Daily Bits

Mobile

AdMob: 11 Phones Account for 96% of Android Traffic

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Mobile analytics firm AdMob has just released its March 2010 Mobile Metrics Report and I can’t help but cringe over the fact that while the Android OS is enjoying significant traffic it is still falls inferior over the iPhone OS. According to AdMob’s report, while the Android OS is steadily gaining traffic while it tries to reach the iPhone’s status, the fact still remains that there are more mobile phone helping the Android OS achieve this feat.

In fact, 11 Android devices account for 96% of the Android platform’s overall mobile traffic. Total Android phones currently available in the market is around 35 handsets from several phone manufacturers. In contrast the iPhone is running on devices developed by one manufacturer.

Looking at the specific Android platforms and their share of market will give us the Android 1.5 with 38% of market share, Android 2.0/2.1 gets 35% of the share and Android.6 getting 26% of the market share.  In terms of manufacturers, both Motorola and HTC tops the list with 44% and 43% of March 2010 mobile traffic.

Other key results of the AdMob report include:

  • Motorola Droid was the leading Android handset in March 2010 generating 32 percent of Android traffic, while the Google Nexus One drove only two percent of Android traffic.
  • At least 54 percent of Android traffic came from devices with a QWERTY keyboard.
  • Three devices – the iPhone 3GS (39 percent), second generation iPod touch (25 percent) and iPhone 3G (20 percent) – generated 84 percent of total iPhone OS traffic.
  • iPhone 3GS traffic share has increased from 30 percent in September 2009 to 39 percent in March 2010. The 1st Generation iPhone only generated 2 percent of iPhone OS requests in March 2010.
  • Total worldwide traffic in AdMob’s network increased 18 percent month-over-month.

Text Messaging Among U.S. Teen Explodes

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Following our recent coverage of  how young online people value their privacy, here comes another report centering on the same demographics this time looking into the exploding text messaging habit of U.S. teens. The study, conducted by Pew Internet shows how teen-agers have embraced text messaging and made it as their main communication medium among circle of friends.

According to the study, some 75% of 12-17 year-olds now own cell phones.  And those phones have become indispensable among teens when communicating with their friends. Around 72%  of American teens engaged in text messaging. Even more interesting is the fact that more than half or 54% to be exact of American teens are daily texters. In fact, texting has overtaken other forms of interaction and communication among American teens today.

Other key findings of the Pew Internet study include:

  • One in three teens sends more than 100 text messages a day, or 3000 texts a month.
  • Calling is still a central function of the cell phone for teens and for many teens, voice is the primary mode of conversing with parents.
  • Girls more fully embrace most aspects of cell phone-based communication.
  • For parents, teens’ attachment to their phones is an area of conflict and regulation.
  • Most schools treat the phone as a disruptive force that must be managed and often excluded from the school and the classroom.
  • Cell phones help bridge the digital divide by providing internet access to less privileged teens. Still, for some teens, using the internet from their mobile phone is “too expensive.”
  • Cell phones are seen as a mixed blessing. Parents and teens say phones make their lives safer and more convenient. Yet both also cite new tensions connected to cell phone use.
  • Cell phones are not just about calling or texting – with expanding functionality, phones have become multimedia recording devices and pocket-sized internet connected computers
  • 4% of teens say they have sent a sexually suggestive nude or nearly nude image of themselves to someone via text message

So there. Now you know what your kids are up to in case they use their mobile phones more often than you’ve expected.

Are You Going to Play FarmVille on Your iPhone, iPad or Android Phones?

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I was supposed to cover something else but stumble upon this post and of course, it’s about so FarmVille, so I should cover it first. Anyway, Mashable is running this report saying that Farmville may soon be coming to the iPhone, iPad and Android devices.

Of course you know Farmville, right? If you’re on Facebook and you have not played Farmville even just for once, chances are you’ve received updates from your friends saying that – so and so have harvested something from their farm. Yes, that’s Farmville folks.

