AdMob serves ads on mobile websites and the Philippines went up to #7 with over 37 Million ad requests for the month of April. This from a total of 2.85 billion requests worldwide. The top 10 includes the ff.:

1) United States: 1.415 billion
2) India: 295.3 million
3) United Kingdom: 196.9 million
4) South Africa: 144.8 million
5) Indonesia: 137.8 million
6) Romania: 50.8 million
7) Philippines: 37.4 million
Bangladesh: 26.75 million
9) Israel: 25.5 million
10) France: 24.2 million

With a population of over 235 million in Indonesia has over 75 million mobile phone users while India has over 250 million at end of February 2008. There’s an estimated 35 million mobile phone subscribers of the 4 combines telcos in Bangladesh (population: 150 million).

In the Philippines, Globe has 20 million and Smart has 30 million subscribers. That doesn’t include Sun Cellular but we know a lot of Filipinos have 2 or more SIMs with them. NTC estimates about 40 Million mobile phone users.

The number by AdMob are pretty interesting. Only means that Pinoys are using their phones to browse the mobile web.

The recent massive campaigns by Globe and Smart for 3G/HSDPA looked like it had an impact on the growth of mobile web traffic and maybe we’ll bump off Romania for the 6th place before the end of the year.

Wait! There’s more!: Please Take our YugaTech Readers’ Survey! Only 60 seconds to complete.

So to satisfy my curiosity, I’m putting up a poll about this. Will you switch providers just for an iPhone?

On our poll section, there are 5 quick choices. Let me expound on them further:

1) No Way! - this could mean you’re not an iPhone fan or you’re a loyal subscriber of your current telco/cell provider.

2) Not Likely - you’re a little curious with the iPhone but you’re already satisfied with your provider.

3) Undecided - what’s an iPhone?

4) Maybe - depends on which Globe Plan it will come with. Maybe, I can use it as a secondary phone. Depends on the price too or if it’s already a 3G iPhone!

5) Sure! - I’m a fan of the iPhone and I’m just waiting to get my hands on one.

What do you guys think? Will the Globe iPhone Subscription Plan be a game-changer? Globe Telecom has about 21 million subscribers but only 710,000 are post-paid.

On the Globe Corporate site:

Globe, SingTel, Bharti Airtel and Optus to bring iPhone to the region

Manila, 12 May 2008 – Globe, SingTel, Bharti Airtel and Optus today announced that they have signed an agreement with Apple to bring the iPhone to the Philippines, Singapore, India, and Australia later this year.

More information will be released at a later date.

Finally!

A call to people inside Globe turned out nothing. They’re all mum about it. Not even a clue. All they told me is that it will be offered later this year. That’s it. No details on the plans, prices and release dates. Will have to dig deeper. *heh*

Wait, does that mean Apple will open up iTunes in the Philippines as well? Remember that Apple ties up your iTunes account with your iPhone subscription. But iPhones are already available in the Philippines. Just visit Virramall in Greenhills. Now, I’m more excited with the prospect of getting an iTunes account than an iPhone being legitimately available with a local telco.

Will the iPhone muster enough influence to make people switch providers? (That’s what happened with AT&T in the US.)

{Hat tip: Andre John & Mobius}

Wait! There’s more!: Please Take our YugaTech Readers’ Survey! Only 60 seconds to complete.

In its 2008 1st Quarter report, PLDT revelead that Smart Bro’s subscribers surpassed PLDT myDSL service since end of 2007. PLDT myDSL has about 300,000 subscribers by end of March 2008 and 264k at end of 2007.

Based on their historical data I gathered from old annual reports, I’ve plotted the growth of Smart Bro since it was offered in June 2005.

Legend: Dark Orange bars: Total subscribers for the quarter. Light Orange bars: Number of new subscribers for that quarter.

In 2007, Smart Bro was able to more than double its subscriber base from 122k to 302k, a 148% increase. Despite the growing number of complaints about the service, it was able to gain the highest ever number of sales leads from January to March 2008 at 82,000 subscribers. Interesting numbers, huh? And the graph looks like the growth is exponential.

