Everyone loves an underdog.  In the mobile world that underdog is named Android. AdMob’s latest mobile metrics report, released today, has already caused the press to make grandiose statements like “Watch Out iPhone, Android Use Is on the Rise” and “Android Passes iPhone In US Traffic.”

But let’s look at the numbers to make sure we’ve got the basic facts right:  there are more iPhones sold everyday than Android phones. How do I conclude this?  In Google’s Q1 2010 Earnings Call, Jeff Huber reported 60,000 new Android activations per day. Sounds impressive.  But consider that Apple reported 8.75M iPhones sold this past quarter.  A quarter is three months long or ~87 days which means Apple is moving 100,000 iPhones a day.

So Apple continues to sell nearly twice as many phones as Android. Now add in the fact that Apple sold close to 11M iPods too (unclear what % are the iPod Touch, but it’s safe to assume a majority) and it’s clear that Apple continues to be the big winner in terms of mobile OSes. In fact, to date apple has sold 85M iPhones and iPod Touches. Android is nowhere close: even if we generously annualize the current sales figures and add a year, android’s user base would still only be at 21M.

So how the heck did Techcrunch just run a headline reading “AdMob: Android Passes iPhone Web Traffic In U.S.”?

Simple answer: the methodology itself has a major flaw.  AdMob is simply reporting the ad request that runs through their advertising network.  These figures heavily depend on the adoption of Admob’s services — i.e. the relationships they’ve formed with app publishers and websites.  And the adoption of Admob’s services across platforms varies widely.  Also, Android apps are twice as likely as iPhone apps to be free (which generally correlates with ad supported).  So Admob’s ad impressions are simply NOT a good proxy for the overall state of the market.  Especially seeing as Comscore pegs Apple’s share of the smartphone market as 25.4% vs Android’s 9%.

For now the underdog hasn’t won.  They haven’t even come close.  And everyday Apple continues to add more users than Google.  Until that changes, the real usage figures won’t be anywhere near each other.

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