Editor’s note: This guest post was written by Jared Reitzin, the CEO of mobileStorm, a Communication Service Provider (CSP) that provides digital marketing services including SMS, as well as mobile applications and secure communication technology for healthcare organizations.

Think about it, what other industry or company do you know of that charges you for service every month but you cannot start using the service for 4 months? Go ahead, I will give you a few minutes, please add your comments below. Can’t think of any? It’s because if a company like this existed, nobody would want to do business with them, and they wouldn’t be around for very long.

However if you have a monopoly on the space and people really needed your service to grow their business, they wouldn’t have a choice. For mobile marketers this may sound like familiar territory. We all know that mobile marketing through a short code is ultimately the best way to go. I’m not sold on QR codes yet as the user experience isn’t that great.

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On Friday, Portio Research published the 6th edition of ‘Mobile Messaging Futures’ which boldly predicts MMS to be a cash machine over the next four years.

According to Portio, MMS – launched after the initial success of SMS to deliver multimedia content – has until recently been the second greatest revenue generating non-voice service, after SMS.

Last year, roughly $31 billion of the worldwide mobile messaging market’s $202 billion came from MMS.

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Teenagers and texting have joined the likes of peanut butter and jelly as natural, inextricable pairs that may never again be separated for the duration of human history.

According to the latest data and corresponding insights from Nielsen, U.S. teenagers have tripled their mobile data usage in the last year – all while remaining kings and queens of texting.

Messaging remains the centerpiece of mobile teen behavior in the U.S. The number of messages exchanged (SMS and MMS) hit 3,417 messages per month per teen in Q3 2011, averaging seven messages per waking hour. Teen females are leading the charge, sending and receiving 3,952 messages per month versus 2,815 from males.

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Based on the latest research and projections by Juniper, mobile instant messaging users are on pace to surpass 1.3 billion worldwide by 2016, a figure that effectively triples the number of IM users in 2010.

Juniper speculates that the continued growth will be driven by the arrival of new services (Apple’s iMessage is cited as one example), and the accelerated adoption of existing services like AOL’s AIM, Blackberry Messenger, Microsoft’s Windows Live, Skype and Yahoo! Messenger.

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Blyk, the one time MVNO turned mobile marketing provider, today announced that it’s extended it’s strategic partnership with UK operator Orange.  As part of the continued partnership, Blyk announced that it will now be in charge of Orange UKs media sales program – as well as continuing support for “Orange Shots”, the SMS-based ad service that Orange built from Blyk’s technology.

We’ve covered Blyk’s evolution from the beginning.  The company started out as an MVNO with a unique proposition.  Targeted at younger consumers, Blyk’s original business model offered free wireless airtime and mobile messaging in exchange for highly-targeted text messages.  A user would signup for Blyk’s service, outline their interests and what companies they’d like to see ads for, and then Blyk would serve up relevant SMS marketing messages based on that profile.  The more ads a user was willing to receive, the more free airtime and mobile messages they’d receive in return.

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The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) today published updated best practices and guidelines related to mobile coupons and so-called “mobile price promotions.”

Created by the MMA’s “Mobile Couponing Task Force,” the document is designed to provide marketers, merchants, wireless carriers and other mobile marketing ecosystem members with an industry-standard for using mobile coupons and rebates to increase sales and promote consumer loyalty.

Though mobile coupons are the focus of the new guidelines, the MMA sees them as only one piece of the puzzle in relation to mobile price promotions — which the MMA defines as ”electronic coupons or rebates that traverse the full redemption process without the requirement for conversion into a paper or other hard-copy format.”

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UK-based mobile operator O2 is seeing huge success with its “O2 More” SMS advertising service, announcing that it now has over 2 million actively engaged subscribers and over 1,000 advertisers.

Launched just 16 months ago with roughly 50 brands, O2 has found a winning strategy by adhering to strict user-privacy rules and maintaining high relevance with the messages it sends.  First off, the service only sends one SMS message per day, and the user explicitly details what kind of products and services they’re interested in upon sign up.  In addition, every single SMS contains an opt-out capability, so the customer can cancel O2 More at any time.

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