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For The First Time, Android Passes Apple's iOS Mobile Ad Traffic - Report

This article is more than 9 years old.

For years, the rise of Android seemed to put almost no dent in the massive proportion of mobile traffic generated by Apple's iPhones. Various theories held that despite their rapid sales, early Android phones weren't as easy to use as iPhones, didn't have the latest and greatest apps, or simply were bought and used by people who cared more about making phone calls and texting than using a lot of apps or roaming the mobile Web. As a result, advertisers preferred to direct ads to iPhone users.

Now, for the first time, Google's Android has passed Apple's iOS in mobile ad traffic, according to a quarterly mobile advertising report released today by mobile ad network Opera Mediaworks. The switch in the first quarter suggests that Android smartphones and tablets such as Samsung's and HTC's newer models are getting capable enough to challenge Apple's iPhones and iPads. "With the Samsung [Galaxy] S4 and other newer Android phones, you're seeing more parity in users," says Opera Mediaworks CEO Mahi de Silva. As a result, he says, "the quality of the ads served on Android devices is also more at parity with iOS."

The numbers: Android claims the most ad traffic, with 42.8% of ad impressions vs. iOS's 38.2%. Android smartphones actually took the lead over iOS phones in the fourth quarter, but Apple's tablet traffic still kept iOS ahead overall. That edge evaporated in the first quarter.

Apple's devices still hold a big lead on Android devices in making money off those ads, however. The iOS smartphones and tablets together commanded 52.3% of revenues to Android's 33.5%. But the latter is an improvement from 26.7% a year ago. And iOS's share is down from 60% in last year's first quarter.

The bigger losers are Symbian, Blackberry, and Windows, all of which even combined trail the mighty "other." "We've seen steady declines in other platforms," de Silva says. "It's really a two-horse race in the U.S."

Android's gain in ads may help it gain on iOS among software developers as well, potentially creating a virtuous cycle. "It used to be that developers focused on iOS first," de Silva says, and indeed apps and game makers still do. "We're starting to see they'll be equally compelled to come out on both platforms."