By: Andrew Berg
AdMob, the mobile advertising platform, today released its May 2009 Mobile Metrics Report. The report examines the distribution and consumer usage of iPhone applications and found that the most popular applications generated the majority of usage by consumers. The report concluded that 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.
The large base of less popular applications that make up the majority of the App Store generated a minority of the total usage. The Apple App Store has enjoyed over 1 billion downloads since its launch less than a year ago and now features over 50,000 applications available for download.
According to AdMob, five percent of the 2603 applications in AdMob's iPhone network, had more than 100,000 active users in May 2009. Fourteen percent of applications had between 10,000 to 100,000 active users, representing 322 applications, and fifty-four 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, and five days after its launch, the iPhone 3.0 OS represented 44 percent of iPhone ad requests.
Apple just released its new iPhone 3.0 OS which includes over 1000 new APIs for developers. Analysts believe the new APIs, which open up aspects of the phone that have previously been off limits to developers, will lead to a new crop of apps at the App Store.
Dedicated application stores are increasingly seen as one of the surest ways of attracting consumers to a handset. One of the most prevalent criticisms of Sprint’s recent release of the Palm Pre was a lack of available applications for the device.
In the wake of the App Store’s glowing success, Android, Research in Motion, Nokia, Samsung and now Palm have all opened application stores that provide content for their respective devices.