For years now, forecasts have pointed towards a portable, mobile future. And now, hand-held mobile web and geo-location are being touted as the next steps in the evolution of social media. These predictions have been shouted from the rooftops and proven, for the most part, to be true. As technology gets faster and more efficient, our phones are becoming smarter and more important to our social lives.

But if the mobile web and app explosion is really all it’s cracked up to be, how come so few of us have smartphones? Global adoption rates have been steadily (sometimes exponentially) increasing over the past several years, but the overall penetration is still relatively low.

A chart illustrating steadily rising worldwide smartphone penetration from 2008 to 2009.

We looked at some recent North American and European smartphone adoption stats to find out just how quickly, and where, the “future” is being adopted.

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Adoption Rates in Europe

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The U.K., Germany, and France have the fastest growing smartphone adoption rates across Europe.

The U.K. leads European countries in smartphone adoption rate, according to a comScore study from March, 2010. In just one year, the adoption rate has jumped 70%, to more than 11 million U.K. subscribers. Other major European countries like France, Germany, and Spain also had substantial growth, falling around the average adoption rate of 32%. France had the second-highest adoption rate with nearly 50% change over one year.

Perhaps the most interesting trend shown in the study was the move to cheaper, more universal plans. Monthly subscription plans were split into two groups: Mid to low tier (less expensive plans), and high tier (more expensive, roughly £35). Across the board, the adoption rates of less expensive plans dwarfed pricier counterparts. In Spain, for example, cheaper plans grew by 31% more than high tier plans.

While smartphones are considered the Rolls-Royce of mobile, their growth seems to be spurred by accessibility and affordability. The goal isn’t to build a hand-held super-computer but to create powerful, inexpensive devices to compliment the everyman/everywoman.

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Worldwide Penetration

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Italy, Spain and the United States lead in smartphone penetration across global markets.

Adoption rates need to be tempered with penetration (what percentage of a population actually own smartphones) in order to make proper sense. A country’s adoption rate could shoot up by 100% if their penetration changed from one person to two people.

Given this context, Italy has the highest penetration of smartphones at 28%, according to a 2009 study from nielsenwire. Spain ranks second, with a penetration of 23%, and the U.S. trails in at third with 17% of Americans toting smartphones.

A statistical breakdown of worldwide penetration demographics in 2009.

Similarly, while the U.K. and France are both experiencing high adoption rates, they rank below the U.S. in overall penetration. The report also brought up some interesting insights: Smartphone users are predominantly male, and generally earn more than $100,000 a year. So much for affordability and inexpensive plans, right?

Not entirely. The penetration statistics show that a majority of smartphone users still see the device as a Rolls-Royce. On the other hand, this only means that there is a huge, untapped market for casual users. The adoption rates show that less-expensive calling plans are growing at a faster pace while U.S. sales have seen a boost from discounted phones.

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North America Jumps on Discounts

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The U.S. saw steady growth with a 36% increase in adoption rate, according to The NPD Group in amocoNews article from March 2010. Even though the U.S. didn’t grow as much as the U.K. or France, it ranked above other major European countries for a comparable timespan. Canada enjoyed a modest presence with 12% market penetration.

The growth in adoption rate was again linked to discounts and cheap plans. Ross Rubin, NPD’s executive director, told mocoNews that as more and more smartphones enter the market, continued growth will depend on lowering the price of data plans.

While we’ve heard in the past that Twitter can be a killer box office predictor, the same might not be true for social media and television ratings.

Social media monitoring company Viralheat spent a month tracking social media mentions — a million of them, in fact — right around the time that nine major TV shows were airing their season finales. The company looked at data from Twitter,Facebook, YouTube, Google Buzz and other sources, including the sentiment of all these mentions, comments and updates.

Then Viralheat compared the social media buzz with the Nielsen TV ratings for each show. Does chatter on the web equate to eyeballs on TV screens?

Not necessarily. Their research determined:

• Online buzz does not always correlate with ratings.
• Sentiment analysis of social media chatter casts those mentions in a new light.
• Even when ratings are lukewarm (as was the case for the Lost season finale) social media chatter can be overwhelming in volume. But a lot of those mentions online expressed a negative sentiment.
• Some shows, including Dancing With The Stars, saw good TV ratings but not many mentions online.

All in all, Viralheat found that Nielsen ratings combined with social media sentiment analysis provided the best snapshot of how a show’s season finale performed with viewers.

So, for you would-be social media gurus, next time you’re trying to measure a brand’s impact on the social web, remember to include some sentiment analysis along with your headcount, or you could be missing out on some critical information.

Here’s the infographic with more interesting factoids than you can shake a stick at; click to see the full version.