Apple’s iPhone is Dominating the Mobile Market – Or Is It?

“Apple’s iPhone has 40% of the mobile market, surpassing that of Symbian. Windows Mobile drops to just 4% which is exactly where Palm’s new WebOS debuted.” – This exactly what someone was trying to tell me this morning. Now, I have a hard time believing these numbers, so I asked them to send me a link to their source. The story comes from a CNet News article called “AdMob: iPhones, Android Phones on the Rise”.

The article has this really graphc that shows iPhone at 40%, up 7% from last month. And Symbian drops 9% from 43% to just 34%. There’s lots of conclusions that someone could try to make from this chart. However, I think the most important thing to understand is where these numbers are coming from.

As I mentioned already, it’s important to know where the numbers are coming from. In this case, admob specializes in placing ads on mobile friendly sites. So their vision of market share is going to be different then the rest.

In this chase, admob gets their numbers from websites, ad impressions, ad requests and of course, clicks. But wait a second, that’s not an accurate representation of devices sold in the market! All that means is that more iPhone users are using the web than Symbian and Windows Mobile. That doesn’t mean that Apple has shot like a rocket to number one. When you think about it, these numbers aren’t even surprising. Windows Mobile devices have been available for years, but very rarely were they bundled with attractive data plans. With the iPhone, it’s a requirement when you buy the phone. Furthermore, this only looks at web traffic on sites monetized by admob. They aren’t capturing the number of people getting email on their device, browsing RSS or Twitter, or whatever the hot new mobile application is. This is just web traffic and just on sites that have signed up for admob.

Hey, I’m happy to see that more and more people are doing it the mobile way. But that’s not the same thing as market dominance.