According to a recent report released by the Google-owned market research and advertising firm AdMob, smartphones accounted for almost 48 percent of AdMob's global traffic in February this year; thereby marking a 35 percent year-on-year increase.

The research, which studied smartphone users browsing AdMob's 15,000 sites, reveals some interesting trends pertaining to smartphone market leadership - with the iPhone boasting a 50 percent share of the operating system (OS) market for smartphone devices browsing the internet; and Android in the 'growing' second spot with nearly 24 percent market share.

As per the AdMob's survey, following iPhone OS and Android - the two leading smartphone operating systems in the AdMob network - during February - was Symbian with 18 percent market share; while RIM, incidentally, was trailing with around 4 percent share.

Google's Android was the fastest growing OS system in the AdMob network year-on-year - with its share of smartphone requests showing an increase to 24 percent this February, as against its 2 percent share during the same month last year. In terms of traffic, the five top-ranking Android devices round the world were - the Motorola Droid, HTC Dream, HTC Hero, HTC Magic, and the Motorola CLIQ.

Meanwhile, the feature phones' category underwent a year-on-year plunge from 58 percent to 35 percent of AdMob's total traffic during the month of February; indicating the increasing user inclination towards smartphones.