Nokia beats Apple as most popular for mobile advertising

Nokia handsets saw the most advertisement impressions globally

Nokia handsets are more popular than the Apple iPhone as a platform for mobile advertising.

This is according to research from InMobi. The Nokia operating system (OS) claimed more than 25 per cent of the global mobile advertising market in July 2010. The Symbian open source OS had 22 per cent of the market, while the Apple iPhone OS was on just eight per cent.

In terms of advertisement impressions, Nokia had more than five billion impressions in July, while Symbian had almost 4.5 billion and Apple 1.7 billion.

In fourth place was the Android OS with just over two per cent of the global share and a little more than 450 million impressions.

The decision by UK supermarket Tesco to focus on development for Nokia phones reflects this trend.

Last month Tesco decided to prioritise the rollout of its smartphone app for Nokia rather than Apple’s iPhone.

“It's about thinking of our customers and the sort of phones they have,” said Tesco CIO Nick Lansley on his blog, referring to "busy mums" as the supermarket chain’s target market.

“When we looked at the sort of phones [Tesco shoppers] have, we saw that plenty of them had Nokia phones."

The research is not all bad news for Apple.

InMobi’s data suggests that there is tremendous potential for the iPhone, but it added that Apple’s closed nature and premium prices will hinder its growth, particularly in emerging markets.

Android will provide Nokia with the greatest competitive challenge given its comparatively low prices and its open source nature.

The research shows that Europe is viewed as the healthiest mobile advertising market globally.

“Europe combines the wealth and media sophistication of a developed region with the complexity that often defines emerging markets such as Africa and Asia; namely multiple languages and an inherent fragmentation due to cultural and geographic boundaries,” said Rob Jonas, vice president and managing director at InMobi Europe.

“Additionally Europe has an emerging developer culture and an evolved consumer use of mobile phones relative to other regions.”

Apple was not available for comment at the time of publication.