InMobi: Nigeria Remains Fastest Growing Mobile Ad Market In Africa [STATS]

by Loy Okezie / Wednesday, November 9th, 2011

InMobi, the world’s largest independent mobile ad network, today released its Mobile Insights Report for Africa providing insights on mobile advertising trends on the continent.

According to data from the report, InMobi now serves over 15.4 billion impressions per quarter in Africa which signifies the potentially massive reach that mobile devices can offer local, regional and global brands.

Africa’s mobile ad impressions grew by 26% over the past quarter, representing 15.4 billion impressions in Q3, up from 12.2 billion in Q2.

The report found that the Nigerian market remains the fastest growing market on the African continent, followed closely by South Africa and then Egypt.

Key highlights of the Africa data include:

Africa mobile impressions grew by 26% over the past quarter on the InMobi network.
Within the region, Nigeria and South Africa experienced the highest mobile ad growth rates.
The Nokia and Symbian platforms dominate the market; RIM OS is a distant third.
Nokia still holds the majority of the share impressions despite 0.5% decrease in impression. The phone manufacturing giant now holds 61.1% impression share
Nokia and Samsung combined make up 80% of the impressions in Africa
The majority of impressions in Africa are on advanced phones, with a 23.5% growth rate this quarter.
Growth rates were highest among smartphones and apps, however most impressions in the region are delivered via advanced phones and Mobile Web.

Mobile OS and Handset Manufacturer Market Share

As expected, the Nokia and Symbian platforms still dominate the Africa market, with a combined total of 61% of impressions in this market.

The third largest OS is RIM with 5% of mobile ad impressions, while Android and the iPhone OS are still relatively small in this market perhaps due to low smartphone penetration.

However, while smartphones make up a smaller percentage of impressions in this market, they have a faster growth rate than advanced phones.

The report also showed that handset manufacturer share in Africa remained generally consistent with Q2. Here, Nokia and Samsung make up about 80% of impressions in Africa.

While most of these data in the report might not be surprising, what’s more interesting is the fact that ad impressions on mobile apps more than doubled in Q3, although they still make up a small percentage of total impressions.