According to this report, the list is similar to the one they had released last year. However, there has been a significant increase in the number of unique visitors to most of the top sites.

It is no surprise that search, social networking and video remain at the top of the reasons for mobile browsing with Google, Facebook and YouTube scoring the top three rankings respectively.

The world’s 10 most popular mobile websites are:

1. google.com
2. facebook.com
3. youtube.com
4. vkontakte.ru
5. odnoklassniki.ru
6. yandex.ru
7. wikipedia.org
8. my.opera.com
9. yahoo.com
10. twitter.com

The report has compared the findings between November 2011 and November 2010. Apart from seeing rapid growth in Asia, Opera Mini has also found a substantial increase in mobile Web usage in Latin America, Africa and South East Asia.

The study was conducted across six countries – Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines. The most important reason for this surge in usage of the internet is the increasing accessibility to broadband networks through Wi-Fi services, smartphones and other gadgets such as tablets, in addition to the continuing proliferation of traditional PCs in the region.

Users in Singapore were found to use the Internet the most among these countries, averaging about 25 hours per week. Among the other countries surveyed, Indonesians use the Internet the least, clocking an average of just 14 hours per week.

Time spent online in Southeast Asia

While PCs (desktops as well as laptops) continue to be used, devices such as smartphones and tablets are starting to cut into their market share. In Indonesia, 78% of users have got Internet-capable mobile phones as compared to just 29 percent who owned notebook computers or 31 percent with desktops.

While communicating through email is the most popular activity in Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines and Thailand, users in Vietnam and Indonesia were more interested in accessing the news. Social networks are also becoming quite popular in this region and expectedly Facebook is the dominant network here too. YouTube is also among the top 5 sites visited in these countries.

Consumers in the region are also taking an interest in communicating with various brands online and often use the Internet to make decisions before purchasing any item. They also tend to post their own reviews later.

However, online advertising is still not a very popular medium of communication in this region. However, with the increasing use of the Internet, online marketers should concentrate on this region as it can only be good for them in the long run.

Melanie Ingrey, Nielsen’s research director for the APMEA region says, “Online activity is only going to increase in the years ahead as more consumers obtain smartphones, and 3G and broadband access become more common and affordable.”

The study found that nearly 45% of users were using the mobile phone to access the internet as compared to about 31% in 2010 and only about 23% in 2009.

Expectedly, the highest rate of growth was seen in the 16-24 year olds age group. In 2009 33% of users in this age group were using the mobile internet, while 71% do so now. In contrast only about 8% of those above 65 years of age use mobile internet connections.

The survey also found that nearly 77% of households in the country now have an internet connection. Nearly half of the remaining 23% felt that they did not need an internet connection.

It was also revealed that the use of wifi hotspots in places such as restaurants malls etc. has gone up dramatically. There are over 3 million such hotspots in the country now.

About 4.9 million people or 13% now use this facility. This is a seven fold increase compared to 2007, and the figure has also doubled since last year. The figure of connects through this means is expected to reach 120 billion by 2015.

These findings suggest that in spite of the growing popularity of 3G services, free and paid-for wireless services continue to remain popular.

It is possible to filter down this calculation to individual devices by using various Facebook Apps. Facebook has a page for every authorised app that is connected to their system. Through these dedicated Facebook pages, blogger Benedict Evans calculated how many people use each Facebook app on each mobile platform, such as the iPhone or Blackberry.

Evans estimated that smartphones from Samsung, HTC, Motorola, Sony Ericsson and LG jointly account for about 24 million users, while the official Android Facebook app accounts for about 53 million users. Android, in all, has approximately 76 million Facebook users, in spite of having sold only about 120-130 million handsets.

About 50% to 60% of users of the iPhone and iPod Touch use Facebook. Since Apple has so far sold about 190 million of these gadgets, the number of Facebook users is estimated at around 85 million.

Ovi from Nokia has only about 5.6 million users, while the recently launched Facebook feature phone already has about 7.5 million active Facebook users.

These statistics proportionally reflect the number of smartphones in the market using the main operating systems and from each major manufacturer.

However, there are some devices that do not have an official Facebook app. For instance, the iPad does not have an official Facebook app as yet. Similarly, a number of OEMs using Android have their own Facebook apps.

The number of people using the exclusive mobile website is far less than those using Facebook apps. The number of users accessing the social network via third-party apps is about half the number of people using Facebook.

In total, the number of people using all of the apps comes to about 222 million. If Facebook’s estimate of 250 million mobile users holds true, it can be estimated that about 28 million people are using the mobile web for Facebook exclusively.

The latest report released by Opera, on the state of the mobile Web, indicates that a very large amount of mobile Web traffic is now being generated in India. Among the most popular uses of the mobile Web is to access the popular social network, Facebook, and also to access online videos. Another popular use of the mobile Web in India is for online shopping and online classifieds.

Popularity of the social network Orkut has been declining. While it was once very popular in India as well as Brazil, it is now on a downward trend in India, although it continues to be popular in Brazil.

In contrast, Orkut’s main competitor, Facebook has gained immense popularity in India. Orkut’s loss could be due to a lack of innovation in recent times. Google, the parent company of Orkut, has just launched a new social network Google Plus, which may change the situation in due course of time.

The top 10 mobile sites in India, ranked according to unique users since May 2010 are:

1. google.com
2. facebook.com
3. youtube.com
4. vuclip.com
5. orkut.com
6. mobile2day.com
7. wikipedia.org
8. zedge.net
9. getjar.com
10. filestube.com

Jon von Tetzchner, co-founder of Opera Software, says, “We see India standing tall as a country in rapid development, with Internet-based knowledge at the forefront of that growth. Furthermore, the mobile Web in India has evolved as an important place to do business, as the proportion of people going shopping on the mobile shows.”

According to the report, for one year between May 2010 and May 2011, India was placed at the number three slot as far as Opera Mini users are concerned. Incidentally, Opera handles about 60-65% of the mobile Web traffic in India. During this period, the number of page views per user has also gone up from 390 to 430.

Latin America continues to show steady growth as well. Between May 2010 and May 2011, the number of unique users in this region went up by 535%, the number of page views went up by 1,556% and the data transferred during this period went up by 1,041%.

Nielsen has also corroborated this information in the USA. According to them, the average amount of data being consumed by users is higher than ever before.

In particular, users of iPhones and Android based phones are consuming very high amounts of data.

The average smartphone user consumed 435 MB of data per month in the first quarter of 2011 as compared to only 230 MB per month in the first quarter of 2010. That is an increase of 89%.

The report further reveals that the top 10% of users are consuming 109% more data than they did last year, while the top 1% of users are consuming 155% more data than they did last year.

It is also of interest to note that those using Apple’s iOS consume an average of 492 MB per month, while Android users are consume an average of 582 MB per month.

In spite of this huge jump in data usage, the revenue generation of mobile operators continues to remain more or less static. This is because the cost of data consumed has gone down quite drastically from 14 cents per MB last year to the present 8 cents per MB.

A recent report had also pointed out a similar trend, wherein, the projected revenues of mobile operators are likely to reach $1 trillion by 2016, but their handling costs will go up at an even faster rate, thus leading to a financial disaster, if corrective steps are not taken soon.

While each operator will have to take individual decisions about what would best serve their purposes, it might boil down to them having to gradually discontinue unlimited data plans, which are very popular at present, and instead introduce usage based structured plans in the near future.

Update: US mobile operators are already resorting to the uninnovative approach of limiting mobile data use. Verizon will introduce tiered pricing on July 7. While this might be a good way to limit damage quickly, it leaves plenty of room for a smart start-up to offer unlimited packages and win public favour quickly.

The bad news is that the report also predicts that the costs faced by these mobile network operators are set to increase at an even higher rate, while the revenue will eventually begin to flat-line.