I couldn’t find the figures for PLDT WeRoam but from my computations, it’s somewhere between 13,000 15,000 subscribers. WeRoam is also considered part of PLDT’s broadband service. Don’t have the numbers from Globe and Eastern Telecoms but PLDT claims 70% share of the combined broadband market in the Philippines.

Fro copies of PLDT’s public records, download the Annual Reports from their Investor Relations webpage here.

Disclosure: Smart Bro is an advertiser of this blog.

Wait! There’s more!: Want more tech talk? Join us in the YugaTech Forums!

The Asus Eee PC, despite it’s small form factor, has already encroached on the market of cheap low-end laptop market. In our round-up I’ve include various laptop brands with their specs and SRP.

The list includes Asus, Acer, HP, Compaq, IBM, Lenovo, MSI, Packard Bell, Neo, Blue, ECS and Prestigio. Didn’t include some of the less familiar ones. While the models indicated above are quite old (2 to 3 year-old models), they’re still widely available in the market and are priced under Php25,000.

The ECS G320 is already priced at the same level as the Asus Eee PC 701 and was said to be the cheapest laptop back in mid-2005 retailing for just Php29,995 when it came out.

Note: Price lists were taken from PC Express, PC Corner and Rising Sun Computers.

Wait! There’s more!: Send Money to the Philippines Remit2Home - it’s fast, easy and reliable.

While the results of the survey are pretty interesting, I find some of them almost unbelievable (at least the ones that involved the Philippines). Take note however, that the sample population included in this research only involved people who used the internet daily or every other day aged between 16-54 years old. That means, the figures are skewed towards the hard core or heavy users.

McCann puts the Philippines’ Internet Penetration at 15.4% (based from InternetWorldStats.com).

• 90.3% of the respondents from the Philippines said they’ve read a blog at least once, ranking 2nd to South Korea at 92.1%. China came in 3rd at 88.1% while Global average is 77%.
• The Philippines ranked 4th (65.8%) on the respondents have started or created a blog. South Korea topped the list at 71.7%, followed by Taiwan (70.9%) and China (70.3%). Japan is No. 9 at only 47.3% which is strange since according to Technorati, Japanese is the #1 language in the blogosphere. Global average is 44.8%.
• The Philippines ranked #1 in joining a new social network sites (83.1%). Friendster rulez! hehehe
• Again, the Philippines ranked #1 on uploading photos on photo sharing sites with 86.4% of the respondents. Friendster rulez x 2!
• With online video, the Philippines (60.5%) is second to Brazil (68.3) on uploading videos to a video sharing site. YouTube Philippines should be in Tagalog so we can beat Brazil! Chinese came in 3rd at 58.1%.
• Filipinos are No. 1 viewers of online videos at 98.6%! iyotTube rocks! Oops, Youtube rocks!
• 61.8% of the respondents form the Philippines says they’ve downloaded a podcast. That’s 5th from the list after China, Mexico, Romania and Brazil.
• The Philippines ranked #6 in RSS subscribers at 45.2%, beating the Japanese (31.4%), Germans (27%), French (25.7%), Brits (24.9%), Canadians (18%), Australians (24.6%) and Americans (18.6%). Now that’s unbelievable.

The reason behind the skewed figures on the last item, RSS, is that the average Filipino “active” internet user is more tech-savvy than the average internet user in most western countries. Active means daily use or at least every other day. That means “active” internet use in the Philippines isn’t that mainstream yet. But that’s already evident from the internet usage penetration stats above.

Update: Copy of the research study can be downloaded here {PDF, 26MB}.

Wait! There’s more!: Don’t have Paypal yet? What are you waiting for? Sign up now!

According to sources, Cure will open its doors to the public this May 19 in an event at the Rockwell. Cure’s network has been alive since December 2006 according to GSMWorld and will operate a 3G (2100) license in the country.

Here’s a little background about them:

2001 – CURE was granted a franchise to construct, install, establish, operate, and maintain telecommunications systems throughout the Philippines.

