According to Juniper’s forecast, the total end-user mobile games revenue will reach $18.3 billion by 2016.

The revenue that is expected to be generated has been broken up into various categories to get a better idea of the capacity of revenue generation. The categories are downloads to tablets, downloads to smartphones, downloads to feature phones in-game purchases on smart phones and in-game purchases on tablets.

Total mobile end-user games revenues predicted for 2016. Source: Juniper Research

Downloads to smartphones, are likely to have the lion’s share of the revenue generated, followed by downloads to tablets and in-game purchases on smartphones, both of which are expected to have nearly equal share of the revenue.

In contrast, the revenue generated from downloads to feature phones and in-game purchases on tablets will be much smaller.

Currently, in-game purchases, which are a small fraction of the revenue generated, account for about $2.1 billion worldwide, and are expected to reach $4.8 billion by 2016.

While 290 million individual Americans (or 114.7 million American homes) own a television set. In contrast, the number of people online in the USA is only 211 million, the number of users above 13 years of age accessing the mobile Web is 116 million.

Interestingly, the number of individuals working on a laptop or desktop computer is about 192 million, while the number of consumers with a mobile phone is 232 million. Through these stats, one could infer that almost 20 million users access the Internet exclusively via a mobile device and the scope of growth for mobile Internet access far exceeds that for the wired Internet.

288 million users watch traditional TV while 143 watch it through the internet. 111 million users use time-shifted TV and 30 million users watch TV on their mobiles. While traditional television viewership is still higher than mobile ownership, this number could fall over time.

Having multiple TV connections in a home is growing increasingly common, with over 35.9 US homes having four or more TV sets, 28.3 million having 3 sets each, 32.7 million having 2 sets each and only 17.7 million having just one TV set.

57% of mobile users have feature phones while 43% have smart phones. This means that only 43% of the current US mobile user base is able to substitute mobile TV for traditional viewing. Android remains the most popular smartphone operating system with 43% of the market share followed by the iPhone with 28% and RIM Blackberry having 18%.

Users in the over-65 years age group watch the most amount of TV averaging 46 hours and 16 minutes per week, while those in the 12 to 17 years category watch the least with an average of only 22 hours and 24 minutes per week.

Among mobile video users, YouTube is the most popular channel followed by FOX and ABC. The Facebook and Twitter apps are more common among women, while Google+ is more popular among men for some reason.

On a worldwide scale, it was found that while devices such as HD TV, 3D TV, Internet-connected TV, smartphones and tablets are already quite popular, a substantial number of other consumers are still at the stage of planning to get these devices in the near future. So, the market for different forms of electronic devices continues to be very exciting, and can be expected to grow still further.

Over the last year or so tablet devices have been growing in popularity. A study conducted by Google found that 65% of users that have tablet devices use them for at least one hour a day. It was also found that these devices are used mostly for personal and fun purposes such as checking email, shopping, gaming and other such leisure activities.

91% of the time spent on tablet devices is for personal activities as opposed to desktops, which are used for work related activities and mobiles, which are carried everywhere and used mainly for local search and other related activities. As a result of this, the tablet devices are used mostly in the evening or night and are not usually carried everywhere.

In order to make the most of this growing popularity of tablet devices, Google also studied how users interact with ads on the tablets. The study showed that users expect the advertisements on tablets to be more interactive and interesting than ads shown on desktops and mobile phones.

Naturally, this is an opportunity Google won’t miss, as they are continuously trying to find new ways to woo big brands and win over more advertising money from traditional media via formats such as online video. The new ad formats introduce by Google are for search and display advertising on tablet devices and have a heavy emphasis on video and rich media.

Rich Media Designs for Mobile are basically rich media ad templates with in-built interactivity. This will make it easy for advertisers to create rich media ads for tablets by porting creative used on other display ad campaigns.

Google Media Ads for tablet search. Image courtesy of Google

On the search side, Google will take advantage of the interactive touch-screen of tablets test video ad placement directly onto the search results page. Google had tried similar video advertising on desktop search results pages in the past, but that experiment never took off from beta.

Media Ads, which will show on Google search pages on tablet devices, though, are more likely to succeed as tablet users are much more open to interactivity and the entertainment aspect of such a device and on the format will help advertisers to engage users in new ways as tablet devices continue to gain n popularity in the days to come.

Global telecom technology and service provider, Ericsson has predicted in its latest Traffic and Market Data Report that the number of mobile broadband subscriptions will rise to an absurd-sounding 5 billion+ by 2016.

Though the number of such mobile broadband subscriptions was earlier expected to cross 1 billion by the end of this year, it is now being estimated that there will be about 900 million such subscriptions by the end of the year. The growth forecasts for 2016 are built on an expected year-on-year growth rate of 60%.

Mobile data traffic is likely to double this year. This is mainly due to the proliferation and availability of new devices such as smartphones and tablets. Smartphone traffic alone is expected to triple this year.

According to the report, users living on less than 1% of the earth’s land area (urban regions with over 1,000 people per square kilometer), will generate around 60% of this traffic. Video consumption on mobile devices is likely to be the main driver of this growth.

Ericsson also expects that the traffic generated by these advanced smartphones will rise 12-fold, and roughly equal mobile PC generated traffic by 2016.

Predicted growth of mobile data consumption (in PetaBytes)

Reports from Asian technology blog, Penn Olson state that for the past 5 days, Gmail services are being affected on Android handsets. The Android Market has also been intermittently inaccessible during the same period.

While the Gmail website is working as normal in China, both the Gmail app for Android and the Android Market have completely stopped working in the country. The website Blocked In China confirms that the Android Market is inaccessible on both Android devices and via the wired Web.

