Millennial: iPad growing, Samsung rises to 46% of Android app use

Samsung Galaxy S III Mini (left angled)

For the second day, Samsung has been named the new leader. After Tuesday unseating Nokia as the top cellphone maker in 2012, the Galaxy vendor today topped HTC as the Android maker which gets most used to access mobile ads. According to ad firm Millennial, Samsung had 46 percent of Android app use, double the 26 percent of 2011.

HTC – which is bleeding money and is rumored to have cut in half shipments and delayed new devices – fell to #2, dropping 30 points behind Samsung. But for Apple, perhaps the best news is what the Millennial end-of-year report did not find…

According to survey findings, Android’s availability on a number of devices, by manufacturers, at a number of price points has helped increase Android adoption globally.

When we take a deeper look, we see Android impressions from over 50 manufacturers and hundreds of devices on our platform.

Of the Android impressions on our platform in Q3 2012, 46 percent of those were from Samsung devices, followed by HTC (16 percent) and Motorola (eleven percent).

This is a big shift from the same quarter a year ago. In Q3 2011, HTC had the most Android impressions (32 percent), followed by Samsung (23 percent) and Motorola (22 percent).

The below chart highlights top Android vendors, as observed on Millennial’s ad platform.

Millennial Media 2012 highlights (Android OS, top vendors)

As for tablets, the original 9.7-inch iPad served up 35 times the volume of mobile ads as its smaller brother, the iPad mini.

Apple released a number of new devices and updates in 2012, including their first seven-inch tablet, the iPad mini. Impressions on our platform from the device increased at an average daily rate of 28 percent.

For some time, there has been an on-going debate over whether or not the smaller iPad was cannibalizing sales of its bigger brother.

The mini is holding its own, with November ad impressions surging 28 percent each day.

This success has not slowed the growth of the original iPad though, and the volume of impressions we see from the original iPad is continuing to grow at an average of 35X the volume of iPad mini impressions.

There’s a chart for that, too.

Millennial Media 2012 highlights (iPad mini)

The report also confirmed trends others may already suspected.

Both smartphone and tablet owners are spending more time on their devices, a sign advertisers haven’t ignored. According to the report, advertising spending is increasingly going toward mobile ad campaigns with some products more comfortable advertising to mobile users.

Ads hawking automobiles to mobile consumers rose 318 percent compared to 2011. Education, sports and travel all boosted their mobile ad budgets by more than 200 percent.

Millennial Media 2012 highlights (industry verticals)

Apple’s iOS isn’t absent from mobile ads.

Recently, ad network Chitika released the results of its 6-month study finding iOS has 67 percent of  web traffic, Android: 33 percent.

The take-away: Android players are fighting amongst themselves for mobile ad dollars while Apple has an open field.

From another perspective, the browser company Opera in October found that Apple has more than 58 percent of mobile ad revenue versus about seventeen percent for Android.

And your take?

Are mobile advertisers abandoning Apple or is this just a case of device volume swaying the numbers?