Netbiscuits, a provider of cloud software service for cross-platform development, publishing and monetization of mobile sites and apps, has published a new edition of their free “Mobile Web Metrics Report”. The document provides up-to-date information on the HTML5 capabilities of top devices in the USA, the UK, Germany, Malaysia and Australia. In addition, the report contains data on the market share of relevant smartphone operating systems on a global, regional and per-market basis and sheds some light on the ratio between dominating versus Long Tail devices on all levels. The information is based on metrics generated from over 4.5 billion mobile pages requests processed by Netbiscuits’ mobile publishing platform every month.

“Which devices really matter for my mobile strategy? How important is the Long Tail of devices in my market and industry? What impact will technologies such as HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript have on mobile in the near future? These and other questions are posed by our customers every day”, explains Ran Farmer, Managing Director of Netbiscuits Inc. “Our new Mobile Web Metrics Report gives the answers based on valid data that our platform generates while delivering mobile sites to more than 2,900 different types of mobile devices worldwide.”

The report demonstrates that HTML5 is far from being the answer to all questions facing mobile web application developers today.

“Our results show that out of 18 different HTML5 features tested not one of them was fully supported by all top 15 devices in the US market”, Farmer continues. “Even those features that are most widely discussed in the mobile industry today, such as Geolocation API, are still only implemented on 50 percent of the top 15 devices in the US. As a consequence, we embrace HTML5 technology but we do not solely rely on it to implement rich UX features across multiple mobile devices.”

In terms of smartphone operating systems the report acknowledges a trend towards a growing number of relevant platforms in the US market.

“Android has taken over the lead in the US: 44 percent of all mobile devices that are accessing sites based on Netbiscuits are running this operation system today”, says Farmer. “Apple iOS has 37 percent market share followed by RIM and Microsoft. Compared to previous years the dominating role of Apple iOS has begun to crumble heavily.”

In line with the results of previous reports published by Netbiscuits, the relevance of Long Tail mobile devices used for accessing the web is still unbroken.

“More than 62 percent of all mobile site requests processed by Netbiscuits in the USA are from Long Tail devices”, Farmer continues. “From 2,210 different types of devices that we detected in the US 2,206 are situated in the Long Tail. That’s a huge number of devices you have to tailor you content and services for, if you want to reach out to 100 percent of you potential audience.”

Netbiscuits’ “Mobile Web Metrics Report” provides 40 tables, graphs and pie charts filled with information on the mobile web today. It is available as a free download at http://www.netbiscuits.com/mobile-metrics-report-2011.

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• Free Download of Netbiscuits' Mobile Web Metrics Report 2011