Paul Ford at Trade Me has just sent me some stats around TradeMe's mobile initiatives. A small but growing number of users are accessing the site via a web browser on a smartphone, or from TradeMe's iPhone app (released in November).

It's interesting stuff. Particularly given that as easily our largest site, Trade Me is a good indicator of trends in mobile use for New Zealand as a whole.

As a point of reference before we jump into the mobile stats, here are some April Nielsen figures for the auction site overall:

• Domestic unique browsers in April: 7,183,181
• Average daily domestic unique browsers in April: 666,150
• Domestic unique browsers for week beginning April 25: 2,421,156

Close followers of the mobile market will know that for all of iPhone's success, handsets running on Google's Android software are making solid market gains (in fact, several surveys have Android now ahead in the US, helped by its support from multiple phone makers, multiple carriers, and a number of budget-priced models). Telecom, Vodafone and 2degrees are also pushing Android here. 

So does TradeMe have an Android app on the way? Paul would only offer that it was on the development team's radar. At this point, there's no timeline.

TRADE ME'S MOBILE UPDATE:

• The number of Trade Me members who use smartphones to interact with our site has increased significantly over the past si months: 1% of all sessions by users on Trade Me are now on mobile
• Committed to increasing our efforts in mobile, there is a big opportunity (still 99% to go!)
•  Mobile has been talked about as being “up and coming” for a long time – it looks like it might have started to arrive
• The iPhone app has been the catalyst for mobile activity, and is leading the way. Also Nokia, Android, iPads and Blackberries
   

All mobile stats

• In April, just over 1% of all Trade Me sessions occurred via a mobile device
• In April: mobile visits to Trade Me = around 1.5 million. Around 23% visited our mobile site (http://m.trademe.co.nz/) and 77% visited via the Trade Me iPhone app
• Biggest recent sale was a motorhome that sold for $140,000 via the iPhone app
   

‘iPhone app’ only stats

• Growth in mobile has been driven by the iPhone app – mobile activity started to move upwards noticeably when we launched the app 6 months ago.
• The take-up has exceeded our expectations – estimated we’d get 50,000 downloads in first 6 months and we’ve hit over 110,000
   

iPhone app downloads by month:

• November: 23,990
• December:  23,353
• January: 19,542
• February: 12,863
• March: 15,595
• April: 15,039
   

Activity via the app:

• 42,000 users sessions per day
• 275,000 sessions per week
• 1 million sessions per month
•  86,000 people have used the app since it was released
•  3000 items sold on Trade Me via the iPhone app last week – note that this is just successful winning actions (bid/fixed price offer/buy now). The level of participation in auctions is much higher as not everyone wins just because they are bidding from an iPhone! Note that 14000 people placed a bid last week
• Most used functions: search, checking watchlists