UPDATED 07:33 EDT / MAY 19 2011

Millennial Media: The World is Getting Smart… Phones

Premier mobile advertising and data company Millennial Media has released a report noting some very interesting global mobile trends.  A month’s worth of study, the report covers device and manufacturing, device OS mix and global mobile developer trends for April 2011.

It is no surprise that the leader of the pack in the manufacturers sector is still Apple, which has the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch in its portfolio. It represented over 32% of all the top 15 manufacturers, while Samsung and HTC placed second and third respectively. On the specific mobile phones side, Apple’s iPhone still owns the top spot with 20 percent, and in far second place is Blackberry Curve, and HTC Evo for third place.

But perhaps the most stunning figures are received by smartphones in the device OS mic category.  Smartphone devices accounted for a whopping 68% (connected devices and featured phones are runners-up) in shares and 20 out of the top 20 mobile phones . Digging a little deeper, Android is at the frontier when it comes to smartphone OS, with 53% market share.  The Android explosion was predicted to happen in 2011.  But, they still have to work very hard to overthrow Apple in the near future as the leading OS globally.

In a recent eMarketer study, they explained how smartphones are changing the landscape of the mobile industry: “Momentum in the mobile device market has swung in favor of smartphones, led by the allure of Apple’s iPhone and the legion of now-viable competitors it has spawned. eMarketer projects US smartphone users will reach 73.3 million by the end of 2011, representing 31% of the total mobile user population… In Q1 2011, Worldwide shipments of Smartphones grew 83% year-over-year and Global Smartphone users are expected to hit 571M by the end of this year.”

Ranked first in top 10 mobile application categories is games, followed by mocial, or mobile social networking, and music & entertainment. Gaming represented 32% of applications impressions. With these numbers, mobile gaming’s goal of reaching $70.1 billion 2015 revenue is no longer far-fetched, and may easily be achieved in less than 5 years as predicted.

Literally almost every hour of every day, the digital world welcomes updates from the mobile platform. Some of the major developments recently within the industry include the collaboration of Google and Digitas that aims to combine their search and data capabilities to forecast trends and reach consumers easily.  There’s also AT&T, which opens its doors to Android third party markets, abandoning the traditional affinity with iOS by allowing users to download the Amazon Appstore.  More companies are leaving the old terrain of advertising with dollar spending shift to mobile ads, with Jumptap securing $25 million from a a recent round of funding.


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