Conventional wisdom is that Apple's (AAPL) iPhone users are a gadget-loving, tech-savvy and well-off bunch. In fact, results from a quantitative study of US 2G iPhone US users conducted by Rubicon in March 2008 revealed that the former have a median annual household income of $67,000 which is roughly 40% greater than the US median. So when comScore reported that the fastest growth in 3G iPhone sales in the US over the summer months came from households that earn less than the median income, it got my attention.

As the attached table shows, ownership of the 3G iPhone rose 48% from June 1 to the end of August among households earning between $25,000 and $50,000 a year, compared to 21% overall. Mobile-browser use grew 4.9% among lower-income consumers, versus 2.7% overall, and their mobile music-listening rose 4.7%, compared to an overall decline of 0.3%. In fact, the income segment that shows the next highest growth (46%) in ownership is the $50,000 to $75,000 income category - a segment that is not too far off from the median income.

The relative success of Asus Eee PC has created a new product category - netbooks, also called Mobile Internet Devices ((MID)) or Ultra-Low Cost PCs (ULPCs). Never to shy away from new product hype, ABI research has promptly come out with a forecast calling for over 200 million of these little fellas by 2013.

A quick note - this is the same size as today’s worldwide laptop market! The report probably assumes (like Michael Dell does) that mobile operators will play a significant role in pushing these babies out, bundled along with their 3G data plans - with subsidies to boot. This model is no different from the one where the operator subsidises expensive phones to sell a voice plan. 

Back in September, I reported that according to AdMob, a mobile advertising marketplace, Apple's (AAPL) iPhone seemed to trail Symbian, Windows Mobile (MSFT), BlackBerry (RIMM) and Palm (PALM) handsets in both worldwide and US share of smartphone traffic. This was in direct contrast to other web browsing marketshare statistics where iPhone seemingly comes out on top. I also received hate-mail from iPhone-junkies. But looks like there is an explanation. Jason Spero, VP of Marketing at AdMob, proffers an explanation:

With regards to the iPhone question: we serve ads on our partner’s mobile sites, so when the users surf the “regular” web on the iPhone that traffic isn’t included in the Metrics report. Much of the tremendous growth we are seeing in iPhone requests are coming from the creation of iPhone specific mobile sites. This traffic is included in the report and these sites represent a growing part of AdMob’s business. As content owners look to improve the mobile experience, we believe more and more mobile specific sites will be created and the mobile web will continue its strong growth in the face of more handsets having the ability to surf the “regular” web.

AdMob, a mobile advertising marketplace, releases what they call a Mobile Metrics Report every month. Since they serve ads for more than 5,000 mobile websites around the world, they claim they are capable of storing and analyzing the data from every ad request, impression, and click. For every ad request, AdMob determines device capabilities using information available in the user’s mobile browser. They claim that over 5 million ad requests and impressions flow through their network every month. The reports reveal some interesting data regarding worldwide share of smartphone traffic.

Contrary to popular opinion (and even here in this blog), Apple's (AAPL) iPhone is nowhere close to holding the top spot in this list. Nokia’s (NOK) Symbian OS takes that honor on a worldwide basis, while out here in the States, RIM’s (RIMM) BlackBerry browser takes the top spot. In fact, as the accompanying charts show, while Symbian’s (driven primarily by Nokia’s N-Series handsets) market share has been steadily growing from 44% to 64% on a worldwide basis in the past six months; iPhone’s share has been hovering around in the 4%-6% category.

Several surveys have revealed that Apple's (AAPL) iPhone users spend a lot of time surfing the Internet. Late last year, when Net Applications came out with its quarterly browser market share report, people immediately latched on to the fact that the iPhone, which at that time was in the market for a full 5 months, had a browser market share that was 33% greater than that of Windows Mobile (MSFT) devices.

This was obviously an amazing statistic at that point in time - in under two quarters, Apple’s handheld platform had passed Microsoft’s over a decade-old mobile platform in terms of browser use. The amazement was further amplified when you consider that iPhone was selling in only one geography (AT&T (T)) while over 20 million Windows Mobile platforms were in circulation. It’s not just just Windows Mobile that was getting killed by iPhone. S60/Symbian - the browser in Nokia’s N-Series platforms among others? About 1/10th.