Every month, mobile advertiser Millennial Media releases their Mobile Mix, a report detailing where things stand in the mobile industry. This month marks a significant first, as well as some all-around good news for Android. Their highlights:
- For the first time, Android surpassed iOS as the largest Smartphone OS on the Millennial network, with an 8% increase month-over-month and 46% impression share on our network in December. The iOS currently has a 32% share
- Android ad requests grew 141% from Q3 to Q4 and since January, Android has grown 3130%
- Android devices represented 16 of the top 30 mobile devices on the Millennial network
- When breaking down the revenue generated by apps in Q4—Android had a 55% share as opposed to 39% for Apple. Android had a 13% increase quarter-over-quarter.
- HTC claimed the number three position in the Top 15 Manufacturers – with a 9% month-over-month increase. There is a direct correlation with this increase and HTC having the highest number of devices (nine) in the Top 30 Mobile Device-Ranking including the debut of four new devices on the Millennial network: HTC Nexus One (Passion), HTC Evo, HTC Droid Incredible, and the HTC Desire.
All in all, some pretty big news for Android, right? Not so fast: web advertiser Chitika disagrees, at least when it comes to which OS is #1 in the U.S.:
The results are (rather comically) nearly reversed: Chitika has the market 37%/53% (Android/iOS) while Millennial says it's 55%/39%. So who's right? Who the hell knows - but the recently-released numbers from Nielsen certainly complicate the issue. Chitika's numbers are measured by web traffic, while Millennial's numbers are measured by mobile traffic. Nielsen is generally the industry standard in measuring things, though - and both advertisers numbers are quite different than Nielsen's.
In any case, they certainly provide food for thought. A few more interesting graphics from the Mobile Mix:
[Source: Millennial Media, Chitika]