Android Market shows as “Blocked” in China

Gmail was the battleground where Google’s exit from China was decided. It comes as no surprise, then, that the service should also be blocked on mobile phones. What is surprising is the fact that it took Chinese authorities so long to make this decision.

Google Plus, on the other hand, was blocked hardly a week after it was launched in China, and remains that way since.

If the sequence of events repeat themselves, Google might find itself exiting the Chinese Mobile market as well, which could be yet another major blow to the company’s East Asian operations.

The study takes into consideration various devices such as tablets, e-readers, and other portable connected devices. The study concentrated on user demographics, features of the devices being used and shipment details. Retailing strategies being used by the manufacturers and marketers as well as pricing tactics were also studied.

Mobiles, smartphones and tablets are expected to be the fastest growing devices in the near future. This assessment has been further strengthened by the recent announcement from Microsoft stating that their Windows 8 OS will be orientated towards mobiles and tablets. Microsoft have also said that their Office suite will add to the attraction of tablets within the enterprise space.

Analysts at Juniper estimate that the number of tablet devices being shipped out will touch 253 million by 2016. This is a huge jump compared to the number of such devices expected to ship this year, which is just around 55.2 million.

Juniper’s numbers match other forecasts by Gartner and DisplaySearch quite closely. Numbers for this year were forecast to be around 50 million, but have now been revised up a bit, which further reinforces these steep growth expectations.

It is also believed that by 2016, more than half the number of tablet devices will have Wi-Fi as well as cellular connections. At present, most of these devices only include Wi-Fi connectivity.

Currently, customers are required to have separate connections for their mobile phones and for the tablet. This situation is expected to change in due course and could also influence the growth in usage of tablets.

The search giant has been running trials of this app on Sprint phones and they are now ready to roll out the app to all Sprint Nexus S 4G phones with an over-the-air update.

So far, they have only tested the app with Citi, MasterCard, and First Data. However, now they are ready to add other partners including Visa, American Express and Discover, to this service. It is not yet known when these cards will become functional on Wallet, as technical details are being worked out.

Once users download the wallet app to their phone, they can use it to make payments through NFC technology instead of having to carry several credit cards.

This service is still in its infancy, as it works only on one Sprint phone, and is compatible with only a limited number of credit cards. Also, the number of terminals compatible with this technology is a very small percentage of the total number of terminals in use.

Google aims to be able to let users use this app for all credit cards, and is also working to make the feature compatible with several other handsets. They also hope to increase the number of terminals compatible with this technology in the near future.

While Google Wallet is compatible on the Sprint network, the other popular networks, Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile USA, are working with several credit card companies to create their own digital wallet too.

The study, incidentally, was conducted to show the importance of clean drinking water. While drinking water was ranked third, above Facebook, the results were not quite what one would expect.

Facebook was ranked fifth in the list. Clean and flushing toilets were ranked ninth!

Similarly, an Internet connection was ranked at number two, just after sunshine, which of course most Britishers are known to be quite starved of.

Ironically, another survey conducted earlier this year found that nearly 50% of men accessed the Internet on their mobile while in the toilet.

Technological advances and social networks have been given predominance over other requirements such as washing machines, showers, fresh fruit and vegetables, pain killers and even shoes. However, to give them more importance than food, clothing and the basic sanitary facility of flushing toilets, seems rather extreme.

The study polled 3,000 British residents, many of whom could possibly have been young adults, who tend to dramatise the importance of trivial things and have never had to live without the ‘comforts’ of clean toilets being available to them.

The top 10 items in the list were as follows.

1. Sunshine
2. Internet connection
3. Clean drinking water
4. Fridge
5. Facebook
6. NHS
7. Cooker
8. Email
9. Flushing toilet
10. Mobile phone / smartphone

In fact, 4 out of the 10 most important things the respondents said they couldn’t live without are completely unrelated to the sustenance of life. Even more ridiculous is the fact that 15 out of the 50 “essentials” were items such as eBay, iPods and Twitter, which didn’t even exist 20 years ago!

Are the British public really such a nation of airheads or was this just another survey with a poorly chosen sample showing “stats” that are far from reality?

This app helps users to organise a get together or events with their friends. When a user wants to know where his friends are, this new app makes it very easy for him to do so.

Users just have to invite their friends through this app, and when they agree to join, both sides will be able to see each others’ locations.

In order to use this app, the user has to sign up using his phone number. Then he can invite all his friends through his contact list and also tell them the reason for the invite.

At this time he can also specify the amount of time for which this invite will hold good. Once that time limit is up, the invite expires automatically and the location sharing stops automatically.

The friends receive a text message with all the details on their Windows Phone. Those who decide to join in will be visible along with their location on the map. The map can be extended or narrowed down to include a larger or smaller area as required.

All those who accept the invite will be able to see each others location. The participants can also update their status through messages. To see a particular person status update, one must click on the user tile of that person. To see the status of all participants, one must click on the People tab.

A person who wants to stop sharing his location has to tap ‘leave’ on the People tab. He can also send his friends a status message to indicate that he is leaving the group.

At present this app is available only on the Windows Phone in the U.S. but is likely to be added to other devices in the future.

This activity is likely to become very popular as it has been found that 73% of users engage in mobile social networking on a daily basis.

By 2016, the number of users accessing these facilities is set to cross 130 million. An increased use of this sector over the past wear and a half has already been noted following the launch of services such as front facing cameras on smartphones and other improvements on the technological side by major industry players.

The use of mVoIP has increased significantly in the market, especially in the developed countries because of the increased use of smartphones and easy to download apps.

As voice based services become more easily available in the market, it will be used more and more in services such as gaming and social networking according to the report.

