TheWayoftheWeb

Content and Digital Marketing Specialists

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Global mobile web usage reality check

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When it comes to the mobile web, it’s easy to presume that the world is dominated by North America and Europe, and the leading companies are Apple and Google (Android).

Handily, Royal Pingdom just did a nice bit of analysis showing exactly how far that is from the truth, based on figures from Statcounter and 3 million websites:

And in more detail:

  • Mobile web makes up around 3.81% of all global web usage
  • Web usage isn’t uniform across regions. In Africa, Chad has close to 29% mobile web usage, Nigeria just over 25%, Sudan just over 22%.
  • India, Indonesia, Cambodia, Turkmenistan and Bangladesh are all around 15%
  • Japan? 2.17% mobile web traffic.
  • Nokia phones dominate in these countries with unusually high shares, often more than 90% of traffic coming from Symbian phones. Then it’s usually Sony Ericsson, or Samsung handsets

Many businesses are concentrating on one territory at a time, and therefore global stats might not change your perception that much, but it’s important to note the manufacturer share globally and outside of the U.S (Where Nokia doesn’t really exist), before you make predictions of manufacturer viability for the future.

When you’re considering mobile websites and mobile applications, do you actually know which platform your consumers own and use?

Newspapers, Magazines, and the Apple iPad

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While newspaper and magazine publishers have seen some good opportunities and success with the iPhone, the larger form factor of the iPad has definitely seen a huge leap in interest and the number of dedicated newspaper and magazine applications being produced, with figures already being shared by various publications about their success.

The Time sold 5,000 iPad apps in 3 days at £9.99, the Wall Street Journal has 10,000 customers paying $17.29 a month (free to print/web subscribers), The Financial Times has had 130,000 downloads of it’s free application. The Australian has had 4,500 downloads at $4.99 a month, the Guardian Eyewitness free app has had 90,000 downloads. And Wired is apparently selling more copies on the iPad than in print (print sales were quoted at 79,000).

(Figures from conferences I’ve attended, Paidcontent, New York Observer, Venturebeat)

All very impressive…but…

1) Friend and former magazine colleague Dave Cushman makes a point which quite a few other people have also discussed – is this an illusion of a long term future for publishers? He picks up on the open/closed, silo/network challenge, and that many publishers seem to see print sales dropping just because we can’t buy a lovely digital version of a print product. (Ignoring the fact that I carry 2-3 digital devices past at least 2 news stands every morning, with print products which already look good, are eminently portable and mobile already, and don’t require any net connection/investment in a new device).

2) The first month of figures are pretty much meaningless. Talk to me in six months about the number of app downloads, subscriber figures, and revenue. Then it’ll be clear whether the approach you’ve taken to the iPad is actually a solution, or just a very temporary bump.

Most applications will see good figures for the first month or two. They’re new in iTunes and get a little bit of promotion purely for that. And in this case, they’re also getting the bonus of a huge amount of hype around the iPad, and large amount of cross-promotion from the existing print and digital products. Here’s a question – How much revenue was given up in house ads to get the revenue the iPad app has generated?

The iPad is still hugely important:

I’m not denying the impact and value of the Apple iPad. It’s been extremely successful so far ( 2 million already sold), and is definitely driving a new way of accessing digital content (the web as well as apps).

But it’s far to early to say with certainty that the future of digital publishing lies in applications, and particularly in products which haven’t adapted to any benefits of digital distribution other than an easy paywall via iTunes. The larger iPad screen and speedy browser means a great way to surf the web for content without cost in many, many cases. And allows me to see all the peer-created and recommended content that is filtered for value to me in a more effective way than news organisations currently manage.

It’s only when excited new iPad owners have overcome their initial app-downloading frenzy and we can analyse repeat usage we’ll see whether this new distribution channel works for magazines – and whether anyone gets away with packaging the same product.

Absolute Radio unveils iTunes Tagging for the iPod nano in the UK

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If I’m struggling to find time to blog, it’s a fair bet something really interesting is happening at Absolute Radio. So the fact I’m finding it near impossible at the moment hints at a number of cool things about to happen.

One such thing happened today, as we announced we’re the first radio station in Europe to implement iTunes Tagging on the Apple iPod nano (Aff Link).

It may have been available in the US for a while, but now you can finally listen to the radio (On 105.8FM in London), hear a great song, and tag it for when you next synch your iPod. Rather than spending the next few days, weeks, or months humming something without being able to remember the name of it.

We’ve worked with worked with Unique Interactive, part of UBC Media and Jump2Go to achieve this – and while I say ‘we’, the actual work was being done by the Tech Services guys. And what better excuse for me to put a new iPod on my Christmas List!

The new Apple Nano and radio…

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This was published just as I was heading out of the office for a short vacation. (Disclosure: I work for Absolute Radio).

If we get a Zune in the office this could be the start of a new series!

Plurk and Jaiku both arrive on the iPhone

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You do remember there are some microblogging networks other than Twitter?

If so, and you have an iPhone, you’ll be happy to know that there’s an official Plurk application, iPlurk, now available via the App store. Ironically for a service that differentiates itself from Twitter with a horizontal timeline and more graphical interface, both aspects have been dropped for the iPhone – then again, if you’re already engaged with the Plurk community, it might make more sense for a lighter interface to update when you’re on the move?

Meanwhile, the Google-owned Jaiku now has it’s own app, developed by third party mJaiku.  It’s got most of the features you’d expect to find, although a test by Darnell Clayton over at Blog Herald reveals that it doesn’t support domain shortening, which may be a significant pain in use. But the good thing is you can contact the developer via Jaiku at raiglstorfer

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