Smartphone trend report shows continuing growth

The latest metrics data* from advertising firm AdMob provides an interesting snapshot of the continuing rise of smartphone usage in the global marketplace. Smartphones now account for more than a quarter (25.8%) of worldwide traffic according to the company's August figures with the Nokia N70 leading the pack with an 11.7% share. In the US, the BlackBerry 8100 is the weapon of choice garnering 14.7% of traffic but the big mover - somewhat unsurprisingly, is Apple's iPhone, which the report found to be the fastest growing device in the world last month putting it into fourth spot in the US where its traffic doubled (7.8%) and ninth globally ( 3.8%).

Nokia is still the major player globally, representing 62.4 percent of worldwide smartphone traffic in August and having the top four ranked handsets (N70, N95, N73 and N80) and 13 of the top 20. The interesting flip-side is that Nokia does not have a top 20 ranked smartphone in the US - a market lead by RIM (Blackberry), which attracted 31.2% of traffic followed by Palm (18.7%).

Apple sits at fifth on both the worldwide and US rankings while RIM, Palm and HTC are also in the top five manufacturers for both. In the US, Samsung is ranked fourth and Nokia does not rank in the top five.

The top five US devices – the BlackBerry Pearl, Palm Centro, BlackBerry Curve, Apple iPhone, and Samsung Instinct – generated 54.1% of US smartphone traffic in August. In terms of overall US traffic, AdMob report that smartphones now account for 23.7 percent of traffic, an increase of 3.5% since May.

And the growth is not likely to slow down according to AdMob: "The anticipated launch of new smartphones in the coming months, including the first of Google’s Android phones, the RIM Bold, and the Nokia N96, is a strong indication that this growth is likely to continue throughout the year."

The full report is available here.

* Note on data (from AdMob report): For every ad request AdMob analyzes information available in the user’s mobile browser. From this, AdMob determines device capabilities and more using open source tools and a variety of proprietary techniques. The result is a snapshot of the devices viewing the more than 5 billion monthly ad requests and impressions that flow through AdMob’s network.