Existing alliances between Facebook and mVoIP providers as well as the acquisition of Skype by Microsoft will further enhance this sector.

The report also forecasts that the increased access to 3G and 4G services will give a further boost to the development of voice based services.

Revenues for the voice based services are however likely to diminish over the next five years as many service providers will offer these services for free in order to get a hold of a larger market share.

These apps can be of great use to residents of the city as well as to tourists. Since the mobile apps are available to users at all times, it is a great way for people to make enquiries about the city and get up to date information even when they are on the go.

The ‘311 feature’ which is a built in app is very commonly used, according to Andy Sparks, UI and project and sales manager for eproximiti, a software development firm specializing in the health care industry and municipalities.

According to him since cameras and GPS facility are generally available in all smart phones, this app can be used to find out not only about events taking place in the city but also current details of graffiti information about potholes and bad roads, or fallen trees in some area and the like.

Earlier, information about such incidents could only be reported through phone calls and computers, but these apps on smart phones have simplified this process to a great extent. According to Andy Sparks, these apps can also be used to spread information about news initiatives being taken up in the region and increase citizen participation through increased awareness.

Some of the cities which have already introduced such local apps are Baltimore, New Orleans, Ottawa and Charlotte.

A well known mobile app called ‘Proximitips’ functions as a hyper-local social magazine, that not only provides news reviews and promotions but also has facilities for purchases and bookings.

This app can be used through street name city name or suburb. The app also allows users to interact with each other thus making the information more interesting and engaging.

Proximitips has been developed in London’s Tech City, and is available in throughout Europe covering 125 million places of interest.

The riots first broke out on the 6th of August in retaliation to police shooting a 29-year-old man named Mark Duggan in Tottenham (North-East London) on the 4th of August.

Local residents started to protest outside the Tottenham police station, but the protest then spread to a much larger area, involving about 20 neighbourhoods. The protest quickly turned into a violent riot.

A lot of the rioters resorted to using the Internet as a means of coordinating their “protests”. Possibly the most popular means here has been Blackberry Messenger, which allows people to communicate through its instant messaging technology in-built on all Blackberry handsets.

Other services such as Facebook and Twitter were also used, of course.

Not only were people instigated to take part in the riots through the use of these services, but photos and videos of arson were also uploaded and circulated widely. This further instigated otherwise casual observers to join in on the rioting and looting.

The other side to this story is the fact that the very technology that helped spread the violence is now being used to identify and locate the perpetrators of the violence.

Metropolitan Police using Flickr to catch London looters

Blackberry’s instant messaging service RIM will now be used by the police to find those who instigated the public to eventually led to so much of damage and destruction.

It is believed that the police are already making use of the data provided by RIM, and working within the guidelines of the Data Protection Act they will be able to make use of this information to nab the culprits.

Some civilians are also helping the police with this investigation. A group of people from Google have formed London Riots Facial Recognition. This is a group that requires membership and will make use of technology to help identify the arsonists.

Even more admirably, a number of civilian groups also used social media to band together and fight off looters as well as to organise clean-up groups to rectify the damage in their neighbourhoods without waiting for the government to act on it.

While London is quickly recovering from the shock and remedying the damage already done, most have been remind that while technology can be harmful in the hands of the wrong people, it can be extremely helpful when used by the right people with the right intentions.

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 number of smartphones sold worldwide in 2010 was 302 million. According to the prediction, 1 billion smartphones will be sold annually by the year 2016.

The prices of these handsets are set to fall gradually with time, and this is what will fuel the growth of smartphones. Economy model handsets, which cost below $150 (unsubsidised rate) are likely to be the most in demand, and this segment will account for a third of the total smartphones being shipped out.

Smartphone prices forecast for 2016

The competition between handset manufacturers and suppliers will also lead to these gadgets being available at very reasonable rates, further enhancing the demand for them.

The report also predicts that many users in the developed markets will be inclined to switch from feature phones to smartphones, but they would expect to pay the price of feature phones only.

On the other hand a low price point will be essential in the developing markets as well, because the consumers in general have a lower spending power and operator subsidies are also fewer.

The increased availability of open source operating systems such as Android along with falling costs of key components for manufacture will help lower the cost of smartphones.

The report also predicts that the demand for standard smartphones costing between $151 – $399 will remain intact, as also the demand for premium or high end phones that cost above $400. This demand will be fuelled by the increased availability of new technologies such as NFC, 3D and Biometrics.

These new high-end smartphones will also be capable of morphing into other devices such as Tablets and Notebooks.

Google had purchased the domain name and trademark Photovine about a month ago. At that time, people were left wondering why Google was interested in a photo sharing site, when they already have Picassa.

Now that it is known that Photovine will function as a photo-sharing app for smartphones, the purchase makes sense.

Photovine will be different from other photo-sharing sites. It will allow users with common interests to connect with each other. The FAQ describes Photovine thus:
“A vine is like a constantly growing family of photos connected through a common caption created by you, your friends, and people all over the world.”

Some examples of vines could be: “What Weekends Are Made Of”, “Secret Stuffed Animal”, “Party People”, or, “Love of My Life”.

As people add photographs to vines, they tell their own stories about the moments, images, and ideas that define our lives in a way that’s social, creative, and fun.

Photovine is run by Slide, which Google had bought over in August 2010 for $182 million.

The concept of collecting a chain of photos that are related to each other through a common caption is quite similar to the new version of Twitter search, where photo and video content are attached through hashtags.

It is not immediately known whether or not Google will eventually integrate Photovine into their new social network Google Plus. At present, Photovine is an invitation only service, and those interested can ask for an invite on www.photovine.com.

The report indicates that total U.S. mobile ad spending is set to grow from the level of $790 million in 2010 to $4 billion by 2015. In addition the report also predicts that the mobile local ad spend will go up from $404 million in 2010 to $2.8 billion in 2015.

In effect this means that while local ad spend currently accounts for about 51% of the revenue, it is set to go up to about 70% by 2015.

Mobile local advertising is defined as that which targets users in specific locations or contains location-specific calls to action.

While mobile ad spend is likely to go up mainly due to the easier availability of smartphones and increased web usage, local ad spend is set to grow due to increased ability of mobile phones to be aware of location of the user.

This increased capability of mobiles, will not only lead to increased advertising by big brands but will also encourage the small and medium businesses to advertise on mobile, through display, search and SMS formats.

Local Advertising can be further divided into National-local and Local-local advertising.

National-local advertising is done by big brands and agencies, which target the local population of a given area.

On the other hand, local-local advertising is done by the small and medium sized businesses.

This local-local sector of the mobile advertising business is what is set to grow at a very fast pace thanks to the availability of facilities provided by features such as AdWords, Foursquare etc. This will eventually lead to the large growth of mobile ad spending.

The report forecasts that by the end of 2011, 1.8 billion people will use the mobile to make payments for purchases of various kinds. By 2015, this figure is expected to go up to 2.5 billion, which is a growth of 40%.

The sectors that would be responsible for a large part of this growth will be mobile ticketing for transport and entertainment. Other physical goods will also be available through mobile payments.

Among the popular digital goods that can be purchased through mobile payments, will be ringtones and games. The price of these goods would range from as little as a few cents to $20.

A large chunk of this growth is expected to come through China and India. China and the Far East will account for 29% of all users, while the Indian Subcontinent will account for 17% of the growth and will cross 400 million users.

Total revenues generated through mobile payments are expected to touch $400 billion by 2015. The Far East and China are expected to contribute about 25% of this share, while America will be the largest contributor with 35% share.

The players in the field of mobile payments will need to be up to date on the latest market trends, and offer users new opportunities in the form of personalised mobile coupons, loyalty schemes, and novel augmented reality offerings.

On the off-side to this good news, the report also warns of a high possibility of fraud occurring due to mobile payments. This is especially likely in case of PSMS and direct billing facilities. The participants of these schemes must pay attention to mobile security, in order to avoid such frauds.

In order to achieve this, Google has added a new feature that will enable automatic mobile rendering of Google Sites for iOS 3.3+ and Android 2.2+ devices.

In order to use this feature, Google Site admins need to go to ‘general settings’ under More actions > Manage site and click on ‘Automatically adjust site to mobile phones’. Once this is done, the Google Site will automatically be adjusted when it is viewed via an iOS or Android 2.2 device.

When this new feature is activated:

• The header layout and top bar will be automatically aligned
• The width of the site will match the device
• Sidebars will be smartly handled and horizontal navigation and dropdown links will be available.

In order to preview the page from the computer as a mobile viewer, users can click on More actions > Preview as viewer (Mobile). Webmasters will even have the option to save some vertical space in the footer by hiding some of the links.

To further help publishers to find their sites even when they are on the go, Google has also added mobile versions of the site list, sites search, and browse sites categories.

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.

Researchers at Nielsen have found that consumers between the ages of 12 and 17 watch mobile videos more than any other age group. During the last quarter of 2010 they watched 7 hours and 13 minutes of mobile video per month on an average. This is almost twice as much as the average 4 hours and 20 minutes of mobile video watched by the general population.

Teenagers use mobile text messaging more than twice as much as people of other ages do. In the first quarter of 2011 they sent an average of 3,364 texts, compared to 1,640 texts by those between 18-24 years of age. They are also more receptive to mobile advertising than others. 58% of them said that they “always” or “sometimes” watch mobile ads.

These youngsters are also quite addicted to social media. While they account for just 7.4% of the total number of social media users, they account for 78.7% of visits to social networks and blogs.

On the other hand, teens talk much less on the phone today than teens did in the 80s and 90s. They spoke an average of 515 minutes on the phone compared to 750 minutes by those between the ages of 18 and 24. The only demographic to talk less on the phone are users over 65 years of age.

Television viewing among teens is  much less than other age groups. While this might seem to be a good thing for their health and development, it actually isn’t. Their time is spent much more in front of a mobile or computer screen. The average American watched 34 hours and 39 minutes of TV per week. 12-17 year olds watch only 23 hours and 41 minutes per week. Teenagers also use home computers much less than older people. 18 year olds spent 39 hours 50 minutes online, of which 5 hours 26 minutes were spent streaming videos.

Children under 10 typically spend a lot of time watching TV, but now they are being exposed more and more to digital activities such as playing online games, watching videos and using social networks.

According to the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, 30% of 3 year olds spend time on computers and 80% of 4-5 year olds do so. 90% of those in the 6-8 year bracket use computers regularly.

The report forecasts that by 2014, at least 1 in 5 smartphones will be NFC capable and there will be 300 million such phones in use worldwide. By the end of 2012 itself, mobile network operators are expected to launch these services in 20 countries.

In recent times, NFC technology has been growing more popular owing largely to adoption by mobile operators, handset vendors and service providers.

As NFC services become more popular, retail marketing via coupons and smart posters will also become more common, especially in developed nations in North America and Western Europe.

In France alone, device vendors expect to sell 1 million NFC-capable handsets by the end of this year itself. The Far East and China are also expected to turn into large markets for this technology after 2012, due to the forecasted development of newer technology and better global standards.

2011 and 2012 are expected to be landmark years in the launch and propagation of NFC technology and the revenue generated from it is expected to touch $50 billion by 2014.

