Nokia and Samsung rule supreme in Africa, RIM on the rise – InMobi

InMobi, which claims to be the world’s largest independent mobile advertising network, on Tuesday provided a snapshot of mobile advertising trends on the African continent, showing that 8 out of 10 mobile adverts in Africa are delivered on either Nokia or Samsung devices.

The company notes that when it comes to smartphones in Africa, RIM reigns supreme, although RIM/iPhone OS/Android collectively only represent 4.1% of the total Africa ecosystem.

In fact, in just two 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”

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 report also showed that South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt represent the largest mobile markets in Africa. South Africa maintains its position as the largest of these with 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.”