AdMob has released new data offering mutiple insights into the mobile ads market, not least the really rather curious statistic that nearly 30 per cent of first-gen iPhones are still in use.

Three devices – the iPhone 3GS (39 percent), second generation iPod touch (25 percent) and iPhone 3G (20 percent) – generated 84 percent of total iPhone OS traffic.

iPhone 3GS traffic share has increased from 30 percent in September 2009 to 39 percent in March 2010. The 1st Generation iPhone only generated 2 percent of iPhone OS requests in March 2010.

The two most recent versions of the iPhone OS generate 86% of the traffic.  In March 2010, 44% of iPhone OS traffic came from devices running iPhone OS 3.1.3 and 42% from iPhone OS 3.1.2. 

AdMob says 2% of its traffic is coming from those old iPhones, which Philip Elmer-DeWitt over at Apple 2.0 estimates Apple sold about 6.1 million units of across the product’s life span.

DeWitt estimates that 7% of the pre-iPad devices running iPhone OS must be v.1 iPhones in his attempt to deduce first gen iPhones in the wild.
Also of interest: Apple’s iPhone accounted for 46 percent of operating system share worldwide, according to AdMob, while it accounted for 47 per cent of device market share, the report also claims. It accounts for 70 per cent of UK operating system share.