The recent study by Compete- Smartphone Intelligence Survey- has revealed that mobile commerce (m-commerce) is bound to grow drastically in 2010.

“We’re seeing notable behavior differences across devices, so, for example, users of the Android operating system share different characteristics than Blackberry and iPhone enthusiasts. As manufacturers and marketers better understand how each group actually uses their devices, there’s a huge potential in 2010 for mobile commerce to explode,” said Danielle Nohe, director of consumer technologies for Compete.

The survey also found that 37% of smartphone users have bought something non-mobile using their handsets in the past 6 months. At the same time, 19% of total smartphone owners have bought music from their device, also 14% of respondents purchased books, DVDs or games and about 12% purchased movie tickets.

Other results from the report that focus more on the specific types of mobile devices in the market include:

- 40% of Android owners and 51% of Blackberry owners would spend $500 or more to buy a product from their mobile phone, compared to 9% of iPhone owners
- The most popular mobile shopping-related activities are research related: 41% of iPhone users and 43% of Android users are most likely to check sale prices at alternative locations from their mobile phones while they are shopping
- The second most likely activity is accessing consumer reviews, with 39% of iPhone owners and 31% of Android owners investigating reviews from their handset before they purchase

The number of British using smartphones rose 10% in the last three months to almost 6.2 million, with Blackberrys becoming the fastest-growing smartphone.

The study by Nielsen also revealed that browsing the web was the fastest growing  UK mobile phone media activity between the second and third quarters of 2009. The number of users using mobile internet went up from 8.8 million in Q2 to 10.4 million in Q3. This means that over 1/5 of all UK mobile users access the internet via their smartphones.

The second fastest-growing activity was downloading applications with 3.1 million users in Q2 to 4.1 million in Q3- up one million new users. Email is the third one down from list, increasing from 5.1 million users in Q2 to 5.8 million. However, most significantly is the growth of text messages and sms alerts which totals 78% of all British mobile phone users who send/receive sms.

Although change was not utterly significant, it’s still surprising to see video listed as the top 6 fastest-growing mobile phone media activity with 4% of total mobile phone owners using their devices to watch videos.

Overall, the total number of people in the UK using smartphones increased 10% between Q2 and Q3 (5.6 million to 6.2 million) that’s over 577,000 new smartphone users.

Edward Kershaw, Vice President of Mobile Media, The Nielsen Company said: “Although there have been sizeable increases in the take-up of new mobile technologies such as video and location-based services they remain niche forms of behaviour. Although the era of the handset as a truly multi-media device on a mass-market level lies somewhere on the horizon, the key for companies to successfully harness mobile lies in a realistic understanding of what media activities people on a large-scale are actually doing on their handsets now.”

These figures clearly indicate that significant growth opportunities remain in this segment. It’d be interesting to see what the new launch of smartphones such as the Palm Pre will do to these numbers and of course, how these figures will have climbed once the holiday season is over.

This evolution has made way for the emergence of new applications such as FourSquare, Yelp and GoWalla, as pointed out by Jeremiah Owyang. So what can these mobile social networks do to tap into this new market that’s harnessing these new tools?

FourSquare, the local-based social network, for example, has been offering discounts based on people’s physical  locations, and therefore, serving up ads on businesses and shops nearby the identified location of the person.

“We should expect FourSquare to evolve and eventually offer advertisements based on your friends’ interests — John, Amy, and Allen all like Los Taqaritors, invite them now for a 20% off discount,” commented Owyang. “Location-based ads will soon connect with social information.’”

Another good tip Owyang mentioned was that consumers should consider using RedLaser, a tool which provides users with the cheapest prices on products by allowing consumers to scan the product’s barcode. In other words, consumers can run a price comparison on the product of desire and make up their minds as to whether to get it at a different store or online depending on the offer.

Owyand then leaves businesses and marketers with a set of recommendations to consider in order to be prepared for this evolution of the adoption of mobile social networks by consumers. And they are the following:

* Listening In For Free Research: Local businesses should immediatly montior their brands on mobile social networks like Yelp and FourSquare.  Use this information as free research: find out the perception of customers opinions both good –and bad to learn about their market.
* Responding To Reviewers: Use negative information as a way to improve products and services and let your community know you’re listening to their feedback.  Although there are always two-sides to any complaint use these same tools to respond to customers in public, but be sure to abide by the terms of service.
* Rewarding Top Customers: Customers that frequently patron your store and tell others on these mobile social networks should be rewarded.  Build both in person and online relationships with them so they’ll continue to advertise and market on your behalf.  Free drinks anyone?
* Preparing for pricing impacts and positioning: With disruptive tools like RedLaser appearing, customers can quickly find pricing of products and find them at nearby retailers.  Retailers like CVS, Walmart, Target, BestBuy, Safeway should take heed as consumers continue to become empowered through instant information.  Companies will need to respond by:  making product pricing more competitive, or offering other deals such as bundling, speed, time, or other value-based offerings.

