The latest figures from AdMob suggest that over 50% of O2 UK customers and almost 5% of Vodafone UK customers are using an Apple iPhone. AdMob delivers advertising to the mobile web, which means it’s able to track the devices it’s delivering to. Whenever a mobile phone views a web page containing an advertisement managed by AdMob, the company receives a ‘request’ to display the ad.
In May 2009 the company handled over 282 million ad requests for UK customers. It’s calculated that the bulk of its requests – 48.7% of all ads – were for Apple devices. When it comes to individual UK networks, the most-popular handset brand on the O2 network was (perhaps unsurprisingly) the iPhone. Nokia led on the 3 network, Sony Ericsson on Orange and T-Mobile, and BlackBerry devices were most popular with Vodafone customers. Yet around 5% of Vodafone customers are using an Apple iPhone (theoretically exclusive to O2) – more than are using LG devices!
Of course, it’s worth pointing out that AdMob’s results aren’t representative of the entire mobile internet, just the brands they have relationships with… but it’s still a fascinating snapshot. [AdMob summary; pdf document]