InMobi has released snap shots of mobile advertising trends in Africa for December and March.
InMobi Vice President and Managing Director for Africa, Isis Nyong’o, said the mobile advertising trends help to show how major communication devices such as Research In Motion’s (RIM) BlackBerry, Samsung and Nokia performed globally.
The data gathered by InMobi shows that 8 out of 10 mobile adverts in Africa are delivered on either a Nokia or Samsung device, especially when it comes to smart phones platforms in Africa where RIM is widely believed to reign supreme.
It emerged that RIM, iPhone O and Android collectively represent 4.1% of the total Africa ecosystem, yet in just two months, RIM has grown 2,5% share points while Nokia, which owns the majority market share (in total number of handsets, rather than just smartphones), has remained static.
“RIM BlackBerry’s growth during the period is proof that the lowering cost of data plans and devices will lead to smart phone adoption in Africa,” Nyongo said. “It will be critical to track both RIM and Android market penetration as a key to growth in mobile advertising ecosystem.”
Data from the report shows that InMobi now serves over 3.6 billion impressions a month in Africa and that these mobile ad impressions have grown consistently by 3% during the period.
InMobi has indicated Africa’s specific data includes 36% growth in mobile impressions in Nigeria in the period, 16% growth in mobile impressions in Kenya while Nokia OS holds 36.9% impression share, followed by Symbian OS at 25.9% and RIM OS at 2.9%.
The report also showed that South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt represent the largest mobile markets in Africa.
South Africa maintains position as the largest of these with more than 850 million impressions a month.
Vice President of Global Research, James Lamberti, said that Africa’s growth in mobile consumption was advanced at 81 percent.
“Africans continue to increase their mobile media consumption with both advanced phone and smartphone uptake growing at a consistent pace in the last quarter,” sad Lamberti. “However, advanced phones still dominate with 81% market share, so smartphones have yet to gain significant traction.”
Goodman Majola
