Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life - Comments on The iPhone Obsession and Lying with Statistics

Comment by SteveL on "The iPhone Obsession and Lying with Statistics"

suppressed@unknown.org (SteveL) — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 10:07:16 GMT

One thing iPhone has above everything else is iPod Touch: a wifi-enabled device with the same browser and screen resolution. This gives it a common platform bigger than lots of others. People should really include the iPod Touch numbers when they look at mobile device traffic -or split them out in the stats.

Posted by: SteveL

Comment by 4gb usb drive on "The iPhone Obsession and Lying with Statistics"

suppressed@unknown.org (4gb usb drive) — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 10:14:40 GMT

I like this information I am very excited about this things It is very nice blog for me.I am very excited to see this one It is so nice for us.

Posted by: 4gb usb drive

Comment by John Walker on "The iPhone Obsession and Lying with Statistics"

suppressed@unknown.org (John Walker) — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 08:59:59 GMT

"That said, I agree that it is a bad idea for developers to specifically target features of a particular browser versus using web standards."

To me, the interesting thing is that if you develop your web app correctly, *using web standards* and with a mobile device in mind, it will work wonderfully on iPhone, Android, WebOS as well as other webkit and standards-based mobile browsers...with just 1 code-base. The ironic thing is that using web standards (CSS and javascript (de facto)) virtually ensures that your mobile web app won't work well under Symbian, RIM and Windows Mobile devices. The browsers on those devices are woefully behind when it comes to web standards. And I should know. I'm in the process of productizing a mobile web app product. No choice but to code for iPhone, Android, WebOS, Opera and then also code for RIM, Symbian and IE Mobile. So, to me, the fault lies at the feet of the mobile OS's that aren't innovating with regard to web standards. Doubling and sometimes tripling my work. Build to the lowest common denominator? No way, no how. Not in today's market.

Posted by: John Walker

Comment by Jonas on "The iPhone Obsession and Lying with Statistics"

suppressed@unknown.org (Jonas) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:41:04 GMT

Next time, read The Fine Article before posting rebuttals.

Posted by: Jonas

Comment by Scott Koon on "The iPhone Obsession and Lying with Statistics"

suppressed@unknown.org (Scott Koon) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:21:38 GMT

PPK actually acknowledges the high market share of iPhone OS later in the post.

But Safari iPhone has about 50% of mobile internet traffic market share! You can’t ignore that, can you? Watch me ignore it. First, so what? ... Since when does web development mean leaving 50% of your mobile users out in the cold? Since when is “I only support browsers with a large market share” a valid argument? ... Next, I’m not so sure if it’s true. Mobile browser detection is really hard. None of the reports I’ve read so far show how they detect browsers. Lots of mobile browsers have iPhone in their UA strings to work around browser detects that obsessed web developers have set up. Do all traffic market share reporters work around that problem? Most probably do, but we can’t be sure. Besides, what will happen when the operators abandon the economically untenable flat rate for iPhone data traffic? Will iPhone users maintain their current traffic market share when they have to pay as they go?

Posted by: Scott Koon

Comment by Andrew on "The iPhone Obsession and Lying with Statistics"

suppressed@unknown.org (Andrew) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:00:00 GMT

Correction to my first comment: I didn't notice that you were using the second set of graphs, which shows iPhone OS as 51% worldwide. My bad. Point is you can't just slight a couple data points because they don't support your side :P

Posted by: Andrew

Comment by Jason on "The iPhone Obsession and Lying with Statistics"

suppressed@unknown.org (Jason) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 18:55:27 GMT

Except this statistic *is* mentioned in the original article: "But Safari iPhone has about 50% of mobile internet traffic market share! You can’t ignore that, can you?"

Posted by: Jason

Comment by Andrew on "The iPhone Obsession and Lying with Statistics"

suppressed@unknown.org (Andrew) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 18:54:31 GMT

Seems you're using the same manipulation of statistics :P You slight the Africa/Asia statistics as if they aren't that important. One problem: Asia is BIG. If you look at the full AdMob report, you'll see that iPhone only accounts for 36% worldwide. Not the smaller 15% PPK mentioned, but not your "major source of traffic", either. (AdMob article and direct link to PDF report) I agree with Brian, though, the point of the original article was that mobile web dev is tending toward iPhone-only testing, much like the IE6-only testing we had a decade ago. I don't necessarily agree with this point, as I'm not familiar with the mobile dev scene, but that was the point I got from his article.

Posted by: Andrew

Comment by Shatter on "The iPhone Obsession and Lying with Statistics"

suppressed@unknown.org (Shatter) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 18:50:43 GMT

You missed another important statistic: How many of those Mobile OS's block ads with their browser? How many of them allow for ad impressions? Ad impressions are the worst possible metric to use.

Posted by: Shatter

Comment by Brian Crescimanno on "The iPhone Obsession and Lying with Statistics"

suppressed@unknown.org (Brian Crescimanno) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:53:03 GMT

I applaud your added statistics; but I think your argument misses the point a bit on PPK's article. He wasn't arguing that developers shouldn't care about the iPhone or shouldn't optimize for it; his argument was about a false-belief that any single browser is ubiquitous in the mobile space. Creating a mobile version shouldn't be about creating an iPhone version any more than creating a desktop version is about creating an IE version (or Firefox version, or Chrome version, etc.) The extra statistics are great; but they actually support the argument of the original article.

Posted by: Brian Crescimanno