By the end of January, it was reported that the number of “select stores” was expanding… to all of them.

Today, Mobile Marketing Watch has learned that PayPal has begun rolling out in-store checkout systems at every Home Depot store in the Bay Area.

As of early 2012, roughly 17 million of PayPal’s 106 million account holders have already linked their accounts to a mobile device.

Renato Mascardo, of San Ramon, California, tells Mercury News that he tried the service at a local Home Depot store and now raves about the experience, particularly with how convenient it makes shopping with his little ones in tow.

“It’s super convenient for me not to have to take my wallet out. It seems like a little thing, but when you have a 2-year-old in your arms and a 5-year-old (in the store) it’s pretty convenient,” Mascardo says.

If you’re unfamiliar with PayPhrase, Amazon had previously launched the program as a means for further simplifying the online shopping experience.

Not yet three years old, PayPhrase allowed shoppers to check out by simply using a personal phrase followed by a four-digit pin.

Amazon says on its website that the time has come to move on from PayPhrase.

“Since launching PayPhrase, we’ve learned a great deal about how our customers like to check out,” Amazon says. “We’ve applied many of these lessons to other features on Amazon.com.”

For now, Amazon says shopping through its digital portal can still be efficient and expedient thanks to the 1-Click checkout option, which utilizes previously stored payment and shopping details to facilitate as swift purchase.

Were you a fan of PayPhrase? If so, will you be sorry to see it go? Please weigh in with a thought or comment below.

Judging from the lofty language used by the company to announce the arrival of its new solution, it’s apparent that Digby really digs the platform.

Through powerful web-style analytics into shopping activities at a brand’s physical locations and effective, targeted location-aware mobile messaging tools, Digby Localpoint enables brands to attract, influence, understand and own the relationship with their loyal customers across all channels.

In describing how it all works, Digby says Localpoint enables brands to create geo-fences around their stores and other points of interest and embed those geo-fences into the brand’s app. Digby then leverages its patent pending technology to measure app engagement and events such as geo-fence entries/exits, store visits, UPC/QR Code scans and other key shopping oriented events triggered through the app as the consumer visits the store and uses their smartphone to find and research products to enhance their in-store shopping experience.

Localpoint can be added to a current branded app through a Software Developer Kit (SDK) or in a rich application developed by Digby.

“Multichannel retailers in particular should recognize that they need a twofold objective with their smartphone presences: enabling sales, but also serving store shoppers,” says eport author Sucharita Mulpuru, VP and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research. “Because the primary use cases of mobile devices are to support multi-channel experiences (e.g., finding more product information in stores, identifying store locations), it is imperative to include multichannel sales influence in any mobile ROI estimates.”

According to the latest insight provided by research firm ForeSee, Apple’s mobile shopping satisfaction score puts the Cupertino, California-based tech giant on the top tier of players in mCommerce.

An impressive 85% of 3,000 consumers surveyed rank Apple at the top of their favorite companies to shop from online. Incredibly, Apple’s mobile shopping score was even higher than consumers’ overall satisfaction with Apple’s web store, which has an 83% approval rating.

“As the adoption of smartphones increases, more consumers are using them to access retailer websites,” said Larry Freed, president and CEO of ForeSee. “More and more, there is expectation that companies will address the mobile environment in ways that are effective and user-friendly. Mobile commerce is still relatively new and there is a lot of room for
innovation and improvement.”

Based on the findings of the research, Apple topped Amazon, Dell, Netflix, and eBay among the top five providers of the most satisfying mCommerce experiences.

WalmartLabs, the upstart social and mobile product incubator at Wal-Mart, has acquired a company called Small Society.

A mobile-centric firm, Small Society is responsible for numerous highly iPhone applications for leading brands like Starbucks, Zipcar and Whole Foods.

While the terms of the deal weren’t initially made public, the outcome of the deal should soon be clear to Wal-Mart customers. Without a doubt, the mobile shopping experience will be getting a definitive boost in some fashion.

“We believe that mobile can have an impact on every part of the shopping experience for Walmart customers, whether in-store or online,” WalmartLabs chief Anand Rajaraman said. “We’re very excited to have such talented new team members to help us make that impact.”

Other 2011 WalmartLabs’ acquisitions included social ad network One Riot and mobile point-of-sale startup Gabble.

For its initial roll out, PayPal will partner with some of the top 200 U.S.-based merchants.

PayPal is admittedly seeking its share of a daily coupon market that is on pace to double to $4.17 billion by 2015, BIA/Kelsey forecasts.

“The experience is going to be completely different than anyone else’s through and through,” PayPal President Scott Thompson tells BusinessWeek. “We’ll only give you something that we think fits the category of unique and relevant. Everyone else is going to bombard you.”

