Mobile agent

As a lot of people on this list already know Mobile Analytics is hard.

I noticed not a lot of commercial companies have posted messages here but I wanted to post this once only message because although Mobile Web content is still a niche market if you are trying to track mobile browser interactions up until now you know how hard it is and as this is a worlds first, it will be of interest to some of you.

My name is Dean Collins and my role with Amethon is to help them with the USA expansion of their Mobile Analytics family of applications.
This is the worlds first “Mobile Web” specific Analytics application.

None of this really matters for people that are building desktop applications - but if you are building web based content specifically for mobile consumers currently you don’t have an accurate way of obtaining information about website visitors apart from log file analysis which is cpu intensive and can take up to 24+ hours in reporting cycles (is also often faulty/misleading with only partial information available).

Lets face it log file analysis hasn’t been used in desktop browser analytics for over 5 years but until now it’s been the best solution available for tracking mobile browsers.

I’m the first to admit that the mobile web is still a niche market but according to M:Metrics almost 23 million Americans browsed the mobile internet in the 3 months up to 31 May 2007

Mobile Analytics from Amethon Solutions is an application you download onto a server in your data center. It is a pay per use application depending on the number of pages served (good for if you are starting out small).
Statistics provided includes:
• Bandwidth (total, average per visit, total per file type)
• Hits (average per visit, number of downloads, page view breakdown)
• Visits (entry page, average duration, click paths, referring search engine)
• Visitors (browser type, user agent, operating system)
• Handsets (make, model, screen resolution)
• Mobile Operator (country of origin, operator name)
• Geo Location (country of origin, RDNS lookup)

All of which are all pretty standard reporting points…….except that this is the worlds first application that can deliver this information for mobile specific browser traffic.

I’m completely addicted to the mobile web (Facebook and Digital Spy are my current 2 faves).

I work for Astraware.com and we make games for Windows Mobile and Palm OS smartphones and handhelds. I’ve been into PDAs and Smartphones since about 1997 (started with a Psion 3c). I bought the Psion infrared modem and surfed the web using my cellphone and Psion to begin with. I got my first convergent smartphone about 3 years ago and I’ve been through about 8 or 9 phones since then. I’m a terrible upgrade-aholic, most recently I’ve bought myself the Samsung SGH i600 and I’m loving the 3G and HSDPA speeds for various sites.

Quite a few of the sites I work with have mobile versions including MoDaCo, Smartphone Thoughts, and our own site, which allows users to download and buy games direct to their devices. What is particularly interesting is that we’re even starting to get customers that are buying games who don’t own or have access to a PC for syncing, so their entire connection to the net is mobile.