The Western Europe mobile advertising market will be worth €929.5 million by 2015, up from €88 million in 2010, mobile research agency mobileSQUARED predicts.
Figures released by the firm’s Knowledge Center on Wednesday show the UK will lead the way in terms of mobile ad revenues by 2015, generating €300 million of the total by that date compared to the €230.9 million of second-placed Italy, as subscriber numbers hit 85.6 million and 101 million respectively.
However, Western Europe as a whole will continue to lag behind Asia in terms of mobile ad revenues during 2010, the firm says noting that Japan alone generates around $1 billion (€732 million) per annum.
“This latest data confirms the slow start made by the European mobile advertising market,” the firm states, adding that its research shows “the transference of budget from other media is taking considerably longer than expected.”
Despite the sluggish start, the mobileSQUARED Knowledge Center predicts that income from banner adverts will reach €243.5 million by 2015, up from €37.9 million in 2010.
Mobile search is also tipped for strong growth – climbing from €30.3 million in 2010 to €480.8 million by 2015.
Surprisingly, the firm’s figures show feature phones will remain the key device by 2015, with 223.4 million users compared to 191.6 million smartphone owners.
However, Apple’s stranglehold over the smartphone market will be shattered by Android devices over the next five years, with the number of subscribers using Android smartphones set to grow from 3.8 million this year to 65.7 million in 2015 – some 39.3 million higher than total iPhone users by that date.
The change will happen as iPhone subscriber growth in Western Europe slows to around one million new users per year over the next five years, the figures show.
Total subscribers in the five countries will hit 429.6 million by 2015, of which 238.3 million will be 3G subscribers, the firm said.