Kudos to the people at AdMob for releasing their latest report, which compares the usage of mobile Web sites and the usage of HTML sites accessed from smartphones.  The report has a number of interesting nuggets especially when you consider the breadth of their data.

While Apple has secured at least eight percent of the smartphone market, they have taken over mobile web usage by generating 43 percent of mobile Web requests and 65 percent of HTML usage globally.

When you compare this to the Symbian operating platform (think mostly Nokia), which has 52 percent market share of smartphone sales, yet only generates 36 percent of mobile Web requests – it illustrates how impressive Apple’s growth in the smartphone market has been over the last two years. Google’s Android platform is also mentioned in the report but it appears it may be sometime before its impact is felt in the industry.

When AdMob broke down the advert requests by country and region, it showed that North America generated 49 percent of all requests yet Asia generated nearly 30 percent – with Indonesia, India and the Philippines generating the bulk of those requests.  Western Europe trails behind at 8.6 percent.

With smartphones only contributing 12 percent of all mobile phone sales globally in 2008, it’s not hard to see that there is a huge amount of growth to be gained in users, applications and revenue.

While the AdMob data mostly covers only their customers, it does indicate trends in the market place. Looking at these trends bodes well for the smartphone market and their applications – the future looks bright I just may have to wear shades.