The total number of people accessing Facebook via their mobile phones is now up to 65 million compared to just 2o million eight months ago. Since its launch in 2006, Facebook Mobile was initially available only in English.

However, due to the incrementing necessity of staying in touch with friends and contacts when there’s no computer available, the Facebook team updated the websites and translated them into a number of different languages for everyone to have access to.

According to Henri Moissinac from Facebook, the sites will allow you to to update status, browse your News Feed and your friends’ Profiles, comment or ‘like’ stories, and view or update your Facebook Page.

Currently, Facebook has two mobile websites, m.facebook.com, which works from any mobile browser and x.facebook.com, which is enabled for Androids and iPhones, plus devices manufactured by Nokia and Palm.

These new developments work pretty well in conjunction with the fact that social marketing is one of the most powerful trends nowadays with an annual compound growth rate predicted to be the highest over the next five years, with mobile marketing sitting right behind it.

Another feature that was launched by the social media giant but only available on some mobile sites is Facebook Connect, which allows consumers to sign-in to a variety of third-party websites using their log-in details from the social network, active for people using the mobile internet.

Through Facebook Mobile texts, a text messaging system that has also been developed, you are enabled to receive notifications, send and receive messages via SMS, as well as, update your status through 52 different operators in 25 countries.

Are you an avid computer or mobile user?

Good news for tourists in Paris who don’t speak French, who don’t have a map and need to find the nearest subway station to go back to the hotel. Just point the iPhone’s camera in front of you and digital information will start popping up on the street view, displaying directions to metro stations, information about historical buildings, restaurant logos with reviews and menu information, hotel rates and more and more layers of information about your surroundings.

Now imagine you are attending a conference and you want to know more about the speaker, his articles, books and professional work. Just point your Android phone at the speaker and superimpose information in real time about social network profiles, blogs and websites relevant to the subject.

Augmented Reality enriches a real time view of a physical space through a device by superimposing contextually relevant data and information to it.

You could think of technologically advanced solutions like head-up displays integrated in airplane and car windshields, but in fact we are already used to experiencing more trivial applications like scores displayed in sport events on tv, or quiz show questions and answers written on screens.

Augmented Reality applications on handheld devices

GPS and compass data on smartphones allow real time interaction with geotagged content depending on the direction to which the handheld device is pointing. Some applications are already integrating these data sources with geo tagging interfaces:

• Wikitude is an example of a service that allows AR integration on a world browser;
• Recommendation website Yelp included an Augmented Reality feature called Monocle on its iPhone 3G application, that overlays user generated content to the image captured from the camera;
• Layar is an application for the Android phone that offers third-party layers with real estate data, tourist guides, local directory services, social communities.

While smart phones have already invaded the mass market, research in AR field is aiming more at portable screens that would display Augmented Reality information without forcing the user to look at a handheld device. Cumbersome head mounted displays are a thing of the past: glasses and even special contact lenses are being developed to provide a convenient way to experience Augmented Reality.

New opportunities for advertising arise with the spread of AR technology on mobile internet devices. Producing advertisements that blend harmoniously in real experiences by overlaying meaningful and useful information is the challenge for brands willing to pioneer the Augmented Reality technology.

Mobile phone technology is advancing rapidly, but what can we expect to be using in 2015? What will our mobiles be able to do and what will they look like?

Recently, there’s been lots of news regarding mobile applications- native apps, mobile web apps, and hybrid apps and most particularly, iPhone applications. And it’s the one device that has caught the attention of some of the most prominent advertisers such as Coca-Cola, Burger King and Kraft, as a means to communicate with their target market. Why?

As explained by Vodafone’s international development management of mobile advertising, Jeremy Makin, the new gadgets and apps offered by iPhone (which can also be developed by other manufacturers)  offer a great opportunity for branding due to their functionality and entertainment. And it’s that fun and entertaining aspect that makes them very popular amongst customers, thus becoming a strategic place for brands to be present in.

A recent study by ABI revealed that the global mobile marketing spend will grow nearly $16 billion by 2011, led by the Asia-Pacific region with $7.7 billion, which accounts for over 50% of this total spend.

Although the financial recession has influenced the mobile phone market significantly, the development of new apps and mobile ad formats are now playing an important role in mobile marketing and advertising, according to a report by WARC.

Jeff Orr, ABI senior media analyst affirmed that “spending on mobile marketing and advertising in 2009 worldwide is at least flat compared to 2008 if not slightly growing…That’s very encouraging compared to the numbers for advertising in other media. It’s less money per campaign, spent more intelligently, with greater benefit per dollar.”

Despite its significant lower campaign cost, however, even mobile advertising is not completely immune from the economic recession. Some typical case scenarios could be, if mobile marketing already plays a significant role and established part of the marketing mix of a company, spending will most likely be maintained or even increased. However, if mobile marketing is part of the experimental budget, then chances are it will get cut.

What do you think the future of mobile marketing will be like?

I remember when people used to make fun of the gizmo trends for mobile phone and asked sarcastic questions like: What can your phone do? Now with the iPhone (and more generally with all smartphones) the question without irony is: What can’t you do?

Mobile phones are like Swiss knifes or nano laptops, they enable you to do an increasing number of things. But the lastest advancement which has impressed me the most has been the development of television and real-time television available for smartphones.

The program Television for iPhone was one of the first applications to offer television content (from channel programs) accessible from your mobile phone. But what’s really impressive is BBC’s launch of real-time content available via smartphones or the France24 application for the iPhone.

This TV-on-the-go idea could at some point influence the way TV is made. The emphasis could be put on short content (3/4 minute content) but of course this will depend on technological improvements (which could solve the current problems such as the extension of the 3G network).

What is the next step? Well, it’s already here: broadcasting live from your smartphone. Companies like Qik, UstreamTV or Flixwagon already offer this kind of service. The next trend will be the integration of real-time content into social media. Qik, for example, is a mobile utility that offers to integrate your videos into your Facebook profile (but you cannot broadcast live on Facebook…yet). That could potentially turn everyone into a journalist, with both positive (reporting abuses, sharing unique moments) and negative (privacy issues) consequences.

Is MySpace ID now a threat to Facebook Connect?

MySpaceID is said to be the equivalent of Facebook Connect in that it is an application that allows users to sign in to and export data to third-party sites using their MySpace identity.

Once users are logged in partner sites using their MySpaceID, not only are they connecting their MySpace profile data to partner sites, they also have the power of finding their own friends on these partner sites, as well as, post updates and profile information.

Other advantages include:

• Connect MySpace profile data to partner sites

• Find MySpace friends on a partner site

• Register on partner sites using their MySpace URL

• Publish activities from partner sites to MySpace

• Syndicate activities on MySpace to partner sites

However, the MySpaceID application is a few steps ahead of Facebook Connect in that it integrates OpenSocial, OpenID and OAuth, all of which make it more ‘open’, whereas Facebook Connect is a proprietary application which just makes it complicated for developers to tap into.

New updates are coming to MySpaceID, which will maybe gain some ground over Facebook Connect even though there has been lots of buzz going around Facebook Connect now available for iPhone.

Some of the changes include the recent partnership with Yahoo! which is currently running bucket-testing to implement the MySpaceID feature in its homepage.The official launch has not yet been announced to everyone, however this will definitely represent a major spike for MySpace since Yahoo! represents one of the most trafficked sites existent today.

So what’s it gonna be? Will people migrate from Facebook Connect to MySpaceID or will the latter pull in new members?

Check out Mashable’s post for more insight on the subject.

The greatly anticipated G-phone by Taiwan’s HTC will be launched tomorrow running Google’s very own mobile operating system, Android.

Time.com’s headline speaks for itself as it reads, “Android: Google’s Dream, Apple’s Nightmare.

It is NOT another iPhone-looking smartphone, the G1 will debut in the market tomorrow with a similar touch-screen as its rival, however, the device will also feature a handy Qwerty keypad that slides from underneath the touchscreen and looks something like the image below:

The Android browser developer is a creation of Andy Rubin, former robot creator, today he’s Google’s Director of Mobile Platforms. Rubin explains to BBC the importance of being able to do internet style browsing from your cellphone and that today, “there should be nothing that users can access on their desktop that they can’t access on their cellphone.”

One great advantage G-Phone seems to be bringing over to its users is that of being able to cut and past in emails, one of iPhone’s meaningful deficiencies. In terms of price, no more no less, cost remains the same as the 3G iPhone: $199.

And guess who else has got competition? The Apple App Store will also be threatened by the new device which is also bringing on board its very own Android Market, which initially will enable users to adopt applications for free.

Also, users will immediately benefit from Google’s latest version of Google Maps for mobiles. Street View is now available on your phone!

The only downside… let’s just say the new HTC is not as slick looking as the iPhone. But hey, looks aren’t that important when you have what you need to be on-the-go and connected to the world.

As of today, 77Lab can join your iPhone’s main gadgets and applications. The 77Lab webclip is now available for an iPhone-friendly version of the website, this way you can always get the latest new media scoop from us no matter where you are.

This new icon can be installed into your iPhone thanks to WordPress which in turn allows you to directly access our homepage from which you can also choose the category or article you wish to fully read by simply clicking ‘more’. The link to the WordPress plugin is http://www.bravenewcode.com/wptouch/.

To add the 77 webclip to your iPhone simply go on lab.77agency.com, from your phone, then choose + then select ‘add to home’.

Once you’ve got our 77Lab webclip on your touch screen, (sort of like the website shortcut that goes on your desktop), all you have to do is select it, and you will be instantly redirected to our homepage, which will look something like this:

So, if you have an iPhone, now you know what to do :-)