BlackBerry OS

Mobile advertising and data company Millennial Media is out with a new MobileMix report based on ad impressions across their network. The results are admittedly surprising considering Android’s seemingly unstoppable march: Google’s operating system did not grow in October compared to the summer period. All Android devices combined in October logged twice the ad requests of iOS gadgets, 56 percent versus 28 percent.

Both operating systems recorded same respective shares during the summer, although Android actually fell two percentage points in August before returning to its 56 percent share in October. As for the other players, Research In Motion’s BlackBerry OS did 13 percent ad requests while Symbian, Windows and Other each logged just one percent. In fact, the entire pie chart above is exactly the same as the summer 2011 chart. Also, relative data pitting Android vs. iOS echoes recent surveys by Nielsen and Gartner.

Of the top 15 device vendors, Samsung grew seven percent month-over-month and had six of the top 20 phones on the Millennial Media network. Interestingly, the Samsung Freeform, a feature phone, made the list of top 20 phones led by iPhone (it’s the first feature phone on their list since May 2011). Android devices represented 14 of the top 20 cell phones in October (15 devices in the summer period), with a combined impression share of 24 percent.

Apple remained the leading manufacturer on their platform and Android remained the top OS when combining Smartphone & Connected Device impressions. More surprising than that, nearly three-quarters of ad requests, or 71 percent, came from smartphones. The remaining 15 and 14 percent came from feature phones and connected devices. Other interesting takeaways right after the break…

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Samsung today announced in a blog post that its free instant messaging service named ChatON is rolling out worldwide. The service will first arrive to Samsung’s Bada-driven devices, Android smartphones and selected feature phones starting this month, via Android Market and Samsung Apps stores. They will release the app on other platforms “by the end of 2011”. The company wrote:

ChatON provides users with a simple way to keep in touch with friends and family anywhere in the world, regardless of device platform. It enables users to communicate in multiple ways, allowing multimedia content and animated messages, as well as more conventional instant messages, to be shared with friends and family.

As we told you, the ChatON service has been conceived as a proprietary messaging service for multiple mobile platforms. Similar to the BlackBerry Messenger and Apple’s iMessage – both of which support free instant messaging over a mobile IP connection – ChatON too supports text, images, group chat and video clips. Unlike rival IM platforms, ChatON also does hand-written notes, animated messages and social features allowing users to give their buddies so-called “Interaction Rank”. In addition, Samsung will be taking ChatON to competing platforms like Research In Motion’s Blackberry OS and Apple’s iOS, guaranteeing mass market appeal and cross-platform messaging.

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Per latest StatCounter Global Stats data, Google’s software platform in August 2011 passed iOS worldwide to rank as the world’s #2 mobile operating system. showing no signs of stopping, Android gained ground at the expense of pretty much every other platform, including Research In Motion’s BlackBerry OS, Symbian OS and Apple’s iOS. Of course, stats can be deceiving and phone makers have been boosting Android’s numbers with dirt cheap handsets and BOGO promotions. Let’s not forget that StatCounter base their data on web usage stats obtained from a network of participating sites so the survey does not necessarily paint a representative picture of the whole market.

That being said, Android was trumped only by Symbian OS, which lost 1.46 percent of market share since June 2011. Symbian OS in August grabbed 32.12 percent market share versus 20.6 percent for Android and 19.41 percent for iOS for the month of August. While Apple’s mobile operating system had pretty much held ground during the June-July period, it dropped 0.62 percentage points between July and August.

In the same period of time, BlackBerry OS declined by 0.64 percentage points. Samsung’s own Bada software for feature phones took 6.04 percent market share in August. Interestingly, Microsoft’s Windows Phone doesn’t even blip on the global radar and is probably tucked away under the ‘Unknown’ category which claimed a 5.72 percent share.

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