GLOBAL - Mobile advertising giant AdMob's latest monthly report shows that the iPhone is now responsible for almost 50% of the web traffic on mobile devices, reassuring the dominating stature of the Apple's sole entry in the smartphone segment. However, the methodology used by AdMob is not exactly representative of the actual web traffic on the mobile devices.

As Newman J. from PC World has highlighted, the statistics from AdMob's report are largely based on ad-based web traffic and that excludes traffic outside of AdMob's network such as YouTube streaming, email, etc..

AdMob serves advertisements for mobile websites and also Skype, but its in-app ads are used only within apps of iPhone and of the Android platform. Further, a statement from AdMob spokeswoman Nicole Leverich suggests that almost one third of the company's network consists of iPhone and Android applications, thereby biasing the web traffic metrics from AdMob towards iPhone and Android. Owing to the sheer popularity of the iPhone and its applications, statistics within this skewed sample space are bound to generate results biased towards Apple's smartphones.

However, the statistics from AdMob cannot be totally ignored for they represent the present market trend in the web traffic on mobile devices. The results, though not representative, seem to give a rough outline of the platform popularity with the masses and tally closely with the sales figures. As it has been previously observed, the iPhone continues to dominate the smartphone market followed by Nokia and HTC, and when we consider the platform-based distribution, the spread is almost similar with the iPhone again leading the pack, followed by Symbian and the Android platforms.

Source: AdMob's October 2009 Web Matrics Report