Among Mobile Portals, Yahoo! Wins

As mobile consumers adopt data solutions, portals and content brands reach for wireless community market share.

The Yahoo brand tops other mobile portals with the highest number of subscribers. Data released by M:Metrics reveal the top portals and content brands on the mobile Web.

In an average month over the third quarter of last year, 12.8 million U.S. mobile subscribers used Yahoo services. America Online was just behind, with a difference of four million subscribers. MSN and Google each maintained about seven million mobile subscribers.

AOL’s second-ranked standing is likely due to its mobile instant messaging (IM) client. AIM accounts for about 89 percent of AOL’s mobile service usage. Instant messaging is used by 73 percent of Yahoo mobile users.

U.S. Mobile Subscriber Monthly Consumption of Content and Applications, December 2005
Activity Projected Monthly Reach (000s) U.S. Mobile Subscribers (%) Change (%)
Sent or received text message 60,983 33.32 4.6
Retrieved news and information via browser 18,572 10.15 0.1
Purchased ring tone 17,675 9.66 7.3
Used photo messaging 17,005 9.29 9.4
Used personal email 13,454 7.35 9.4
Used mobile instant messenger 11,568 6.32 10.5
Used work email 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
Notes:
1. Data based on three-month moving average for period ending December 31, 2005.
2. n= 35,056.
Source: M:Metrics, Inc., 2006

ESPN is mobile users’ most popular news brand. It receives an average 4.9 million unique users per month. Yahoo and CNN both service about 4.5 million monthly subscribers.

The Weather Channel exceeds Yahoo with 4.1 million subscribers; Yahoo comes in with 2.8 million subscribers. Mobile users seeking maps and directories turn to Yahoo (3.8 million subscribers) first. Additional map and directory providers include Mapquest (3 million); Google (3 million); Yellow Pages (2.1 million); and Moviefone (1.9 million).

M:Metrics data are drawn from a survey that collects specific device model and carrier subscription information from each month’s sample of mobile phone subscribers.

Mobile Content Brand Reach, Q3 2005
Weather Brand Subscribers (000s) 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.com 1,300 FoxSports.com 2,462
WeatherBug 1,161 ABC News 2,189
Search Brand Subscribers (000s) Map/Directory Service Brand Subscribers (000s)
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
Notes:
1. Three-month moving average ending December 31, 2005.
2. n=35,056.
Source: M:Metrics, Inc., 2006

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