Search Engines and Mobile Internet in Belgium

Mobile Internet Expanding as Devices Do:

Late January, like many geeks, we were looking forward to a new upcoming legendary keynote of Steve Jobs. Rumors about the launch of an Apple tablet were everywhere. As usual Apple's marketing buzz worked perfectly. But that day Steve Jobs did not only announce the upcoming launch of the iPad.

He also introduced a new advertising platform called iAds. Since Semetis is focused on Search Marketing and thus Search Engines Advertising, as soon as the keynote's video was available online, we took some time to go through it.

"On The Mobile Devices Search Has Not Happened" (Steve Jobs):

Here is how he introduced iAds: "We have 185.000 apps in the Apps Store, ... , A lot of those apps are free and the rest of them are really reasonnably priced. ...When you look at a mobile device, it is not like a desktop. On the desktop Search is where it's at. That's where the money is. But on the mobile devices, search hasn't happened. People aren't searching on a mobile device like they do on a desktop. What's happening, they're spending all their time in apps..." Steve Jobs, January 27 2010 (see the caption here).

Our first reaction was OMG we were thinking the opposite! Are we still too Googler? But wait, are we speaking about time spent on pages when we are speaking about search? Google aims to kick us as fast as possible out of the search engine (with the result we were searching for). So wouldn't it be just like Rupert Murdoch claiming people spend all their time on his newspaper so you should only advertise there? Sure you should, but when hanging out on a website or an apps do you really want that ad? How useful/helpful is that ad? Where search is so strong is that people just tell the search engines I want a cheap flight ticket to Lucca in Italy. It allows advertisers to target very precisely exactly when people need it. It's highly relevant! Now the question is: Are search engines still the internet gateway on mobile devices?

Google Analytics Magical Crystal Data Ball, Who's...?

At Semetis, we like to crunch data. So we decided to investigate how people browse the web on their mobile device. Google Analytics "new" Mobile report allows us to digg into the figures. We recently published two articles on Mobile Devices and Mobile Internet traffic market shares in Belgium. So far, Mobile Devices are dominated by Apple (iPhone and iPod Touch) and Mobile traffic represents less than 1% of the total web traffic. But at Semetis like many other people we do believe in the exponential growth of Mobile in the next 3 years.

But let's go back to Apple Founder's claim: "on the mobile device, search hasn't happened" (see the caption here).

By experience, we know that Organic Search represents around 35% of a website's traffic. Below you'll find the figures of the Mobile Devices Traffic Sources Breakdown In Belgium for the first 3 months of 2010:

What a surprise, the first entrance source is ... search and it seems ... pretty similar to the desktop. Is Belgium different from other market where Apple gathers its data? Is it because of the low penetration of webphone in Belgium? Or is it because Steve Jobs was angry at Google at that time... We will just let you guess!

Note: All these data are coming from our clients Google Analytics Mobile reports. Data are aggregated and relative (in percentage) in order to keep the highest level of confidentiality which is also of the highest importance for Semetis.