A new report provides a snapshot of the current mobile media landscape and audiences in the U.S., and highlights the potential power of mobile commerce in the near future.

According to an August survey, 43 percent of all smartphone owners have an Android device. But if you ask only those who got a new smartphone in the past three months what kind of phone they chose, more than half (56%) will tell you they picked an Android device.

Nielsen’s new Social Media Report looks at trends and consumption patterns across social media platforms in the U.S. and other major markets, exploring the rising influence of social media on consumer behavior.

According to first-reported data from Nielsen Smartphone Analytics, a new effort that tracks and analyzes data from on-device meters installed on thousands of iOS and Android smartphones, the average Android consumer in the U.S. spends 56 minutes per day actively interacting with web and apps on their phone.

Australians’ use of mobile phones to access mobile news sites has reached record levels in the wake of the country’s closest ever election result, according to the latest mobile traffic figures from The Nielsen Company.

Video consumption across multiple platforms is now a global phenomenon. Consumers in all regions are proving their insatiable appetite for video information and entertainment – thus far adding screens to their media mix, not replacing them.

When we look at smartphone data consumption distribution and year-over-year change, we see a large disparity of usage among smartphone users and are struck by the staggering amounts of data used by the heaviest users.

We are at the beginning of a new wireless era where smartphones will become the standard device consumers will use to connect to friends, the internet and the world at large.

According to The Nielsen Company, mobile Internet traffic in December 2009 was similar to total Internet use, with the largest audiences being seen for search, e-mail and social networking.

The launch of the Droid by Motorola–which runs Google’s Android 2.0 operating system–is the latest smartphone to be tagged “a game changer,” and “the iPhone killer.”