A new report published today by Juniper Research suggests mobile app downloads will surpass 25 billion by 2015, up from just 2.6 billion in 2009.

According to the report, players across the mobile value chain are seeking to emulate Apple’s success with the App Store by launching their own branded storefronts, such as the ‘Mobile Market’ from China Unicom, ‘Airtel App Central’ from Bharti and the ‘Apps & Games Shop’ on Vodafone 360.  The transition to an app-centric environment has also benefited more established storefronts such as GetJar, which passed 1 billion downloads earlier this month.

Interestingly, the report noted that “freemium” was becoming the prevalent business model, with publishers increasingly offering applications free at point of sale and subsequently monetizing them via in-app billing of subscription-based services, upgrades to premium content or micropayments for virtual items.  Still, the report offered caution to those seeking app store launches, saying they’d need to demonstrate sufficient scale to be able to induce developers to provide them with unique content.

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The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) today published a report entitled “Prevailing Mobile In-Application Advertising Formats,” that looks at current and future trends for mobile ad formats and placement on a variety of platforms and devices.

The IAB fielded a simple survey to members who sell in-app ads, asking them to summarize the ad formats they currently support, across seven different platforms for mobile devices, including Android, Blackberry, iPhone/iPod Touch, iPad, Palm, Symbian and Windows Mobile.  Participating publishers in the survey included companies such as 4INFO, the Associated Press, CNN.com, Millennial Media and Pandora, just to name a few.

In terms of smartphone platforms, the IAB concluded that banner sizes are “most harmonious,” meaning the surest way to run a campaign across a majority of smartphone app platforms is to stick to the largest of the 6:1 Mobile Marketing Association mobile banner sizes, which is 300 x 50.  A majority of the participants in this survey support 300 x50 directly, and those that don’t generally have a size slightly larger where a 30 0x 50 will fit okay with black or white bars around it.

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The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) has released preliminary results to an upcoming survey in which marketers were asked about their mobile marketing budgets for the remainder of 2010 through 2011.

The results thus far indicate budgets for mobile marketing spend is set to rise 124% from 2010 to 2011, putting the total allocation to the mobile channel at roughly 4% of overall marketing budgets.  Mobile as a marketing channel is up by the greatest single percentage, with “events and trade shows” the only other channel that’s projected to see growth in budget totals, surprisingly enough.

Looking at digital marketing budgets as a whole, budgets are expected to increase from nearly 30% to 32.3%, while television spending is only 15.4%, rising to a little more than 16 percent next year.  Other interesting results of the survey indicate outdoor marketing is projected to drop 25.8%, newspapers 25.5% and direct mail by 17.5%.  Marketers surveyed represent more than $2.3 billion spent on mobile media in 2010, and they say they’re allocating $5.5 billion next year.

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Opera today published its latest State of the Mobile Web report for May, in which some interest tidbits were highlighted.  First things first, however, Opera saw increases in all three categories of growth in May 2010: unique users, pages viewed and data consumed.  In all, 61.4 million people used Opera Mini in May, 28.3 billion pages were served and 4.0 petabytes of operator data were compressed for Opera Mini users.

Russia has long been the top country in terms of Opera Mini users, but in May, Indonesia took the top spot.  Also in May, Nigeria surged ahead of Ukraine, South Africa and the United States, while South Africa also jumped ahead of the United States.  Interestingly, in all of the top 10 countries for Opera Mini usage, the prime time for browsing was at night — 8pm to midnight — which falls in line with other reports we’ve seen.

This month’s report focused on Latin America and its tendencies for mobile Web consumption.  Peru and Ecuador lead the top 10 countries of the region in terms of page-view growth (1,213.3% and 515.4%, respectively), while Colombia and Brazil lead the top 10 countries of the region in growth of unique users (322.4% and 303.6%, respectively).  Costa Rica leads the top 10 countries of the region in page views per user, with each user browsing 426 pages on average each month.

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Fleishman-Hillard International Communications in conjunction with Harris Interactive recently published the 2010 Digital Influence Index, which found that marketers have yet to capitalize on the influence of the Internet and mobile channels when it comes to driving consumer decisions about a range of products and services.

The study also measures several key aspects of consumers’ use of the Internet, from media consumption patterns, to the degree of adoption of various digital behaviors, to involvement with online social networking.  Now in its second year, the Index has expanded to include 48 percent of the global online population, spanning France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, China, Japan and the United States.  In terms of mobile, the study found that marketers are overestimating what average everyday consumers know about the smartphones they use everyday.  Without educating consumers on the potential of new-age smartphones and other devices, the marketing potential will subsequently suffer.

As apps multiply and speeds increase, mobile users snap up smartphones — but realize only a fraction of their potential, the study suggests.  Although mobile Internet use is growing, a significant gap exists between the capabilities available to mobile phone users and the number of individuals who actually take advantage of them.  In an article on MarketingVox, the author covers a good example of this with eBay’s recent purchase of RedLaser, a mobile application that lets customers scan bar codes in order to list items faster or just compare prices.  For those who are tech savvy, use of the barcoding app will come naturally, but a majority of eBay’s users either don’t understand how the technology works, or is to set in their ways to try something new.

In a press release issued this morning, textPlus, PointRoll and AdMarvel detailed early campaign metrics from ads served on the iPad, showing high levels of engagement and long interactions times compared to traditional mobile ads.

Campaigns that ran the first four weeks after the iPad launch delivered average interaction times across advertisers of 30 seconds, and as high as 53 seconds for one advertiser.  In addition, interaction rates — measuring the number of people tapping to expand and engaging with the ads, as a percentage of impressions — ranged from .9% to 1.5% in the first month of the campaign, up to 6 times the benchmark for comparable click-to-expand ads on the desktop.

More impressive was that 67% of users who viewed a video component of ads in the app watched it all the way through, compared to 53% completion rate for desktop.  ”These findings obviously show that the iPad can be a successful supplement to a 360-degree campaign across devices to strengthen and further lift audience engagement,” the release said.  It also serves as an early indication of what iAds may produce in terms of engagement and interaction.

“In 2010 we’re going to take the biggest leap since the original iPhone,” said Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

As expected, Jobs showed up to show off the new iPhone Monday morning at the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco.

The 4th generation iPhone is packed with some 100 new features not presently available in any previous iPhone model. While Jobs only touched on a handful of new bells and whistles, the presentation was sufficient to excite the sold-out audience with forthcoming improvements to the juggernaut Apple smartphone.

On dsiplay at the WWDC, for example, were the iPhone’s newer, higher-res screen, an upgraded and bigger battery, 5MP camera with flash, a gyroscope for improved rotation sensitivity, video chat capabilities (via front facing camera), and a sturdier but 24% thinner frame.

The 4th-gen iPhone will go on sale June 24th with preorders starting June 15th. Available in both black and white, the iPhone 4 will retail for $199 for the 16GB model and $299 for the 32GB model.