Being only slightly tech-obsessed (though our wives might agree to differ), we haven’t paid too much attention so far to Google’s Android mobile phone offering. To be honest, we hadn’t even felt compelled to invest in the ubiquitous iPhone. Our excuse: a stated preference for style over substance. Actually, we probably weren’t cool enough.

Anyway now, courtesy AdMob, we’ve come across some fascinating/frightening statistics that suggest:

1. Android is becoming a serious contender
2. Smartphones are taking off faster than earlier data had led us to believe
3. Mobile apps are ‘the next big thing’ on the very small screen

First, take a look at this chart, comparing mobile data usage worldwide for the various operating systems.

Clearly Android has a long way to go to pick off Apple — but look at the tripling in Android’s worldwide operating system usage in just six months.

Secondly, some mobile application download numbers from a month earlier:

AdMob surveyed over 1,000 iPhone, iPod touch and Android users to find out more about their interaction and download behavior with apps.  Some highlights:

• Android and iPhone users download approximately 10 new apps a month, while iPod touch owners download an average of 18 per month
• More than 90 percent of Android and iPhone OS users browse and search for apps directly on their mobile device instead of their computer
• Upgrading from the lite version was the top reason given when users were asked what drives them to purchase a paid app
• iPhone and iPod touch users are twice as likely to purchase paid apps than Android users.
• Users who regularly download paid apps spend approximately $9 on an average of five paid downloads per month

In a separate post at BrandRepublic, AdMob’s Russell Buckley notes that:

We serve about 10 billion ads every month to mobile web publishers and app developers globally. This means that we can’t measure market share, but we can track handsets that are used more than they should be, to view mobile web pages and download and use apps.  We noticed very early on that iPhone was getting a disproportionate amount of share when measured like this and history is being repeated with Android.

What’s also great for mobile advertisers is that Android and iPhone both offer much more creative advertising formats and that their ease of use generally mean more interaction and higher click-through-rates. Consumers are engaging with marketers via the mobile channel in very large numbers and that trend is going to speed up with more Android handsets in the market.

Even allowing for the fact that Russell is in the mobile marketing business, the enthusiasm is contagious.

Which leads us to ask the question: how prepared are you for mobile marketing? [Forecaster/analyst Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley has already outed the Mobile Internet as one of The Big Trends of the next twelve months!]

Tags: admob, Google, iPhone, mobile apps, mobile data, mobile device, mobile web, operating system, smartphones