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The mobile web is looking a bit smarter lately. AdMob, a mobile ad platform we’ve covered before, put out its metrics for August, and it’s clear that smartphones are quickly becoming mainstream. Drawing on data from the over 5,000 mobile websites the company serves, the numbers point towards smartphones both in the US and worldwide continuing to become more prevalent, but with very different manufacturers dominating internationally versus domestically.

Within the US, smartphones accounted for 23.7 percent of mobile web traffic, up by 3.4 percent from May. While Apple’s iPhone has, unsurprisingly, seen dramatic growth from in the past month, jumping from 5.2 to 7.8 percent of total smartphone traffic, RIM still dominates the market, with 31.2 percent. Still, the iPhone is the fastest growing smartphone within in the US.

Worldwide, smartphones were the source of 25.8 percent of traffic, rising 3.4 percent since May 2008. Outside the US it’s a completely different market, with Nokia absolutely dominating. In every market AdMob studied, Nokia handsets were used for at least 50 percent of total smartphone requests. In total, Nokia has 62 percent of total worldwide traffic — and this is without having a single phone in the top twenty within the US. This is largely because Nokia has had trouble working with US carriers, and chosen instead to focus its efforts on international markets.

With the upcoming debut of Google’s Android, the roll-out of RIM’s Blackberry Bold, and Nokia launching its N96, as well as the continuing consumer fascination with all things iPhone, smartphones will continue to grow in market share.

Still, there’s a significant uphill before smartphones are even close to ubiquitous. The top handset model both worldwide in the US? Motorola’s once chic, now antique RAZR.

Updated

An analyst firm, J. Gold Associates, is speculating that Google’s mobile operating system, Android, and Nokia’s mobile operating system, Symbian, will merge in three to six months. The thinking goes that the move would free Google up to focus on compelling and potentially profitable mobile applications, prove that Symbian is more than a Nokia publicity ploy, reduce the number of platforms that developers would need to build for, and promote a standard user interface across phones.

The stakes are growing in the mobile arena. Other analysts expect the mobile web advertising market to more than double each year over the next several years. Application developers seeking to exploit the opportunity are busy exploring what operating system to write to.

Symbian representatives have said they’d be “happy” to work with Google on mobile initiatives, although it’s not clear what that specifically means.

Update from Google: “Google doesn’t comment on market rumors or speculations.”

Meanwhile, Android has yet to launch, and some once-excited third-party developers are losing enthusiasm. Symbian has been live since 1998; more than 200 million Symbian devices have been sold in total, 77 million of which were sold last year. Android is built using Linux. The two systems have very different application programming interfaces. The list of potential roadblocks goes on.

Sure, Nokia bought what ownership it didn’t already have in Symbian, and just announced that it would be open-source. But that seemed like a move to counter Android, and other rivals, like Apple’s iPhone software developer kit.

But that’s the thing. Nokia’s own efforts to open-source Symbian through a nonprofit foundation are also still incomplete. From Ars Technica:

[Symbian vice president of strategy John M. Forsyth] admits that the Symbian foundation doesn’t entirely know what it is doing yet and says that they are looking to the community for advice on how to proceed. The lack of details, he says, is not a consequence of secrecy but instead reflects the fact that planning is still in an early stage. “We are not hiding anything when we talk about the plan for Symbian,” he said. “It is pretty much as it looks.”

Forsyth was also quoted as saying that the culture of Symbian developers is “intractably bound to its proprietary roots” and needs to be fundamentally redefined around open source practices.

In sum, this is an interesting idea but without further explanation about how this merger would work in practice, we’re not holding our breath.

[Image via handcellphone]

Can someone build a GPS system that’s not a boring necessity and instead is a fun way to socialize with your friends? That’s what Planet 9 Studios, a San Francisco startup, wants to accomplish with RayGun, a GPS navigation and social networking application. It is already available in 2D and is about to launch a 3D version.

With RayGun, you can create an avatar to represent yourself, and move around in the application. You can also share routes, text chat, share photos and video, and even talk to each your friends over VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol).

By combining these social networking features with GPS, the company calls RayGun the first social navigation application. The application runs on cell phones, personal navigation devices, in-car navigation systems, and PCs. There’s also a 2D version that runs on Google Earth and on Google Maps. RayGun runs in 3D on Windows Mobile, Symbian and Linux based phones. Support for more platforms is coming, says Planet 9 chief executive David J. Colleen.

With RayGun, Planet 9 Studios is entering the growing market for location-based mobile services. There are plenty of competing mobile navigation systems: Besides first generation navigation systems such as TomTom and  Magellan, Web 2.0 navigation systems, like Dash, are entering the market. In addition, Nokia is developing it’s own navigation system based on image recognition.

RayGun’s strength is the quality of its 3D graphics, which turns navigation into an almost game-like experience. But 3D graphics can be also a weakness: Do users want advanced graphics on the small screen of cellphone or other navigating device?

The big question for Raygun is whether social networking features are a useful addition to a navigation system. When you’re using GPS, you’re often in a rush, so I’m not sure how often you’ll have time to send extra messages. And if you want to socialize with your cell phone, you can already do it with companies like Loopt, a social mapping service where users can share locations with their friends.

Planet 9 Studios won’t be selling directly to consumers; instead it’s negotiating with mobile phone suppliers and network carriers about delivering RayGun in their products, Colleen says. Colleen adds that RayGun will have the only server, GeoFeeder, that can stream 3D data to cellphones; although that’s only needed with less advanced cell phones that don’t have enough storage for rich 3D-data.

So far, RayGun has been available in testing mode, and it’s used by the U.S. Army, Boeing, AT&T and Sprint in tracking people in emergency situations. Last month, Planet 9 Studios was named as a finalist in TeleAtlas LBS Innovators Series Event, and was picked by Dow Jones to the top 10 startups developing wireless products.

Founded in 1991, Planet 9 Studios is already well-known as a supplier of high-quality 3D city models and data which are used in games, movies, GPS devices and cell phones. For example, Planet 9 data is used in Magellan’s Maestro Elite 5340-navigation system, and its models were used as backdrops for the movie Zodiac.

In the 1990’s Planet 9 Studios had clients such as Microsoft and Apple, but the company lost its big customers after the dot-com bubble burst and had a low profile for a while. Now it’s trying to make a comeback by bringing 3D products to mobile platforms. So far the company has been privately funded but now it wants to raise $8 million within the second quarter of 2008.

Nokia, the world’s biggest mobile phone supplier, is developing a new kind of navigation instruction system for mobile phones. With landmark-based navigation you won’t even need to know your address or cross streets to get directions. You just take a picture of a nearby landmark, like the Golden Gate Bridge, with the camera in your mobile phone. Then, Nokia will match your photo with other landmark photos in its mapping database, and tell you where you are. Instructions to your destination are given by red arrows added to pictures, text or voice.

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