Mobile advertising marketplace AdMob revealed in its January 2009 Mobile Metrics Report that there is a continuing widespread mobile Internet usage on WiFi in the United States and strong growth in Western Europe.

The states that generated the most WiFi traffic are California with 18 percent, New York with 14 percent, and Texas with eight percent.

Other highlights from the January 2009 report:

• Worldwide requests increased 8 percent month over month to 6.8 billion, led by double digit growth in Western Europe and Asia.

• Traffic from Western Europe increased 132 percent in the last year to total 550 million requests in January 2009, with Spain and Italy growing the fastest.

• The iPhone is now the number one device by usage in Western Europe with 21 percent share of total requests. This strong share reflects dramatically higher mobile Web and application usage by consumers and AdMob’s strength on this device.

• Nokia and Sony Ericsson are the number two and three manufacturers in Western Europe, with 22 percent and 17 percent share, respectively. Nokia continues to dominate the smartphone category with 11 of the top 15 devices.

• Windows Mobile has 5 percent share of market in Western Europe with only one device, the Samsung i900, in the top 15. Worldwide the Windows Mobile OS has 8% share of smartphone requests.

Originally posted on February 12, 2009 @ 11:10 am

Mobile and online recommendation service Goodrec has launched its service with over 100,000 recommendations submitted by users since its beta service in September 2008.

Now anyone can view the recommendations on Goodrec, and access the 725,000 listings for restaurants, nightlife, movies and more. And, with simple ‘Thumbs Up’, ‘Thumbs Down’ recommendations and short quicktips, it’s easy to find and make recommendations by and for your friends, enabling personal informed decisions when at home or on-the-go.

Additionally, users will soon be able to download the company’s new “GoodFood” iPhone application, which is dedicated to making it easier and faster to find and share restaurant recommendations. Registered users can continue to use the company’s “Goodrec” iPhone application to make and request recommendations in any category.

Goodrec’s mobile applications take advantage of the iPhone’s location-based capabilities, giving users the power to quickly find places around them that friends have recommended.

Originally posted on February 10, 2009 @ 11:22 am

Boingo Mobile and Qik are launching their partnership this Valentine’s Day to help lovebirds stream their devotion with live video from their mobile phones over Wi-Fi.

This partnership will enable Qik users to enjoy the global Boingo network for free for 30 days by signing up. For Valentine’s Day, Boingo will award three free Boingo Mobile accounts to the three best proclamation of love on Qik. Winners will be chosen for showing creativity, style, humor, and/or the most ardent declarations of love.

Boingo Mobile is a downloadable application for smartphones that simplifies the process of logging in to Wi-Fi hotspots.

Originally posted on February 11, 2009 @ 12:38 pm

The Financial Times has launched a new version of FT.com optimized for mobile devices that uses Bango’s mobile analytics to provide a deep understanding of the traffic to the site and track responses to marketing initiatives.

In addition, the Financial Times is pioneering an advanced web experience for its growing mobile channel which consists predominantly of Blackberry and iPhone users. Using Bango’s Identifier technology, a user’s preferences are stored in their FT.com profile, so when they return they can quickly get to what interests them most.

Bango mobile analytics encompasses both site analysis and campaign marketing for mobile marketing and advertising. Bango customers rely on detailed metrics (unique visitor count, country, network, handset of each user) to help them make the best decisions about future mobile investments and get closer to their customers.

Originally posted on January 30, 2009 @ 6:56 am