14 DAY TRIAL // A recently published report from mobile ad company Smaato shows that United States users of Symbian-based mobile phones click the most mobile ads on their devices. The April data collected by the company shows that Symbian phone owners click on these ads 2.7 times more than iPhone users do, despite the fact that handsets running under the platform do not enjoy a massive presence in the country.
“The performance of different operating systems in April shows Feature Phone handsets continue its consistent rise in CTR’s (134 up 9 from March), closing the gap on Symbian (157 rising just a point from the previous month). The remaining operating systems saw drops in the index, as CTR’s decreased across the globe. The Index consists of the average CTR of all devices and this number is set to 100,” the mobile ad company notes, according to a recent article on gigaom.
When it comes to the global market, Symbian is reportedly the leader, followed closely by feature phones. Windows Mobile, iPhone, Android, Palm and BlackBerry come in next, something that seems to be rather interesting, although the number of Symbian devices is larger. There are only few handsets running under the Symbian OS to sport touchscreen displays, which makes it difficult to click on mobile ads, which means that the clickthrough rate should be higher on devices like iPhone or Android.
“Despite Feature Phone’s gains, Symbian’s remains the leading OS in terms of click through rates worldwide, with more than double the click through rate of iPhone. Putting this into perspective, we have to consider the sheer number of Symbian devices compared to Apple devices, but it should also serve as further proof to advertisers that the iPhone is far from the be-all and end-all in mobile advertising,” Smaato continues.
The report provided by the company is based on data taken from 40 mobile ad networks, which served over 6 billion ad requests during last month. According to gigaom, the figures might show that the Symbian OS is much more mature than Apple's platform, and that advertisers and developers are more likely to target it with their solutions.
