Last Friday the 12th, leading mobile advertising firm InMobi released results of its research on the Kenyan market as far as mobile advertising and current market trends are concerned. The findings should not be surprising to many bearing in mind the steady pace at which the adoption of mobile telephony and its associated technologies has been witnessed. Just the other day local telecommunications giant Safaricom Ltd, in an earnings call, reported that its network had reached the 19 million subscriber mark. The research findings are indeed consistent with every industry analyst’s expectations.
Mobile advertising impressions rose by 12% as tracked by InMobi on its Kenyan mobile network. In a statement, Isis Nyong’o, the Vice President and Managing Director of InMobi Africa notes that there were more than 2.6 billion impressions recorded on the InMobi network, a massive figure by any means.
As per the findings, troubled Finnish device maker, Nokia, still remains the leader with 58% of impressions on the InMobi ad network coming from its phones. Samsung and Alcatel follow distantly at 20% and 11% respectively. However if what has been happening on a global scale is anything to go by, this could change come the next quarter as Nokia is losing ground in key low-end markets that have been its core (forget about smartphones). Symbian is still the leading mobile operating system though Android, with a market share of a paltry 2.8% is coming onto the picture at a pace that should get Nokia executives scratching their heads.
The Nokia Asha 200 which Nokia is aggressively marketing currently. Nokia devices still remain the phones of choice in Kenya and Africa at large despite the decline of its hold on the phone market lately according to data released in new findings by ad network InMobi.
Over the quarter, smartphone impressions increased by 17% to stand at 7%. This means in the next quarter you can only expect the figure to become a double-digit and surge further as cheaper and cheaper smartphones continue penetrating the Kenyan market.
What do these results mean for marketers? There is untapped potential out there. Almost half the Kenyan population has access to a cellphone and a notable portion of this population is already eyeing the next affordable smartphone. That’s a market that cannot be ignored. Add this to the findings which show that the same trend is being witnessed all over Africa with 24.4 billion advertising impressions being registered on the InMobi network across the continent (an increase of 15% compared to the fourth quarter of 2011).
Continental-wise, impressions on smartphones in the first quarter of 2012 rose by 19% and accounted for 24% of the combined impressions recorded via individual handsets on the InMobi Africa networks. Just like is the case locally, the Nokia brand took the lead on the continental map though being beaten by its troubled competitor RIM’s Blackberry 8520 as the smartphone that generated the most impressions.
Related: InMobi AdTracker Unveiled
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