Smaato: Symbian Still Reigns in US

Despite the well-publicized spat between Apple and Google, mobile advertising company Smaato’s monthly metrics shows that Symbian devices continue to dominate the US mobile advertising market.

Released last week, the May report averages Click-Through Rate (CTR) for all mobile devices to a 100 point baseline.  Symbian decisively takes the lead at 316 CTR – over three times the average despite extremely low market penetration.
Similarly, it is very interesting to note that Google Android phones (118 CTR) edge out Apple iPhone/iPod Touch (111 CTR) also despite a relatively smaller market share.

“In the US, Smaato’s metrics reveal that Symbian still dominates the region in terms of CTR – despite small market share of handsets, Android has now leapfrogged Apple in to second place as Apple suffers another drop in global CTR,” Smaato reports.
Apple’s recent moves to promote its own iAd mobile advertising service may very well be in response to the disproportionate advertising performance compared to hardware market share.
Globally, Symbian OS has the largest OS market share being installed on nearly 50% of all mobile devices.  However, on its European home turf, Windows Phone takes the lead at 157 CTR compared to second-place Symbian at 137 CTR.
Smaato’s metrics are based upon 40 mobile ad networks and over 7 billion ad requests served in the Smaato Network of more than 5,000 registered mobile publishers in May 2010.