Smartphones on the rise in US, with iPhone leading charge

A quick glimpse of the latest statistics ad network Millennial Media would suggest the status quo is taking hold in the US mobile market, but the devil is definitely in the detail.

With smartphones now accounting for almost half of all mobile ad impressions across the States, the market as a whole is certainly tipping in its collective favour.

Getting to the front of this particular pack, therefore, is now crucial, with the firm's latest statistics – officially published by eMarketer – suggesting iPhone has a commanding 70 percent share of all smartphone ad impressions.

RIM's range of BlackBerry handsets – which many other analytics firms suggest actually has a controlling share of the US smartphone market – is in second according to Millennial, with 14 percent of the market.

But it's Android that consistently shows the fastest growth according to Millennial's findings, with ad requests rising 72 percent month over month.

That's a quicker rate of growth than both iPhone and Blackberry, whose requests rose by 20 percent and 25 percent respectively.

With 6 percent of the total market, Millennial says high customer satisfaction is what is fuelling Android's momentum, the lack of an exclusive carrier tie-in also aiding the OS to reach as many consumers as possible.

[source: eMarketer]