Millenial Media - a stats goldmine

Oooh. Stats!

Most of the time any regular readers of this blog will have had to make do with personal experience, meandering, off the cuff commentary and some hyperlinks as anecdotal evidence. Well today I bring you some statistics and graphs. Shall we dive right in?

Millenial Medias wonderful monthly report for September shows, amongst other things, strong smartphone growth, with them now accounting for 58% of mobile page impressions. If you remember, a few posts ago, I mentioned how surfing the net on my HTC Desire was nearly as easy as doing it from my home computer. I can't help that feel that the rise of smartphones, and the ease with which we can use them to surf the net is inextricably linked to the amount click through's and revenue we'll see the mobile advertising market make going forward.

The Mobile Mix report has a hundred other stats and plenty of talking points. Head over now and download it

Working out your differences.

Well well well, that cute little robot has dollar signs in his eyes. For the first time in its history Android ad revenue exceeded iOS. Am I surprised? No, not really, Androids multi manufacturer, multi price point system gives them an natural advantage in this space over their Cupertino based rivals.

Part of Apples charm is that it is a 'premium' brand and as such charges a premium price. Fine, this is a system that has worked, and continues to work very very well for them. Desire-ability is their stock and trade and no one does it better. $4.31 billion profit. Enough said.

I always think about Google and Apple as direct rivals, but this weeks announcement has made me reconsider, as in fact the two do not compete directly across the board. Apple has always made its own hardware and married it with its own software, this is true for every single product its released in the last decade. It means incompatibility errors are less likely to occur and given their premium status, they can make a profit on each piece of hardware sold. Microsoft have hardly made a penny from hardware, and neither have Google (apart from the Nexus One, which a) did not sell very well and b) was made by HTC).

Google, is a software company, through and through - which allows it to work as many with established manufactures as it can do deals with. Thus, a glut of Android devices, ranging in price. Apples approach, on the one hand allows it to garner profits from both revenue streams, but on the flipside means that it will lose some ground to Google in advertising revenue as Android devices proliferate.

Both companies are very successful, but in some areas their success is mutually exclusive, and does not hinge on the others failure. If nothing else, with smartphone sales skyrocketing this town is very much big enough for the two of 'em.

After work thoughts.

Confession time: I’m writing this from work. Well, after work – but still at work all the same. Due to today’s tube strike I spent the first hour of the day comfortably surfing the net on my smartphone. I use the word ‘comfortably’ because on the new smartphones its honestly only a little less convenient than on my desktop PC at home.

One of the few merits of riding the bus to work over the tube was that I had internet access. Soon, with Boris Johnsons plan to enable internet access in the tube by the time of the Olympics, this won’t be the case, and barring tube strikes I’ll have even less reason to ride the bus than I already do.

However, there seems to be the opinion amongst a significant amount of my colleagues that the tube is some kind of sacred ground, reserved for people watching, reading ‘The Metro’ and practising standing with your neck crooked at a funny angle. As much as I enjoy all of these things, I’d rather spend the time replying to Facebook messages that I’ll have to reply later, above ground, when I could be doing other things like living. Charing Cross currently has its first free wifi connection, and is the first London station to do so. It follows a similar system in Glasgows metro, which has already got a number of advertisers onboard to help fund the system. Personally, I can’t wait.

Android Psychology

Blog time again folks. I do like fleeting updates on here, like the good friend you see now and again, and always wonder why you don’t make more of an effort to meet up more regularly. Personally, I got a new phone, eventually opting for an HTC Desire on Android. I should probably just come out and say it, I’m an Android fan. On a side note, I’ve been speaking to other people on the Android platform about why they chose it over iPhone.

Why people choose Android:

• The iPhone is now so commonplace that they wanted something a bit different
• They are cheaper
• They know someone who blindly worships Apple – which really pisses them off.

Its amazing the amount of people who cite reasons one and three, given that taken on a purely unemotional level, they make almost no sense –However, anyone who has studied why people purchase what the do knows that emotion plays a massive role in the decision making process, even if the individual would claim otherwise. In the same way people (read: me) dislike the bands they used to love as soon as they hit the mainstream, people seem to be having the same reaction with smartphones. I’d like to find a psychological study that offers a theory about this by the way, but I’d say it is more prolific now than ever before because of the level of customisation that the new OS’s offer – no phone is ever the same, it’s an extension of the ‘self’, and thus you are emotionally attached. Armchair psychology 101. Unfortunately a different theory is needed for the popularity of the iPhone.