Mobile to hold 22 per cent of US paid search in 2012

Three times more than the current 6.5 per cent.

Finance firm the Macquarie Group developed the report using data from marketing company Efficient Frontier, which says smartphones and tablets are to occupy up to 22 per cent of all paid search share by the close of 2012.

The report claims that the current mobile spend is 6.5 per cent of all search spend, which is 2.7 times higher than this time last year.

Jonathan Beeston, global marketing director for Efficient Frontier, said: "We've every reason to expect that in the UK we'll see a similar explosion of growth, but around six — nine months behind the US."

Tablets held 43 per cent of the mobile device spend share between August and October 2011, while 77 per cent of all mobile traffic comes from tablet devices, according to the report.

Results show that this makes up half of all click shares on mobile devices as tablet conversion rates are similar to desktop searches.