It is easy to forget that it wasn’t just the launch of the iPhone that brought upon Apple’s success in mobile.  Over the last two years, they made major strides which have fueled their success, including the development of the App Store, new hardware with the 3G and 3GS, evolution of the operating system, and their worldwide expansion.  In the same time frame the iPod touch rapidly transitioned from a music player to an Internet and application device.

Accordingly, the iPhone and iPod touch have fueled much of AdMob’s growth as a mobile advertising network over the past two years.   While traffic expanded over the first several months of 2008, it wasn’t until the launch of the App Store and the development of mobile specific Web sites that our growth rapidly accelerated.  Below is an annotated chart that shows the growth of traffic in the AdMob network as it compares to major milestones in the development of the Apple ecosystem.

In December 2009, 36% of worldwide ad requests came from the iPhone and iPod touch, with the majority of them coming from apps.  For more information on the Apple trends we see throughout our network, visit previous posts on our Metrics blog including operating system share by region, the impact of holiday sales on the iPod touch, international expansion throughout 2009, and our consumer survey on app download behavior.

While tomorrow’s rumored announcement of a new product/device from Apple is exciting, we think it’s going to be interesting to watch the development of a new ecosystem over the next several years.  We are excited to be along for the ride.