PayPal, however, will face no shortage of stiff competition in its latest venture.

Groupon and LivingSocial had a combined 73 percent market share in daily deals in October, according to an estimate from Yipit, a website that aggregates online offers.

“EBay could definitely use coupons as counterpunch-type of approach to retain customers,” says Peter Sorrentino, a senior fund manager at Huntington Asset Advisors. “If you can get consumers to your site for something that has a pretty broad appeal, then you can capture their wallets before the couponing companies lead them away from you. Once you’ve got the eyeballs, the clicks will soon follow.”

To rank mobile apps by active reach, that is, by the percentage of Android owners who used the app within the past 30 days, Nielsen analyzed usage data from its proprietary device meters on the smartphones of the thousands of consumer panelists who agreed to be part of Nielsen’s ongoing Smartphone Analytics research.

Nielsen found that Facebook’s popular app is the most active among Android owners in the age range of 18-24 and 25-34, “who both hover at around an 80 percent active reach.”

Not surprisingly, Google’s YouTube app gets heavy usage from Android smartphone owners 18 -24. Nielsen says 64 percent have used it in the past 30 days, compared to 56 percent and 51 percent of 25-34 and 35-44 year olds.

A preference for media apps with a social dimension (e.g. Words with Friends) among the 18-24 set is also reinforced by their sizable usage of music and video apps (e.g. Pandora) compared to older demographics.

In addition to using their smartphone apps for social activities and mobile gaming, the 35-44 segment demonstrates a greater inclination to shop using the Amazon AppStore, as 24 percent of them used the app in the last 30 days, while only 14 percent of those 18-24 did the same, Nielsen says.

To read the full report, click here.

A new study from Wakefield Research (which was commissioned by Motricity) shows that 70% of device-shoppers made more purchases in 2011 than they did in 2010 from their smartphone or tablet.

The study confirms that this holiday season may be the biggest year for online holiday shopping yet.

“70% of Americans who shop with their smartphones or tablets report purchasing more items directly from their device in 2011, than they did in 2010. On-the-go purchasing is increasing in popularity,” the report reads.

It’s common to think that the increased popularity of mobile shopping is being driven by Gen Y, the report suggests, but that’s incorrect.

“Directionally, device owners ages 25-44 are nearly twice as likely to feel that shopping from a mobile device is more convenient than those ages 18-24 (42% vs. 23%),” research shows.

And when it comes to the biggest spenders via mobile, men are the winners.

Men are making the biggest-ticket purchases. On average, men spent $312 on the most expensive item bought on their device, while women spent only $222.

The latest in-depth report from the folks at Millennial Media highlights key areas of the mobile marketing realm that have made significant gains in recent months.

According to the findings presented in the report, local market targeting grew a staggering 50% quarter-over-quarter, and certain “post-click” options, like the ability to watch video, similarly grew 78% quarter-over-quarter.

Finance, however, was the top US ad vertical on Millennial Media’s network and has grown 356% year-over-year. Entertainment, on the other hand, was the top International ad vertical.

Millennial Media also found that six different verticals experienced triple digit growth or greater year-over-year. Technology (not consumer electronics, but BtoB tech, cloud storage, etc.) was the leading vertical as it grew 687%.

Interestingly enough, campaigns that allowed consumers to view a map grew 27% quarter-over-quarter. This fact illustrates the increasingly important role that the “view map” option continues to play in driving consumers into physical locations.

Not surprisingly, Millennial Media discovered that when consumers used their mobile phones while shopping in Q3, the top activity was to search for particular items to try and find a better price.

To learn more about the fascinating insights contained in Millennial Media’s Q3 SMART report, click here.

The growth, according to Juniper, will be fueled by digital adspend moving to mobile and mobile coupons simultaneously gaining greater consumer acceptance and confidence.

The report found that the smartphone, and more recently the tablet, has increased the capabilities of both the modern shopper and the mobile retail marketer.

“The marketer now has new marketing channels to attract the mobile shopper,” Juniper proposes, “but equally the shopper has more access to competitive product and pricing information before making a purchase.”

In addition, traditional boundaries between physical (‘bricks and mortar’) retailing and online retailing are blurring as mobile bridges the gap; fundamentally disrupting the ecosystem with a new breed of ‘clicks and mortar’ retailing initiatives emerging.

The report wisely cautions mobile marketers to think carefully about their strategies and only use the most appropriate mobile marketing channels to connect with the mobile shopper. Juniper says there is danger in assuming that the mobile app is the answer to every requirement.

“Mobile retailing is undergoing rapid change. We are starting to see an ‘arms race’, as the power of the mobile channel equips both the shopper and the retailer with capabilities they never had before,” says report co-author David Snow. “Each side has to keep up with the other and gain an advantage in order to clinch the purchase transaction in their favor.”