Android Provides More Eyeballs to Advertisers, While iPhone Offers Most Revenue to App Creators, Study Finds

There are many ways of measuring smartphone success, but using almost any metric shows both the iPhone and Android doing pretty darn well.

That said, new numbers from Millennial Media offer up an interesting take–just how are the smartphone leaders doing in terms of making money for others. The report looks at both how many ads are being viewed on various devices as well as how much app revenue is being generated via the various smartphone operating systems.

In terms of advertising impressions, Android is the clear leader, with devices running that operating system accounting for nearly half of all ad impressions shown last month. Measured on that basis, 14 of the top 20 devices run Android, though the iPhone still tops the list and the BlackBerry Curve is the second most common phone model.

However, in terms of app revenue by platform, the numbers are largely reversed, with iOS apps generating 47 percent of revenue, as compared to 36 percent of revenue generated by Android apps. BlackBerry apps accounted for 7 percent of sales, while WebOS, Windows Phone, Symbian and other operating systems combined for just 10 percent of app revenue.

The report is chock full of other interesting stats as well.

For example, non-phone devices such as the iPad, iPod Touch and Galaxy Tab are seeing strong ad growth. The number of ads seen on such devices grew 21 percent month-over-month and such devices now make up 17 percent of the total mobile ad market, as compared to 64 percent for smartphones and 19 percent for feature phones.

The iPhone, meanwhile, saw its number of ad impressions grow 17 percent from a month earlier, amid adoption of the Verizon iPhone, which now accounts for 8.2 percent of ads shown to iPhones.

The report also breaks out ad impressions based on the type of phone. On that basis, 59 percent of ads were viewed on touch-screen only devices, 17 percent on models with both a keyboard and touchscreen, 13 percent on phones with a keyboard but no touchscreen and 11 percent on those sad little phones that have only a traditional phone keypad.