, in the case of something like Twitter, invent something people didn’t even know they wanted and/or needed. The problem with that approach is, the returns may not be immediate.

Nielsen goes on to discuss just how much time Android owners spend on the mobile web, either via app or mobile browser, of which, Nielsen’s blog post says:

…the average Android consumer in the U.S. spends 56 minutes per day actively interacting with the web and apps on their phone. Of that time, two-thirds is spent on mobile apps while one-third is spent on the mobile web.

There is, of course, an additional pie chart to emphasize their findings:

Obviously, marketing comes into play here, because the idea of making people think they need the item you’re offering is incredibly basic, but also a fundamental approach that should not be overlooked.

What about you? Do you use Android apps that fall outside of the top 50? If so, are you satisfied? If not, why? Let us know in the comments.

About 40 million people used Opera Mini in October, according to the company. That’s an 11.3% increase from September 2009 and more than 155% compared to October 2008. page-views and data transfers increased at an even more impressive rate. Opera says that because of this, consumers can save 9.4 billion USD per year just by using Opera Mini. If you want to know how this translates to you personally, Opera has a cost calculator in its new State of the Mobile Web report.

"Because Opera Mini compresses data by up to 90%, people everywhere can reduce the amount they pay each month for mobile data," says Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner. "By making the Web accessible and affordable on mobile devices, we can usher in a communications revolution on an unprecedented scale. Opera Mini is helping to spur this change — potentially affecting the lives of billions — not just by making mobile browsing possible, but by making it affordable, as well."

The 39.6 million people using Opera Mini in October viewed 17.2 billion pages.

From September, page-views increased 14.8%. From October 2008, they increased 238%. A few more interesting stats from Opera’s report include: 

- Opera Mini users generated more than 263 million MB of data for operators worldwide in October 2009.

- Since September, the data consumed went up by 16%.

- Data in Opera Mini is compressed up to 90%, meaning Opera Mini servers processed up to 2.5 petabytes of data this month.

- Since October 2008, data traffic increased 233%.

The top 10 countries for Opera Mini usage are (in order) are Russia, Indonesia, India, China, Ukraine, South Africa, United States, United Kingdom, Poland and Vietnam. This is exactly the same as it was in September.

As mobile web use is clearly growing rapidly, it is important that your site has not only a good, usable mobile presence, but it is also essential that your site be visible in mobile search. We recently looked at some advice from Google on making sure you’re indexed in Google’s mobile web search, and how to handle the two different versions of you site (mobile/desktop). Read more here.
 

Related Articles:

> Ensuring Your Site is Indexed in Google’s Mobile Search

> Smartphone Sales Up 12% In Q3

> Usage of Mobile Web and Apps Doubles in 2 Years

AdMob released its Mobile Metrics report for September, which highlights the rapid growth in usage of mobile web sites and apps on new devices in the past year.

In September of 2008, the Motorola RAZR was the top device in the US and the iPhone was the only touchscreen device in the top 10. This year, things have changed a bit. The lost of the top 10 devices includes five with touchscreens, six with Wi-Fi capabilities, and six with application stores.

"These devices are responsible for a much higher percentage of mobile usage than their share of handsets sold," says AdMob. "However feature phones like the Samsung R450 and Motorola RAZR V3 still represent 60 percent of ad requests in the US.  The strong mobile Web usage on these feature phones is likely driven by unlimited data plans."

Other highlights from the report include:

- In September 2007 AdMob had 1.6 billion ad requests, in September 2008 5.1 billion, and in September 2009 10.2 billion.

- Nearly every region of the world experienced immense growth in the past two years, with North America, Asia, Western Europe, Oceania and Latin America seeing a six-fold increase in traffic since September 2007.

- Worldwide iPhone and iPod touch traffic increased 19 times from September 2008 to September 2009 in the AdMob network.

- In September 2009 42 percent of requests in the US were made from Wi-Fi capable devices. 18 percent of actual US requests were made over a Wi-Fi connection in September 2009 compared to only 5 percent in September 2008.

- Devices running on the Android Operating System (OS) accounted for 17 percent of smartphone traffic in AdMob’s network in the US in September 2009, up from 13 percent in August 2009. The HTC Dream (G1) was the number three device and the HTC Magic was the number 10 device in September 2009 in the US. As with the iPhone OS, much of the Android traffic in AdMob’s network came from applications.

