The sudden change appears to come, however, not from Apple grossly underperforming earlier expectations but from IDC grossly underestimating the total size of the U.S. mobile advertising market and Google's share of it. The earlier report had cited a total market size of under $250 million for 2009, while the new report claims that 2009 saw a market of $368 million.
Earlier this year, IDC projected Google would lose market share this year. It revised estimates after Google's October announcement. "Google is a lot bigger than we thought," Weide says. "We rectified that, based on the numbers they provided in their last earnings call."
Those underestimations have led to a dramatic upward revision in Google's market share numbers for 2009 and 2010, with all of its competitors, including Apple, seeing corresponding significant decreases in their market share numbers. IDC's September report claimed that Google held a 27% share in 2009 when including data for AdMob, which it acquired late in the year, but the firm's new report claims that Google held 48.6% of the market on its own in 2009, with AdMob holding an additional 8.4% share for a total of 57% of the expanded market.
The revised projections for Apple show the company holding 8.4% of the market for 2010, good for second place in an industry it hadn't even entered in 2009. Quattro Wireless, which was acquired by Apple right around the beginning of 2010, held 5.4% of the market in 2009.
Apple is continuing to expand its iAd program, pushing out worldwide delivery of ads early last month and following that up with announcements that it would be adding programs for advertisers in Japan and Europe this month and early next year.
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