This post is part of our ReadWriteMobile channel, which is dedicated to helping its community understand the strategic business and technical implications of developing mobile applications. This channel is sponsored by Alcatel-Lucent.
Millennial Media's April 2011 report, a snapshot of the company's large mobile advertising network and the trends it contains, found this month that ad impressions on iOS devices have increased by 47% since January of this year. At the same time, Android impressions have grown just 19%.
And when breaking down the revenue generated by all apps, iOS apps accounted for 50% of revenue, while Android accounted for 39%. This was a 6% month-over-month increase for Apple.
RIM and Symbian ad impressions also grew since January says Millennial, up 17% and 5%, respectively, a trend that highlights the growing mobile ad industry, perhaps, more than it does momentum for those platforms themselves.
Gaming applications were found to be, across the board, the most popular app category. However, travel and sports apps both saw increases in impressions during April. Travel app impressions were up 91% in April and sports apps were up 56% - the former fueled by spring break and summer vacation planning, and the latter by seasonal sporting events.
As usual, Millennial also detailed the trends it saw in April in terms of devices and platforms on its network. Here, iOS devices (iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch) represented 32% of the Top 15 Manufacturers Impression share for the month. The iPhone also ranked #1 in the top 20 mobile phones.
Other OEMs:
In total, Android devices continued to account for more impressions (20% of all impressions in April) on Millennial's network. Android also accounted for 16 of the top 20 phones.
And finally, for the first time ever, the Top 20 Mobile Device list included only smartphones and no feature phones.