AdMob, one of the top mobile advertising marketplaces, recently published a report that contained several very interesting mobile metrics (390 Android, 380 iPhone and 347 iPod Touch owners from a survey that was run from August 14th – August 21st).  The first finding of note, which isn’t that surprising given that it’s the same as what others have found, says that 90% of respondents reported they primarily found applications by browsing their respective stores/marketplaces.

This speaks to the extreme importance of app store rankings and user feedback for mobile developers.  Unlike desktop or web-based application development, mobile development success seems to take place in an extremely confined environment in which many of the traditional channels to publicity on the web can’t help drive sales.  Further, The top reason given for purchasing paid apps for Android and the iPhone was “I like the free version and upgraded” followed by “I’ve read good reviews” and “Word of mouth recommendation.”

On average, Android and iPhone users download 8 new free apps per month, while iPod touch users download an average of 16 free apps per month.  No follow up question was asked to shed some light on why this would be, but it would seem that the iPod Touch’s younger demographic and their interest in games might have something to do with it.

iPhone and iPod touch users are twice as likely to regularly download paid apps as Android users.  19% of Android users regularly download 1 or more paid apps a month, compared to 50% of iPhone users and 40% of iPod touch users. For users who regularly download paid apps, the number of paid apps downloaded and the average amount spent each month was similar across platforms.

These users spend roughly $9 a month and download 5 paid apps per month.  Dividing the average amount paid per month by the average number of paid apps downloaded yields an average app purchase price of about $1.80.  This should be heartening news to mobile developers, particularly those developing for the Apple OS.  With some very rough extrapolation this makes Apple’s App Store nearly a $200 million a month business.  Android’s Marketplace, which is still very much a developing community, makes a respectable $5 million a month.  As more devices come online that run the Android OS this number should only rise.

Last takeaways: In looking at the numbers and percentages of requests by manufacturer it appear that the iPhone is the preferred smartphone platform of the US and the UK (60% and 64% respectively), while Nokia has a huge edge over all others in countries like Indonesia, the Philippines and India (97%, 96%, and 95% respectively).

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