December Data Highlights Show Mobile Consumers Flocking to Shopping Sites, While the Overall Mobile Internet Audience Grows to More than 27 Million

SAN FRANCISCO – February 8, 2006
Yahoo! Messenger rises to the top among mobile IM applications, according to Telephia, the leading provider of performance measurement information to the mobile industry. The Telephia Mobile Internet Report shows that nearly 7.9 million mobile users logged onto Yahoo! Messenger via their wireless device in December 2005, reaching nearly 4 percent of all wireless subscribers (see Table 1). AOL Instant Messenger secured a reach of 3.6 percent with an audience of more than 7.3 million wireless consumers, while MSN Messenger attracted an audience of nearly 4.3 million, reaching 2.1 percent. The mobile applications for Google Talk and ICQ Messenger secured an audience of nearly 1.7 million and 673,000 unique mobile visitors, respectively.

The Telephia Data Network and Application Testing Report (DNA) for instant messaging shows that Yahoo! Messenger also scored higher than AOL’s instant messenger in overall service quality in four out of five wireless networks measured. The report includes service quality performance and usability comparisons for Yahoo! Messenger, AIM, and MSN Messenger.

Telephia’s DNA performance tests further indicated that success rates for instant messaging over short codes was much higher than when using the native client-based instant messenger on the device. On average, IM activity over short codes had a three percent login failure rate. Among client-based instant messenger applications tested, two-thirds posted a login failure rate of 20 percent or greater.

“The biggest Internet brands, such as Yahoo!, AOL, MSN, and Google, are well poised to extend their reach across different channels, including the mobile world.” said Kanishka Agarwal, Vice President of New Products, Telephia. “In this battle of the brands, the product that presents 24/7 uptime and a feature-rich IM experience that mimics what consumers can do on their computers will beat out the competition. Thus, benchmarking service quality from the user’s experience will be a critical gauge for providers to enhance their products.”

December Data Highlights:
Holiday Shopping on Mobile Phones Rise More than 27 million wireless users accessed websites, web email, and instant messaging via their mobile devices, reaching 13.4 percent of all mobile subscribers in December 2005. According to Telephia, the Health/Fitness and Shopping/Auctions categories secured triple digit grown during the month, increasing 164 and 115 percent, respectively (see Table 2). Automotive, Search, and Food/Dining sites rounded out the top five.

Mobile shoppers were in full force during the holiday season. More than 3.3 million mobile consumers visited shopping sites on their wireless device in December. Mobile consumers visiting the Target.com website increased by 243 percent, while Amazon.com attracted 107 percent more mobile users in December. Shoppers to eBay rose 80 percent over the previous month, and Froogle’s mobile audience jumped 76 percent.

The Mobile Internet Report is a monthly survey of mobile Internet users leveraging Telephia’s panel of more than 63,000 wireless subscribers. For the month of December 2005, more than 3000 panelists responded to questions regarding their mobile Internet usage and demographics. The report is part of Telephia’s Audience Metrics product suite, which tracks audience and measures performance of mobile content and applications, based on the company’s proprietary tracking technology that gathers and analyzes detailed audience and revenue metrics each month directly from a panel of 30,000 mobile consumers’ wireless bills. Telephia’s Data Network and Application Testing Report (DNA) measures and tests core wireless data network performance and end-to-end user experience for mobile applications and technologies such as instant messaging, WAP, SMS, video streaming, downloads and other features.

About Telephia
Founded in 1998, Telephia provides syndicated performance measurement information to the leaders of the mobile industry. Telephia serves more than 50 mobile industry clients, including carriers, device manufacturers, content and application providers, retailers, infrastructure vendors and investment analysts. Telephia is the industry standard measure of subscriber share, customer satisfaction, device share, network quality, revenue share, advertising effectiveness, content audience and many other key performance indicators.

For further information, please visit our website at www.telephia.com or call 415-395-0500.

Press Contact: Maria Bumatay
e: mbumatay@telephia.com
p: 415.637.4904