iPhone stays on top as mobile OS share stabilizes

Android has the largest mobile OS usage by share according to ad impressions, with iOS coming in second and BlackBerry in third, according to Millenial Medias just-released monthly Mobile Mix report. The shares havent really budged at all since last quarter, indicating we may be seeing the smartphone market entering into a period of relative stability, at least in terms of how the OS pie is divided.

Android ruled the roost again with 56 percent of the connected device and smartphone OS mix, Apple came in second with 28 percent for iOS, and BlackBerry had the next most significant chunk of share with 13 percent. All of which were exactly the same during Millenials third quarter Mobile Mix report, covering July through September. That could be good news for Apple, which is still riding high atop the device pile, taking the top spot for ad impressions among all manufacturers, with 23.5 percent of impressions among the top 15 device manufacturers, and 12.53 percent of the top single-device impressions going to the iPhone.

Apples share grew slightly compared to the third quarter results, butSamsungand HTC also experienced a lot of growth, with HTC actually passing Samsung for the second spot among manufacturers of devices. As Kevin has also noted previously, Chinas Huawei has also been creeping up the charts. But the battle for second appears to be one that mostly affec! ts the d istribution of Android sales; iOS, as per its relatively stable market share, doesnt appear to be all that affected by power struggles among the Android hardware maker ranks, at least during the past few months.

Apple also continues to take in an outsized portion of mobile advertising spending compared to Android, grabbing 40 percent of application advertising dollars, versus 50 percent for Android devices. Apples position slid one percentage point between last quarter and October, while Androids rose one point. Interestingly, during the month of October, gaming applications slid from a longheld first-place position among the categories of apps that get the most ad impressions, replaced by music and entertainment apps, which were in second place last quarter.

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