It’s the Apple iPhone’s 5th Birthday today. That’s five years and 250 million handsets sold and shows no sign of slowing up as new research shows it continues to dominate the smartphone market. Apple iPhones are owned by 19% of smartphone users compared with 15% owning an Android phone and 11% owning a Blackberry, which today announced a delay to its latest phone.

Overall, smartphone ownership has risen to a huge 45%, marking a truly significant shift in how we receive and transfer data. Equally impressive is the fact that ownership figures have nearly doubled in the last six months.

Demographic distribution of users is not that surprising – 32% of 15-34 year olds own an iPhone, with only one in four males in this age group owning an Android phone, and a slightly lower number of females owning a Blackberry.

While we clearly love our apps and getting our information on the go, this hasn’t prompted a huge spike in tablet take up.

It is still a ‘niche’ market with only 10% of adults owning a tablet. However, like it’s iOS sibling the iPhone, the iPad is the most popular device in this market, with 8% of households owning one.

While tablet usage is fairly evenly spread demographically, men under 35 are the highest users (14%).

Gavin Sugden, Director of Ipsos MediaCT who conducted the research commented:

“When you look around you can see the speed at which technology now evolves and is being adopted has changed. Nearly half of us own a smartphone and the iPhone is clearly the most popular, but it will be interesting to see take up of android with the release of Windows 8 now that consumers will be able to easily connect between windows devices in the same way Apple’s iCloud has now revolutionised the way Macs and iOS devices working together. There are a lot of tablet devices out there and the market has doubled in the last six months but Apple still dominates the tablet market because of brand recognition.”

However, while Apple will undoubtedly be celebrating the 250 million devices it has sold in the last five years, it has pointed out that iPhone’s have brought with them some very bad habits.

These including texting on the toilet, desperately searching for electricity points to charge phones, and constantly checking screens during meals. Still there is good news out there. Here via Stuff magazine are some of the iPhone goodies on the way:

Apple is working on wireless charging for iPhone and iPad

Chances are there’s some gagdet lovers out there who would rather spend eternity untangling headphones than charge their smartphone wirelessly in Jay-Z’s nightclub. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t fond of the wireless charging idea. Apple seems to like it too. And when Apple likes something, it usually files a patent in celebration.

Will we see an iPhone 5 with wireless charging? Probably not, as the latest iPhone 5 ‘snaps’ and renders show a new smaller dock connector that will be causing iAccessory manufacturers some trouble for now. But with iCloud, AirPlay and wire-free syncing Apple now just needs a wireless charging system to complete the futuristic iDevice set-up.

Inductive charging can work over a few metres with about a 50% efficiency rate right now and the US Army wants to aim for 50 foot ranges to wirelessly charge radios and GPS receivers. So before long, we’ll hopefully be strolling into work to find our phones are charging themselves the minute we set foot through the door.

Apple dual-screen apps incoming

Nearly every film set in the future features a multi-screen control station. Seeing that as inevitable Brightcove has jumped ahead and created a tool that allows developers to make dual-screen Apple apps easily – making your sofa a futuristic control station. Brightcove’s clever idea is to allow developers to come up with apps that use dual-screens over Apple’s AirPlay with Apple TV. Read more…

Best iPhone apps this week

We’re in a gaming mood this week so feast your thumbs on these glorious time-wasters, featuring The New Draw Something. Check it out….