The Corpse Princess has set her sights on smart phones.

The anime series of the same name is coming out on DVD September 14, and distributor FUNimation Entertainment is using the mobile advertising network iVdopia to get the word out. It’s all about engaging fans of anime, a genre of animation with roots in Japanese manga, or comics.

Something called the Viper Ad lets users swipe away an entire screen-takeover with a fingertip, unearthing the next image. With mobile social media, users will be able to share Corpse Princess videos with friends on sites like Facebook and Twitter. Fans will also be able to view multiple clips from the series on their phones.

The campaign for the DVD release of the show, titled Shikabane Hime in the original Japanese, is a natural progression for a business that has long understood–and even encouraged–fan sharing. For example, the Internet is rife with fan-translated chapters of popular manga long before they’re released in English–which copyright owners allow to remain out there, knowing that these translations increase consumers’ interest for a book’s official release. While other video content owners fear allowing copyrighted material to be viewed on mobiles, the anime/manga industry gets it.

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Mobile is immensely popular in India, as evident in new figures out by SMS GupShup that indicate the text-based social network has reached 35 million total users while adding over 1 million each and every month.

These figures show SMS GupShup surpassed July traffic on Facebook (with 21 million unique visitors) and Orkut (with 20 million unique visitors) — two social networks who have long fought for social dominance in the region.  Granted, SMS GupShup differs, but it shows mobile’s dominance in India.

There are roughly 550 million mobile phone users in the country and only 50 million web users, according to the company.  With a 10 to 1 mobile-to-PC ratio and SMS serving as the most popular communications platform, the market is ripe for SMS GupShup to take off, which it obviously already has.  The startup currently processes more than 500 million messages a month and accounts for over 5 percent of all texts sent within India.

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The rumor machine was right.

Today, as Apple CEO Steve Jobs took the stage at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, California, the Apple Store simultaneously went down, an indication that something, in fact, was coming.

In addition to rolling out an entirely refreshed line of iPods, Steve Jobs also premiered the new Apple TV, priced at an astonishingly low $99.

According to Jobs, the ambition behind Apple’s favorite “hobby” was to greatly simplify the digital media experience. Apple achieved this by dumping the internal hard-drive of the first generation Apple TV and making the new offering based solely on streaming content from Apple or your computer.

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There’s big news for SMS marketing in Latin American countries today, as the “Latin America Common Short Code” initiative announced in March by the CTIA has gone live.  The initiative provides a much-needed centralized CSC registry process for all of Latin America — a high-growth region in terms of mobile technology.

The initiative is supported by all major operators in the region and uses technology provided by Syniverse Technologies, a company that provides a wealth of telecommunication services to over 800 mobile operators, ISPs and other enterprises around the world.  Syniverse has built a short code system that every single operator in Latin America can tap into that provides 6-digit short codes that work the same in any country, as long as your operator is part of the CSC initiative.  With the new system in place, marketers will be able to reach an additional 500 million people within Latin American countries.

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The writing is clearly on the wall for Apple. Soon, it’s iPad will not be the lone warrior on the battlefield of tablet computers. And although the iPad may remain the dominant force in the industry, it will have its fair share of pretenders, wannabes, and perhaps even legitimate contenders to the tablet crown.

This week, numerous reports have surfaced about forthcoming iPad competitors that consumers will soon encounter in the marketplace. Case in pont: KT, South Korea’s largest fixed-line operator and the country’s second-largest mobile carrier by revenue, is moving forward with a little something called the “Identity Tab” tablet PC.

The Identity Tab, which will be released in early September, sports a 7-inch screen, is powered by Android, includes a one-gigahertz CPU, 8GB of memory and a 3-megapixel camera. Apps will be available from KT’s Olleh Market and Google’s Android Market.

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It’s time again for Millennial Media’s monthly S.M.A.R.T. report for July.  This month’s special section details a survey conducted by InsightExpress that takes a look at mobile shopping behaviors as we approach the holiday shopping season.

First, the basic stats:  the US mobile Web increased by 1.67% from 77.4M to 78.7M users.  Millennial’s reach of the mobile Web continues to grow as well, from 62.9M to 64M unique users month-over-month to represent an 81% total reach.  Other quick highlights show advertisers continued to engage in a deeper mobile experience with consumers during the month of July, with over 13% incorporating rich media elements in their campaigns.

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Yet another major acquisition in the mobile space has transpired.

Google has scooped up mobile gaming startup SocialDeck in a move that furthers the search engine giant’s growing involvement in social media through strategic purchases and acquisitions.

With the ultimate goal of challenging social networking juggernaut Facebook, Google reportedly shelled out big bucks of the buy, although no financial terms have yet been made public.

As reported by the Wall Street Journal, the Canadian start-up has launched several games titles for Facebook, as well as Apple’s iPhone and Research In Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry devices.

“SocialDeck’s games platform technology enables simultaneous game play across multiple mobile devices and social networks,” the WSJ explains.

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