2005 – CURE submitted an application to the National Telecommunications Commission for a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity to install, operate, and maintain a nationwide third generation (3G) telecommunications network in the Philippines.

2006 - The National Telecommunications Commission granted CURE a provisional authority to do so, along with 10MHz of paired spectrum (1955-1965MHz/2145-2155MHz). {Info taken from their website here.}

The company has been hiring Project Managers and Personal Mobile Assistants since last month, according to the JobStreet listings. They currently have an estimated manpower of about 50 and should be growing as the launch date approaches.

Been hearing about them for some time now (read PTB) but didn’t really know what’s going on with them or why they’re still silent ever since the news that they’ve been granted 3G license by the NTC. Still, it’s good news there’ll be a new player in the 3G market. We all love some healthy competition.

Update: From Migs, according to this news from Inquirer.net, Smart already bought Cure. So, there’s no new competition after all? Isn’t there any anti-trust laws in the Philippines to prevent competitors from buying each other?

Wait! There’s more!: Please Take our YugaTech Readers’ Survey! Only 60 seconds to complete.

First, mobile gaming is still young with only a few players like Sony PSP and Nintedo DS dominating it. The iPhone and the iPod Touch is a good platform to introduce touch based gaming. Apple has already hinted that Electronic Arts (EA) and Sega will be developing for the iPhone. Nokia has already upped its ante with their new N-Gage platform so this is an area that will be closely watched by many.

Second, the console. It is possible that Apple could introduce gaming via consoles similar to the Apple TV. In a way, the Apple TV could be a potential interface to introduce gaming into millions of home it’s already installed. All they need to do is add some intuitive controller like the nanchuck on the Wii.

Last, the Mac. A number of PC games are already available on the Mac. You got Diablo, World of Warcraft, Neverwinter Nights and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic for example. Why not a lot of people are playing on the Mac may have to do with the upgradability of the system — can’t replace a new CPU or just slap in a much faster and newer video card. It’s also cheaper to set up from scratch a PC gaming rig than a Mac gaming rig.

Apple’s best bet would be in the iPhone and the iPod Touch.

A friend who’s a long-time Globe subscriber recounted that she got a call from Globe’s Customer Support telling her that her accounts has an outstanding balance of Php4,900+. More than half of these charges are from her mobile internet usage.

She was informed that for a couple of weeks last April, she made several hundred connections to Globe 3G. She explained to the CSR that she tried using Globe 3G but hooking it up to her laptop while staying in the province. However, the connections never really worked because she wouldn’t get any internet to her laptop at all.

It turns out that despite the handset being able to connect to 3G, her laptop was not getting the shared internet connection. This prompted her to disconnect and reconnect multiple times, unknowingly being charged 5 Pesos for each try. All these time, she’s being charged for internet time she never really used.

The Globe Customer Service Rep was helpful enough and told her she can just make a dispute once she gets her next billing. It’s possible other subscribers may be experiencing this as well. My suggestion to Globe would be to not charge any connection that is dropped in less than 30 seconds. Another way is to cap reconnection charges — say if you made 5 connections in 15 minutes, they don’t charge you 5 x 5 Pesos (Php25) but only charge you Php10; or if you reconnected within 90 seconds, it will still be considered as one session and instead of two. I’m sure they can improve on their billing system to resolve this issue.

Wait! There’s more!: Don’t have Paypal yet? What are you waiting for? Sign up now!

Yoani’s blog, Generation Y, was awarded by “Ortega y Gasset Prize” in Digital Journalism (named after a Spanish philosopher). Sanchez was however unable to leave Cuba to go to Spain and personally received the award herself.

This is a huge feat for a one year old blog and it clearly shows that you don’t need to be a western blogger to get as much recognition in the field of journalism. Yoani, though, is one in a million.

On another front, that New York Time’s article about blogging as a health risk is just pure bull. In this and age, anything can kill you. In the Philippines, there’s a much higher risk of dying from singing in a karaoke along street bars than blogging 24/7 in the confines of your own room.

However, this video below may shed some light on this issue:

Wait! There’s more!: Want more tech talk? Join us in the YugaTech Forums!