The iPhone leads the pack, Android is gaining, everybody else is losing share

Click to enlarge. Source: AdMob

It's been a year since Google (GOOG) released Android OS, the open-source smartphone operating system widely perceived as the most likely to overtake Apple's (AAPL) iPhone in the long run.

As it happens, Google this month also purchased AdMob, the world's largest purveyor of mobile phone advertising. So this seemed as good a time as any to take a snapshot of the changing smartphone marketplace, as measured by ad requests to AdMob's network.

We reviewed a year's worth of AdMob data — including the October numbers released Monday — and charted it on the graph at right (reproduced full-size below the fold).

There's a bias in the data, since AdMob ads run better on iPhone OS and Android devices than on, say, Research in Motion (RIMM) BlackBerries. But the trends are clear.

Over the past year, Nokia's (NOK) Symbian has lost the largest raw market share, down to 25% last month from 59% the same month a year earlier. In percentage terms, Windows Mobile (MSFT) is the biggest loser, down 70% in 12 months, with Symbian, Palm's (PALM) Web OS and BlackBerry OS close behind.

These numbers are based on worldwide ad requests. Apple's lead is even greater when AdMob zeroes in on the U.S. and U.K. markets. For a look at how the iPhone's share of the U.S. and worldwide markets have grown, see the chart prepared by MacRumors' Erik Slivka here.

Below the fold: A full-size fever chart of AdMob's worldwide data for all the major smartphone operating systems.

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]

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Corporate venture capital is one of the corners of the VC world that runs extremely hot and cold. When the startup world is gathering interest and money, practically every large company – even some small outfits – trots out its own venture investment group. But just as fast as they pile in with their corporate cash, the suits also run for the exits when times get dicey.

Take the previous tech boom-and-bust cycle. As the ‘90s ended and this decade began, corporate VC investment in startups soared from $468 million at the end of 1998 to $6.2 billion at the beginning of 2000, according to Thomson Reuters.

When the bottom fell out of the tech economy, the corporate cash crashed too, down to $848 million in the third quarter of 2001. Never mind that corporate VCs inevitably lose money on their deals, it appears that most public companies just don’t seem to have the stomach for it.

Still, a handful of tech companies have consistently stayed in the corporate VC game, including Microsoft (MSFT), Qualcomm (QCOM), and more recently Google (GOOG). For these tech companies, buying technology and talent early is worth the risk (they all also happen to be sitting on billions in cash to invest). But perhaps the most steadfast corporate VC is Intel (INTC). More

Apple underscores one of the strengths of AT&T's cellular network

Image: Apple Inc.

Scheduled to air on primetime TV Monday night are a pair of Apple (AAPL) iPhone advertisements that highlight one of the few things AT&T's (T) network can do that Verizon's (VZ) can't: surf the Web in the middle of a phone conversation.

(AT&T's GSM network allows simultaneous voice and data connections; Verizon's CDMA network does not.)

The spots — posted below the fold — follow a series of high-profile Verizon ads attacking both AT&T and, by association, the iPhone, for the shortcomings of the carrier's 3G network.

Apple's response — showing users a feature that they may not have been aware of  — is considerably more subtle than AT&T's, which accused Verizon of false advertising and sought relief from its ad campaign in the courts, so far without success.

The ads are scheduled to run during House, Dancing With the Stars, How I Met Your Mother, One Tree Hill, Big Bang Theory, CSI: Miami, The Daily Show, and the late-night talk shows (Conan, Kimmel, Fallon, Craig Ferguson).

Below the fold: the new ads.

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Security experts report that a malicious worm is tunneling its way through Dutch iPhones

This may be one of those "I told you so" moments that gives comfort to people on both sides of the Apple-Microsoft divide: Those who claim that Apple's (AAPL) products are no more immune to malware attacks than Microsoft's (MSFT), and those who insist that Apple's operating systems are nearly impenetrable, as long as you play by the rules.

According to the Dutch security firm XS4ALL, a software worm has been spreading through the Netherlands that can seize control of iPhones without their owners' knowledge and hand it over to a server in Lithuania.

"This worm is doing really bad things," XS4ALL's Scott McIntyre told security.nl.

Only a few hundred iPhones have been infected so far, according to the BBC. But if the worm gets into large Wi-Fi networks, thousands could be at risk.

This is the third reported iPhone malware incident in as many weeks and by far the most dangerous.

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Marketing online is about more than jumping on the social media bandwagon

By Sam Cece, CEO, StrongMail Systems.

A decade ago, the term social media didn’t mean much to consumers, let alone marketers and corporate executives.

Cece says platforms change but good marketing principals prevail. Photo: StrongMail

Today, none of us can get away from the term – it’s everywhere. Companies are jumping on the social bandwagon, erecting fan pages on Facebook, developing corporate Twitter accounts, creating groups on LinkedIn and producing channels on YouTube–all in the name of reaching, engaging and influencing customers on a more personal level.

