Mobile retail opportunities are estimated to reach $12 Billion by 2014. Given the importance and relevance of mobile marketing, we believe this projection is valid.

Coupons, incentives, and advertisements are functional and profitable via the mobile device. The mobility adds benefit to the consumer by allowing them portable savings and information. Instead of building models of large scale demographics by age, industry or gender, the goal is changing to use demographics as initial templates to build individual profiles which reflect the true needs of the person or business interacting with your marketing. This is known as personalization in the mobile space.

Continue reading @ The Huffington Post.

MobileCrunch has a story up with some interesting results from March's AdMob report on the state of the mobile web:

The report showed the clear stratification of the Android handset market. Whereas in September 2009, there were only 2 major Android handsets, there are currently 11. In September, HTC dominated Android with HTC devices accounting for 96% of all Android web traffic. This month, Motorola took that throne, and accounted for 44% of Android web traffic. HTC was close behind with 43% of requests and Samsung sat at an abysmal 9%.

And how about the iPhone:

Though the focus was on Android, some interesting news came out on the iPhone. Just 2% of iPhone OS web traffic came through the 1st gen iPhone, compared with 39% for the 3GS, 25% for the 2nd gen iPod Touch and 20% for the iPhone 3G.

Head over to MobileCrunch for analysis and more.

Mickey Alam Khan, the Editor of Mobile Marketer draws an interesting analogy between Apple and its App Store and Gillette's razor business:

The genius of Apple is that it has replicated with the newly launched iPad tablet what it has got down pat for previous products such as the iPod in 2001 and the iPhone in 2007, followed by the App Store in 2008.

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Indeed, it is not the iPad device that’s the prize – it is the revenue from the hundreds of thousands of applications created for that device, locked and unique to the Apple ecosystem. It is the potential of downloads, mobile advertising on applications and revenue shares from sales of movies, music, software, books and media.

Apple, in effect, has learned from Procter & Gamble’s Gillette: create and upgrade the subsidized razor, win the loyalty of its target market and then keep them coming back for refill blades year after year, life-stage after life-stage.

For Apple, the iPad is the razor and applications are the refill blades. The iPod with its songs from iTunes and the iPhone with its songs and applications from the App Store are cut from the same philosophical cloth.

Read the whole thing @ Mobile Marketer.

Simon Vella has an excellent column over at Adweek:

The flurry of recent media announcements around mobile apps probably has you thinking this might be your easy marketing answer for 2010. Beware the hype, because beneath the excitement lies plenty of stats that show it's still a plaything compared to text messaging, which continues to deliver impressive year-over-year growth across all demographic groups.

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If we next look at usage, there are some telling statistics that again highlight why text messaging provides a better return when marketing to customers. In results released from its analytics platform in September 2009, Flurry showed that only one-quarter of iPhone apps are used more than 90 days after they are downloaded. So it's hardly representing value for money as a brand-building tool, either.

There is so much more to read, so head over to Adweek now!

Very cool demo at CTIA in Las Vegas from AT&T:

Countering over-the-top competitors while also aiming to bridge better ties between its video and wireless offerings, AT&T demonstrated a new mobile application this week at the CTIA show that will let users download their DVR-recorded content for viewing on mobile devices.

The demonstration app, which is in internal beta at AT&T (but not yet with customers), was shown on the iPhone, but AT&T said it wasn’t ready to name the final devices or pricing for the service yet – nor exactly when it would be available. But in an interview, AT&T’s vice president of video services Jeff Weber said the mobile viewing app would let AT&T “take clear competitive advantage of being [both] a TV and wireless provider. It’s as good a [market position] as we can find. It’s a real luxury for me right now to be sitting in my chair with an all IP-based platform” that can deliver video to both the TV and the mobile device, he said.

Read More @ Connect Planet Online.

Snoop Dogg, the eternal rap star, is bringing his mobile game up to speed to promote his new album More Malice:

Rap mogul Snoop Dogg is using the mobile channel to drive sales of his CDs, DVDs and ringtones, giving away free mobile video content and wallpapers and running a sweepstakes.

The rapper’s agency Cashmere has partnered with mobile entertainment content provider Myxer to promote the upcoming release of Snoop Dogg’s CD and DVD combination More Malice, the follow-up to the Malice N Wonderland album. As part of the promotion, Snoop will use Myxer’s MobileStage product to deliver exclusive, behind-the-scenes branded mobile video content.

Head over to Mobile Commerce Daily for a whole lot more.