Although there are still some problems that need to be ironed out, NFC technology is here to stay.

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.

This has been confirmed by the recently released Opera State of The Mobile Web report.

Accessing various social networking sites has become the most popular function on mobile phones. The network being commonly used varies depending on the location. While Facebook is definitely the most popular social site in the Western world, vKontakte is extremely popular in Russia and the surrounding region.

It has come to light that 77% of the users in Indonesia and the Philippines visit Facebook regularly on their mobiles. In this region alone, more than 400,000 Facebook users make use of Opera software to access social networks.

Those who use mobile devices to access social networks were also found to do so quite frequently, according to the page view statistics of the report.

Use of mobile handsets for social networking is expected to continue growing. It was found that between March 2011 and April 2011 the number of users of the Opera Mini Browser has grown by 4.6% to 107.1 million.

This seems to be quite a logical use of the mobile Web, as users naturally need to find out many things about a place they are new to. At such a time the mobile is the handiest and most easily available gadget to help them.

For instance, when a user ends up in a location unexpectedly, the user could find an appropriate hotel to stay in by searching for nearby accommodation. Similarly, if the user needed to make a booking for a flight to or from a particular location, the mobile would be very useful.

It has been found that mobile devices are used during all stages of travel, right from the initial research to planning, experiencing and sharing of the experience.

Google has revealed that about 19% of all hotel queries are now conducted through mobiles.

Analysts at eMarketer predict that the number of U.S. consumers making use of mobile for travel planning will rise from 19.7 million in 2010 to 29.7 million in 2012.

This growing use of mobile for travel related requirements is a good opportunity for marketers to reach a larger audience. In order to improve their performance, marketers should show location related ads to travelers. Click-To-Call and easy to download ads also improve client compliance. Tablet devices are fast becoming very popular and campaigns should also be catered to these devices.

While the percentage of users using their desktop PC to access their email has remained more or less constant, the percentage of those using their mobile phones to do so has increased substantially.

This conclusion was formed based on a study conducted by Return Path an email marketing and monitoring firm. According to their research, about 48% of users access their email through Web browsers such as GMail, Hotmail, and Yahoo! Mail. On the other hand, those using desktop-based email programmes such as Microsoft Office Outlook account for about 36% of users.

In contrast, the fraction using a mobile device to access their email is about 16%. While this figure is much lower than the numbers for webmail and desktop mail, it has grown by nearly 81% during the 6-month period of the study. This growth has, quite obviously, occurred at the expense of the other options.

The iPad and other tablets have contributed largely to the growth of “mobile mail”, which allows users to check their email at any time and at any place. The study by Return Path shows that the use of tablets has surged by about 15% between October 2010 and March 2011. This surge is expected to continue, as newer devices hit the market.

The use of mobile mail is becoming important as it allows users to access their emails and learn of the latest developments at any time without missing out on some important communication.

On the traditional email side, desktop usage was high during the week, peaking on Wednesday and then tapering off over the weekend. Webmail use, on the other hand, is high on Monday, lowest on Wednesday and then rises gradually again to peak over the weekend. Neither of these statistics are surprising.

In contrast, mobile use remains fairly steady during the week, starts to rise on Thursday, peaks on Friday and Saturday and then drops again on Sunday, although it remains higher than on weekdays. Marketers need to keep these facts in mind when planning their campaigns so that they do not miss out on an opportunity to connect with their target audience.

A survey conducted by Greystripe the brand focused mobile ad network has recently revealed that two thirds of moms are using their smartphones to help them with their shopping.

The survey was conducted by them over a period of three months between November 2010 and February 2011 across 239 women with children. It has shown that 66% of the women surveyed made use of their smartphones while shopping.

• The commonest use of the smartphone was to locate the nearest store in the area. 45% of the women did this.
• 36% of the women used their smartphones to compare prices of commodities in different stores.
• 31% of the women used their phones for new product research.

Apart from this, women also used their smartphones to save money by downloading coupons through their Android or iPhones. The phones were also commonly used for shopping lists and to look up new recipes.

Dane Holewinski, director of marketing at Greystripe said “The majority of moms with smartphones are using those devices for their day-to-day tasks especially shopping, making them the ideal target for advertisers.”

Similar surveys carried out by others have shown somewhat conflicting results. A mobile shopping survey across 1600 women last year showed that 94% of them were interested in mobile shopping and mobile marketing.

During the same time frame a survey conducted by SheSpeaks found that only 10% of women had downloaded any apps related to shopping and 62% were not even interested in doing so.

It has been predicted that Near Field Communications (NFC) services will expand greatly over the next three years and by 2014 at least 20% of smartphones will be NFC-capable. This of course means that the number of debit and credit cards in use will gradually diminish.

In fact, these services are expected to be launched across 20 countries by next year itself. Retail marketing and payments for purchases made, will be done through coupons and smartcards in Western Europe, North America and other developed nations.

Mobile operators have already made announcements in regard to NFC technology and manufacturers expect to sell 1 million NFC devices this year itself.

Mobile wallets are also expected to be frequently used for the purchase of tickets for travel on metro, bus and rail in future. Until last year, less than 100 million used the service for purchase of tickets, but by 2015 that figure is expected to cross half a billion. This will help transport companies to eventually cut down on their operational costs, while at the same time providing a great convenience to users.

Blackberry and Samsung will be launching NFC-enabled devices, while Orange will be launching contactless payment technology by the end of this year. Other companies are expected to follow suit.

It has been reported that in 2010 the monthly traffic for search through smart phones has gone up by 67 times. Users are now turning to the mobile for a variety of services.

