Android Rising

I was reading over some metrics published by Millennial Media on handset market share and was amazed at their numbers on the growth of Android ‘requests’. MM is an mobile advertising platform and provides some impression data with Android at 65% month-over-month 2182% since January 2010 compared to Apple at 12% month-over-month up 32% since January. (Are Android apps more littered with ads?) iPad requests grew 112% month-over-month according to these guys.

Amazing numbers, and Android clearly is plowing away big time. Comscore shows RIM device share at 37.3%, Apple at 24.3%, Google at 21.4%, Microsoft 10% and Palm at 4.2% as top smartphone platforms as of Sept 2010. Google was at 12.8% in June, so clearly a lot of folks are gobbling up devices with the Android OS. And although our first dedicated APPs are for iPhone and iPad we’ll be looking closely at this platform as we always deliver on our users terms. But outside of specific applications, having websites mobile friendly is the de-facto default.

Other interesting bit is top 10 application categories according to MM for all devices Games #1 and Social Networking #2. (I’m still amazed to hear some folks question social media, its impact or that classes of humans with certain job titles do not use.) Mail and messaging #3 and Education and Employment at #8, News and Events at #9.

Overall the smart phone figures along with mobile advertising projections are phenomenal and all indicators across the board place mobile strategy as key in any companies marketing plan. Arming a sales force with iPads / tablets / Smartphones loaded with company data, video, calculators and custom apps to compress the sales cycle makes a lot sense, and those creative types will face some changes in marketing material creation some more radical than others. But the creative and technical potential is awesome.

With mobile advertising, its going to be key to reaching folks on their terms, and those terms are mobile devices, please not while driving in left lane on freeway at 50MPH, or eating as was the case of my breakfast this morning dragging my headset through my eggs.

And so we keep focused on the emerging mobile ‘ecosystem’. Its key that links, resources and assets be mobilized if your going to blast a message to those devices. To ignore would be equivalent to sending a email blast with a reference to a page in a printed magazine- reduce the ‘hop’ factor, making a user switch mediums to execute action results in no action.

And while we send our eNews in multi-part mime so the message is better read on some mobile devices, and the editorial or product information is on mobile friendly sites, the advertisers will benefit from greater mobile reach. Good news is a redirect on a site to a mobile version is not a killer. If it is, then custom landing pages equipped to handle both is key.

Its all a big layered transition so key is developing the layers in your marketing plan. Wired claimed the web was dead, so while a bit sensational, the point is well taken: information migration and delivery is moving fast and we’re transitioning for a simpler, sleeker services that just work.