The fourth quarter metrics reports are in and some found Android devices are hot on the iPhone?s tail, but Apple?s juggernaut is heating up as well.

AdMob?s December Mobile Metrics Report found that in the fourth quarter of 2009, Apple lead with 40 percent of ad requests in North America, followed by Samsung with 17 percent and Motorola with 11 percent. Although the iPhone generated more than 50 percent of smartphone requests in the last quarter of 2009, the Android gained ground.

?Android traffic in the AdMob network has grown dramatically over the last year in North America and Western Europe,? Mike Fyall, manager of product marketing at AdMob, San Mateo, CA. ?In the fourth quarter of 2008, traffic from Android devices represented only 1 percent of overall smartphone traffic, compared to 16 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009.?

According to AdMob, Apple and the iPhone operating system is tops in Western Europe, North America, Latin America and Australasia while Nokia and the Symbian operating system leads in Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe.

Nokia lead in Asia by a margin of 53 percent of requests in the fourth quarter of 2009.

After launching in several countries in Asia in 2009, the iPhone had a strong fourth quarter and doubled its share of smartphone requests to 27 percent.

?Although smartphones represented only 14 percent of mobile devices shipped in 2009, smartphones generated 39 percent of worldwide traffic on the AdMob network in 2009,? Mr. Fyall said.

Millennial Media, Quattro Wireless top ad networks in December: Smaato
Smaato Inc. published its first Mobile Advertising Metrics report and found that Quattro Wireless and Millennial Media are the top-performing mobile ad networks in the United States, performing equally with 83 percent fill rates for mobile publishers in the Smaato Network.

According to Smaato, Symbian phones had the highest click-through rate at 161 compared to the averaged Index of 100. Apple?s iPhone and iPod touch was second at 119, but was the most dominant platform for mobile applications.

?The Smaato metrics show trends regarding ad network fill rates and handset click-through rate,? said Harald Neidhardt, cofounder/chief marketing officer at Smaato, Hamburg, Germany. ?Significance can be seen when comparing performance rates by operation system that not all smartphone operating systems are created equal.

?Android has the most catch up to do compared to the recent hype around new handsets and hidden champions are the less looked at 'old timers' like Symbian when it comes to mobile advertising return,? he said.

The metrics are based on 3 billion ad requests in the Smaato Network in December 2009.

Smaato said the findings indicated a very strong holiday season for mobile marketing.

?We expect 2010 to perform mostly better in volume and price ROI for mobile publishers if they engage ad optimization platforms and more transparency for the mobile marketing industry,? Mr. Neidhardt said.

Apple continues to dominate: Millennial
Apple received an average of 24 percent of Millennial Media?s network impression share in the fourth quarter of 2009 and the iPhone operating system was the leading smartphone with 41 percent of U.S. impressions.

Samsung represented approximately 23 percent of Milliennal?s network impression share and touch screen devices represented approximately 46 percent of impressions. Research In Motion?s operating system held a 27 percent average in the fourth quarter of U.S. smartphone impressions.

?Every month, there are trends that catch our eye,? said Erin ?Mack? McKelvey, senior vice president of marketing at Millennial Media, Baltimore. ?In December, it was the increased user session times and page views.?

Wi-Fi carriers dominated Millennial?s carrier mix in December and represented 22.56 percent of the network?s impressions.

U.S. smartphone impressions averaged 38 percent of the company?s network in the fourth quarter.

Consumer behavior trends in December reflected the use of mobile as part of the holiday shopping research and purchase process.

Millennial found that average monthly page views per user increased to 125 in December from 113 in November. The average user session time increased in December from five minutes and two seconds to five minutes and nine seconds.

?Brands were increasingly leveraging mobile?s unique and immediate ability to drive purchase or subscription,? Ms. McKelvey said. ?This shouldn?t be surprising, as brands are realizing that the mobile triple play of location, relevancy and immediacy provides them an incomparable channel in their media plan.?

Facebook most visited mobile social network: Opera
According to Opera?s State of the Mobile Web report, Facebook grew more than 600 percent during 2009, surpassing VKontakte to become the social network of choice for Opera Mini users.

Twitter surged more than 2800 percent in a year, making it the fastest growing social network on Opera Mini. The social network growth on Opera Mini was surprising to Opera.

?Facebook certainly carried over the momentum we've seen in our regional reports,? said Thomas Ford, senior communications manager at Opera, Oslo, Norway.

?Twitter's growth was surprising,? he said. ?It came out of nowhere in 2008 to be the third-most visited social network on the mobile Web ? a very impressive performance.?

Overall, mobile Web usage was up in December 2009, more than 46.3 million people used Opera Mini, an 11 percent increase from November 2009.

Consumers using Opera viewed more than 20.7 billion pages in December 2009.

Since December 2008, page views increased by 223 percent.

?We believe that the mobile Web will surpass the wired Web in user count in a few years, and already you can see the potential for the mobile Web: 60 percent of the world's population has a mobile phone, but only approximately 25 percent have a PC,? Mr. Ford said.