3.6 billion impressions for Africa

InMobi, a mobile advertising network, has released its latest Africa Regional Insights which give an idea of mobile advertising trends in Africa between December 2010 and March 2011. According to the report, InMobi now serves 3.6 billion mobile advert impressions a month in Africa and these impressions have grown constantly by 3% during the period.

InMobi, an independent mobile advertising network, has released its latest Africa Regional Insights. These provide a snapshot of mobile advertising trends on the continent between December 2010 and March 2011. 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.

Africa specific data includes:

· 36% growth in mobile impressions in Nigeria in the period

· 16% growth in mobile impressions in Kenya the period

· Nokia OS holds 36.9% impression share, followed by Symbian OS at 25.9% and RIM OS at 2.9%

The data also indicates that while 8 out of 10 mobile adverts in Africa are delivered on either a Nokia or Samsung device, when it comes to smart phonesplatforms in Africa, RIM reigns supreme: although RIM/iPhone OS/Android collectively only represent 4.1% of the total Africa ecosystem. In fact, in just 2 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,‚ comments Isis Nyong’o, Vice President and Managing Director InMobi Africa. “”It will be critical to track both RIM and Android market penetration as a key to growth in mobile advertising ecosystem””

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 thesewith in excess of 850 million impressions a month.

James Lamberti, VP of Global Research & Marketing at InMobi says, ‚Africans continue to increase their mobile media consumption with both advanced phone and smartphone uptake growing at a consistent pace in the last quarter. However, advanced phones still dominate with 81% market share, so smartphones have yet to gain significant traction.‚

The full report is available to download at www.inmobi.com/research

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