African Mobile Advertising Market Grew at 21% Over the Last 3 Months, InMobi

InMobi has released its April 2011 Mobile Insights Report for Africa. The report provides insights on mobile advertising trends across Africa. InMobi claims in the report that it now serves 4.2 billion mobile impressions a month in Africa, up 21% from 3.5 billion in January 2011.

Key highlights of the Kenya data include:·

• An average of 45 million mobile ad impressions monthly added in 3 months·
• Smartphone impressions increased 37%, but remain relatively small with only 7% of the total market share·
• Alcatel and Huawei combined to increase their share by 4.7 points driven partly by a push on affordable Android devices·
• Nokia remains the dominant market player with a 53.8% share, despite losing 3.4 share points during the period

While the data indicates  that advanced and smartphones impressions grew at a consistent pace, advanced phones still dominate the market with an 85% share.  While there are early signs of growth among smartphones, they have yet to gain substantial traction.

The report puts South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt as the largest mobile markets in Africa.  South Africa maintains the position as the largest with more than 946 million impressions a month which is a 24% share of the African market.