Apple Core Not For Mobile Ads?

MoreVisibility - February 17, 2010

My physician will describe how to age gracefully during my annual physical exam and I figure if I continue to jog during lunch and have an apple a day, I’m doing the right thing.  In the growing smartphone market, Nokia is probably not aging gracefully as is evident by Apple’s growing market share of global ad requests as measured by AdMob network.  Nokia lost 15 percent points from 2008 Q4 to 2009 Q4; while Apple grabbed 24 percent during this period

I can attribute this to the iPhone going global and of course the Apple App Store’s treasure trove of applications running on the iPhone.  There are simply many more developers embracing the Apple’s OS versus the Nokia backed Symbian OS.  We all understand that the secret sauce in the mobile advertising niche will be unearthed by an application, probably not yet developed.  Having said that, one would think attracting developers is a prerequisite for a successful mobile advertising platform.  Gartner is projecting 4.5 billion mobile app downloads for 2010, with 82% of the apps free! So how will those developers monetize their apps, if eight out of ten downloads are free?

Developers can earn their money from mobile advertisers, and the various banners, embedded video, overlays, animated gifs, ad bugs and so forth added to their content.  An important piece of this income relies on knowing the location of the smartphone, in order to provide timely advertisement of goods or services.  After reading an article in the Apple App Store tip section of their developer center, I became confused and began to wonder how Apple can continue to attract developers if they are disallowing the use of their Core Location Framework, “If your app uses location-based information primarily to enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads based on a user’s location, your app will be returned to you by the App Store Review Team for modification before it can be posted to the App Store”

So, Apple is protecting their valuable customers from unwanted advertisements, or are they flexing their muscles and attempting to leverage their newly acquired Quattro Wireless mobile advertising division? Hmm, first the threat to replace Google with their past adversary Microsofts’ Bing as the iPhones’ default search and now this constraint on app developers

It will continue to get heated as these industry giants juggle for position in the race for your mobile advertising dollars. Our team at MoreVisibility is here for you and will be keeping abreast on the ever changing climate of the mobile advertising niche. Just yesterday at the Mobile World Congress 2010, Google’s Eric Schmidt gave the keynote speech in which he proclaimed “Mobile First”. Websites must take heed and be prepared to present their content on mobile devices, or possible miss opportunities to present their goods and services to the rapidly growing mobile users. Stop by our Mobile Websites Knowledge Center first to learn more or call us and let us explain how we can guide you in all your internet marketing needs.