This will occur due to a combination of market saturation in conjunction with a fall in average revenue per user on the one hand and increased costs of handling mobile data traffic on the other hand.

If mobile operators wish to prevent such a catastrophe from occurring they need to start taking preventive and corrective steps right away. Juniper’s report also provides a few suggestions that the operators can implement in the near future. According to the author, Dr Windsor Holden, there is of course no simple or single solution that would be applicable to all operators. Operators need to study their own business model and use whatever steps are most applicable to them on a case by case basis.

Some of the suggestions include, offering integrated rate plans along with a wide range of segmented pre-paid and post-paid tariffs. Operators can also try to enhance their revenues in the cloud, on machine-to-machine and mobile financial services by leveraging their existing assets.

Second tier networks that have a much lower traffic could benefit by maintaining flat-rate plans for data bundles. Integrated mobile broadcasts can also serve to increase the revenue generated through 3G services, by improving capacity.

Another significant suggestion involves the transition from expensive fossil fuels to green networks and base stations. This particular move will not only improve cost efficiency, but will also be applauded by environmentalists.

Near Field Communication (NFC) technology is used to develop mobile wallet services. Both Google and mobile provider Orange have started using the technology in the past few weeks.

Thousands of retailers are now set to start trying out this new service and it is estimated that about 40,000 retailers will have embraced it by the end of this year.

Orange and Mastercard will jointly launch a new handset, which will have this NFC technology embedded in it. The launch is expected to occur between April and June. O2 and Visa are expected to follow with their own NFC enabled handset a little later.

In order to popularise this service, banks, retailers, handset manufacturers and mobile phone operators are investing huge amounts of money in the infrastructure required.

While this facility is sure to make shopping a lot more convenient, the security aspect of such a service should not be taken lightly. Edward Chandler of Mastercard has said that it is a very secure service. In fact, he claims that it is as secure as any credit or debit card can be.

On the other hand, Kieren Hines, a mobile phone analyst says, “There are a lot of things that need to be resolved in the industry about how this is going to be rolled out. In terms of security you’re almost certainly going to have to enter a pin when you make a transaction.”

Some people have expressed concerns about security measures that will be available in case of loss or theft of an NFC wallet enabled mobile phone. The answer to this is quite logical if one considers the fact that a regular wallet containing credit or debit cards and cash is just as likely to be stolen or misplaced, and hence users will need to be cautious to avoid such a thing from happening, whether it is a wallet or a mobile phone.

If anything, having a mobile wallet could eliminate the need to carry a separate wallet, which would reduce the chances of theft as the number of valuable items that any individual would need to take care of would be reduced.

The Android virus was discovered by a Reddit user, ‘Lompolo‘, who found a programme to play the guitar on a mobile phone, supposedly written by a person whom he knew was not the actual author of that programme. The app contained a virus code, which he found in 21 other apps, though many more could actually have been affected.

The virus, known as DroidDream, can send sensitive information such as the unique ID of a phone or a password to any other server.

Gingerbread, the latest version of the Android OS, is not susceptible to the DroidDream virus.

In addition to removing the affected apps from the Android Marketplace, Google has also suspended three accounts used by that developer. They have, however, not issued a formal statement about the rogue apps.

It has been pointed out that such rogue apps are one of the negative effects of the open nature of the Android OS.

Coincidentally, last week also saw a major attack affect the London Stock Exchange (LSE) site. According to the investigations conducted, it was found that the damage was done when a third-party advertiser, Unanimis, was hacked.

Though the site had been blocked on Firefox it was accessible through Chrome. Once a user accessed the site, pop-ups started appearing on their own and indicated fake virus alerts. A fake security scanner claimed to detect a lot of malware.

When Google’s safe browsing service crawled through the site, they found that it had been compromised at least 6 times in the last 90 days, and over 363 pages of the 1,112 scanned by them had been affected.

When the Nexus One and the Nexus S were first launched, they provided users with the ability to ‘Sync Friends with Contacts’. In other words, when Nexus handset users downloaded the Facebook App, the details of their Facebook friends, including their phone numbers (where available) were stored in the Google address book.

A user’s contacts from Google as well as from Facebook were, therefore, very well amalgamated with each other, making it is easy for users to access their friends’ details whenever they wanted to.

Now, Google has decided to discontinue this feature from the Nexus S. Once this sync feature is removed, Facebook contacts will be visible in the Facebook App but will not be integrated with the Android Contacts App.

Another strange aspect to this move is the fact that the sync feature will continue to exist on the Nexus One handsets, because, according to a Google spokesperson, “the Nexus One was preinstalled with Facebook”, so users would expect the integration of the two apps, which is not the case with the Nexus S. Google has also clarified that the sync feature will not be available on any future devices they launch.

The main grouse that Google has with Facebook is the lack of portability. While Facebook allows the import of data, it does not allow export, thus making the interaction with other sites a one-way deal. In other words, the availability of contact information from Facebook relies entirely on the connection between the two contacts, and could be lost from the Google Contacts App when a user breaks a social connection on Facebook.

While this is an internal problem between Google and Facebook, and should have been sorted out professionally by the two organisations, it is the users who will miss out on the convenience of having their mobile and social apps interconnecting.

The reasoning that Google has offered for this discontinuation is quite strange. They say, that if a user ever decides to quit Facebook, he will lose all this data. So they have decided to discontinue it before a user gets too used to it. They quite forget that ‘if’ a user chooses to quit Facebook, he can make alternative arrangements to save his data before hand.

It now remains to be seen how Facebook will react to this move.

Bing conducted a poll of users between the ages of 16 and 35 years and came across some interesting findings. They found that men were doubly likely to use their mobile phones to find the perfect romantic restaurant or an appropriate gift.  Whereas, only about a third of users use their mobiles for directions when they get lost on their way to a new restaurant.

Keeping these findings in mind, the Bing team made arrangements with Digital Dating Experts, Debra Goldstein and Olivia Baniuszewicz to provide interesting Valentine’s day tips to their users.

Content has been created specifically for the occasion so that users can go to m.bing.com on their mobile to get details about restaurants, theatres and bars.

Special tips are provided for men, including setting up a date near to the location of the woman they are pursuing. Romantic and easy recipes are also available. Flirtexting tips also tells users to avoid using smileys, acronyms and emotional messages. While replying to a message, users are advised to wait a while but not for too long.

Developers have also created mobile Web applications to help users find partners and gifts. Many of the smartphone apps are available for free, such as apps from SpeedDate, eHarmony, Match.com and OKCupid.

Gifts available on mobiles range from Valentine’s Day cards, to flowers and diamonds. Romantic music and poetry are also available.

This is the first time that major online brands are focusing on events on mobile and creating special content and sales for mobile, just as they normally would in the wired world.

According to comScore’s report, 2010 US Digital Year in Review, new and highly advanced mobile handsets were introduced along with new mobile content options and applications. The use of smart phones and the 3G spectrum increased significantly and the use of browsers and applications through mobile handsets went up by 7.6 percentage points between December 2009 and 2010 as a result of this.

The availability of new data plans with 3G and 4G services have also furthered the growth of the mobile industry. 29% of mobile subscribers now have unlimited data plans compared to 21.7% last year. This, coupled with the introduction of handsets such as the iPhone 4, Windows Phone 7 and RIM Blackberry Torch has caused the usage of smart phones to reach an all-time high of 27% of all mobile handsets.

While RIM remains number 1 with a 31.6% share of the smartphone operating system market, Google’s Android OS has become the second largest, with 28.7% of the market largely due to large-scale adoption of Google Android powered devices.

Samsung was the most popular handset manufacturer last year in the U.S.A. accounting for 24.8% market share of devices sold. LG was second followed by Motorola, RIM and Apple.

Mobile devices continued to be used for a wide variety of activities in addition to making phone calls. Text messaging was the most popular activity, with 68% of American mobile subscribers texting in Decmber 2010.

While the dominance of SMS might seem old-fashioned, one must keep in mind that the mobile phone is a communications device first and foremost. Moreover, a number of new technologies saw increased adoption too. 39.5% of subscribers used their mobiles to get news and information, 36.4% used their mobile browsers, 34.4% used mobile apps and 21.4% accessed mobile search services.

The system is expected to launch by summer this year, and will offer a convenient alternative during the Olympic Games to be held in London next year.

Contactless Payment technology, the system launched for travel payments by mobile provider O2 in 2009, will contribute to the basis for the mobile payment platform. Orange will launch new SIM cards with Near-Field Communication (NFC) technology, which is also used in new credit and debit cards nowadays.

Users will be able to “wave” their mobile phones at shop tills from a distance of about 10 centimetres to make their payments.

The system will be very convenient as mobile phone will now also function as a wallet and users will not have to bother to carry cash or credit cards.

Orange is working with Barclaycard to launch this new service. Over 40,000 businesses have already expressed their willingness to subscribe to this new payment option. Initially the service will only allow for the payment of small sums up to ₤15.

A similar facility for payment through mobile phones has been available in Japan and Korea for several years now.

According to a report from the Payments Council in the U.K., “by 2050, using cash could well be a minority activity.”

Last September, rumours that Facebook was making its own mobile phone were fueled by posts on TechCrunch and Bloomberg. Both reported on tips from anonymous sources that Facebook had started making their own mobile phone. Facebook was supposedly manufacturing the required software, and the hardware was to be made by another manufacturer.

The continued growth and popularity that mobile social networking and Facebook in particular were enjoying made it seem logical that Facebook would try to integrate their apps into mobile phones. Since this was only possible if they had control over the operating system, it was believed that they would want to make their own handsets.

The rumours had even pinpointed two employees – Joe Hewitt and Matthew Papakipos – who were supposed to be secretly working on the project.

Facebook was reported to be in talks with INQ Mobile to build the phone and AT&T was believed to be the chosen carrier, although nothing was finalised. The social network was supposedly considering the development of 2 handset models, one with a full QWERTY keyboard and the other with just a touch screen. The p hones were expected to be very reasonably priced.

These rumours were then laid to rest when a Facebook spokesperson clarified to Mashable that they were only interested in making mobile apps more social and not in building phones.

Now, the rumours have started afresh ever since a description of INQ’s new mobile phone surfaced. The description of the new phone was obtained via the Blutooth certification that was recently awarded to the device.

The new INQ phone is supposed to be an “Android smartphone built to make messaging faster and smarter”. It’s designed around the way people naturally communicate and has Facebook built into its core. The homescreen features multiple entry points to different Facebook functions, while a dynamic widget displays a feed of status updates, albums, videos and photos.

While a lot of the speculation leads one to believe that the original rumours were probably true, only a handful of people are in a position to verify the truth. Facebook did deny the rumours at the early stage. Though, that could be because it was probably too premature to admit to anything back in October. Whether Facebook denies this new set of rumours or not might give a better indication of the truth.

The usage of mobile broadband services has been increasing at a very fast rate. This is most likely because of the increased availability of smartphones, tablets, cheap laptops and other portable devices coupled with the availability of several types of data plans to suit each user’s needs.

While the number of mobile broadband connections was just about 200 million in 2008, it crossed the ½ billion mark in August 2010, according to mobile equipment manufacturer Ericsson. They now estimate that this figure will cross the 1 billion mark in 2011, and further predict that this number will go up to 3.8 billion by 2015.

The increased use of mobile broadband services has started adding to the revenue generated by telecom operators and also has caused an increased demand for mobile gear. Telecom firms such as TeliaSonera, Telenor and Tele2 have already reported increased use of mobile Internet services.

Adoption of mobile broadband is most prolific in the Asia-Pacific region, which is expected to account for 400 million users. North America and Western Europe are surprisingly not far behind, contributing an additional 200 million subscriptions each, in spite of the already high number of fixed-line broadband subscribers.

Customer satisfaction with mobile broadband in the Western countries, though, is pretty poor. Most customers complain about slow speeds and low download limits, especially when compared to speeds on unlimited broadband connections via ADSL and cable connections. These services tend to be used in these regions mostly by travelling business personnel.

In many parts of Asia, though, mobile broadband is the only available option, which accounts for the greater number of regular subscribers.

In 2009, the total revenue generated by mobile games was $6 billion, and by 2015 this figure is expected to cross $11 billion.

Of late, it has become the norm to offer games for free initially, in order to gain popularity and to get users hooked onto it. Later, additional extra gaming levels and game-play items are made available for purchase.

The report forecasts that the number of users downloading games through off-store and in-store means will rise significantly, thus adding to the total revenue through the pay-per-download and in-game purchase services. Mobile advertising spend is also set to increase substantially.

One of the main challenges that developers face today is that of discoverability. In other words, the game should be able to catch the attention of the user, given that there are thousands of apps and games now available on the iPhone and Android mobile app market places, all of which compete with each other.

This is a vicious cycle, in which a game that is downloaded frequently becomes prominent, but in order to be downloaded frequently, the game has to be prominent in the first place. Since only a few games are able to do this, most of the games usually remain obscure, and therefore clock very few downloads.

Another important feature guiding the growth of this market is the development of new handsets with modern technology that improves the mobile game experience.

Statistics from StatCounter have given an overall view of which OS is predominantly used in which part of the world. The data used to gauge the mobile OS market share was taken from the month of October 2010 and is based on mobile Web usage rather than on actual numbers of handsets in use.

Apple’s iOS is the most popular mobile operating system used to access mobile sites in North America, Europe and Oceania, while Symbian is most popular in Africa, Asia and South America. Nokia handsets are relatively cheaper and are thus more popular in developing nations, but have a relatively smaller share in the North America.

Interestingly, BlackBerry, which was behind Apple’s iOS in the U.S. in October has now surpassed it with 34.3%, while Apple has 33%. Also, Google’s Android OS, which had only 8.2 % share in the U.S. in November 2009 now has 23%.

Is Android Not That Big, After All?

Android OS is still not the leader in any continent, by StatCounter’s reckoning. Google’s mobile operating system is the market leader in South Korea with 78.3% but in other countries including Austria, Taiwan and Denmark it has a market share ranging from 27.3% to 16%.

Palm’s Web OS and Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 also do not account for a significant share of the market. iOS is the most popular in Canada with 83.7% share followed by Cuba, Switzerland, Australia, Singapore and Sweden where it has well over 60% market share.

BlackBerry leads in the Dominican Republic with 57.1%. In the U.K. it has 40.4% while in U.S. it has 34.3% market share. Although BlackBerry originated in Canada it has only 3.6% market share in its home country.

Symbian is the largest OS in over a 100 countries with Chad having 94% share. Libya, Sudan, Iraq and Egypt follow with 93.9% to 83.9%

Not The Full Story

While the numbers provided by StatCounter paint an interesting picture, they do not provide the full story. The data is based solely on mobile Web browsing as counted by StatCounter. The data discounts the fact that a very large number of Nokia users don’t access the mobile Internet.

In fact, only 30% of mobile phone users in the UK have ever accessed the mobile Web. This means that the mobile operating systems used by over 70% of the population are not even considered. This number is similar is most of Europe and North America.

The numbers provided by StatCounter don’t even count Android market place and other app market place usage, which could account for the lower market share for Android, which contradicts the stats on Android’s growth that we’ve seen earlier this year.

The service, known as ConnectedDrive, has allowed BMW car owners to conduct local searches while they are on the move in their cars.

Google services inside a BMW car

The new services will initially be available in Germany, France Italy, Austria and the U.K. and will be included in every new BMW car which is equipped with a professional navigation system from September 2010.

One of the new features being added is search suggestions. This facility is similar to what is available on desktop computers. When a person types the first few characters of his search query in the search box, he will be provided with suggestions. Only, in this case the suggestions will be based on the current location of the car. This feature will definitely speed up the search, as the user will not be required to spell out lengthy names while he is driving the car. Also a user can conduct the search even if he is not sure of the exact name or spelling of the place he is looking for.

Another interesting feature which is being introduced in the ConnectedDrive service is ‘Pictures at your destination’. As the name suggests, this service provides the user with detailed photographs of the location he is searching for, including satellite images from Street View when available. These pictures will make it easy for the user to identify the place when he actually reaches it even though he may never have been there before.

The search results also provide useful information such as the postal address, telephone number, ratings and reviews, facilities available etc about the place.

Google also continues to try and make new innovations, to add more services to their local search feature, which would prove to be more useful to their users and car drivers.

These added features should benefit BMW, as new car buyers would certainly give some consideration to these features while deciding which brand of car they wish to buy.

They also found that this growth has been largely spurred on by China. Lottery deployments such as mobile lotteries have become big business, in the developing markets across the world.

It is also assumed that deregulation of remote gambling may follow in the not too distant future, thus further spurring its growth.

The report indicates that this growth is the result of a combination of services such as mobile casinos, lotteries and betting services which have become popular in the emerging internet markets like China.

The iPAT service of Japan Racing Association is one of the major contributors to the global marketing transactions.

Also casino and betting services in U.K. are large contributors here, while China follows in third place for mobile gambling.

It is also expected that the U.S. will soon introduce mobile lottery services. The Juniper report says. “State lottery providers are anxious to explore new distribution channels, with US lottery sales from traditional outlets in decline. The upshot is that several lotteries are in the latter stages of discussion with mobile technology providers with a view to launching mobile lottery services in 2011.”

It has also been found that end-users use mobile gaming applications while multitasking.
Apple has now permitted the sale of gaming Apps via the App Store, while other service providers have a browser based approach.

While the report shows that the usage of the mobile web in June 2010 was slightly lower than that in May2010, the growth between June 2009 and June 2010 has been phenomenal. The slight dip between May 2010 and June 2010 is due to certain technical and political issues which are likely to be sorted out shortly.

The number of Opera Mini users between June 2009 and June 2010 worldwide has grown by 124% to 59.4 million. The number of page views in June 2010 was 27.3 billion which is 161.8% more than in June 2009. The amount of data generated in this period has also grown by 147.1%.

The report, which has focused especially on mobile Web usage in Africa, shows that the top 12 countries for mobile web usage in that continent are South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, Ghana, Sudan, Libya, Tanzania, Ivory Coast, Namibia, Mozambique and Mauritius.

In these countries, the number of page views has gone up by 182%, unique users have increased by 124% and data transfer has gone up by 160% between June 2009 and June 2010.

While sites like Facebook, YouTube and Google are all very popular, Facebook is the leader in 6 of these countries, while Google is at the top in the other 6 countries.

Nokia is the most popularly used handset brand and is followed by others like Samsung Sony Ericsson and LG.

In fact, as of now, YouTube Mobile receives over 100 million video playbacks daily, which is about the same number of playbacks, which YouTube.com used to get in 2006 when they joined Google.

When YouTube Mobile was launched in 2007, it had only about 1,000 videos available on the mobile site. There were also several limitations in the site, mobile browsers and the hardware then available, thus preventing the YouTube Mobile from being as good as the YouTube.com experience.

YouTube has, however, been working hard to constantly update and improve their mobile site to provide better features tot heir users.

They have recently updated the site yet again, making it much faster than before. The new interface also has more touch friendly features. It also now has most of the features and functionality available on YouTube.com such as search query suggestions, the ability to create playlists etc. It also allows users to put in marks such as ‘favourites’ ‘like’ ‘unlike’ etc. directly from the mobile handset.

YouTube also intends to henceforth update YouTube Mobile every time they update YouTube.com.

These features have only been launched in English for now, but other languages should follow shortly.

Mobile analyst, Ben Wood, of CCS Insight, says that the mobile phone is probably “the most prolific consumer device on the planet”.

At 5 billion, there are already about 3 times more mobile phones than personal computers worldwide.

Of the 5 billion mobile phones it has been estimated that 1 billion connections have been made in the last one and half years according to Wireless Intelligence.

When the mobile phone was first launched in the U.K. in1987, it had been predicted that there would be a maximum of 10,000 mobile phones. But now 30 million phones are sold every year in the U.K. itself.

A large part of the growth in the number of mobile telephones can be attributed to the growing markets in regions like India and China.

At the end of June 2010, the Asia-Pacific region alone accounted for 47% of global mobile connections.

The mobile phone has today become practically indispensible across all strata of society, and many people have more than one mobile phone. Many users also use mobile phones with more than one sim-card.

In Western Europe the mobile penetration is estimated to be 130% while in Eastern Europe, it is 123%.

Mobile broadband connections are also increasing along with the number of mobile phones. In 2009 there were 360 million broadband connections. By 2015 they are expected to reach 3.4 billion.

Ericsson has also estimated that 2 million new mobile connections are added daily and the number of 3G subscriptions is already over 500 million.

To arrive at their findings, Opera analysed a 24-hour period across the top 10 countries, to see how the Opera Mini browser was used.

They found that the top 10 countries were Indonesia, Russia, India, China, Nigeria, Ukraine, South Africa, U.S.A, Vietnam and the U.K. Russia, which was in the top position previously, has now been replaced by Indonesia as the country with the most active mobile Web usage.

What the study has found is that users in all these countries are most likely to access the mobile Web between 8:00 pm and midnight, irrespective of differences in their cultures, location and economies.

They also found that there is no significant difference in the amount of data that is accessed on weekdays and weekends in all these countries.

The other notable point is that in the U.K. users were equally likely to access the mobile Web between 8:00 am and noon, while in the U.S. they are most likely to access the mobile Web between midnight and 4:00 am.

It was also found that in the U.K. and China, daytime (8:00 am to 4:00 pm) usage was likely to be the same as evening (4:00 pm to midnight) usage, while in all other places evening usage was far more likely.

The report shows that the Opera Mini has been used by 61.4 million mobile browsers, which is an increase of 4.2% since April 2010 and 142% since May 2009. The number of page views has also gone up to 28.3 billion in May 2010, which is an increase of 7.7% since April 2010 and 193.8% since May 2009.

The use of the Opera Mini has also gone up in Latin American countries by 194% between May 2009 and May 2010, while the amount of data transferred has gone up by 234% in the same time period.

78% of smartphone users accessed their browsers in April 2010 and 80% of them accessed applications. By contrast only 19% of feature phone users accessed their browsers, and 17% accessed applications. But feature phone users still constitute almost half of all users who access their mobile browsers and applications.

In April 2010 there was a growth of 28% in the number of users accessing their applications on the phone. The figure was up to 69.6 million users.

Social networking through apps saw a growth of 240% and was up to 14.5 million users. Access to News Apps grew by 124% to 9.3 million users and Sports Information apps grew by 113% to 7.7 million users.

Mobile banking usage has also more than doubled over the last year, to nearly 5 million users. Online retail sites via browsers also grew by 47% to 7.3 million users.

In April, the number of mobile users accessing their browser also grew by 31% to nearly 73 million users. Social networking through browsers grew by 90% to almost 30 million users.

Mark Donovan, comScore senior Vice President of mobile says, “With mobile media consumption on the rise, the discussion of how consumers are accessing content – whether it is via application, browser or both – continues to be an important factor for companies looking to invest further in their mobile brands. Although application access is clearly on the rise, with several categories more than doubling their audience via this method, content consumption via browser continues to be the most popular method for Americans to access mobile media.”

In other words, brands and marketers need to take care of both categories of users while planning their campaigns, as they have an opportunity to grow through both channels.

According to this deal, Yahoo! and Nokia will work together to improve their mobile internet services, in an attempt to win back some of their market share from competitors like Google and Apple.

The agreement will become functional in the second half of this year, and more services may follow later. Yahoo! will host Ovi email on Nokia phones exclusively, while Nokia will provide maps and navigational services to Yahoo!

During a conference held in New York last week, Nokia and Yahoo! stressed on the need to improve and expand mobile services in new markets, as the mobile phone is fast replacing the PC.

Nokia’s Chief Executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo believes that this deal with Yahoo! will help Nokia to do better in the U.S. where it is still not doing well in spite of being the market leader in the newer markets.

He says, “Location, maps and navigation will get more mind-share, will get more attention in the U.S. and many more users in the North American market,”

While Nokia has spent over $10 billion in the last few years to offer services like music downloads email etc. they are still unable to compete with Apple and Google.

On the other hand it is a well known fact that Yahoo! has been struggling for a while now, to keep up with its rival Google which has the far more popular Android operating system.

Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz feels that this deal could eventually help Yahoo! to get more local advertising business.

Financial details of this deal are not yet available. There have been mixed responses from various analysts as to whether this deal is likely to be successful or not.

Myxer, which was started in 2005, now boasts a user base of 30 million unique visitors who download entertainment content from it regularly.

A ‘More Malice’ content channel has been created on Myxer to promote the album. It will provide behind the scenes content on mobile videos to promote the album. The Myxer URL is:

http://www.myxer.com/MALICE

More Malice is the sequel to Snoop’s previous album, ‘Malice in Wonderland’. The record is accompanied by a mini-movie based on the previous album and it features Snoop Dogg playing the central role of Malice.

While the presence on Myxer is central to the album’s release, it will not be limited to the site. Ring tones and wallpapers of the album will be available to interested users. Embeddable widgets will also be placed on various music sites and on Snoop Dogg’s social network profiles.

CEO of Myxer, Myk Willis says, “It is becoming clearer by the day, that artists’ fans want to use their mobile phone as the connection vehicle to their favorite artists. We recently launched MobileStage as a free, customisable mobile web site for artists, and the response has been great.”

Artists seem to increasingly recognise the value of connecting with their fans directly. Radiohead launched a very successful album solely online back in 2007. In the past couple of years most artists have built Facebook Pages and Twitter profiles, which they or their PR teams use to interact with fans, keeping their loyal customers engaged.

“These days its all about the artist interacting with the fans directly”, said Snoop Dogg. “I know what my fans want and now with Myxer I can give them what they want and need by delivering the best content straight into their hands, giving them exclusive content, and what they can expect to see on my upcoming More Malice album.”

According to their monthly report, the Opera Mini had over 50.5 million users in February 2010, which is 1.7% more than the number of users in January 2010 and 145% more than the number of users in February 2009.

The number of page views in February 2010 was 22 billion, which is 5.6% lower than what it was in January 2010. The main reason for this could be the fact that January has 31 days, while February has only 28 days. The figure has however gone up by 200% compared to February 2009.

By the same logic, February 2010, generated over 330 million megabytes of data worldwide, which is 164% higher than February 2009, but 1.9% lower than January 2010.

The top 10 countries worldwide using the Opera Mini are Russia, Indonesia, India, China, Ukraine, South Africa, Nigeria, U.S., Vietnam and U.K.

In February 2010, consumers in the top 10 countries spent approximately $103.8 million, which is approximately $1.2 billion per year. Considering $1 per megabyte to be the average global charge, the Opera Mini thus generates $4 billion per year for mobile operators.

The Opera Mini is operational on smartphones as well as on other phones, thus allowing more users to access the internet through their mobiles.

In North America, the countries, which use the mobile Web the most are U.S. Mexico, Canada, Costa Rica, Honduras, Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Guadeloupe, Trinidad & Tobago, Panama and Puerto Rico.

The number of page views in these countries has gone up by 153% while the number of unique users has gone up by 109% and data transfer has increased by 84% between February 2009 and February 2010.

In most of these places, Google is the most frequently accessed website.

The most commonly used handsets for Web browsing are R.I.M’s BlackBerry, LG, Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson.

The Opera Mini has a 90% compression rate, which allows users to save a considerable amount of money on their mobile bills even while browsing the Internet on their mobiles.

Mobile operators are now offering users flat rate data plans, which further encourage users to access the mobile Web without having to worry about exorbitant mobile bills at the end of the month. In effect more consumers using the mobile Web, means more money for the mobile operators.

Web 2.0, according to Juniper, includes common Web applications that individuals use to generate, consume and interact with digital content. It covers the social Web and other sites that prompt user interaction.

The growing involvement of users with the social Web has a substantial effect on the business models, development strategies and revenues of mobile service providers, equipment manufacturers and other players in the mobile industry.

Mobile Web 2.0 is somewhat different from traditional Web 2.0 due to the technical and physical constraints of mobiles, such as their relative inability to work with Flash and AJAX. As a result, Mobile Web 2.0 substantially lags behind the full-fledged Web 2.0 as far as its technological evolution is concerned.

The development of smartphones and the iPhone and the availability of various services on mobile – SMS, MMS, IM and VoIP – give mobile social media advantages, such as the immediacy of content sharing, which has helped the medium gain a lot of ground in the second half of 2009, and it continues to do so in 2010.

Services such as mobile messaging and mobile Internet browsing are growing rapidly. While such rapid growth raises concerns, it also leads mobile industry experts to believe that mobile social media can be monetised by means of contextual and location targeted advertising in conjunction with premium services and virtual goods.

In fact, Juniper’s studies have also found that mobile Web users are more willing to pay for services provided to them than desktop users are.

Currently, Web 2.0 on mobile is valued at $5 billion by Juniper Research. This value is estimated to go up almost 4 times by 2014.

The study was conducted across 5 of the top mobile network providers in the U.K. over a period of 60 days, across 150 locations in the country to measure the speed of mobile data connections during peak hours. The operators who were considered for the study were O2, Orange, Vodafone, 3, and T-Mobile.

The results reveal that in the month of January 2010, O2 was the most efficient mobile network operator. They offered access to a web page within an average time of 1.7 seconds in London, which is about 30% faster than the slowest of the operators. However, in other cities the top position was shared by all the operators.

For music downloads, however, O2 was the fastest in 12 out of 20 cities. They were also the runners up in 4 of the remaining cities.

The studies were conducted between 10.00 a.m. and 10.00 p.m. on all 7 days of the week to reduce the margin of error.

Apart from London, some of the other cities covered included Edinburgh, Leeds, Bristol, New Castle, Liverpool and Sheffield.

Studies like this are not just about heaping accolades on faster networks. Simon Page of SIRODA says, “Regularly testing in this way helps identify areas for investment.”

O2 had invested 30 million pounds for 40 new sites before last Christmas. Obviously the investment has proven worthwhile.

The study shows that people want to buy tickets for various purposes such as train and underground travel (57%), bus tickets (53%), music concerts (55%) and even for sports events (57%).

Users responding to the survey thought that it would not only be very convenient and time saving to buy tickets on mobile handsets (44%), but also the large majority (67%) thought that they are less likely to lose a mobile ticket than a ticket bought over the counter.

225 survey respondents also pointed out that mobile tickets would be less polluting to the environment.

mBlox has revealed that they are already in talks with Arriva buses to start an m-ticketing service in U.K. This service will not only make it easier and convenient for users to make their travel arrangements, it will also be safer for them as the chances of fraud will reduce considerably. The distribution costs will also go down, which will be beneficial to the company.

The application required to buy tickets via mobiles will have to be downloaded onto the mobile device and will be free of charge. Concept Data Technologies have helped mBlox and Arriva Buses to start this marketing service.This is currently the largest service of its kind in the world, and is spread across a 1,000 bus routes and 4,500 buses.

Managing Director of Arriva Buses, Mike Cooper says, “Our customers can now buy tickets using their mobile phone at anytime from wherever they happen to be in the U.K.”

Arriva is offering users the chance to test this service for free in Crewe. Testers will be given a day, weekly or four-weekly ticket at a discounted price and will be requested to rate the technology and the overall experience. Those interested can register at:

www.arrivabus.co.uk/m-tickettesters

The GSMA is the industry association for mobile phone operators. It carried out a study on mobile Internet use in December 2009. The study showed that almost 16 million people in U.K. spent nearly 4.8 billion minutes on the mobile Internet and generated 6.7 billion page views between them. Of this, nearly 50% of the time people spent on the mobile Web was on Facebook.

The total number of mobile Internet users is likely to be much more than 16 million, as T-Mobile and 3 were not included in the survey. This data will be published shortly.

While Facebook was visited by almost 5 million users, it was closely followed by Google, which was used by 4.57 million users. Users did not spend anywhere near as much time on Google, though, as they did on Facebook.

The figures were released by the Mobile Media metrics service, which has been recently launched by the GSMA and comScore, to help various brands and agencies to set up their mobile ad campaigns and to judge the response they receive, to these campaigns.

Mobile marketing has definitely been on the upswing lately. Mobile commerce showed significant growth in the 2009 holiday season and reports predict that mobile Internet access will overtake PCs in 2013.

The demands on the mobile Internet have now become so great, that there is a strong possibility of the networks collapsing if something is not done soon to relieve the pressure on them.

Signs of trouble on the operator side were first discussed at the Mobile Search Conference in 2007. Back then, Dr Valentina Rivoira from Telecom Italia had said that operators have limited bandwidth and don’t necessarily want consumers to download large files and use the mobile Internet like they do the desktop. In 2007, this meant that tariffs would remain high till providers could improve their own bandwidth.

Now, a report released by The Cloud and Exane BNP Paribas claims that mobile Internet traffic is close to the point of breaking down.

According to the report, the mobile Internet has been growing at the rate of ten times each year for a while now, and if this continues, the entire system could collapse by the end of the year, or at least will struggle to survive.

The report says that smartphones have changed the way people use their mobiles. Handsets are now used for several purposes, from streaming music to down loading files, photos and video clips and even to watch TV.

It has also been suggested that by 2015 the demand on the mobile networks in Britain will be almost 100 times more per user than it is now.

According to this report the solution to this pending crisis lies in shifting from the mobile 3G networks to roaming Wi-Fi – a rather convenient solution for The Cloud, which is a Wi-Fi provider.

Steve Nicholson CEO, of The Cloud explains that ultimately consumers are interested in how fast they can access the net, for various functions. They would be willing to shift to any device that allows them this access.

This could mean a major shift in plans for mobile service providers, and potential losses in revenues as well, which might be incentive enough to resist any such change.

According to Gartner’s research, mobile phones will overtake PCs for Internet access in 2013. As per their estimates, the number of PCs in 2013 will reach 1.78 billion, while the number of Internet-compatible mobile phones will be 1.82 billion. Of this, the number of smart phones is predicted to be 1.32 billion, while the number of enhanced phones, which have media or application capabilities, but no local operating system, will be 0.5 billion.

Gartner also expect that PCs will continue to be used for the majority of page views in 2013, but website access will be mostly through mobile phones. By 2015, however, mobiles are predicted to become the main mode of accessing the web.

Assuming that these predictions will come true, it would be prudent for companies to ensure that their websites, portals and Web applications are fully supported for mobile access.

Another fact webmasters must keep in mind is that mobile users are generally less patient than the average PC user. Hence, ensuring that users can access the desired page with a minimal number of clicks should be a priority.

Organisations that deal with consumers through their website will soon need to make sure that their sites support mobiles, as they would face greater losses than those who have business-to-business applications. For instance, banks, online retailers, government offices, educational institutions especially need to heed this change.

eBay reports that the amount of shopping done through mobile handsets saw significant growth during the last holiday season.

Considering the importance of e-commerce in everyday life, it was only a matter of time before mobile shopping, or m-commerce as it is being called, followed suit.

According to the report from eBay, about 6 million people across 165 countries, have installed an eBay application on their mobile phones, and eBay receives 750,000 unique mobile visits daily.

1.5 million purchases were made via m-commerce on eBay during the 2009 Christmas holiday season, which is almost 3 times the level seen during the same period in 2008.

The total revenue generated via eBay mobile applications in 2009 was reported to be worth half a billion U.S. dollars, and a new transaction took place every 2 seconds. This alone should be enough information to make a number of companies rethink their mobile strategy

Consumers are not just using mobile phones to make small purchases of items of daily use. Some very high-ticket luxury purchases were also made via mobile. Examples cited by eBay include a 23-foot deck boat, a Boston grand piano and a 1966 Chevrolet Corvette.

In a separate report, mobile phone manufacturer, Motorola, found that the usage and impact of mobile shopping technologies exploded during the 2009 holiday shopping season. The survey identified that 64 percent of Gen Y (age 18 to 34) shoppers used their mobile phones for in-store shopping-related activities during the holiday season.

With the ever-increasing amount of news pointing to the growth of mobile in just the first 2 weeks of the year, one wonders if 2010 might finally be the real year of mobile?

Mobile search has grown 5-fold for Google in the past year. A slew of Android-based devices are hitting the market this year, and the Nexus One aims to be one of the best. Google’s mobile phone’s features include:

1. Nexus One phone hardware includes a 3.7-inch (diagonal) widescreen touchscreen interface with 800 x 480 pixel resolution, Wi-Fi, GSM EDGE, Bluetooth and a trackball
2. The phone will run on the Android 2.1 mobile platform
3. Basic features include a compass, gps, accelerometer, light sensor, proximity sensor
4. 2 microphones on the Nexus One allow noise cancellation
5. The phone is 11.5mm thin and weighs just 130 grams (with battery)
6. 5 megapixel cam + LED flash. 1-click upload to YouTube
7. 5 home screen panels to add more widgets
8. Live wallpapers – including animation – will sit behind widgets on the home screen
9. Live wallpapers are interactive and react to touch!
10. 3D framework introduced into the Android platform
11. Quick photo loading, 3D gallery and photo clustering
12. Google Earth for mobile due to be released soon
13. Voice activated searching and GPS-based search localisation
14. Voice enabled ALL text fields in the device, which means you can speak your emails, tweets, facebook updates

The Nexus One will be sold exclusively online via the Google website:

www.google.com/phone

Unlocked phones will be sold for $529. Alternatively, users can buy a subscription to T-Mobile and get the operator-subsidised phone available for $179.

Pricing of the Nexus One is disappointing, and this sentiment was reflected by some of the attendees at the press conference. Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, had in the past voiced hopes that we may one day see an ad-supported mobile phone. They seem now to be falling short of their own hopes.

Vodafone will be the first operator to sell the phone in the UK. Spring 2010 is the estimated time Google has given for the UK launch of their new mobile phone. Users on other networks can simply plug in the other netowrk operator’s  SIM card.

At the Q & A session following the press conference, Google mentioned that the core revenues and income they aim to gain from the mobile phone business is not meant to be from sales of the hardware but from the usage of their mobile search service and the ensuing mobile advertising.

Vlingo’s list has been compiled after studying the data they have collected in 2009 across the millions of searches conducted using their service.

Over three million people worldwide currently use Vlingo’s services on their mobile phones. All they need to do is simply speak into their handset, to carry out various tasks such as sending mails, searching the Web or even to update their Facebook status.

According to their findings, YouTube, Facebook and MySpace hold the top 3 positions in the list, which only goes to prove, how popular social networks have become, even on the mobile Web.

Dave Grannan, President and CEO of Vlingo says, “unlike traditional Web searches that focus on specific search terms, such as Michael Jackson or Twilight, our data shows that on mobile phones, people tend to search for specific destination sites and resources.”

The findings are not too surprising, though, as navigational searches are extremely popular even on the wired Web. On the mobile Web, users find it a lot easier to speak the name of the site they wish to visit than having to key in an entire URL on the phone’s number pad.

The top 10 voice-powered mobile searches, according to Vlingo, are:

1. YouTube
2. Facebook
3. MySpace
4. Weather
5. Movie Times
6. Twitter
7. Yellow Pages
8. MapQuest
9. Craigslist
10. White Pages

Predictions about the growth of the mobile Internet have actually come true, and what is most striking about the phenomenal growth of the mobile Web is the fact that it is growing fastest in developing countries, like those in Africa and South Asia.

Norway-based company, Opera Software, which develops Web browsers for desktops, mobiles and Wii consoles has reported that they recorded over 41.7 million users in November 2009, which is 5.3% higher than the previous month and 154% higher than November 2008. Of this, the most remarkable growth was seen in Africa, South East Asia, South Asia and East Asia.

The report, which is released every month, showed that in the top ten countries in Africa, the number of page views went up by 374%, the number of unique users went up by 177% and the amount of data transfer went up by 183% between November 2008 and November 2009.

They also reported that the top 10 countries for mobile web growth worldwide were Russia, Indonesia, India, China, Ukraine, South Africa, U.S.A, U.K., Vietnam and Poland, in that order.

Use of the latest technology now available was found to be continually going up, even in the times of recession, as this technology can help people overcome their day-to-day hardships.

The Internet mobility company Novarra, has released data that clearly highlights this fact. According to Novarra, mobile page views of sites related to the X-Factor went up by 15,000 percent between September and December, and they reached a peak during the final.

Incidentally, mobile traffic and page views also peaked every Saturday and Sunday when the live weekly show and eviction were being held.

During the final, which was held on 13th December, 19 million people watched the show and 10 million votes were sent in. The mobile page views also went up by 55 percent compared to the previous week, and were the highest recorded during the entire duration of the reality show.

Mobile Web users also seemed to have clear favourites. Contrary to expectations ‘Jedward’ did not generate much traffic, and in fact the popularity of the show increased after their exit by 122 percent, and a further 85 percent the week after that.

The second highest page views, on the other hand, were recorded on Sunday 25th October when early favorite Danyl Johnson struggled to get through.

These findings could make a clearly case for the popularity of the mobile Internet. However, Novarra has not released any absolute numbers. Hence, we don’t actually know if the 15,000% mobile traffic increase they’re referring to was just a jump from 1 page view to 15,000 page views or something more significant.

Mobile devices are predicted to “Eclipse the PC” next year. While the report does not actually predict the death of the Personal Computer, it does say that the mobile Web will grow, to the extent that it no longer remains subservient or secondary to the PC. Mobiles will become the primary source of Web browsing for many.

It is expected that the number of mobile Web users will cross the 1 billion mark in 2010, while the number of PC users will be around 1.3 billion. The growth rate of mobile devices will be 2.5 times that of the PC.

The growing numbers of smart phones, such as the iPhone, Blackberry and Google Android powered devices, along with good mobile operating systems, are responsible for this explosive growth.

200 million more smart phones are expected to hit the markets in 2010.

IDC also predicts that the iPhone, which currently has about 1,00,000 applications, will have about 3,00,000 applications by the end of the next year, while Android, which has just 10,000 applications will have 50,000 to 75,000 applications by then, further boosting the mobile Internet.

Google’s open operating system, Android, will also provide stiff competition to the iPhone.

The typically over-hyped Apple tablet, which they have called the ‘iPad’, and Microsoft’s own tablet device, which is expected to launch in the coming year as well, will further contribute to this growth.

A survey of 22,000 US consumers conducted by BIGresearch shows that consumers are increasingly expressing a negative attitude towards mobile marketing.

The percentage of people who are not in favour of mobile marketing has grown since June 2008.

67% of consumers surveyed said they dislike text ads, up from 64% in 2008. 60% dislike voicemail ads, also up from 57% in 2008. And 60% dislike video ads, up from 56% in 2008.

In fact, 52% of consumers surveyed actually felt that mobile marketing is an invasion of privacy. This number too is up from 2008.

The majority of users expressed the view that marketers should take prior permission before sending any such ads to consumers.

These findings are sure to give some sleepless nights to mobile marketers, who must now find a way to get their ads across to users without upsetting them, as that would defeat the whole purpose of advertising.

On a more general note, it was found that the mobile marketing audience consists of 58% males. The average age of these users is 39.2 years. These users also tend to access social networks in large numbers. 38% use Facebook, 23% use MySpace and 13% use Twitter on a regular basis.

Mobile analysts from Informa have predicted that mobile online usage is set to grow to 25 times its present levels by 2012.

While this sounds like great news for mobile operators, the revenues are not likely to grow at the same rate. In fact, it is expected that mobile revenues may only double in the same time period.

Also, mobile networks are not yet geared to accommodate such a sudden growth spurt. This may very well lead to widespread mobile data traffic jams in time to come.

Dimitris Mavrakis, an analyst with Informa, says, “The decoupling of revenues from traffic presented operators with a problem because it deprived the phone firms of cash at a time when their networks were in need of upgrading.” He further informs that the hardware required to build the next generation mobile networks that could handle such high traffic will not be easily available until late 2010, thus further aggravating the problems of mobile operators.

Graham Carey of Bytemobile said that the fact that many laptops and smartphones are always in the ‘on’ mode further compounds these problems. The flat rate pricing which had been introduced to encourage users to access the mobile net, now seems to be having a boomerang effect, as users are using it extensively while mobile operators are not earning as much as they would, if the users were being billed at an hourly rate.

For now, mobile operators are using methods of optimization, like shrinking files, wherever possible without affecting the quality of the download.

John Spindler, Vice President Product Management at network optimization firm ADC, said that the unequal distribution and sudden spikes in mobile data use were also adding to the problem.

The study conducted by Scarborough Research has shocked most people by revealing that as a matter of fact it is the working mom who makes the maximum use of mobile phones.

A working mom has been classified as a lady who has a full time job and at least one child at home.

Thinking about it, it does make sense that these multi-tasking women should make full use of the technology available to them, in order to be able to coordinate the several tasks that need to be done by them. This way they can be reasonably sure that things are in control back home, when they are away at work or commuting between their homes and place of work.

According to the study, the average mobile telecoms bill incurred by a working mom is $94 which is 21% more than that of the average mobile user in the U.S.

What is even more of an eye-opener is the fact that these working moms do not use the mobile phone only to make and receive calls and messages, but they are also likely to download content from the Internet on their mobile phones.

These ladies have also been found to be responsible for the purchase and use of several other high tech gadgets in their homes, which would help them to do save time by doing their work faster and thus enabling them to accomplish more in a given span of time.

AOL acquired Third Screen Media, a mobile advertising company, in 2007 for $80 million. According to sources in the know, the new CEO of AOL, Tim Armstrong, and the head of the advertising department Jeff Levick are planning to either shut down the mobile advertising network or just letting all their contracts lapse over a period of time.

It has been reported that AOL is not renewing the deals they have with their existing publishers for their mobile ad network. Instead, these publishers are quietly being allowed to go to AOL’s competitors. AOL has also not put out any new publisher proposals, which obviously means that they are losing a lot of clients, and surprisingly this does not seem to be bothering them, which again indicates an intention to discontinue the business.

A number of current employees of Third Screen Media are reportedly out in the field, hunting for new jobs.

It is believed that AOL will instead focus on developing mobile content and will also rebuild their mobile ad technology, which will then be able to service other AOL-owned properties.

This is certainly a good move at this stage, since AOL will be turning into a separate entity from Time Warner shortly. They will then have businesses like mobile web publishing, AOL Mail, MapQuest, AIM and iPhone apps, which they can monetise.

AOL could always rebuild their mobile advertising business again later with even better technology when the market turns and demand for mobile advertising really picks up.

The number of mobile websites has been growing rapidly, and so has the number of mobile Web users. The number of mobile websites has now grown to almost 2 million while an estimated 31% of mobile phone users browse the mobile web at least once a month, to look up routine things such as weather, news and search.

While mobile websites are improving in general, the report from the Yankee Group found that only 4 of them received good usability scores. These were Google, Google News, Yahoo! and MLB.com.

Carl Howe, a director at Yankee Group, says, “Unlike last year, most of the sites we reviewed adapt their content to many differing feature phones and smartphones. And some companies are also starting to incorporate location-awareness, something other sites should strive to emulate.”

Of the 27 sites studied, it was found that for news, both Google and Yahoo! have done well and scored 73 points each. They have managed to walk the tight rope between providing sufficient information and flooding the user with excessive details.

Again, in the field of search, Google has retained the number one slot as would be expected with 81 points and is followed quite closely by Yahoo! with 76 points. Yahoo! just needs to strengthen itself regarding some of the relatively minor features such as extraneous content and HTML validation errors.

In the field of sports, the Major League Baseball mobile site scores 71 points and is followed by Rival.com with 58 points and ESPN.com with 57 points.

As far as U.S. mobile carriers are concerned, they all need to improve their own mobile presence. Sprint, though not very good, is the best with just 53 points.

Read the full report: Best Of Anywhere Web 2009

Mobile phone users worldwide have been growing by the minute, and that obviously means that the mobile ad business will continue to grow further.

According to estimates by eMarketer, the total number of mobile users by the end of this year should be 280.8 million and according to comScore, the number of smartphone users should touch 29 million by then.

AdMob has stated that the number of smartphone shipments worldwide is projected to grow by 13%.

eMarketer also estimates that the mobile ad spend in the U.S. alone will increase from $648 in 2008 to $760 in 2009.

One of the main reasons for this growth in mobile ads is the availability of better mobile websites, which have been optimized for use on mobile phones. Thus users find it easier and more interesting to access the net through their mobile phones.

AdMob which was founded in 2006 with just one employee, and has grown to 85 employees in January 2009, has done very well for itself, particularly in the last year due to these changes in the mobile internet experience. Since June 2008 their monthly ad requests has have grown to 8.3 billion.

According to the analytics firm Nielsen, AdMob is now the third largest mobile ad company in the U.S. after Millennial Media and Third Screen Media.

Their mobile ad revenue is expected to go up by 18.1% this year to $1.3 billion.

When these figures are compared to that of newspaper ad revenue which will be down by 18.7% to $35.5 billion, radio ads which will be down by 11.7% to $15.8 billion and TV ads down by 10.1% to $43 billion one can get a true estimate of how well mobile ads are doing.

Considering the fact that Vodafone already has a subscriber base of 289 million, which is spread out in different corners of the world, this new project will be a huge undertaking.

A series of new network APIs will provide access to the billing system as well as information about customer location.

There are 3 main services being provided:

1. Access to global customer base – this will allow developers to develop an application only once and it will be made to all Vodafone users all over the world.
2. Billing – New services will allow customers to pay for various services which they use through heir prepaid or postpaid mobile phone accounts, instead of having to use their credit cards, thus ensuring their safety.
3. Location – Developers will be provided with certain capabilities which will give them location awareness, thus allowing them to create more innovative services and applications. Vodafone will however, allow its customers to decide and control how their personal information is to be accessed and used.

This project was conceived following the formation of the Joint Innovation Lab (JIL), which Vodafone established with China Mobile and Softbank.

Following the continued fall in voice to voice and data transport revenues, there has been a lot of speculation regarding the future prospects of the mobile operators business. The introduction of these new services could well be seen as a step in the right direction to improve the revenue generating possibilities for mobile operators.

According to CEO of Vodafone, Vittorio Colao, this step could kill two birds with one stone, as it will allow third parties to develop attractive new services, while billing and supporting customers through their network capabilities all over the world. This will help operators to make more money, while providing users with new and innovative services that they want.

Vodafone will release these API’s through the JIL in summer.

This re-launched Go mobile platform from Yahoo! will open the doors to third-party application developers, just like Google’s Android project does. Yahoo! Go is relatively popular… quite a few users have actually downloaded the software onto their mobile phones. Other developers don’t need to convince users to do the same with their applications as well; they can just piggy-back on the Yahoo! platform now.

Download Yahoo! Go

Go 3.0 itself offers some impressive improvements, in the form of a more personalised homepage and an “upgraded user-interface”. The improvements make the entire user experience more conducive to browsing the Internet, or at least the Yahoo! Go-related Internet from a mobile phone. Some of the nicer features we liked were:

• Smooth browsing through Flickr photographs
• Easy integration with Yahoo! Mail
• Quick, free access to local information including traffic and weather

Yahoo! has also been busy developing what it likes to believe will be the next generation of web services, within a social setting. The CEO of the company, Jerry Yang personally attended CES 2008, where he demonstrated a new service that he called “Life with an exclamation point”, which aims to integrate different applications such as email, structured data, tags and other information in a social context and thus help users in multiple facets of their life through advanced technology.

This interface too will be open to third party application integration. Like Facebook, the new service’s homepage will also highlight relevant updates from various connections instead of just showing an inbox. Dan Farber at ZDNet has details and screenshots of the demo system.

As TechCrunch have noted, similar such platforms and strategies have been adopted in the past by the likes of Microsoft, Google and Facebook. It remains to be seen whether Yahoo! Life!, which sounds eerily similar to Microsoft Live, will really provide anything new or if it will turn out to be just another copy of the same old platforms.

Yahoo! hope the two new offerings will enable their customers to use the Web more productively and more easily. However it will take a while for the complete new social package to be available due to security concerns, which must be addressed first. They expect to see some form of the platform during the year, but full functionality might not be available in 2008.

One hopes that these latest innovations will help to restore Yahoo! to its earlier place of pride vis-à-vis the internet, considering the fact that they used to be the stars of the Internet before Google came and rained on their parade. Share prices of Yahoo! Inc. have taken a beating off late while those of their competitor, Google Inc; have risen significantly, often at Yahoo!’s expense.

AOL Mobile UK

The new offering by AOL Mobile configures all Web content to match any phone, irrespective of its make. A once-in-30-day log in feature and an algorithm that remembers the user’s personal requests and favourites make the portal more user friendly than the mobile portals from rivals Microsoft, Yahoo! and Ask.

Like the other portals, the service includes local weather forecasts, horoscopes, news and a regular web and images search feature. AOL Mobile uses Google search technology to power mobile searches.

The dynamic mobile transcoding feature included in the portal’s technology is supposed to easily render Web content from any internet site. Based on this belief, AOL has also chosen to omit the Mobile Search feature that Google offers on its own mobile search service. However, AOL’s transcoding system does not seem to live up to expectations. Even compared to Google’s transcoding technology, AOL Web Surf reportedly falls short.

A near desktop experience?

First -time users of the service and some bloggers are already complaining that the mobile browsing feature is inferior due to the poor transcoding technology. When compared to the Yahoo!, MSN and Ask’s mobile portals, AOL Mobile does not have a wow-factor and it is also on the slower side. AOL should pay more attention to little things such as server response times and sorting local search results by distance in order to win users.

As far as consumers are concerned, AOL Mobile will most likely get lumped with all the other major mobile search portals, as it does not provide any significant improvements, which is what the mobile Internet really needs.