At the eTail 2010 social media and mobile commerce summit, it was indicated that the mobile commerce market is worth roughly $2.5B today, with that number set to double each year over the next few years.

Mobile commerce in general was dissected during a special panel where topics ranged from the current state of the industry to growth potential and even emerging best practices.  Some panelists represented brands that already utilize mobile commerce initiatives, with many stating that while the shift to mobile continues, it doesn’t seem to be shifting focus away from traditional eCommerce.  “We did notice incremental growth at Lacoste,” said Maryssa Miller, former director of ecommerce at Lacoste, New York.  “After we launched an mcommerce-enabled app in April, we didn’t see regular Web site sales decrease.”

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This week, Google CEO Eric Schmidt revealed that his company’s Android mobile operating system is growing by leaps and bounds.

But that’s pretty obvious regardless of Schmidt having to say so.

Since it’s grand unveiling, Android has become a major player in the mobile space, often bumping Apple’s iOS to the backburner of headlines and mobile consumer preferences.

Google’s CEO, however, is quantifying some of the perceived growth of Android by revealing that sales of smartphones running Android now touch on approximately 200,000 per day.

“People are finally beginning to figure out how successful Android is,” Schmidt said at the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe, California, noting that only eight weeks ago, Android device sales were just 100,000 per day.

“It looks like Android is not just phenomenal but incredibly phenomenal in its growth rate. God knows how long that will continue,” he added.

According to fresh data courtesy of The Nielsen Company, Android devices now make up 27 percent of all smartphone sales in the US this year. That bests the iPhone (which only accounts for 23 percent) for the first time on record.

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The Mobile Marketing Association announced Wednesday an august panel of speakers lined up for the group’s 2010 MMA Forum in New York. The event is scheduled to be held at the Waldorf Astoria on June 8th and 9th.

According to the MMA, the two-day forum serves up the “largest and most comprehensive” networking conference focused on mobile marketing. This year, the MMA will introduce several premiere events, including an “Adopt-a-Brand” program and a “Mobile Experience Lab.”

Most exciting, however, are the prominent names that will speak at the 2010 MMA Forum. The headlining speaker at this year’s event will be CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien.

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The BBC may be one of the oldest and most venerable broadcasting institutions known the world over, but even the British Broadcasting Corporation isn’t immune to the loss of market share to the mobile news business. With more people than ever turning off their television screen in favor of the mobile screen, the BBC is now investing time and resources into building up its mobile news presence.

This week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the BBC announced that a dedicated news app will be available and free to download this spring. The news app will be supplemented by the introduction of a BBC Sport app to launch shortly thereafter. In addition to the iPhone applications, the BBC is making arrangements to take their apps to BlackBerrys and Google Android-powered smartphones.

According to the formal announcement, the news app will “offer content from the BBC News website, including stories and blogs, as well as audio and visual content.”

Making the process an interactive one, users will be allowed to submit comments and even pictures directly to the BBC newsroom.

“[Audiences] want to access digital services that they have paid for at a time and place that suits them,” says Erik Huggers, the BBC’s director of future media and technology.

This year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain is illustrating like never before how sophisticated the goals have become for many mobile marketing firms and solutions providers.

A prime example of such is Airwide Solutions, an emerging provider of cutting edge mobile messaging infrastructure, applications and solutions. Today Airwide rolled out what they’re calling a “real-time loyalty & profiling solution.” The aim of the endeavor is to help mobile operators “drive incremental lifetime value” across the subscriber base. That, of course, includes evasive prepaid customers.

The announcement at MWC also revealed Airwide’s partnership with Business Logic Systems, a firm that knows a thing or two about real-time prepaid marketing campaign automation and customer loyalty solutions. For Airwide, BLS brings to the table a wealth of knowledge and experience with enabling mobile operators to “stimulate top-ups and usage, reward loyalty and reactivate dormant subscribers.”

As noted by Airwide executives during the announcement, prepaid customers have proven a difficult nut to crack in terms of mobile marketing. While the prepaid customer base continues to grow by leaps and bounds, mobile operators have lagged behind their potential in successfully marketing to these subscribers and, consequently, increasing their life time value. Continue Reading

Roll out the red carpet. A top executive from Google will be on hand for a mobile marketing related event in New York next week.

The occasion will provide an opportunity for the Google big kahuna to delineate his company’s mobile marketing plans and overall strategies for the year ahead.

Alex Barza, the Google exec alluded to, oversees Google mobile ad sales. Supplementing his presentation on February 10th will be relevant case studies and a Q&A session with the audience.

Other speakers presenting or contributing to panel discussions will include officials from Bango, HipCricket, Ping Mobile, Impact Mobile, The Lustigman Firm, Amobee, Neustar, Sumotext, and Netbiscuits, to name only a few.

Among the most eagerly anticipated speakers is Michael Becker iLoop Mobile, who will deliver a presentation on the essential tools of the trade for effective and efficient mobile marketing.

As 2010 continues to give rise to countless new businesses and industries ramping up mobile marketing efforts, the practice of mobile marketing is, itself, rapdily becoming a “teachable lesson plan” that continues to turn up in educational settings, seminars, and even marketing classes across the academic landscape.

Adobe Systems is moving forward with Adobe Flash Platform Services for Distribution.

Essentially, Adobe is offering a new solution for advertisers and content publishers to utilize emergent tools in the digital sphere to more successfully promote and profit from applications for smart phones as well as those for social networks and desktops.

Created with distribution platform provider Gigya, Adobe is enabling the hosted online service to assist developers in both creating and sharing their applications across a variety of digital channels. For example, a web app constructed with Flash Platform tools can now be distributed across the Windows Mobile and Symbian operating systems.

Adobe officially unveiled Adobe Flash Platform Services for Distribution this week the IAB MIXX Conference and Expo in New York.

In order to give developers a “comprehensive distribution solution” Adobe’s primary talking point with this new offering is how the solution includes a “unified management tool to effectively promote, measure and monetize Web applications and games.”