(Originally posted on the Google Mobile Ads Blog)

Good data on the smartphone user is hard to come by. Good data that enables companies to make data driven decisions on how to engage with consumers on their smartphone is even harder to come by.

Today we are launching a new resource to address that need. Our Mobile Planet www.ourmobileplanet.com is a new web site featuring an interactive tool that anyone can use to create custom charts that will deepen their understanding of the mobile consumer and support data driven decisions on their mobile strategy.

The site gives anyone access the full set of data from the “Global Mobile Research: The Smartphone User & The Mobile Marketer” we conducted earlier this year (March & July 2011) with Ipsos and in collaboration with the Mobile Marketing Association.

Example of a presentation ready chart on ourmobileplanet.com

Need to know the smartphone penetration in Singapore? It’s 62%. Trying to figure out if more consumers in France or Germany have made purchases via their smartphone? It’s France. Want to know if consumers in the UK visit a store after doing a local search on their smartphone? 41% of them do.

Now anyone - marketer, app developer, tech geek, big or small - can answer these questions and many more by drawing on one of the the most extensive, far reaching standardized surveys on smartphone user behavior ever conducted. Not to mention, this is the first time a study this extensive has been made available for free.

We commissioned this survey and have made the data available for free because we believe the shift to mobile is so fundamental that we need to do everything we can to help businesses adapt immediately.

Posted by Nicole Leverich, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team