Android has bounced back from a dip in mobile ad share to reach its highest point yet, Millennial Media said in its monthly report on Wednesday. This past July, Android’s ad traffic shot up 15 percent just over the past month to hit 61 percent. Google’s rise pushed the iPhone down to 21 percent.
RIM declined one point to hit 14 percent. Microsoft may have shown some first signs of success, as ad hits from Windows Phone 7 surged 71 percent over the past month and kept it at two percent despite the rapid development from Apple and Google.
Apple was still the top individual phone maker and had the most-used individual device, but the Android impact had cut into its share. It was now down from almost 31 percent share in all devices to just over 26 percent, and the iPhone’s primary share was down from over 16 percent to slightly under 14 percent. Some of that could be pinned on the Nexus S, which doubled its share to almost six percent. It may have been helped both by the Nexus S 4G on Sprint as well as the AT&T model, making the official Google phone one of the few to have real cross-platform support.
Samsung was the fastest mover among manufacturers as the Droid Charge and its other Android phones picked up speed.
iOS was still closing off an Android edge in all devices. When iPads and iPods were included, Apple had gained five points to hit 43 percent.
In the past two years, few in the industry had gained significant ad volume, Millennial added. Apple, HTC, and Huawei were the only ones to more than double their share, where others were somtimes flat. LG, Motorola, and Samsung had lost share as their smartphone businesses weren’t growing fast enough to offset wide-ranging losses in basic phones.
The review of July info also showed a major swing in app types. Games were now 29 percent of ad hits on Millennial, growing by over a third from what had been seen in June. Android, historically weaker than iOS in games, now counted 34 percent of its ads on games.
As with all studies discussing ad traffic, the share doesn’t directly represent actual market share, which puts Android lower, at 52 percent in the US, and still has the iPhone growing to 29 percent. The data can reflect trends in hardware and supports notions that Android isn’t finished growing. It may, however, also mirror key apps launching or updating that use Millennial’s ads. Regardless of the network, key apps like Cut the Rope or Angry Birds are most popular on Android as ad-supported free versions where they frequently exist either as demos or pay-only full versions on iOS.
