• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, May 31, 2017

Smartphone sales are still growing, but not nearly as fast as in years past.

That’s one takeaway from Mary Meeker’s latest Web trends report, which went out Wednesday.

Worldwide, phone sales grew just 3%, year-over-year -- down significantly from 10% growth during the previous 12 months, the Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner reports.

Year-over-year, smartphone installs grew by 12%, which was way down from 25% during the year prior.

Around the world, the number of Web users grew by 10% -- unchanged from the previous reporting period -- while domestic Web usage increased by 4%, year-over-year.

Also of note, at some point between 2015 and 2016, average mobile usage among U.S. consumers surpassed 3 hours a day.

That’s compared to the combined 2.2 hours they spent on their desktops, laptops, and other connected devices, at the end of 2016.

As for the U.S. advertising market, mobile continues to drive growth. From 2015 through 2016, money spent on mobile ads grew by 22% -- better than desktop advertising’s growth rate of 20%.

Stateside, mobile advertising made up $37 billion of the $73 billion spent on digital ads, in 2016.  

Worldwide, Meeker actually expects digital ad spending to surpass TV adverting at some point this year. By her estimation, their respective growth trajectories will cross somewhere around the $190-million mark.

As for platforms, Google continues to dominate in terms of domestic ad spend. At the end of 2016, the search giant gobbled up more than $35 billion in ad dollars.

Yet that figure represented only 20% growth from 2015, while Facebook saw a 62% rise in U.S. ad spending (to roughly $13.5 billion), from 2015 to 2016.