iPhone and iPod touch shares continue to grow

What are you talking about? The iphone hardware is actually not that great, and while the U.I. is alright for average users, the reality is that I can't go 10 minutes without any app crashing. It's not years ahead like you're lead to believe, it's just made incredible easy, but easy doesn't equal better.

What am I talking about? I'm talking about the difference between the positive user experience that I and most others (judging from online and personal sources) have when using the iPhone compared to my own experience using the devices I mentioned.

"The iphone [sic] hardware is actually not that great..."—I'm not sure what you're critiquing, but I'll say that the iPhone does an excellent job of interpreting touchscreen gestures, takes a beating (I've dropped mine a few times), has a decent camera (some shots feh, some stupendous), good sound quality in-ear and speakers, reasonably fast (but of course has to balance battery draw), good ergonomic shape/weight/size.

"...and while the U.I. is alright for average users..." Um, it's a mass-market multi-use device so of course its UI is targeted to average users. That's what a UI should be. And it's not just "alright", it's excellent. Things are easy to find and use. Not perfect, but excellent.

"...the reality is that I can't go 10 minutes without any app crashing." Not sure why you're having this problem. Neither I or anyone I know with an iPhone has this problem, nor do I see common reports like this on the interwebs. Is yours jailbroken? Have you checked in with Apple? It could be a bad handset—it happens.

"It's not years ahead like you're lead to believe, it's just made incredible [sic] easy, but easy doesn't equal better." —I have to disagree on all counts here:

1) the other phones still haven't caught up, so I'd say that the iPhone, now two years since the first demo, is years ahead;

2) I'm not "lead to believe" but I have used the devices (iPhone and others) myself as well as read of other people's experience (both professional UX designers as well as the hoi polloi);

3) "easy doesn't equal better." — Oy, in terms of usability, yes, easy does mean better; in terms of overall UX more goes into it, but ease of use is critical for the "average" user; if you want unvarnished Linux, then you're an outlier type user, which is fine, but not the target of a mass-market device.

Stupid ass - read the article - the chart is for smartphone (web) requests. 17 percent of iphones and 12 percent of ipod touches (market share) - both generated a total of 51% of the web ad requests.

Actually, Tony C is correct. It should specify market share as opposed to just share, or better yet, just exclude the 17% and 15% statements all together. We all know web requests to not correlate directly with market share and nowhere else in the article is market share mentioned.