Here’s something from the department of Quelle Surprise: Bango (AIM: BGO) reckons the iPhone lags behind the top 20 mobile handsets most used in browsing and buying on the mobile web.
The Bango Top 20 handset list, based on Bango’s February statistics, puts the Nokia 3110c on top, followed by the Samsung M800 in 2nd and the Nokia 6300 in 3rd place. On the whole, smartphones account for 30% of handsets in the top 20. Bango detected a total of 1,811 different types of handsets accessing the mobile web in just one month.
The iPhone appears as 24th on the list, leading Bango to conclude that brands trying to reach the mass market on the mobile web need to look beyond that rarefied group of iPhone users whose buying is restricted to the Apple App Store.
The company’s stats are based on its own metrics from Bango Analytics, monitoring the activities of major brands and businesses as their consumers browse to mobile websites, and the number of sales of mobile content and services handled by Bango Payment.
While it’s not a comprehensive or comparative study, the stats and Bango CEO Raymond Anderson’s blog analysis will still make interesting reading for businesses that monetize their mobile content and services across a wide demographic.
Anderson’s point that companies that haven’t optimised their sites for mobile browsing or transactions are missing out is on the money, but this situation is not likely to remain constant. Come June, when new iPhones are launched, it’s likely to be at different pricepoints more suitable for the mass market.