A study by ClickFox provides a fairly up-to-date insight of the iPhone or Android holder’s purchasing behavior online, as well as additional details that further solidates the immense popularity smartphones have  gained ever since the original iPhone was launched back in 2007.

ClickFox reports that Apple is still in the lead, with iProducts accounting for 51 percent of smartphone activations.  Android’s impact on the market can be observed quite clearly when ones compares this figure with the market share the iPhone had a couple years ago.

As far as software goes, smartphone owners have a rather interesting relationship with their apps. Fourty-eight percent of handset holders use an app 10 time or more a day; more than they shower, brush their teeth or eat in the same 24-hour period. Nevertheless when an app glitches 25 percent of users will promptly delete it, regardless of how much they used it before.

When breaking the numbers down, two categories stand out in particular. Mobile banking apps are the most frequently used applications at 30 percent, and online shopping apps come in at 19 percent. This trend is growing at a noticeable pace, which has been taken into consideration by the industry as thanksgiving approaches.

Backing up a report by Millennial Media dating back to June, a fresh IBM study predicts that a record number of customers will be using their phones to do shopping for the holidays. Based on data from 500 leading retailers the company concluded that 15 percent of Americans that will visit a retailer’s website will do so via their handset.

“It’s going to play a big part of how consumers are buying this holiday,” said John Squire, chief strategy officer of IBM Coremetrics. “Mobile users have less patience. They are surgical shoppers. Retailers are going to have to do a really good job in targeting their messages and promotions for mobile users.”

It seems that app developers are also boosting their expectations. In a very timely manner, ShopSavvy released the latest versions of its iOS and Android shopping apps yesterday.