Day three at Mobile World Congress saw the launch of location-based ads (LBA) for CloudMade’s map-based platform for mobile apps and mobile Web development, along with Shazam announcing a partnership with Augme Mobile to launch an innovative “Audio Recognition Advertising” solution.

Millennial Media published a unique 2009 “year-in-review” version of its S.M.A.R.T report detailing quick facts about the mobile advertising ecosystem over the past year, and why they refer to 2009 as the “year of mobile,” while Opera’s recently acquired AdMarvel debuted the latest iteration of its Android Advertising Toolkit, version 1.5.

Rounding out the day’s news, from a mobile marketing and advertising perspective, was Roamware revealing future plans for its mobile payment solution to combat interoperability issues head-on, while Loopt announced more content partnerships and revealed its strategy to take on performance-based hyperlocal mobile marketing.  Stay tuned to MMW for more updates.

Day two at Mobile World Congress saw the launch of “Ping” from a startup called SEVEN, which aims to bring cloud-based push-messaging to smartphones and feature phones alike with its simple platform aimed squarely at wireless operators.  Continuing the focus on wireless carriers, Openwave also debuted its new “Analytics: Data Media Edition (DME), which aims to help operators effectively monitor, manage and monetize mobile data traffic.

With a heavy emphasis on mobile apps at this year’s event, Bango shifted focus with its release of interesting mobile Web usage numbers- revealing a 600% usage growth over the last 12 months.  Even so, mobile apps again stole the spotlight today with such announcements as mOcean launching the industry’s first “comprehensive ad-managment platform” for mobile applications, and Portland-based Urban Airship landing $1.1M in funding for it’s unique in-app purchase technology.

Rounding out the day was T-Mobile and Blockbuster’s announcement that they’ve joined forces to provide downloadable movies via mobile devices, allowing access to Blockbuster’s library from any connected device.  Stay tuned to MMW for more updates from day three and four of Mobile World Congress.

As part of our continued coverage of this year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC), we’re taking the opportunity to recap the day’s events, and the most important announcements, introductions and developments thus far.  Here’s a quick recap of day one:

Orange expands its mobile advertising initiatives to all of Europe, with localized programs designed around SMS and MMS, while Samsung debuted its new “Bada” smartphone OS in addition to expressing its vision for a “non-feature-phone” mobile ecosystem.  Sony Ericsson, not to be left out, debuted its new mobile content creation platform dubbed “Creations,” along with three new devices, while Adobe debuted a new mobile AIR platform to bring unified Flash development to mobile devices.

Finishing out the day’s news; Mobixell launched an innovative “RSS gateway” solution, Airwide targets prepaid subscribers with real-time loyalty and profiling solutions, and Xtify debuts new geo-targeted mobile messaging platform.  The biggest news of the day, however, was the announcement by 24 wireless operators and device makers who have formed the “Wholesale Applications Community,” in an attempt to unify mobile app development and distribution.

Hyatt Hotels & Resorts is behind a new mobile website that makes the hospitality business a little easier to navigate for hotel-seekers.

Thanks to the new mobile presence, powered by mobile web platform provider Usablenet, guests can now locate, book, or cancel hotel reservations on any Internet-enabled mobile device.

According to the official announcement from the hotel giant, Hyatt guests can now visit the mobile site to take advantage of the following features and more:

· Find and book a hotel by location
· Hyatt special offers
· View or cancel a reservation
· Web check in and check out
· Access Hyatt’s Yatt’it travel tips by country
Hyatt and its affiliates own, operate or manage hotels in 45 countries worldwide.

You can preview the mobile site from any desktop by visiting www.hyatt2go.com.

Day two at CTIA featured more device announcements, more mobile app launches and the continued debate when it comes to mobile broadband.

While both LTE and WiMax have been in the spotlight at this year’s event, the question remains of which one is superior when it comes to 4G technology.  Both technologies are relatively the same in the way they operate-and while WiMax is finally being rolled out, LTE seems to have more support from the major players in the wireless industry.  

Verizon Wireless is one carrier that’s putting its support behind LTE as the emerging 4G technology.  The company’s executives talked about the technology in the opening keynote- Ivan Seidenberg, chairman and CEO of Verizon, stated “LTE is quickly emerging as the global standard.  We’re moving fast to get to 4G.  Working with Vodafone, we’ve completed the market trials and standards work.  We will begin deployment later this year with a few commercially-ready markets and will roll it out to 25 or 30 markets in 2010, with the expectation of faster rollout thereafter.”

On the device front, several handsets were revealed that will utilize the upcoming 4G broadband.  This year’s event is proving that our cell phones will soon become phone/netbook hybrids that allow us to do just about anything we do with our computers.  The Samsung Mondi debuted today as the first WiMax-based “Mobile Internet Device,” along with seven other devices by Samsung.  The growing trend seems to be that touchscreens and QWERTY keyboards are quickly taking over the simple numeric keypad.  In today’s mobile web-centric and messaging-crazy world, numeric keypads just don’t cut it.

With the emphasis on mobile broadband so fierce at this year’s CTIA, the opportunities over the next year for mobile marketers will be tremendous.  SMS-fees came under fire today, but the larger picture is that mobile broadband will take mobile marketing’s potential to another level.

Day one at CTIA featured the usual handset and carrier announcements, but also kicked things off with a plethora of new application announcements.  The tone has been set that mobile applications will remain in the spotlight this year, along with the devices and the mobile broadband networks they run on.  

Microsoft spilled more details about its upcoming “Windows Marketplace for Mobile,” which they say already has plans to introduce applications from the likes of AccuWeather, The Associated Press, CNBC and a slew of other well-known names.  Blackberry, on the other hand, finally took the wraps off its own mobile App store today with the announcement that “Blackberry App World” is now live and available to download.  

Not to be outdone, Palm gave a sneak peak of its own App store running on its highly anticipated Palm Pre device.  The biggest surprise was the fact that Palm seems to have included an emulation application that will allow users to run the thousands of PalmOS apps that have been around forever.  Provided by Motion Apps, the emulator will display the familiar PalmOS desktop and its applications directly on the Pre’s homescreen.

As evident by the many QWERTY-based device announcements, the theme seems to be centered around smartphones capable of quick messaging and email.  Along with the Nokia E71x, the LG Neon and the Samsung Magnet, the HTC “Snap” was introduced this morning that’s so email-centric that it includes a new application that will actually prioritize your e-mails based on certain preferences.  Dubbed “Inner Circle,” the app brings e-mails from a preselected group of people to the top of your in-box so you can read and reply to them immediately.

The “Mobile Lifestyle” is said to be the overall theme of this year’s CTIA, and day one proved that theme with the many mobile application announcements that bring even more functionality to the mobile landscape.  Stay tuned for days two and three of this year’s event which promises to be just as action-packed.

It’s not really a daily roundup because I don’t have time to do daily roundups. I do have time to share some of the things I reviewed while I was eating my lunch though.

• Mobile Spammer from down under gets slapped with a $150K fine. I love it!
• More down unders news, M.Net gets a new Marketing boss.
• GigaOm introduces us to mig33. Thanks Om!
• This just in… GoIP Global sez Text Messaging is a “Fast Growing New Marketing Tool”. No way, is it really?
• The MMA wants to see Kid friendly guidelines in the Mobile Marketing space (me too). Via BizReport.
• Thai Mobile is rolling out a 3G Network and expects to quadruple subscriptions this year.
• A new Mobile Marketing Agency is born at IPG.

Gotta run. Oh, and I had a Chick-fil-a with a Hi-C.