From almost zero market share in January to 14,8 per cent in September: Android phones are picking up very fast in news consumption in Norway.

In Norway big groups of the population tend to be early adopters of new technology.  For instance the big web sites already see thousands of visits from Norwegian iPad users each day, even though the tablet has yet to be officially launched in the country.

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With this in mind I took a look at the mobile web statistics of Aftenposten.no, the web site of Norway’s largest newspaper.  This graph shows how the mobile visits to the news sites are divided between the major operating systems.

Some conclusions can be drawn:

• iPhone users dominate the news consumption.  53,1 per cent of the mobile visits to Aftenposten.no in September came from iPhones.
• Phones based on Google’s open source Android operating system grab market share at very high speed. In January a mere 0,5 per cent of Aftenposten’s mobile traffic came from Android phones. Nine months later the share stands at 14,8 percent. That is a tremendous growth in a very short time period.
• The big looser is Nokia’s operating system Symbian, which has halfed its market share from 36,5 to 17,3 per cent in this time period.
• Other operating systems, such as Windows and Blackberry are also loosing market share.

These numbers do not necessarily reflect the actual market share of the different mobile phones in Norway. Experience shows that smart phone owners will use news sites much more than other mobile phone owners. However, I am pretty sure other big news sites will see a similar trend in their statistics.

It seems to be a safe prediction that Android phones will be more important for news sites than Symbian phones by the end of the year.

With regard to the global fight between iPhone and Android, it obviously will take more time as we take into consideration Apple’s very strong position. But as it looks now, iPhone and Android are the two platforms media sites in the Norwegian market should concentrate on.

A small detail at the end: Among the Android phones one model stands out in Aftenposten’s statistics: HTC Desire. This model alone represents 5,2 % of the visits to the news site.

Related articles from other sources

• Google’s Android Beats RIM BlackBerry in Mobile-OS Race (nytimes.com)
• Gartner: Symbian, Android to dominate in 2014 (news.cnet.com)
• Android making dramatic inroads in smartphone share (shortformblog.com)

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Morgan Stanley’s analyst  Mary Meeker gave a comprehensive presentation of mobile trends during the Web 2.0 Summit this week. She predicts mobile internet usage is exploding and that Apple/iPhone will continue to lead the way.

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Meeker’s presentation is full of interesting facts and trends about mobile internet usage. I have included the whole presentation below.

One of her major points it how the mobile internet usage will explode in the years to come. Especially use of iPhone has kicked of this development. But she also points to how Android telephones make people surf much more on the web than on other mobile devices.

In fact mobile internet usage now is growing much faster than the adaption of internet on desktop computers.

Another important trend is location based services. “Location changes everything. This one input – our coordinates – has the potential to change all the outputs”, she states.

For platforms she believes Apple will continue to drive the market in the next 1-2 years. However, in a longer term open mobile web (such as Google Android phones) will pose challenges.

Meeker also points out how changes in social networking and mobile computing platforms (led by Facebook and Apple ecosystems) are fundamentally changing ways people communicate with each other and ways developers/advertisers/vendors reach consumers.

See many more points in the presentation.

Also a number of other blogs have covered her presentation, including these:

• TechCrunch
• paidContent
• VentureBeat
• Mashable
• All Facebook

CrunchBase Information

Mary Meeker

iPhone

Information provided by CrunchBase

ReadWriteWeb has done its annual State of the Web. Here are the top 5 web trends in 2009, according to the highly respected technology blog.

I find ReadWriteWeb to be one of the best sources around to follow the latest developments on the web. Their bloggers are all knowledgable and write with at deep understanding of the the radical changes we are in the middle of. Thus it has been with great curiosity I have studied what they consider to be the top 5 web trends in 2009. And to be honest: I think they hit it right on – again.

Here are the five trends:

1. Structured data

Unstructured information gives way to structured data – paving the road to more intelligent computing.

2. Real-time web

A new form of communication with a social graph associated with it.

3. Personalization

Information must be relevant and personal to each individual.

4. Mobile web/augmented reality

Iphone was a paradigm shift, and Android is on the rise. With it comes the mobile web apps revolution.

5. Internet of things

Real world objects, like fridges and toasters, get connected to Internet.

Here is a presentation ReadWriteWeb has made to present the five important trends: