It's still a feature phone world out there. Despite rising demand for smartphones in the U.S. and Europe the rest of world is still clamoring for feature phones.

According to a recently released report from market analysis and strategy firm Vision Mobile, smartphone adoption has reached over 27 percent around the world.

The rate of smartphone adoption varies widely in different regions. In the United States, more and more people are using smartphones. Vision Mobile says that 63 percent of all North American users have smartphones. In Europe the number is a bit lower at only 51 percent.

In other parts of world where pre-paid plans are the norm, Nokia's Symbian platform and Research in Motion's BlackBerry still holds on to a significant market share. The Asia Pacific region has a smartphone adoption of around 19 percent while Africa and Middle East region have an 18 percent smartphone adoption rate and Latin America has the lowest with 17 percent.

Although Asia only has a 19 percent smartphone adoption rate the number does vary from country to country. In Taiwan at least 46 percent of Taiwanese mobile phone owners have smartphones. China has recently surpassed the United States in the smartphone market. Nearly 24 million smartphones were shipped to providers in China during the third quarter of 2011 according to data from research and consulting firm Strategy Analytics. Middle East nations like the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia also have high mobile phone adoption rates, each over 150 percent as of mid-2010.

As for who will win the smartphone war the field is down to two fighters: Apple Inc.'s iPhone and smartphones that run Google Inc.'s Android software. Vision Mobile says that despite Apple and Google's efforts there won't be a single winner in the smartphone war. Both platforms have hundreds of millions of users making it impossible to completely decimate one side. Windows Phone and Research in Motion will have to struggle to move into the number three position although Windows with Nokia's help will have a slight advantage over RIM.