For the first time, Google?s Android tied with Apple?s iOS as the largest smartphone OS on Millennial Media?s mobile ad network, with an 8 percent increase month-over-month and 37 percent impression share overall.

According to Millennial?s October 2010 Mobile Mix report, Apple, the leading device manufacturer on its network for the last 13 months, also accounted for a 37 percent share of impressions. Those numbers are another indication of how quickly Android?s market share is growing.

?Month to month, we have continued to see the rapid growth of the Android platform,? said Mack McKelvey, senior vice president of marketing at Millennial Media, Baltimore. ?For the first time in October, we actually saw Android smartphone impressions on our network tie iOS smartphone impressions at number one, each capturing 37 percent share.

?Our clients? savvy cross-platform buys have enabled them to reach their target audiences at scale, regardless of device or OS type,? she said.

Competitive marketplace
The competition between handset manufacturers continues to heat up.

Motorola became the No. 3 manufacturer and held a 15 percent impression share. Two new Motorola devices, the Droid 2 and Droid X, debuted on the Top 30 Mobile Device list. 

Research In Motion devices represented six of the top 30 mobile devices, with the BlackBerry Curve overtaking the Motorola Droid for the No. 2 position.

RIM ad requests grew 43 percent month-over-month.

Since January, impressions outside of the U.S. on Millennial?s network have grown 20 percent faster than U.S. impressions.

?In this month?s report, we featured a global snapshot to highlight some of the trends we?re seeing beyond the U.S. marketplace,? Ms. McKelvey said. ?Both our U.S. and non-U.S. impressions are growing at a rapid clip each month, with double- or triple-digit month-over-month growth for Android, Apple, RIM and iPad.

?It?s interesting to note that the non-U.S. impressions are actually outpacing the growth of our U.S. impressions by 20 percent,? she said.

?Our clients? ads reach mobile users in more than 250 countries around the world, which enables them to reach their target audience no matter where they reside in the world.?

Smartphone impression share increased 3 percent month-over-month and accounted for 61 percent of the mobile phone impression share in October.

This increase demonstrates the continued rapid consumer adoption of smartphones.

Feature phone impression share increased 1 percent month-over-month and represented 28 percent of the smartphone, feature phone and connected device mix.

For the first time, Symbian was featured in Millennial?s smartphone OS mix and had a 2 percent impression share on the network last month.

Millennial found that iPad requests increased 112 percent month-over-month.

?For the first time, we included connected devices in our list of the top mobile devices serving impressions on our network,? Ms. McKelvey said. ?The iPod, iPad and Sony PSP were all represented in the top twenty-five in October.

?Our advertisers know that opening their campaigns to all different types of devices, across all different types of operating systems, provides them with the best opportunity for success,? she said.

?We expect that the introduction of new tablets and other connected devices into the marketplace will continue to drive diversity in this list of devices in the coming year.?

Final Take
Millennial Media's Carrie Seifer