iOS - it's still where the (ad) money is

Stephen Withers
Friday, 15 April 2011 16:56

Your IT - Mobility

There's been a lot of noise about the way Android is going to dominate the mobile device market, but new research suggests iOS - iPhone, iPad and iPod touch - is still where the money is being made.

According to the latest figures form Millennial Media, Apple is still the leading mobile device manufacturer and the iPhone is still the number one mobile phone on its advertising network. Given the seemingly ever-growing number of Android devices from a range of manufacturers, it's not surprising that Android has the biggest smartphone OS share (48% vs iOS's 31%) in terms of ad impressions.

The arrival of the Verizon (CDMA) iPhone has contributed to a significant change in the iOS share since February, when it accounted for 27% of the mix. RIM's share also improved from 17% to 18%.

Despite all these changes, iOS still takes the lion's share of revenue - helped by a doubling of iPad revenue - accounting for 47% in March compared with Android's 36%.

Despite "strong growth" in RIM's impression share - the BlackBerry Curve returned to the number two position in terms of impression share, with the Bold 2 at number 5 and the Torch at number 19, that wasn't quite enough to reach an 11% impression share, which converted to a 7% revenue share.

What does all this mean? Two possibilities come to mind. One is that iOS users are simply more active than those of other mobile operating systems; the other is that they are more accepting of ad-supported apps.