Looking for SMS marketing solutions for radio or concert promotions? Visit Club Texting.

Here's a quick story from Mobile Marketing Watch:

Although mobile apps are clearly all the rage, Shaun Gregory, the managing director of O2 Media, says it’s important not to place apps ahead of sound mobile marketing practices when it comes to utilizing the mobile space most efficiently in the promotional process.

Head over to Mobile Marketing Watch to read the rest.

Mobile Marketing Watch reports that Best Buy is ramping up their mobile marketing programs:

According to sources at the company, Best Buy is putting the wheels in motion on a spruced up mobile website, more aggressive and targeted SMS texting campaigns, and mobile application updates to help capture a larger share of the mobile community’s attention.

It was just late last year that Best Buy introduced its mobile site and a corresponding iPhone application.

Best Buy’s chief marketing officer, Barry Judge, told the Wall Street Journal last month that his company “wants to use mobile to make standard ads more interactive. A print ad or billboard, for instance, might give consumers an address they could text-message for more information.”

Read more @ Mobile Marketing Watch

Read about Club Texting's text message marketing solutions for retail.

According to Mobile Marketer the rush is on:

On the heels of Steve Jobs’ official introduction of Apple’s iPad, marketers and developers are racing out the door with applications and advertising services for the new tablet.

Mobspree has launched TouchPlay, an interactive publishing service that uses the iPhone and iPad’s rich-media capabilities. First up on the platform is “Ordinary Mary’s Extraordinary Deed,” a copublishing collaboration between SnackLogic and Gibbs Smith.

...

Scoreloop, a provider of social mobile games, has begun development on games for the iPad.

The game developer said the iPad will allow for a more sophisticated gaming experience with integration of its play challenges, achievements, friend recommendations and social network integration. Scoreloop also supports the iPhone and Google’s Android devices.

Read more @ Mobile Marketer

Call us skeptical (about the specs), but this is what IntoMobile has to say:

According to a report citing comments from South Korea’s KT execs, Apple’s upcoming iPhone successor could feature a removable battery, OLED display, video calling, and a new dual-core processor alongside upgraded graphics processing hardware. If true, we could see this feature-packed “iPhone 4G,” as it’s being called, hitting market as soon as April of this year. The expedited launch window would be a departure from Apple’s traditional mid-year launch of new iPhone hardware.

And what might we see in April?

The rumored feature-set of the iPhone 4G is everything we’d hoped for in a next-gen iPhone. The higher-resolution OLED display should go a long way in competing with smartphones outfitted with 3.7-inch and 4-inch high-res displays from the likes of HTC and Motorola. The removable battery is something that iPhone users have been clamoring for ever since the original iPhone landed on US shores – an Apple patent application bodes well for a removable battery. And, while supposed Android “superphones” like the Nexus One tout 1Ghz Snapdragon processors, this new iPhone 4G might just come to market toting a latest generation of ARM Cortex A9 dual-core processor capable of clock speeds in excess of 2Ghz. That’s going to make for an iPhone that’s not just fast, it’ll have more processing power than laptops of just a handful of years ago!

Sounds exciting, but, alas, unlikely.

It seems like every day there's another story in the news about sexting (news search results). It now looks like MTV is going to turn the 18 to 25 demographic's fondness for sexting into a reality TV show:

 MTV News put out a casting call for "people who appear to be between the ages of 18-25 to share their stories" about the latest teen trend: sending text messages or e-mails with sexual images or provocative words.

The network's documentary arm is looking for people who have engaged in sexting, are worried that their private pictures have been disseminated to the masses, have had relationships ruined by sexting or are facing legal trouble from engaging in the activity.

According to a new Pew Research Center study, 15 percent of cellphone owners between 12 and 17 have received nude or partially nude photos on their phones, while four percent admitted to having sent the images themselves.

Read more @ The New York Post.

Gizmodo has scored the first hands on review of the rumored, found, confirmed Google Nexus One.

Thanks to a clandestine meeting with a source, I got a chance to play with and try out the Nexus One. It's basically, from my time with it, Google's Droid killer. It's thin, it's fast, it's better in every way.

My source was very firm about no photography, and I didn't want to jeopardize anything on my source's end, so there are no photos, hence these photos are ones we've already shown you. But, based on all the leaked shots this week, plus the very pretty and very clear one last week from Boy Genius, everyone knows what the phone looks like already. Hell, there's even a complete UI walkthrough today that's on YouTube. So I'm going to focus on the experience, and how it compares to the Droid and the iPhone 3GS.

