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InMobi Says Mobile Now Top Media Channel in Vietnam [INFOGRAPHIC]

We have some interesting insights today about the Vietnam mobile market from mobile advertising network InMobi. The company says that the mobile advertising market in that country grew 121 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011, as the company saw its ad impressions rocket to six billion, more than double its total from the previous year. InMobi says that of the more than six billion ad impressions it served in Q4 2011, 5.6 billion were on feature phones [1], and only 0.4 billion were on smartphones. For those of us who live in more mature markets, it may come as somewhat of a surprise to find that Nokia (HEL:NOK1V; NYSE:NOK) is the dominant phone manufacturer in the market, one which is still dominated by feature phones. As you can see below, even though Nokia is the dominant handset maker by far, its market share is shrinking, while Samsung (005930:KS) and other Android phones appear to be on the rise, but Android still only accounts for 2.6 percent of the market overall. Vietnamese users also differ in their media consumption habits, as mobile is their preferred media channel (35 percent of their daily media time), over television (25 percent) and PC (18 percent), according to a survey conducted by InMobi [2]. The company’s regional director and general manger in Southeast Asia, Phalgun Raju, noted that an upswing in mobile online shopping can be expected in Vietnam as well:

Our survey found that three-quarters of mobile web users in Vietnam have been influenced by mobile advertising when making purchases… In addition, we also found that 77 percent of consumers expect to conduct mobile commerce in the next 12 months – a 36 percent increase from where we are today. Check out more details in infographic below, which nicely illustrates these important changes happening in Vietnam’s mobile sector.

1. Note that in the infographic above, InMobi (somewhat generously) refers to ‘feature phones’ as ‘advanced phones.’ I’m going to stick with what I think is the standard industry moniker, even though many feature phones can indeed sometimes be quite advanced.

2. InMobi says its sample size in Vietnam for this particular survey is 1,183 mobile web users. That’s not a whole lot, but still significant I think.