IPhone stays on top as mobile OS share stabilizes
Source: Darrell Etherington
Android has the largest mobile OS usage by share, based on ad impressions, with iOS coming in second and BlackBerry in third, according to Millenial Media’s just-released monthly Mobile Mix report. The shares haven’t really budged at all since last quarter, indicating that we may be seeing the smartphone market entering into a period of relative stability, at least in terms of how the OS pie is divided.
Android ruled the roost again with 56 percent of the connected device and smartphone OS mix; Apple came in second with 28 percent for iOS; and BlackBerry had the next-most-significant chunk of share with 13 percent. All of these were exactly the same during Millenial’s third-quarter Mobile Mix report, covering July through September. That could be good news for Apple, which is still riding high atop the device pile, taking the top spot for ad impressions among all manufacturers, with 23.5 percent of impressions among the top 15 device manufacturers and 12.53 percent of the top single-device impressions going to the iPhone.
Apple’s share grew slightly compared to the third-quarter results, but Samsung and HTC also experienced a lot of growth, with HTC actually passing Samsung for the second spot among manufacturers of devices. As Kevin has noted previously, China’s Huawei has also been creeping up the charts. But the battle for second appears to be one that mostly affects the distribution of Android sales; IOS, as per its relatively stable market share, doesn’t appear to be all that affected by power struggles among the Android hardware maker ranks, at least during the past few months.
Apple also continues to take in an outsize portion of mobile advertising spending compared with Android, grabbing 40 percent of application advertising dollars versus 50 percent for Android devices. Apple’s position slid one percentage point between last quarter and October, while Android’s rose one point. Interestingly, during the month of October, gaming applications slid from a long-held first-place position among the categories of apps that get the most ad impressions, replaced by music and entertainment apps, which were in second place last quarter.
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