While the game has certainly changed, it feels as if the social media pendulum has swung a bit too far in one direction. But by taking a closer look, it becomes clear that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Social media isn’t new (email is considered by many to be the first social network), word-of-mouth marketing has been around for decades (look at the way Amway and Mary Kay Cosmetics products are sold) and viral marketing isn’t a fresh idea (arguably the pyramid scheme, which dates back to Charles Ponzi, was fueled by viral marketing). More

Add media and marketing executives to the long list of constituents who wish North American mobile systems were more like those in Asia.

Though the entertainment and advertising rarely are on the cutting edge when it comes to embracing new technologies, a group of muckety mucks at the Paley Center for Media International Council meeting in New York last week made it clear that the future of  media consumption is the mobile devices – at least the mobile device as used by consumers in countries such as Japan, Korea and even China.

"If you look at what's happening in Japan and Korea the potential for mobile is huge," says Nick Brien, president and CEO of Mediabrands, a media holding company and unit of Interpublic Group (IPG).'

"The future is here," Brien adds. "And it is there." More

Apple airs its first Chinese-language ads as reports of retailer intimidation emerge

Supplementing print advertisements like the one at right, the first Apple-produced iPhone ads appeared on Chinese TV over the weekend.

They come on the heels of the device's somewhat sluggish start last month in the world's largest mobile phone market (more than 720 million subscribers).

Apple's (AAPL) local carrier, China Unicom (CHU), reported signing up only 5,000 new subscribers in the iPhone's first four days of sale, a result Western analysts viewed as disappointing.

In addition to the several reasons put forward — e.g., high prices, lack of Wi-Fi, a market saturated with knock-off and black-market phones — iPhonAsia's Dan Butterfield has added another: strong-arm tactics on the part of China Unicom's chief rival, China Mobile (CHL).

According to Butterfield, some of the country's most important mobile phone distributors are not yet selling the iPhone despite signed agreements with China Unicom. Reason: threatening letters from China Mobile warning them not to.

"The precise wording of these letters is unknown," writes Butterfield, "but this is more than just a suggestion." He then quotes — in translation — an article in sina.com:

"Many cell phone distributors received formal notification that 'Selling iPhones is not recommended,' or 'Selling iPhones is not allowed or China Mobile will fine you or stop cooperation with you.' "

Tactics like this, as 9to5Mac's Seth Weintraub puts it, "make Verizon and AT&T's little sissy war seem silly."

Below the fold: An iPhone ad with a Chinese accent and Chinese apps.

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Its Cinderella contract with Apple for the iPhone runs out in seven months, says one analyst

Brian Marshall. Image: Bloomberg

Broadpoint AmTech's Brian Marshall, who has replaced Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster as the most bullish of the mainstream Apple analysts, made several assertions of fact in an Bloomberg TV interview Friday that — if true — struck me as newsworthy. Chief among them:

• The contract that gives AT&T (T) exclusive access in the U.S. to Apple's (AAPL) iPhone expires in June 2010.
• Apple is now getting a $450 subsidy from AT&T for each iPhone it sells; after June, that subsidy will be reduced to $300 for all carriers, domestic and international.
• The 4% of AT&T subscribers who use the iPhone consume roughly 40% of the network's bandwidth.

Here and in a research note issued last late month, Marshall has been lobbying heavily for Apple to start selling the iPhone through Verizon (VZ). It turns out he may have personal reasons for doing so. He told Bloomberg's Pimm Fox that whenever he travels to New York or San Francisco with his iPhone he gets dropped calls "all the time."

"A very frustrating experience," he said, "but I'm not going to move away because Apple has their hooks into me"

You can hear all this, plus what Marshall has to say about the Chinese iPhone market, Windows 7's effect on Mac sales and Apple's 2010 earnings, in the interview posted below the fold.

UPDATE: Financial Alchemist's Turley Muller takes issue virtually everything Marshall says in this interview. See here.

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]

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The man behind #swineflu and #HowBlackAreYou was the hit at this year's NYC webfest

Baratunde Thurston. Image: O'Reilly Media

This has nothing in particular to do with Apple (AAPL), but it's very 2.0.

We spent much of last week at a conference in New York City called Web 2.0 Expo — a celebration of the "next generation Web" where one of the centers of attention was the giant Twitter screen set directly behind the keynote speakers that showed what the audience was tweeting about whomever was onstage.

The speakers included a typical mix of Web celebrities, including O'Reilly Media's Tim O'Reilly, Digg's Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson, author Douglas Rushkoff, Flikr co-founder Caterina Fake and White House chief technology officer Beth Noveck.

But the hit of the conference — judging from the laughter, the applause and the tweets — was Baratunde Thurston, Web & Politics editor at The Onion.

His talk was entitled "There's a #Hashtag for That" and I've discovered that it's a kind of Twitter touchstone. The audience at the Javits Center thought it was knee-slapping hilarious. People who don't quite get what Twitter is for — like my wife — are even more mystified than they were before they watched it.

The video is posted below the fold. We'd love to hear what you think.

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]

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