My name is Philip Tapkov. I am a MSc student in eMarketing @ Oxford Brookes Univeristy, UK.


I am also digital marketing consultant for small businesses.
Check out my infographic CV at www.philiptapkov.com

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    Android Takes Over Mobile Ads, iOS chosen by the rich



    What’s new on the mobile market



    So Android is the new cool kid on the block. It’s been going on like this for a while now (since last year, to be exact) and marketers start to ask questions like Which platform should we use to advertise?

    Of course, it’s all fun and games in the world of blogging and we tend to ignore important factors like what exactly is your target market made of. Still, this is for your own company to decide, we can just take a look at the cold hard numbers and draw conclusions for ourselves. 



    How (Much and Many) Customers Use Android, iOS and RIM



    Some may argue that the boost of Andorid was expected (and a little unfair) because while Apple has only one phone (with its respective versions), Android runs on many different devices (11 new smart phones introduced just last year) and it can even be installed on an iPhone, if you’re geeky enough. That inevitably gives Google’s platform a little advantage in terms of market segmentation, as it covers many crucial customer preferences like price, size and even complexity (check out Davis’es Technology Acceptance Model and you’ll know what we’re talking about here). Same goes for the Canadians at Research in Motion who offer an impressive variety of smart phones.

    According to comScore, January this year, for the first time ever, Android actually surpassed iOS in numbers of subscribers. With an amazing increase of 7.7% of market share since October last year, Google’s OS is now a market leader with 31.2%, followed closely by RIM with 30.4% who lost almost 6% in this period. The bronze goes to Apple’s iOS which is preferred by about 16 million people, or 24.7% of the whole market. The bad news here (for Apple) is not this percentage itself but the fact that iOS subscirbers only increased by 0.1%.

    In the usage patterns of those subscribers, no surprising changes can be seen. Yes, people use their devices more and more but the predominant part is still for text messaging (68.1% - no change since the last report). For marketers like you and me it’s very nice to see that the usage of downloadable apps has increased from to 33.7% to 35.3%. That means more exposure, which can’t be a bad thing, can it?



    Top Smartphone Platforms Chart



    Android beats iOS in Mobile Ads, too



    InMobi just released a report that proves Android’s dominance over iOS in terms of mobile ad impressions. In case you’ve never heard of this company, they are the world’s biggest independent global mobile advertising network. That’s why, even though not every advertisers uses InMobi (Apple have their own iAds, for example, plus there are other providers, anyway), we can still rely on the company’s network for being representative.

    Ad Impressions Share on InMobi Network

    The report says that 37% of all impressions on InMobi’s network were made by an Android device, while iPhones accounted for only 23%. Google’s OS made an impressive jump of 21% since the last report in October 2010, while Apple actually lost a fraction (less than 2%).

    The reason I trust InMobi’s reports to be a representation of what’s going on the mobile ad market is because they have a 5.9 billion ad impressions base, of which 58% came from the mobile web and almost 70% (4.1bn.) were made through a mobile device.



    The Rich Kids Still Play With Apple



    InMobi, however, is not the only player. While most advertisers might chose it, there’s those big fish that cost a lot and serve the chosen ones. By chosen, of course, I mean rich. Medialets is one of those companies that provide premium mobile ads. I’m still waiting on their newest reports, but the one from early this year, states that although iOS is lagging behind Android, Medialet’s customers (Lexus, Fox News, Toyota, Starbucks, New York Times to name a few) still prefer Apple’s platform.

    My wild guess here would be that the results are due to the complexity of the ads that Medialets provide, that is, most of the Android devices might not be able to reproduce their creations (please correct me if I’m wrong).






    1. digitalmarketingideas posted this
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