In-Brief: A trilogy of iPhone-related posts kicks off with a hard look at hard facts.
This could be the week that Apple chalks up its one-billionth iPhone application download, according to this post at MoCoNews. Principal Correspondent Tricia Duryee does the math and figures "about 100 apps are being downloaded every second-that's 6,000 every minute, 360,000 every hour and 8.6 million a day."
It's a flood of apps that pegs the needle, and no doubt plays in favor of companies that recognized the potential of the Apple App Store early on. I'm thinking here of mobile ad marketplace AdMob, which just launched Download Tracking for iPhone applications, allowing advertisers to accurately monitor App Store conversion rates, (detailed in a separate post based on an exclusive briefing with Russell Buckley, AdMob VP Global Alliances); and Taptu, a mobile search company gearing up to solve the search/discovery problem in the "Touch Web" and become a leading App Store mobile ad network in the process (an ambitious plan I discuss tomorrow's exclusive Q&A with Andreas Bernstrom, Taptu COO).
The iPhone has helped to unleash a new interest among consumers in the mobile Web, but it nonetheless represents a tiny subset of the total mobile market. To date Apple has sold 17 million iPhones worldwide (a total Nokia generally tops in a fortnight). Garter puts it in perspective: It concludes that smartphones account for a small percentage of handsets (11-12 percent of all handsets sold globally), and iPhones account for an even smaller percentage of total smartphones (8.2 percent of handsets sold globally).
Another keys data point comes from comScore. It reports that more than half (54 percent) of app users are in households making at least $75,000 per year. If your end-goal is about reaching a mass-market audience with apps, ads or marketing campaigns, you're well-advised to think beyond the iPhone.
Before jumping on the iPhone bandwagon, we should also take a closer look at new stats from AdMob and Bango, numbers that both confirm and deny iPhone's leading position.
April 14, 2009