A study by AdMob has shown that 29% of users use the mobile internet for over 1 hour per day and 35% of them use the mobile internet for longer than they watch TV. 24% spend more time on the mobile internet than on desktops. The mobile is also being used frequently for entertainment. 58% of users use the mobile internet at least 5 times a day.

But this growing popularity has generated some unhealthy competition between the popular local search engines Naver and Daum against Google.

Naver and Daum are considering filing a complaint with the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) against Google.

The problem is that most smartphones are preloading the Google’s Android OS as the default search engine due to which users need to download the apps to access the local search engines. The local search engines are upset as this has resulted in a loss of market share for them.

The market for web searches shows that Naver has about 70% of the market share and Daum about 20% while Google has less than 10%.

On the other hand, for mobile searches, Naver has about 50% of the market share and Daum and Google have about 20% each.

Google on their part have said that the handset manufacturers are free to decide which OS they want Android is an open platform.

Many online communities have also accused Naver and Daum of having resorted to similar unfair trade practices in the past, and they are now crying foul because they are sailing in the same boat.

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.

Although this is a good sign for those involved in mobile marketing, it is only the beginning, and the industry still has a long way to go.

In a recent interview, Laura Marriott CEO of NeoMedia said, “I think we all know there’s serious work to be done. We need more education at the point of sale. Codes need a clear and consistent explanation of what they are and how you can read them every time they’re printed. We also need to get scanners on more devices.”

According to her, only big brands are currently using the barcodes or QR codes, and it is necessary to get the smaller businesses interested in this service.

One reason why the barcodes may not be very popular, is that users can hardly be expected to scan a barcode with their mobile, when it is displayed on a billboard on the street.

Recently, however, NeoMedia launched a new barcode management platform, which provides enhanced and detailed analytics to the marketer, such as when, where and by whom the barcodes have been used.

In time, barcodes could become almost as popular as the website URL itself.

Android developers will now be able to publish their apps on the Android market with the ability for users to purchase them directly when they wish to do so.

While this facility will give users the ability to try-and-buy the app and also get upgrades when required, developers will be able to better monetise their apps.

A good number of apps are already available with the In-app Billing facility. Some of them are Tap Tap Revenge by Disney Mobile, Comics by Comixology and WSOP3 by Glu Mobile.

Google had first announced this In-app Billing facility in January at the Inside Mobile conference in San Francisco and had allowed users to start developing and testing these apps. To begin with, developers will have to fill out a detailed documentation form and will then be provided with a sample app to demonstrate how the feature works.

It will be imperative for users to follow the prescribed security guidelines, in order to prevent the inadvertent purchase of unwanted apps and also to prevent misuse of the facility by miscreants, as this could result in excess billing.

In-app purchasing facilities have been available through Apple’s App Store and Blackberry’s App World for quite some time now.

If this deal, reported by the Wall Street Journal, is finalised, Google will provide retailers with data about their users, which the retailer can then use to target specific ads and special offers to users in their vicinity.

In addition to being extremely beneficial to users and retailers, thereby driving adoption of Android mobile phones, this service will help Google earn more through ad revenue.

Holders of debit and credit cards from Citigroup and Mastercard will be allowed to activate a mobile payment application on their Android 2.3 phones. This will eliminate the need to carry separate debit and credit cards.

Google will be able to manage the credit card accounts as well as track the spending habits of the customer, through a special application.

Verifone Systems, a company that makes card readers, will make the contact-less devices required for this purpose. This system will function on near field communication (NFC) technology, much like the mobile payment system Orange plan to launch in the UK.

The near field communications technology used in these devices is far more sophisticated than the magnetic strip in the traditional debit or credit card and hence it will be safer to use.

Expected to be launched some time this year, this new service is expected to face competition from Apple and Blackberry, who will also soon make use of similar technology in collaboration with other credit card companies and financial institutions.

Google will, however, have to ensure that they do not upset the advocates of user privacy when they provide user data to retailers in their efforts to drive more ad revenue.

Mobile ticketing users store a ticket on their mobile device for later redemption. These tickets serve as a substitute for a traditional paper based ticket or even an e-ticket that needs to be printed out. When redeeming the mobile ticket, users simply need to show their handset to the ticket checker at the entry point to the venue.

At present, only about 1 in 20 consumers worldwide make use of mobile ticketing facilities, which means that the total number of users accessing these service is about 230 million.

Analysts at Juniper have projected that by 2015 this ratio wil go up to 1 in 8 and the actual number of mobile ticketing users will be about 750 million. It is also expected that the next two years will be crucial for the growth of this market.

Mobile ticketing services are already fairly popular in Japan, Central and Eastern Europe and Scandinavia. In these places, mobile ticketing is widely used to purchase tickets for transport, sporting events and entertainment.

Tickets, once booked, are delivered to the user in a variety of ways such as through SMS, mobile Web, bar codes, near field communication (NFC) and smartphone apps. It is essential for advertisers and vendors who wish to make use of this opportunity to plan their strategy well.

Total Mobile Phone Users (%) Who Use Mobile Ticketing Split by 8 Key Regions 2015

Far East mobile users are expected to continue leading the way in terms of adoption of this technology, even in 2015. Western European users are expected to be the second largest user group adopting mobile ticketing technology.

Howard Wilcox, author of the report says, “Mobile technology is moving the ticket machine into our pockets. Our research demonstrated that mobile ticketing will change the way that many people buy and obtain their regular, every day tickets that are mostly printed at the moment.”

When users click on ‘Deals’ they are shown a list of the special offers that are currently available in their locality.

Microsoft has started this feature in association with DealMap, which features deals from sites like Groupon, Living Social and Restaurant.com. The feature will offer about 200,000 deals across 14,000 cities.

