New Mobile Platforms Drive Smartphone Growth Worldwide

­While Symbian devices such as the Nokia N70 and N95 continue to be popular handsets, analysis from mobile advertisign agency, AdMob finds that the iPhone OS, Android and webOS have gained marketshare over competing platforms in the last six months.

In particular, Android has shown strong momentum, with increasing usage of the HTC Dream (G1) and HTC Magic (myTouch) devices in the US and Europe.

Their monthly traffic report also noted that the worldwide iPhone OS marketshare has increased from 33 to 40 percent in the last 6 months, with substantial share in all regions except for Asia and Africa. Android is however growing rapidly in North America and Western Europe. The HTC Magic (my Touch) is a Top 10 smartphone in both North America and Western Europe.

Although its marketshare has been declining, Nokia continues to hold 12 of the top 20 smartphones devices in AdMob's network.

The iPhone represented 50 percent of US smartphone usage in AdMob's network in August 2009, followed by RIM and Android devices at 14 and 13 percent, respectively. Palm Pre also had a strong month, due to the addition of new publishers to the AdMob network, and captured 9 percent of US smartphone usage.

Nokia's N97 and 5800 XpressMusic touchscreen devices were the fourth and fifth most popular smartphones in Western Europe.

This data is based on usage of handsets and smartphone devices during the month of August in AdMob's network of more than 9,000 mobile sites and 3,000 applications. AdMob market share is calculated by the percentage of requests received from a particular handset; it is a measure of relative mobile Web and application usage and does not represent handset sales.

Posted to the site on 30th September 2009