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The iPhone and Android ecosystems are growing rapidly, with Gartner estimating the two platforms combined to sell 25% of smartphones worldwide in Q1.  At their developer conference last week, Google stated they are activating 100,000 Android devices a day.   Apple has sold an amazing 85 million iPhones and iPod touches over the past three years.

Despite these figures, it is difficult to determine the number of active devices in various markets.  Devices shipped can be very different from the installed user base on a platform.  For example, Apple does not break out how many of the 85 million iPhone OS units are no longer in use, what the overlap is between iPhone and iPod touch users, or the geographic distribution of the devices.

In the April Mobile Metrics report we take a look at unique Android and iPhone devices in our network.  The numbers represent the unique devices that requested at least one ad from the AdMob network in April 2010.  Please note these are not market estimates, rather data from our network that could be used to inform relative comparisons between the platforms.

The chart below compares unique Android and iPhone devices for the US and worldwide.  In the US, there were 10.7 million iPhone devices compared to 8.7 million Android devices.  If you include the iPod touch, the gap between platforms increases to 2 to 1 in the US.

Internationally, the iPhone platform has significantly more unique devices than Android in the AdMob network.  The ratio of iPhone OS devices to Android devices was 3.5 to 1.  The report breaks out the geographic distribution of the devices in more detail; 75% of Android devices are in the North America, compared to 49% of iPhone OS devices.

Keep in mind that these unique device numbers are from the AdMob network only and reflect the adoption of our products and business operations.  We don’t know what percentage of the total universe of iPhone and Android devices AdMob reaches.  However we believe the data is useful on a relative basis given the large sample size of devices in our network.