Mobile Awesomeness Blog

The folks at Mobile Marketer have two free eBooks that are definitely worth a read for anyone interested in mobile advertising or eCommerce. Both are full of articles, tips and case studies form some of the world's brightest when it comes to the mobile web.

Download "Mobile Marketer's Classic Guide to Mobile Advertising" (6.4mb)

Download "Mobile Marketer's Classic Guide to Mobile Commerce" (3.8mb)

Last week Admob released their monthly Mobile Metrics report for November, 2008. We hope to report on some highlights each month from the report as they relate to the mobile web development community.

It should be noted that Admob statistics are not an accurate reporting of mobile phone usage as a whole. All of the stats are based on impressions across the Admob advertising network. These reports are of great interest to us, since they represent the percentage of users that are accessing the web from their mobile device. For mobile web developers there is no better source of industry metrics right now.

• The iPhone continues unbelievable growth around the world. Worldwide iPhone requests were up 52% from October, to 359 million. This represents 6.3% of all requests across the network.
• The use of WiFi to connect to the internet through a mobile device is up from 3% to 8% in the US, and up from 4% to 8% in the UK.
• Smartphones make up 31.4% of the worldwide traffic share, and 30.8% of the US traffic share.

These 3 reports are based on 5,771,228,226 total requests across the AdMob network:

Top 5 Countries

1. United States (42.1%)
2. Indonesia (16.2%)
3. India (7.9%)
4. United Kingdom (4.3%)
5. Philippines (2.8%)

Top 5 Worldwide Handsets

1. Apple iPhone (6.3%)
2. Motorola RAZR v3 (3.7%)
3. Nokia N70 (2.7%)
4. Motorola KRZR K1c (1.9%)
5. RIM Blackberry 8300 (1.7%)

Top 5 US Handsets

1. Apple iPhone (9.9%)
2. Motorola RAZR v3 (7.5%)
3. Motorola KRZR K1c (4.4%)
4. Motorola Z6m (3.7%)
5. Motorola W385 (3.7%)

Have you been dying to get your hands on a G1 phone but don't care to pay $50/month or more for a T-mobile plan? Thanks to a recent Google announcement, now you can!

Dubbed the "Android Dev Phone 1", registered Android developers can now get their very own, carrier independent phone for testing. The cost is $399 per phone.

Become a registered Android developer here. (Cost is $25)

Read all about the phone here.

The team at mobiThinking brings another quality eBook for mobile web designers, called "The Best & Worst of the Mobile Web". It is full of best-practice guidelines from some of the world's most popular mobile websites. 

Why?

We are designers just like many of you. The mobile web is a great challenge for us all. With that challenge comes a number of new constraints, but also new opportunities. Our goal is to inspire you by showcasing sites in the gallery, and also to provide quality resources on how to make the technical side work.

What will I find on this blog?

That's a great question. This is new for us too, so don't hold us to it, but here are some things we hope to talk about here:

• The latest news, tutorials and resources that help you develop kick-ass mobile websites
• Mobile phone and mobile browser reviews
• Featured websites from the gallery, maybe even some Q&A with the smart people that created them

How can you contribute?

• Subscribe either of our feeds, the gallery or the blog ... better yet BOTH!
• Rate the websites in the gallery
• Comment on the blog, but please be polite
• Support our advertisers (when we have some), or better yet, become one!
• If you can't get enough, you can follow our company twitter feed: http://www.twitter.com/brightwurks

Our Commitment

We're committed to keeping the gallery up to date, doing our best to post relevant items for you on the blog and coming up with new features that will make the site easier to navigate and browse. Thanks for visiting!