AdMob, a company that supplies online Web ads, released metric data on Thursday showing an enormous spike in traffic coming from users of the iPod Touch on Christmas and in the days afterward.

Meanwhile, iPhone users continue to comprise an ever-larger number of people using mobile devices to access the Web.

Apple must have sold mountains of iPod Touches. From Thanksgiving on, the three models of the Touch periodically were out of stock at Amazon and other retailers, and a number of anecdotal reports in December pointed toward strong sales.

If Apple is in a bragging mood at its January 21 earnings conference call, it might break out the iPod Touch’s quarterly sales numbers (it usually doesn’t). In any case, one can find plenty of powerful evidence for the Touch’s success in the metric data supplied by companies like AdMob.

Ad requests from the iPod Touch increased from 86 million in November to 292 million in December, AdMob reported. Worldwide Touch traffic was 2.4 times higher in the week after Christmas than it was the week before.

But things look even sweeter for Apple when you look at the data for the iPod Touch and iPhone together. With the Touch’s surprising performance and the iPhone’s share growing at the expense of nearly all other Web-enabled mobile phones, Apple appears to have a good chance of fulfilling its goal of creating a dominant new mobile computing platform.

In the data that ranks the top handsets by the number of worldwide ad requests, the iPhone holds the No. 1 spot with 10.8 percent. That’s more than double the No. 2 device – astonishingly, the iPod Touch -- with 4.7 percent.

Motorola’s RAZR V3 followed with 3.4 percent; the Nokia N70, with 2.7 percent, was No. 4. The highest BlackBerry on the list, the 8800, was seventh with 1.5 percent.

Of course, Apple benefits in this category by having just one model of iPhone rather than the dozens of models sold by the competition, although the fact the Touch beat them all as well weakens that excuse.

Nevertheless, even in the data that lists the worldwide leaders by manufacturer, Apple’s 15.5 percent is second only to Nokia’s 29 percent. BlackBerry maker Research in Motion came in seventh with 3.5 percent.

And get this: of the 10 manufacturers, only Apple posted a gain in share (plus 7.6 percent) from the previous month. Every other manufacturer lost share except HTC, which was flat at 1.8 percent.

AdMob’s U.S. specific data tilts even more favorably toward Apple. In the handset data, the iPhone-iPod Touch team again take the top two spots with 16.2 percent and 7.1 percent.

Apple leads all manufacturers in the U.S. market with its 23.3 percent share, followed by Motorola with 21.6 percent. RIM is fifth with 6.4 percent.

And again, only Apple gained share from the previous month, picking up 11.1 percent. RIM lost 1.1 percent and Motorola 3.5 percent.

AdMob also breaks the data down by operating system, though in this category it leaves out the iPod Touch because it isn’t a phone.

Symbian leads in worldwide OS share with 41 percent, but the iPhone’s Mac OS nets 32 percent even without the Touch’s help. RIM takes third with 10 percent, just edging Windows Mobile’s 9 percent.

That Apple’s devices show rapidly growing share among mobile devices on the Web tells us that people who want such capabilities – and there are more of them every day – are choosing Apple products.

So far Apple seems to be a step ahead of the competition, with the wild success of the App Store giving it a major advantage over all rivals (for the present, anyway).

The coming year will tell if Apple’s platform can hold off those rivals, primarily RIM’s BlackBerry Storm and Google’s Android operating system. Both have or plan to have app stores of their own.

And just this week, Palm reawakened from the dead with its just-announced Pre touchscreen phone, which has received very favorable early reviews.

What the competition can’t duplicate is the iPod Touch, a means to gain Web share from customers who don’t want a smart phone’s expensive monthly contract. The 8 GB iPod Touch gives customers a Web-capable mobile device for as little as $229.