Careful With Your Statistics

The latest set of statistics published on mobile data use leaves me with more questions than answers. The headline says that the iPhone accounts for 67% of mobile web traffic.

Slightly more useful is the market share graph, though any time I look at statistics from this particular source I get confused.

The listed platforms are; iPhone, Java ME, Windows Mobile, Android, Symbian, Palm, Other. This begs the questions:

• What geographical area?
• Is RIM/Blackberry listed under "Java ME" or "Other"?
• If Blackberry = Java ME, what else is listed there?
• Where are browsers written in Java ME, such as Opera Mini and BOLT? Are they distributed across Blackberry, Android, WinMob, Symbian, and Other? Or are they all in Java ME?
• Is this page requests or data or something else? That sure would make a difference, especially with transcoders out there reducing data going to other phones.

Among other things, Opera Mini is reporting a 315% year-on-year increase in their mobile traffic. Since they were pretty popular a year ago, that's huge. And the implied increase in all mobile traffic doesn't match up with my understanding of mobile traffic from sources like AdMob.

The summary: make sure you understand the mobile space before diving into these statistics or trying to create your own.

Here we go:

“Our mobile share methodology measures share for browser capable mobile devices. This means the mobile device must be able to render HTML pages and javascript. Visits to WAP pages are not included.” (link)

So these stats are presumably valid for “share of mobile Javascript-rendering devices”. That’s where Opera Mini went, and most of the Blackberries. By default, Blackberries have Javascript off (or they did; I don’t know if this is still true).