Since the feature has only just been launched, the service is going through some teething troubles. For instance, a few of the deals being offered have already expired or the deal information may not yet have been optimised for mobile access. Given a little time, it is quite certain that these problems will be ironed out.

While the new service is compatible with both iPhone and Android based handsets, it is, quite surprisingly, not compatible with Microsoft’s own Windows Phone 7 mobile operating system. This incompatibility arises because the service is is built on HTML5, which is not compatible with Windows Phone 7. It is expected that Microsoft will soon add an update that will allow users to access this feature through the Windows Phone 7 and Internet Explorer 9.

Irrespective of the minor shortcomings of this feature, Microsoft is undoubtedly one up on their rival Google as Google has not yet got a similar feature. It has been rumoured, though, that Google plans to launch a similar service called “Google Offers” very soon, which might explain why Bing rushed to get Deals out in the market before it was fully developed to support Microsoft’s own devices.

Microsoft also plans to start a similar service in association with eBay.

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.

This estimated growth is based on the expectation that smart phone usage will continue to increase along with the availability of new apps.

Already there is a high level of awareness of services such as social media, videos, music and games on mobile. The open mobile Internet has also led to greater availability of services such as gambling and adult content.

Big brands have started allocating large amounts of money to advertising through mobiles. Consumer brands such as Coca-Cola have long recognised the potential of this medium. Other brands, especially those that rely on business via a local presence, such as hotels, stores and even smaller restaurants have now started investing heavily in the medium. An increasing amount of this investment is now being diverted to mobile entertainment, in addition to mobile apps and location-based advertising.

Over the last few years, the size as well as type of content available for mobile entertainment has changed, thus providing more opportunities for monetisation. Analysts at Juniper predict that music will continue to be the largest source of revenue generation in the mobile entertainment market, and the fastest growing sector will be gambling.

Geographically, not much is changing, as the Far East and China, followed by Western Europe, are predicted to be the largest markets for revenue generation.

This is certainly good news for the industry, as it means that music downloads to mobile handsets are expected to more than double in value within the next 5 years, from $2.4 billion in 2010.

The music industry had been going through a very lean phase for the last several years due to the rampant prevalence of online piracy. After the introduction of P2P file sharing, people tended to avoid buying records and CDs from the market, and just downloaded the music illegally.

In order to fight this piracy, companies like Apple introduced iTunes in 2003. People could now easily and legally download the music in the form of ring tones, ring back tones, full track services and music videos by paying for it.

While PCs with MP3 players were earlier required to download the music, the recent technological advances made by the handset industry have now made mobiles the most popular tools to download music.

In fact, according to the Juniper report, the sales of the iPhone will soon exceed that of the iPod because of this. Google has also gone into the mobile music business with the intention of making their Android OS more popular than Apple’s iOS.

Whether this saves the music industry as we know it, or seeds a revolution where record labels become obsolete or have to redefine their business model in order to effective monetise music downloads by consumers without worrying about piracy eating into their revenues remains to be seen.

Blaise Aguera y Arcas of Bing Maps and Mobile said in an interview with Forbes, “The model of apps for everything is broken in a very fundamental way, a lot like the way the web was before there was a good search engine.” In the old days, people used to type the web address in the URL bar. Even now, this helps in deciding which app to use.

According to Arcas, some of the apps will become “baked-in” default options, depending on the circumstances and the search engine may also suggest some apps. Microsoft has previously talked about doing this by making use of the phone’s sensors such as its camera and location detection mechanism in order to anticipate some of the user’s queries and requirements in advance.

The success of the iPhone and Android have led to the availability of over 3,00,000 apps for mobile devices. To get ahead in this race, Microsoft will have to streamline the process of finding and using apps and make many of them a part of the Windows mobile operating system.

Windows Phone 7 already has 30,000 drivers, which is a good thing as far as providing options is concerned, but it slows down the speed with which the apps are available. Microsoft will, therefore, have to decide how best they can combine reliability with speed in order to improve usability.

As with search, Microsoft might be entering the market too late, with little new technology to make a significant impact. Microsoft’s mobile operating system has a fairly low market share of just 2%, compared to 8% for Google’s Android. The software giant would need to develop some really ground-breaking technology to break the current trend and make significant gains in the mobile market.

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.

Nokia, the handset manufacturing giant, has been going through a deepening crisis since the launch of the Apple iPhone in 2007. The company has decided to sideline their Symbian OS in favour of the Windows Phone OS for their smartphones.

Microsoft Windows Phone on a Nokia handset

Nokia will also use other Microsoft services such as the Bing search engine for their mobile phones. This could turn into a serious blow for Google Mobile and help Bing to gain a larger share in the mobile search market.

The move is expected to help Nokia fight the growing popularity of the Apple iPhone as well as the Google Android platform. Nokia’s new Chief Executive, Stephen Elop, worked with Microsoft until last September, when he took charge of Nokia. The relationship comes as no surprise, not only due to Elop’s historical associations with Microsoft, but also because of the fact that Google is seen as a competitor.

According to Elop, “Nokia is at a critical juncture, where significant change is necessary and inevitable in our journey forward. Today, we are accelerating that change through a new path, aimed at regaining our smartphone leadership.” He also indicated that there would be a management reshuffle, and some people may also lose their jobs.

Though Nokia is still the largest handset manufacturer in the world, its market share has fallen from 36.4% to 28.9% in the last year.

Reactions to the announcement have been quite negative, and the price of Nokia shares has fallen 9.8% since the announcement. Even though this could be Microsoft’s biggest stroke of luck, with respect to mobile search, their shares didn’t rise much either.