To those of who you who don't think the Droid is sexy, you'll be glad to know that the Nexus One is major aesthetic improvement:

You can call the design the antithesis of the Droid: smooth, curved, and light, instead of hard, square and pointy. It feels long and silky and natural in your hand—even more so than the iPhone 3GS.

Head over to Gizmodo right now to learn all about the Google Nexus One.

Yesterday saw the unveiling of a potentially groundbreaking product:

The idea – let people quickly and easily accept physical credit card payments from their mobile phone. A small device attaches to the phone via the headset/microphone jack. The device gets the power it needs to send data to the phone from the swipe of the card, and sends the information over the microphone connection. Based on the shots below, the device is compatible with both the iPhone and Android (or at least the recently released Droid).

Think paypal, but anyone can now accept physical credit card payments, too. With no contracts or monthly fees. People are sent receipts by text and email.

Head over to TechCrunch to learn more, or just watch the video to see how it works!

A report from Clicky reveals some interesting results:

This page shows the daily web browsing marketshare for mobile phones of interest, which is calculated from all mobile traffic across the 150,000+ sites that are tracked by getclicky.com. It is updated every 30 minutes.

2.63% on Nov 11, 2.84% on the 12th, and 2.67% on the 13th. Learn more @ Clicky.

Mobile Marketing Watch has an interesting take on just why smartphones are hammering the carriers' networks. It's a bit more nuanced then you probably expect:

Through its research, Airvana identified a significant mobile network “load multiplier effect” caused by smartphone data traffic on the macro-cellular network.  Airvana engineers comparing data use profiles found that for a given volume of data transmitted, one smartphone typically generates eight times the network signaling load of a USB modem-equipped laptop. Although smartphones may only account for a minority percentage of all devices on operator networks today, they’re always on, moving between cell sites and continually ‘polling’ the network.  As a result, smartphones are already responsible for the majority—two to three times as much as laptops—of the total signaling activity.

Put simply, the nature of smartphones – with their mobile Web-focused design and always-on capabilities are swallowing bandwidth faster than any other device in use on wireless networks today- eight times more than a laptop pulling the same bandwidth from a USB-based mobile broadband connection.

Read more @ Mobile Marketing Watch.

MediaPost's OnlineMediaDaily brings news of a new report on the mobile entertainment industry:

The worldwide economic downturn isn't slowing down mobile media growth, according to a new forecast. The Mobile Entertainment Forum's latest Business Confidence Index, compiled by KPMG, projects average mobile media revenue will grow 33% in 2009 -- a 6% increase over the rate predicted at the beginning of the year.

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The explosion of mobile applications is also starting to pay off as apps alone are expected to account for 14% of all mobile media sales. It's likely Apple's App Store, with more than 2 billion downloads to date, will generate the vast majority of app sales this year. Even so, most iPhone apps are still offered free.

Read more @ OnlineMediaDaily

If you've got the right Verizon phone and you're a college football fan, pay attention:

Read more @ Fixed Mobile Convergence.

IntoMobile has the details on the PGA's new iPhone app for golf lovers:

Read more @ IntoMobile
Read about text messaging solutions for golf courses at Club Texting

Coors Light has just rolled out a very cool new SMS based mobile marketing effort:

Coors Light, a subsidiary of Molson Coors Brewing Co., is launching a mobile initiative as part of its continued “Cold Certified” campaign to create interactivity between consumers and the brand.

Read more @ Mobile Marketer

Mobile Marketer reports that Jägermeister's American importer is turning to mobile marketing, which makes perfect sense considering the demographic alignment:

At the events, announcers, displays and the Jäger team promoted the mobile call-to-action of texting keyword JAGER to short code 47201 for a chance to win a Supercross bike.

Consumers that texted in had to verify their age and were than notified that they had been entered into the sweepstakes and asked if they would like to opt-in to future messages from Jäger.

The call-to-action was displayed on-site with signage and over the loudspeakers: “Win this bike tonight!!! If you win, it goes home with you tonight. It’s so easy. Just text JAGER to 47201.”

The SMS sweepstakes exceeded Sidney Frank’s expectations for driving consumer interaction.

The percentage of attendees who texted in to enter the sweepstakes ranged from 4 percent in St. Louis and Jacksonville to 8 percent in Salt Lake City.

Of the consumers who entered the sweepstakes, the percentage who opted in to receive future marketing messages from Jägermeister on their handset ranged from 4 percent in St. Louis to 12 percent in Jacksonville and Las Vegas.

Read more @ Mobile Marketer.