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Written by Laura Chisholm
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Monday, 16 August 2010 03:09
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Last week we presented on the topic of Trends and Developments in Mobile Marketing at Frank Chamberlain's DM Forum.
One of the big topics for discussion was whether Apple or Google Android would win the race for consumers' hearts, minds and ultimately dollars.
Well, for the first time last quarter the Google-owned Android operating system (OS) exceeded Apple’s iPhone OS market share. A Gartner report released last week shows that smartphones accounted for 19% of all mobile phones sold in the second quarter for 2010, with devices using the Android OS showing rapid growth in market share.
The Android OS jumped from a 1.8% market share in the same quarter last year, to a 17.2% market share in Q2 2010. Compare this to the Apple iPhone's OS which had a 13% market share this time last year and has crept up to just 14.2% this year.
Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner attributes this growth to “a non-exclusive strategy that produces products selling across many communication service providers and the backing of so many device manufacturers, which are bringing more attractive devices to market at several different price points."
So, what does this all mean for marketers? Well, I would think twice about rushing out and comissioning that expensive iPhone app. It seems like Android could be where it's at.
Read the Gartner report here
View our Mobile Marketing presentation
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Google do push sponsored links to handsets/mobile devices. Appearing on a mobile device can be different to just normal PPC campaign creation and management however.
In Google’s ad campaign settings there is a section called Networks and devices. By default “All available devices” is selected. If you select “Let me choose” you get the option to un-tick “Desktop and laptop computers” and “iPhones and other mobile devices with full Internet browsers”. They also give you an “advanced device and operator” option. Here you can target only specific devices and/or operators, the options for devices are: Android, iPhone/iPod Touch, Palm webOS, and iPad. The Australian operator options are: 3, Optus Mobile, Telstra and Vodaphone.
This is great from a marketers point of view as you can further define your target, especially for mobile content, offers, relevance, location and provider.
Some links with some exciting information about ads: http://www.them.pro/Google-launches-location-based-mobile-display-ads
http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2010/03/google-awarded-location-based-ad-patent.html
And Google now have a mobile ad creation portal: http://www.google.com/mobileads/advertiser_home.html
Further to having a mobile friendly site with such a wide variety of handset, screen sizes, operating systems available being optimised or being able to deliver content based on the users handset is becoming increasingly important to all sectors of business, not just enterprise level websites.
This ensures a user experience that is fast, efficient and uses less bandwidth (lower cost to user)than a normal site. Thank you and apologies once again.
Regards,
Steve Crough
Managing Director ITSimple Pty Ltd