Apple earnings reflect US strength – but iPhone is bigger Down Under

With a little accounting magic, Apple earnings for the last quarter of 2009 were buoyed by strong iPhone sales. Everybody knows Americans love their iPhones. What's more surprising is that Aussies and Kiwis are crazy about them.

In the US, iPhones and iPods generate 68 percent of requests to web advertising provider AdMob, according to a December report. But Oceania, which includes Australia, New Zealand, and several islands in the Pacific, is where Apple is really seeing eye-popping growth.

At the beginning of 2009, Apple devices composed only 38 percent of the mobile Web market down under. By the end of the year, that number had more than doubled to 83 percent.

Make no mistake: The American market is still king, thumping the next highest mobile searching nation, India, with eight times as many ad requests in December. Owning 68 percent of the American market was worth almost twice as much as owning all of Oceania for the month, when measured in ad-request traffic.

Still, it suggests that the Apple iPhone has a lot of growth potential beyond US shores.

Where might Apple's next big push come from? Looking at AdMob's numbers, it might be Eastern Europe. That's where the iPhone pumped up its share of mobile devices from 14 percent to 23 percent in 2009, gradually eating in to market leader Nokia, which declined from 44 percent to 35 percent.