Have you heard? Apple decided to skip the recession this year. The idea reminds me of the line from Forest Gump where he tells the woman at the bus stop, his business partner "Lieutenant Dan" invested in some "fruit company" (Apple Computer) so he didn’t have to work anymore… Well that "fruit company" has been going strong since the mid 1980’s and in the midst of the global financial meltdown the company racked up a whopping 15% rise in earnings for Q2 over 2008. Company profits for the period were at a staggering $1.31B, (up from $1.05B). This too had a positive effect on Apple’s iPhone carrier, AT&T Wireless whose earnings also were up. Analysts point to the success of the iPhone 3G and the rest of the stars in Apple’s galaxy (Apple TV, iPods, iTunes) for the stunning results.

Steve Sechrist
Senior Analyst and Editor

In the recent Mobile Metrics Report (March-09) from AdMob, mobile advertising tracking firm, they noted something interesting. The company reported that even with just 11% of the smart phone devices out there, Apple has surpassed Symbian (with 47% of the smart phone market) as "the most commonly detected mobile operating system on the web." The results are based upon smart phone requests made to web sites, and apps that serve AdMob advertising (a total of 7.65B ad impressions in March-09).

As the London Mirror put it in a recent article on the subject: "With that kind of disparity, this has to be about how it feels to use the mobile web. Although most Symbian phones can offer a web browsing experience, it seems that many more iPhone owners want to actually use the internet from their mobile." See the full article here.

We agree with this assessment and will go even further. We are in the early days, the wild west if you will, of data delivery. So far, Apple has provided the best conduit, not just with a status quo of web surfing, and e-mail services, but now slightly over 1 billion apps downloaded from the App store driving web connectivity while providing new, unique and even fun services never before offered-and this is just the tip of the iceberg. - Steve Sechrist

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