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

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

Readyping has launched allowing restaurants to easily and safely send their customers a text message when their table is ready.

As long as restaurants have been around, customers have waited to be seated. Whether they have a reservation or are a walk-in, a busy restaurant may not be able to accommodate all of its guests upon arrival. Whatever check in method is used, the host must find each party when their table is ready. Restaurant pagers make it easier to notify customers, but they are expensive, have a limited range of operation and can be lost, damaged or even stolen. They may also pass bacteria from one guest to another.

Readyping utilizes hardware that restaurants and consumers already have: computers with Internet access and mobile phones. It only takes a few moments to create an account and start using Readyping to check in guests who must wait for a table. The host simply enters their name, party size and mobile phone number. When a customers table is ready, the host clicks a button next to their name and a text message is instantly sent to their mobile phone letting them know the host is waiting to seat them.

Originally posted on January 24, 2009 @ 8:08 am