The smartphone sector in Australia is booming. In the 12 weeks to June 13 2010, 1.8 million handsets were purchased in Australia, of which 45 per cent were smartphones, according to figures released to telecoms.com by Kantar Worldpanel ComTech this week.

ComTech interviews 130,000 users in Australia annually with the same sample of 10,000 individuals aged 16+ interviewed every four weeks. The company found that 34 per cent of Australians aged 16+ own a smartphone and that 25 per cent of smartphones purchased were on pre-pay.

As you might expect, Apple is doing pretty well but not as well as Nokia. The iPhone share of all handset purchases in the 12 week period was 18.5 per cent, but this figure doubles to 37 per cent within the smartphone market and is only just behind Nokia’s share of smartphones of 39.6 per cent. Around 4.2 per cent of all smartphone purchases were on the Android OS and buyers of this OS are more likely to be male, aged 25-34.

According to ComTech, the average spend on a pre-pay handset is $166 – or $269 if it is a smartphone.

More stats below:

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Kantar Worldpanel

ComTech is the largest continuous research consumer mobile phone tracking panel of its kind in the world, conducting over 1 million interviews per year in Europe alone. The study has now been expanded to Mexico, Brazil, Japan, Australia and the US , bringing the total number of annual interviews to over 2 million. Worldpanel ComTech tracks mobile phone behaviour, including purchasing of phones, mobile phone bills/airtime, source of purchase, phone usage and handset features and delivers beyond market share tracking to understand drivers of share changes, market dynamics through consumer insight – the data included in this story is excluding enterprise sales.