Anyway, one proof cited by the report is the blog Supererogatory found out that the domain names farmvilleandroid.com, farmvilleipad.com and farmvilleiphone.com have been registered under DNStination which happens to be the registrar of FarmVille.com.

If those domains were not enough to convince you that FarmVille is coming to mobile platforms, how about a Zynga spokesperson response to Mashable’s inquiry saying – “Zynga plans to expand to various mobile platforms. We cannot provide additional information at this time.”

That’s pretty obvious, right? Unfortunately, the Zynga spokersperson did give out any other detail. But it’s probably enough to elicit some excitement among FarmVille users and fans which currently number around 80 million right now.

Are you ready for FarmVille mobile? Will you play FarmVille on your mobile phones?

Seesmic for Android Gets Geotagging, Widget and Native ReTweet

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The folks at Seesmic has just updated their Android app, adding three very useful features – widget, geotagging and native ReTweet. If you haven’t downloaded and installed the Seesmic App for Android on your phones yet, why not grab it from the Android Market now or read along as these new features might convince you to use Seesmic’s twitter app after all.

The new Seesmic for Android now comes with the first version of its widget. This allows you to read tweets entirely and compose a new tweet from the widget and then tweet it to all of your Twitter friends. To get add a widget on your Android phone’s home screen, simply long press on your home screen and add the widget to view your timeline from your phone’s home screen.

The next new addition to Seesmic for Android’s features is native retweet.  It supports Twitter’s native Retweet functionality and lets you choose various ways of retweeting – that is you can either use the old quote or Twitter’s new Retweet function.

Finally, there’s also geotagging feature.  This allows you to tell your friends your location when you posted a tweet or reply to their messages. Geotagging also allows you to see any tweets that support geolocation geographically.

All these three features just made Seesmic for Android a worth contender in the growing mobile Twitter app space.  So, what Twitter client do you use on your Android Phone?

Free Lonely Planet Euro cities iPhone guides, but watch those data charges

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Iceland’s volcanic eruption has caused a huge headache for those stranded away from home, and while the big problems of finding alternative transport are yet to be resolved, iPhone users could at least find a little joy with Lonely Planet’s free guides to European cities.

Stranded or not, you need to be quick to get hold of them, as the offer ends this coming Thursday, 22nd April.

Grab city guides for Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Budapest, Copenhagen, Istanbul, London, Moscow, Munich, Paris, Rome, Stockholm and Vienna.

Beware, though, because it might be cheaper to get a train, boat or taxi home than incur hideous roaming data charges. If you’re near a Wi-Fi hotspot, though (or are in your home country with free data), head over to the iTunes store and search for Lonely Planet City Guides.

Move Over iPad, Here Comes the WePad

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There you go. What was being touted as an iPad killer even before the iPad was officially released finally gets to come out of the closet and was finally and officially launched. We’re talking about the WePad. It’s definitely not the plural form of the iPad but rather a different product, created by the German company – Neofonie.

Some of the things that we don’t know yet about WePad are pretty interesting. For example, reports said that there will be two WePad models – a 16GB WiFi and 64GB HD-capable unit.  The rest of the WePad specs and features are pretty impressive, well of course if you’re looking at it from the perspective of what a tablet should be.

The WePad boasts of 11.6-inch touchscreen display, Intel Atom N450 CPU, two USB ports, onboard webcam, and of course something which has been much sought after from the iPad – Flash support.

And some of the major features that you can enjoy with the WePad include – browse the Internet, watch YouTube, check email, chat with friends on Facebook and more.

The WePad is also banking on the open-source dictum, having built the WePad’s platform on Android and Linux.  So, you can just imagine the possibility of more apps coming into the WePad’s way once it becomes publicly available.

WePad is also promising something about “WeMagazine.” This is an ePublishing Open Platform that provides publishers with tools necessary to develop their publication-specific applications for the WePad.

Could the WePad revolutionize the web magazine  publishing industry? Will it be able to steal the thunder away from the Apple iPad?  Are Flash support and Android or Linux OS enough to convince you to get the WePad?