Could this be both Microsoft and Nokia’s chance to strike the smartphone and mobile Web markets and make a serious change in both their fortunes?

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 largest spending was seen in November ($14.5 billion) and December ($18.1 billion). Cyber Monday – the first Monday after the Thanksgiving holiday – broke all records with $1.028 billion being spent in a single day.

Among electronic items, flat panel TVs and mobile devices were the fastest selling, followed by computer hardware.

Online Consumers

Group buying through sites such as Groupon and Living Social gained tremendous popularity during the year. Social networks also continued to grow. Facebook became the number 1 site in August 2010, for time spent online, beating sites like Google and Yahoo! It now accounts for 12.3% of the total time spent online in The U.S.

The amount of time spent on leisure activities online also grew in 2010. Portals represented 20.2% of the share of time spent online, while social networks accounted for 14.4% and entertainment sites for 12.6%.

Social Networks

The growth of social media caused web-based email usage to reduce from 12.5% to 11.0%, especially among the younger generation. Social networking accounts for 14.4% of all time spent online, but its share much higher for youngsters. Women also tend to spend more time on social networks than men.

Facebook also now accounts for 10% of the U.S. page views and has gained millions of new users. MySpace, on the other hand, has seen a sharp decline, losing 27% of its users. LinkedIn, Twitter and several new social sites continue to grow gradually. While it has lost some users in the 35-54 years demographic, the number of users below 18 years and above 55 years have grown significantly. On the other hand, Twitter saw maximum gain in the 18-34 years demographic.

Search Marketing

The search market has also seen innovation with the introduction of instant search by Google. Google continues to be the market leader in the States, with over 60% of the market share, while Yahoo! had 16% and Microsoft had 12% in December 2010. ‘Facebook’ was the most searched term, with 1.9 billion queries in 2010, followed by ‘YouTube’ with 790.7 million searches.

Online advertising has grown by 23% between December 2009 and 2010. Leading brands have now started reallocating a larger share of their ad spend to online advertising. Over 1 trillion display ads were shown on Facebook and 529.4 billion ads on Yahoo! The strategies being used for display as have also improved resulting in better user response especially through retargeting. The online video and TV market are also growing, which is a fact that advertisers should take note of.

The service is being introduced jointly by Orange, Bouygues Telecom and SFR, in conjunction with computer services group Atos Origin. The service will be called Buyster and is likely to be introduced in France by summer this year.

www.buyster.fr

Buyster will allow users to make payments for purchases made online, by linking their mobile phone to a bank card. The new service will be based on the same Near Field Communication (NFC) technology that Orange is using for mobile payments in the UK. Users will be able to just wave or touch their mobile phones against an in-store reader to make a payment.

Mobile operator Orange estimates that the service will soon be made available to more than 50 million users. French online retailers are extremely happy with the news of this service, as the convenience it will provide can only help to improve business.

Laurent Bailly, head of marketing at Buyster, said that the service will later be extended across Europe. However, many observers are raising doubts about the possibility of the success of the service outside of France.

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.

Reports from Performics Inc. indicate that by the end of 2011, Mobile Google paid search will generate 16% of all Google paid search clicks. This figure was only about 3.5% in January 2010.

The surge in the growth of mobile paid search has already begun in the last few months of 2010. However, conversion rates from mobile search advertisements are lower than those from paid search on desktops.

James Beveridge, a senior analyst at Performics says, “Conversion rates are still lower for mobile search than desktop, suggesting that advertisers should focus on improving mobile site experience.”

Imran Khan of JP Morgan believes that monetising mobile search is the most important opportunity for Google this year. He finds that while mobile search queries have grown over 5 times in the last couple of years, and still continues to grow, only 3% of Google’s search advertising revenue comes from mobile and Google should now focus on strengthening this sector.

Robert Hamilton, Google’s own product manager for mobile search also says that mobile search usage has gone up by 130% in the third quarter of 2010 and the amount of search traffic on Android tripled during the first half of 2010. He also estimates that the number of mobile phones in use worldwide will reach 5 billion soon, and by 2014, there will be more mobile Internet users than wired Internet users.

Getting Mobile PPC Right

All facts point to the obvious conclusion – Google needs to concentrate on mobile PPC now. However, just like video, mobile has proved to be a difficult channel for Google to monetise.

Over the years Google has tested various mobile ad placements. Currently, ads are shown above and below the search results, depending on the nature of the query. Only time and extensive testing will tell what ad format and placement will work best for Google Mobile Search.

Google had launched their first handset, the Google Nexus last January, but it was available only through online channels, to which they did not receive a very good response.

This time, Google has decided to play safe. The Nexus S phone will be available online as well as through stores.

The phone will be available in the U.S. from the 16th of December. Best Buy and Best Buy Mobile will be selling the phone. It will be available unlocked or with a T-Mobile service plan and will cost $529.

In the U.K. the phone will be available from the 20th of December through Carphone Warehouse and Best Buy retailers. It will be available free with £35 per month contracts or £549.95 SIM-free.

The Nexus S will be manufactured by Samsung, unlike the Nexus One, which was manufactured by HTC. The Nexus S will be the first handset in the market to run on the new Android 2.3 operating system.

Other specifications of the phone include a 1 GHz Hummingbird processor, 4-in-1 Super Amoled Screen, 5-Megapixel back and front facing camera, 16 GB internal storage and NFC (Near Field Communication) hardware that allows users to use the phone as a credit card to make payments, provided the service provider enables such a service.

While Google no doubt hopes to be able to cash in on the holiday season by launching the phone just before Christmas, one wonders, if the timing is not just a bit late, especially in the U.K. as a lot of people may have finished their Christmas shopping before the new phone is actually launched.

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.