AdMob’s data is based on usage of handsets and smartphone devices during the month of September in their network of over 15,000 mobile sites and apps. AdMob’s market share is calculated by the percentage of requests received from a particular handset. The company deems this a measure relative of mobile web and application usage.

Related Articles:

> App Store Gets Twice the Downloads of Android Market

> That’s a Lot of Mobile Advertising!

> What’s Your Favorite iPhone App?

Making moves to get blogs to display properly on mobile devices is a good move considering recent research, which found that consumers are generally not pleased with the way mobile web sites display.

"While mobile users may accept sites that are ‘light’ on richness and small in form factor, they are evidently not willing to sacrifice performance," said Matt Poepsel of Gomez, the company behind the research. "The mobile Web is all about convenience – the Web in your pocket -and slow mobile pages contradict that benefit. To avoid ongoing dissatisfaction and to capitalize on the mobile opportunity, businesses need to place mobile performance management squarely at the top of their to-do lists."

The WordPress themes should make that easier for on the blog side of things.

One theme is a modification of WPtouch, and will be displayed to phones with modern web browsers like those on the iPhone and Android phones. The other was developed from an older version of the WordPress Mobile Edition and will be displayed to all other mobile devices.

"Mobile visitors greeted by WPtouch will get easy access to posts, pages, and archives," says WordPress. "They’ll get fancy AJAX commenting and post loading. If you are using a custom header image, it will be scaled to size and displayed at the top of your blog. When viewing your blog on other phones, the focus will be on loading the blog quickly while displaying the important information about your content."

According to WordPress, over 60 million page views a month of WordPress.com blogs have been on mobile devices.

The firm determined that smartphones accounted for nearly 3 times more usage than their relative market share. With regards to usage of mobile sites and HTML sites on mobile devices, AdMob found relative usage of both to be highest on Apple and Android devices. 

"The emergence of devices such as the iPhone and HTC Dream (G1) that deliver truly compelling Internet experiences has generated discussion of which Web consumers will use on mobile – mobile Web sites or HTML sites," says AdMob.

Other interesting findings from the report include:

- The iPhone OS had 8% of the smartphone market, but generated 43% of mobile Web requests and 65 percent of HTML usage.

- The Android OS share of the smartphone market was less than 1%, but generated 3% of mobile Web requests and 9% of HTML usage.

- The Symbian OS had 52% of the smartphone market, but generated only 36% of mobile Web usage and 7% of HTML usage. 

- Usage of mobile Web sites greatly out paces usage of HTML sites on smartphones running the Symbian and RIM Operating System (OS).

- 24% of US requests were made over a Wi-Fi network. The top five Wi-Fi devices in terms of usage were the iPhone, iPod touch, Sony PSP, HTC Dream (G1), and HTC Dash.

AdMob’s report relied on research from Gartner and ad requests from its own network of mobile websites and apps, which include 7,000 sites and 1,600 apps.

What I found interesting are these stats included in Martin Bellam’s related post:

It’s not so much the raw numbers nor Bellam’s analysis:

[…] as a proportion of users, there are more Windows and Mac users of the news.bbc.co.uk domain than across the BBC as a whole. This, of course, could lend weight to the argument that the BBC News site is most often consumed during office hours, on networks that are locked down to the two major OS variants.

Or, I guess you could equally argue that it is the sheer weight of Linux, Sun and Unix users hitting the h2g2, Doctor Who and much-missed Cult site that skews the figures in the opposite direction.

No, what I find most interesting are the numbers related to visitors using mobile platforms.

Of the 14 operating systems shown in the clip-graphic above, I count 11 as mobile operating systems – Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Blackberry, Motorola, Symbian, Samsung, LG, Orange, Sagem, T-Mobile and O2.

They all may add up collectively to a relatively small percentage of overall site users compared to the majority on PCs, Windows and Macs, yet look at the actual numbers of people who use the sites from a mobile device – over 11 million to the main BBC sites and over 1 million for BBC News.

If my figures are about right, that’s around 4.4% of all visitors to the main BBC sites who get there from their mobile devices.

