M:Metrics Reports That in Battle of Portals Yahoo! Has Early Lead in Mobile Domain
Posted on: Monday, 30 January 2006, 09:00 CST
M:Metrics, the mobile market authority, has found that Yahoo! is the most popular mobile content brand. During the quarter ended December 2005, 12.8 million U.S. mobile subscribers accessed Yahoo's services in an average month -- 4 million more than second-place AOL. MSN and Google follow, with about 7 million subscribers accessing their mobile offerings each month during the fourth quarter.
AOL owes its second-place position to its strength in mobile instant messaging (IM). About 89 percent of its mobile reach is comprised of users of AIM service. Yahoo! users are more likely to access other services, such as news, maps and search in addition to Yahoo IM, which is used by 73 percent of those who used Yahoo! branded services.
"AOL owes its strong position in the mobile domain to its ability to provide seamless access to AIM buddy lists on handsets through an elegantly designed service and its strong relationships with mobile carriers," observed Mark Donovan, vice president, products and senior analyst. "Its challenge is to demonstrate that it can use AIM as the foundation to engage users with a broader base of services, much as it is seeking to do on the desktop by opening access to its portal and e-mail services and linking these with AIM."
ESPN is the most popular source for news among mobile content users, claiming 4.9 million unique users in an average month during the fourth quarter. Interestingly, Yahoo! is on par with CNN as a source of news on the Wireless Web with about 4.5 million subscribers visiting each property on a monthly basis. The Weather Channel is the top source for weather, and Yahoo!, which places second in the Weather category, has twice the audience of Accuweather or Google.
In the burgeoning market segment of mobile search, Google has extended its dominance on the Web to mobile, but only narrowly, with Yahoo! coming in a close second among the 8.9 million people who used mobile search in December.
Conversely, in the area of maps and directories, Yahoo edges Google and Mapquest, but by a slim margin.
"Although these are early days in mobile media, the aggressive efforts in mobile by Yahoo! and AOL are paying off," said Donovan. "But it is a close race, and as traditional media brands put more muscle into their mobile businesses, we expect that the market will shift."
Mobile Content Brand Reach ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Weather Brand Subscribers News Brand Subscribers (000s) The Weather Channel/Weather.com 4,127 ESPN Sports News 4,934 Yahoo! 2,813 Yahoo! 4,599 Google 1,513 CNN/cnn.com 4,514 Accuweather 1,300 Fox Sports 2,462 Weatherbug 1,161 ABCNews.com 2,189 Search Brand Subscribers Map/Directory Subscribers (000s) Service Brand Google 4,538 Yahoo! 3,793 Yahoo! 3,975 Mapquest 3,048 MSN Mobile/MSNBC 1,324 Google 3,036 AOL Mobile 1,039 Yellow Pages 2,128 Don't Know 582 Moviefone 1,907 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Source: M:Metrics, Inc. Copyright (C) 2006. Three-month moving average ending December 31, 2005, n=35,056. ----------------------------------------------------------------------M:Metrics surveys 12,000 to 14,000 U.S. mobile subscribers monthly to report on the consumption of mobile content and applications and benchmark the performance of carrier, device manufacturers, mobile content publishers and technology providers. The following are the results of its December Benchmark Survey.
U.S. Mobile Subscriber Monthly Consumption of Content and Applications M:Metrics Benchmark Survey: December 2005 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Activity Projected Percent U.S. Change Monthly Reach Mobile (000s) Subscribers ---------------------------------- -------------- ------------ ------- Sent or Received Text Message 60,983 33.32% 4.6% ---------------------------------- -------------- ------------ ------- Retrieved News and Information Via Browser 18,572 10.15% 0.1% ---------------------------------- -------------- ------------ ------- Purchased Ringtone 17,675 9.66% 7.3% ---------------------------------- -------------- ------------ ------- Used Photo Messaging 17,005 9.29% 9.4% ---------------------------------- -------------- ------------ ------- Used Personal E-mail 13,454 7.35% 9.4% ---------------------------------- -------------- ------------ ------- Used Mobile Instant Messenger 11,568 6.32% 10.5% ---------------------------------- -------------- ------------ ------- Used Work E-mail 7,886 4.31% 12.8% ---------------------------------- -------------- ------------ ------- Purchased Wallpaper or Screensaver 7,176 3.92% 8.5% ---------------------------------- -------------- ------------ ------- Downloaded Mobile Game 6,052 3.31% 6.5% ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Source: M:Metrics, Inc., Copyright (C) 2006. Survey of U.S. mobile subscribers. Data based on three-month moving average for period ending December 31, 2005, n= 35,056. ----------------------------------------------------------------------About M:Metrics
M:Metrics is the mobile market measurement authority. As the only research firm to measure the audience for mobile media, M:Metrics provides the most accurate metrics on actual mobile content consumption by applying trusted media measurement methodologies to the mobile market. M:Metrics' monthly syndicated data service gives clients the critical insights and intelligence required to inform smart business strategies and the competitive benchmarks needed to evaluate the performance of competitors and partners. M:Metrics is a private, venture-funded corporation headquartered in Seattle, with offices in San Francisco and London.
About M:Metrics Data
Based on continually refreshed samples of nationally representative mobile phone consumers, M:Metrics reports summarize market size, device reach, and key demographic and mobile phone usage characteristics.
The data presented here is drawn from an extensive survey questionnaire that collects specific device model and carrier subscription information from each month's sample of mobile phone subscribers, and also drills down into specific details related to current and past usage of various mobile phone applications and content. Data collected from each sample are statistically balanced and projected to the total national population of mobile phone subscribers.
Authorized Uses
Members of the press may cite research data or a portion of text provided that each is sourced to M:Metrics, for example, "Source: M:Metrics, Inc." or "According to M:Metrics, ...". Copies of graphs, data tables or slides must include the following copyright notice affixed to all material: "Copyright (C) 2006, M:Metrics, Inc.
Source: Business Wire
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