Nokia outperforming rivals on mobile ads

LONDON, UK: Nokia's phone operating system has nearly 50 per cent of the global mobile advertising market, more than its overall industry market share and ahead of Apple, a new survey showed on Monday.

InMobi, the world's largest independent mobile advertising network, said 48 per cent of all its display ad impressions were carried on Nokia phones in July, despite the Finnish company's perceived weakness in the high-end smartphone market which is more suited to carrying mobile adverts.

According to the survey Apple's iPhone, which is seen as ideally suited for watching content and adverts, had 8 per cent of the market in July.

In terms of overall market share, Nokia has around 40 per cent of the smartphone market with its Symbian operating software but has lost its leading position in recent years among the most expensive handset models to phones such as the iPhone and Research in Motion's Blackberry.

According to analysts at Gartner, Apple's iOS operating system has a 14 per cent operating system market share. Google's Android operating system carried 3 per cent of InMobi's advert impressions, compared with its overall operating system market share of 17 per cent.

The InMobi Global View of Mobile Advertising report said Nokia benefitted from the fact that mobile advertising was taking off strongly in Europe, where Nokia also dominates.

In terms of advert impressions, Nokia had almost 10 billion ad impressions in July. Apple had 1.6 billion impressions while Android had over 711 million.

Apple has also launched an advertising platform for adverts within applications.