I doubt anyone would disagree that such usage will only grow. By how much is the question.

I’m hoping that we’ll see updated stats at the end of December.

And what about Linux, as Bellam’s post and others were primarily to do with that?

It’s only 0.01%, trailing in the distance behind mobile operating systems.

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Furthermore, as Silicon Valley Insider’s Dan Frommer notes, “Even that crowd seems to treat it as a novelty.  Just 1.1% visited one at least once a week, and 0.7% used a mobile social network almost every day.”  (The 3.5 percent represents U.S. users throughout the month of June.)

That looks like bad news for mobile social networking – never mind loving it, only around one out of every hundred people even like it.  Yet a more positive person might view this as an opportunity for growth, and given the technology’s young age, that could be a valid interpretation.

“Nearly every online social networking site has added the ability to connect to these communities with a mobile phone, allowing people to access profiles and share content while they’re on the go,” Mark Donovan, a senior analyst at M:Metrics, told 3G.  “With the mobile phone playing a central role in people’s social lives, it’s only natural that social networking sites are working to bridge the gap between the online and mobile worlds.”

But between 3.5 percent and 100, there’s a long way to go.

The top five countries accessing the mobile web via Bango* in April 2007 were the UK at 27%, the US at 21%, South Africa at 11%, India at 9% and Indonesia at 3%. In total, Bango detects mobile web users from over 190 countries. The Bango population cannot be regarded as a representative sample. Nevertheless it is surely an indicator of what is happening in this sector.

In addition to growth in the US, Bango’s data shows that 9% of all accesses to mobile websites now come from India, up from 4% a year ago. India, with a population of just over 1.1 billion and lack of an established fixed phone line network, relies on mobile phones to stay in touch. Here, mobile phone usage is set to exceed European levels within the next few years. Again it is probable that Bango’s figures under-represent the growth of the mobile Web in the Far East.

From its data, Bango suggests that search fuels the appetite for mobile Web surfing. This is undoubtedly true currently. However it is an increasingly mobile world. As the technology improves the mobile experience, it seems likely that other applications such as mobile TV will drive further growth.

Related: 100 Million Websites – How Many To Go?

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Though the U.S. has five times the number of mobile Internet users than the UK, the percentage of Americans accessing it is 19 percent, compared to Britain’s 24 percent. Germany and Italy have the highest percentage of the population surfing on the go with 34 percent.

In all six countries measured by comScore, the most likely mobile user was a man (55 percent), using a Motorola in the States, a Nokia in Europe. In fact, half of Italy belongs to Nokia. A quarter of Americans favor Motorola. While Americans are fixated on the major portal, Europeans tend to trust their phone provider’s (Vodaphone, o2, T-Mobile) portal equally.

“Three-quarters of American mobile Web surfers access content from the leading online portals such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN compared to only thirty percent of Europeans,” commented Bob Ivins, managing director of comScore Europe.

“In Europe, the mobile Internet appears to mirror the dynamics of the fixed Internet. Google remains strong but the other U.S.-based portals achieve much lower penetration, facing stiff competition from local competitors–in this case the mobile providers– who have the structural advantage of a degree of control over the access point and interface from the mobile phone.”

An interesting question to pose may be the examination of access to convenient public transportation. Americans do a lot of driving, especially back and forth to work or between destinations with readily available desktop Internet. It would be interesting to see if there is a correlation between mobile access and, say, train usage.

The survey found that that visits to News sites via mobile phone were almost negligible, and nonexistent in Germany. Only in Italy and Britain did visits to News sites outnumber visits to Commerce sites – which may be telling itself of who is using mobile Internet.

What are people searching for the rest of the time, I wonder? Oh yeah.

Another survey, conducted in the US by Harris Interactive showed the over a quarter of mobile users were open to watching advertising on their handsets, as long as they received a free application for their phone in the exchange.

With a number that buries direct mail response rates, the Harris survey found that seven percent of respondents demonstrated a willingness to receive relevant promotional text messages.

Further, the study found also that nearly 10 percent of respondents had given up land lines altogether. Over half were considering the same thing. The thought follows, then, that the mobile market still has a ways to open up, and users are becoming more open toward marketing.

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