Mobile ad network AdMob is celebrating the two year anniversary of its Metrics Report with an edition that looks at the growth of its network from September 2007 to September 2009, and compares the Top 20 handsets in the UK and US over the same time period.
The report highlights the rapid growth in usage of mobile websites and applications on new devices in the past year. In September 2008, the Motorola RAZR was the top device in the US, and the iPhone was the only touchscreen device in the top 10. In September 2009, the list of the top 10 devices includes five with touch screens, six with wi-fi capabilities, and six with application stores preloaded. These devices are responsible for a much higher percentage of mobile usage than their share of handsets sold. Feature phones like the Samsung R450 and Motorola RAZR V3, however, still represent 60% of ad requests in the US. AdMob says that the strong mobile web usage on these feature phones is most likely driven by unlimited data plans.

Highlights from the September 2009 AdMob Mobile Metrics Report include:

• The number of monthly ad requests in the AdMob network increased by a factor of 6.3 over the past two years, from 1.6 billion in September 2007 to 10.2 billion in September 2009. This growth was widely distributed, with 64 countries sending more than 10 million requests in September 2009, compared to only 16 countries in September 2007.
• In September 2007, AdMob had 1.6 billion ad requests; in September 2008 5.1 billion; and in September 2009 10.2 billion.
• Nearly every region of the world experienced immense growth in the past two years, with North America, Asia, Western Europe, Oceania and Latin America seeing a six-fold increase in traffic since September 2007.
• Worldwide iPhone and iPod touch traffic in the AdMob network increased 19 times from September 2008 to September 2009.
• In September 2009, 42% of requests in the US were made from wi-fi-capable devices. 18% of actual US requests were made over a wi-fi connection in September 2009, compared to only 5% in September 2008.
• Devices running on the Android Operating System (OS) accounted for 17% of Smartphone traffic in AdMobs network in the US in September 2009, up from 13% in August 2009.

The data is based on usage of handsets, including Smartphone devices, during September 2009 in AdMobs network of more than 15,000 mobile websites and 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. Additional details and regional data are available in the full September 2009 report. 
You can access the full report here.