I love my Smartphone (an iPhone, in my case). I really do. More than I’ve ever loved any other inanimate object in my entire life. And I’m not alone. Comscore reported recently that there is now a 41% Smartphone penetration in the UK alone and we’re using our beloved gadgets and gizmos for way more than just making a few phone calls. We watch videos and TV, we send emails, we Tweet, Digg, StumbleUpon, we Facebook, we search for things, we read, browse, plan travel, book holidays, fling cartoon birds at cartoon pigs, check the football scores, learn languages, find discounts, listen to music, share music, create ”˜music’ (I love Songify), we take photos, share them, we record videos and upload them, we catch up on the news…

The list goes on. But what figures emerging show recently is that we’re also engaging in more mobile shopping. We’re buying products and services (not just app downloads or music) through mobile apps and mobile websites.

Being the gadget loving bunch of geeks we are, we’re regularly reading articles and pulling out the key statistics on the growth of mobile (as well as conducting our own research). Here are a few of our favourites from the past few months.

Mobile Apps

  • As of September 2011, there are more than 425,000 apps on the Apple App Store and there have been over 15 million downloads. (Source: Apple)
  • As of September 2011, there are more than 277,000 apps on the Android Marketplace and there have been over 6 billion downloads. (Source: Research2Guidance)
  • Mobile users spend 81 minutes a day using apps – surpassing the 74 minutes spent per day on web (As read on Guardian.co.uk).

Mobile Commerce

  • 1 in 3 Smartphone users would use contactless payments via their Smartphone if they had the opportunity. (Source: Yougov)
  • The average value of a transaction carried out on a mobile device has increased by a whopping 43% in the last 12 months. (Source: IAB)
  • Smartphone users prefer to make purchases via a mobile website than an app and the average transaction value is higher on a mobile site than in an app.  (Source: IAB)
  • Paypal processes $10 million per day in mobile transactions. (Source: Official Paypal Blog).
  • 78% of potential car buyers say they will use their mobile device for both researching and making their purchase. (Read on: GoMoNews)
  • There is one purchase every single second through Ebay’s mobile apps. (Source: Mobile Commerce Daily)
  • Ebay generated $2 billion worth of sales through mobile devices in 2010. (Source: Mobile Commerce Daily)

Mobile and Social Media

  • There are more than 250 million active Facebook users accessing the social media platform from their mobiles. (Source: Facebook)
  • Users who access Facebook through their mobile devices are twice as active on Facebook as those who do not. (Source: Facebook)
  • 40% of Tweets come from Mobile. (Read on Mashable)
  • 10% of all Youtube video views are mobile – that amounts to 320 million daily views. (Source: Youtube).