Mobile Growth – Mid-Year Checkpoint

Every once in a while, we like to take a step back to try to put the mobile revolution in perspective. We last did that in December. And guess what? Growth globally is unchecked since our last major end of year update and, if anything, is accelerating.

The past couple of weeks have provided news that fits right in line with the update because of a series of fascinating articles and announcements. So let’s dive in!
The first article comes from Venture Beat, which looked at Flurry’s data on mobile growth. Their conclusions (check out the graph above) were many, but across the board Flurry seems to be enjoying explosive growth world wide (especially in China where almost a quarter billion smart phones/tablets are active). Flurry has an installed base on over 1 billion (did you say billion?) devices, leading to generation of more then 3 trillion app events (e.g., analytics data points) per day. That’s a lot of events. Of particular interest in the article and the linked blog report found here is a graph of mobile usage throughout the day. What’s fascinating about this graph is the frequency of usage throughout the day, peaking at prime time, which has been historically owned by TV. So not only is the mobile usage growing just by the shear number of devices and apps on those devices, but also by the frequency of use, which is continuous. By the way, read Flurry’s blog for some other interesting insights on behavior of Mom’s (hint: they like iOS) and adoption in China (hint: 1 billion consumers).

Once you’ve gotten through the Flurry report, take a walk over to App Annie. App Annie’s post is focused on the driving effect of mobile on publisher’s growth. They have some great stats, starting with the doubling of revenue on both Google Play and the iOS App Store in the last year. In the context of this stat, App Annie also points out that smart phone penetration rate globally is just 1/3, which means that there’s plenty of room for further growth. And App Annie rightfully points out that the companies that are doing well are equally global – apps are originating from countries worldwide.
So with some stats on growth overall in our back pocket, let’s pick out a couple of news items of interest. And the easiest place to get news? Public announcements:

The first and most talked out is Facebook’s stunning mobile growth. In their most recent earnings announcement Facebook claimed 60% growth in mobile ad revenue, now constituting over 40% of their overall revenue of $1.2 billion. Facebook also noted they have over 800 million active monthly mobile users.
Google, though getting dinged in their earnings call for not being on top of their mobile strategy, is still making a lot of money from mobile, with revenue on pace to double in 2013.
Here’s another data point: Pandora’s mobile revenue is up 105% this year, accounting for over 2/3 of their overall revenue.
Baidu, the Chinese Internet company, gained more than 10% in the market as a result increasing mobile revenue.
And don’t forget EA, which saw 27% growth in mobile revenue.

So, big growth continues. Growth globally continues. And public companies, as well as plenty of smaller outfits, are enjoying the mobile ride. Let’s wrap up with a nod to Localytics, which has 20 cool stats on mobile growth, too numerous to quote here, but highly interesting.

Go mobile.