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Alibaba’s slice of the mobile ad market to rise this year

Despite its declining hold on the global digital ad marketplace as a whole, smaller screen marketing is up.

Online commerce giant, Alibaba Group Holding Inc., may find its global mobile ad market share climbing higher this year. This, despite the fact that the company’s grip on the digital advertising space is starting to slide.

eMarketer’s data shows the Chinese ecommerce giant will have a smaller portion of global digital ad spend.

The research firm’s prediction is that the digital ad spend drop will be around 0.9 percent to 4.6 percent in 2016 compared to the figures from 2015. That said, the mobile ad market share will be climbing at the same time. That increase will be significant, as its share will rise to 10.9 percent. Last year, that figure had been 8.7 percent.

Mobile Ad Market on the RiseIn the Chinese market, Alibaba will continue to be the leading player in both those markets. The massive company will hold onto 39.7 percent of the tremendous $27.9 billion Chinese market for mobile advertising. Furthermore, it will boost its share of digital ad spend to 28.9 percent. That is an increase of nearly 4 percent compared to 2015.

The strength in the mobile ad market share growth is due to the company’s customer retention strategy.

Andria Chen, an eMarketer analyst, explained that the company’s strategy to hold consumers within its entertainment and online ecosystem explain its mobile ad success. The company has been acquiring several different companies within those spaces.

For instance, Alibaba purchased the Youku Tudou video streaming platform in 2016. According to eMarketer, that particular purchase may “aid sales growth” for Alibaba during this quarter. It may also help the company to assemble more complete user profiles.

Furthermore, the ecommerce giant has also made investments in a number of other areas supporting growth. For example, it has raised capital for an affiliate platform for local services called Koubei. The funds came from international investors. Equally, it invested more in building out logistics operations within locations such as villages and towns that are not yet easily accessible. It’s easy to see that the company is seeking to amp up its share in more than just the mobile ad market.

32GB iPhone 7 proves to be much slower than pricier models

Testing has shown that the least expensive version also comes with a considerably slower performance.

Recent tests on the 32GB iPhone 7 are showing that the price you pay for a smartphone can make a difference to performance. The testing by both Unbox Therapy and GSMArena have revealed very similar results.

The 32GB version of the Apple smartphone is considerably slower than its more expensive counterparts.

The two companies both independently found that the 32GB iPhone 7 is much slower than the 128GB and 256GB versions. Furthermore, the 32GB model’s 4G reception is also notably poorer. The testing showed that the speed of the storage within the least expensive iPhone 7 model was a sizeable 200Mbps slower than the more expensive 128GB version.

32GB iPhone 7 - Image of iPhone 7The read speed of the two mobile devices was measured at 656Mbps for the 32GB and 856Mbps for the 128GB. That said, it was also pointed out that in terms of day to day usage, any fluctuation in read speed higher than 600Mbps is unlikely to be detected by the user.

What may be noticed by 32GB iPhone 7 users is a difference in writing to the storage.

The write speed was significantly slower on the cheaper model. While the more expensive 128GB iPhone write to memory at 341Mbps, there was an eight times slower write rate on the 32GB model. Its write to memory speed was measured at only 42Mbps in the Unbox Therapy tests.

This was only underscored by the GSMArena tests. The iPhone 7 Plus version write rate was nearly identical. The 32GB smartphone registered a write to memory speed of 39.6Mbps. The 128GB iPhone 7, on the other hand, wrote to memory at 308Mbps.

Other testing of the various Plus versions have shown that there are differences among them in their cellular performance. Cellular Insights, a firm based in New York, tested the networking equipment of the devices. What it found was that models A1778 and A1784 – which were sold in the UK and Europe – achieved considerably poorer performance than the A1660 and A1661 models sold in the United States.

These tests show that it’s not just the 32GB iPhone 7 that differs from the other models. Smartphone performance also depends on where you purchase your device.