AdMob, the world's largest mobile advertising platform, examines the distribution of consumer usage of iPhone applications in its May 2009 Mobile Metrics Report. In less than one year, the Apple App Store has grown to more than 50,000 applications and given consumers access to applications with broad consumer appeal as well as a long tail of niche applications that serve specific segments.
The report finds that, as is true with many other forms of media, the most popular applications generated the majority of usage by consumers. The App Store ranking system feeds the success of these top applications, some of which were accessed by more than 1 million users in May. Few applications may reach this blockbuster of success, but there is also significant percentage of popular applications have built a strong base of tens of thousands of users. The long tail of applications that make up the majority of the App Store generated a minority of the total usage.
Highlights from the May 2009 AdMob Mobile Metrics Report:
* 5 percent of applications had more than 100,000 active users in May 2009, representing 116 applications in AdMob's iPhone network.
* 14 percent of applications had between 10,000 - 100,000 active users, representing 322 applications.
* 54 percent of applications had less than 1,000 active users, representing 1,244 applications.
* The average iPhone user in AdMob's network accessed four applications in May.
* Five days after its launch, the iPhone 3.0 Operating System (OS) represented 44 percent of iPhone ad requests. In contrast, only 1 percent of iPod touch requests came from devices running the iPhone 3.0 OS.
AdMob reached 15.1 million unique users on iPhone and iPod touch devices on 2,309 applications in its network in May, the vast majority of which were free to download. Please see the notes section of the full report and the Metrics blog for more details on methodology.
Visit AdMob's Metrics Report site (http://metrics.admob.com) to access the full May 2009 report, view past reports, or sign up to get an email notification when future reports become available. AdMob stores and analyzes handset and operator data from every ad request in its network to optimize ad serving. Each month, the AdMob Mobile Metrics Report aggregates this data to provide insights into major trends in the mobile ecosystem.
About AdMob
AdMob is the world's largest mobile advertising platform, serving more than 6.3 billion mobile banner and text ads per month across a wide range of leading mobile Web sites and applications. AdMob helps advertisers connect with a relevant audience of consumers on mobile devices and gives publishers the ability to effectively monetize their mobile traffic. Incorporated in April 2006, AdMob provides the tools, data, and business models fueling the explosive growth of mobile media in more than 160 countries and territories worldwide.
AdMob has been named one of the most innovative companies in advertising and marketing in 2009 by Fast Company magazine, a 2008 Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum, and one of Wired.com's 2008 Companies to Watch. AdMob works with thousands of advertisers and publishers, including Adidas, CBS News, Comedy Central, Gap, Lonely Planet, MovieTickets.com, MySpace, P&G, Tapjoy, and Universal Pictures. To learn more about AdMob, visit www.admob.com.