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Mar. 25, 2009

Last week, Mobile advertising company AdMob published its 2009 Mobile Metrics Survey for the first quarter.

Ad-Mob's research reveals that even during a tough recession as we're facing now, on average, smartphones have continued to gain market share over the past six months.

Global sales of smartphones grew from 26.2 percent to 33.4 percent in February alone.

The survey notes that the launch of the HTC Dream (G1) and BlackBerry Storm also help push The Android and Research In Motion's operating system sales in the U.S.

The report bases operating system growth on mobile Internet usage, not the number of handsets sold, and demonstrates the high consumer engagement with touchscreen devices.

The BlackBerry Storm saw a modest increase in requests. Overall demand for the Storm rose from 5 percent in mid December to 8 percent in the most recent 2009 report.

RIM's BlackBerry Curve led the company's device requests last month, taking over the top spot from the previous frontrunner, the BlackbBerry Pearl. A little over 43.9 percent of RIM requests were for the Blackberry Curve.

A previously published Ad-Mob survey from December 2008 demonstrated that Apple's iPhone operating system held a controlling thirty-three percent market share in the U.S.

However, in the past 2 months, that share has increased to over 49.8 percent, with RIM following at a distant second with over 20.9 percent.

In the most recent AdMob report, globally, the top 5 smartphones are:

Apple's iPhone

The Nokia N-70

The BlackBerry 8300

The Nokia N-80

The Nokia N-73

By far, the top 5 smartphones in the U.S. are now the iPhone, the BlackBerry Curve, the BlackBerry Pearl, the Palm Centro and the HTC Dream (G1) smartphone.

Wireless industry analysts have been trying to understand the effects the current global recession is now having on mobile users' phone habits.

While a recent NMRC market study showed that wireless users are indeed cutting back on extras and switching to prepaid services, the most recent Ad-Mob numbers seem counter-intuitive, with mobile consumers opting for more expensive cell phones that can handle equally expensive extras.

Seven months ago, the top four smartphones sold globally were almost all held by Nokia, with the N-70, the N-95, the N-73 and the N-80.

The BlackBerry Pearl took the fifth spot, however.

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    This article was featured on Business 5.0 and on Tech Blog.

Source: Ad-Mob.