Some would say we’re officially swimming in a world of mobile apps as the collective app marketplaces spanning the likes of Apple, Android, Windows and RIM are set to surpass 1 million total apps available.

According to mobile analytics firm Mobilewalla — Apple, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone 7 have collectively hit 991,524 apps available in their stores, with the major 1 million app milestone set to be reached within the next week.  This is a significant milestone considering the modern mobile app ecosystem really only got its start in mid 2008.  Further still, the data leaves out apps from platforms such as Symbian, Palm and older Windows mobile apps that would inflate the total even further.  It’s also worth noting that while Android and iOS developers alone have created and submitted more than 1 million apps combined, many of them have been pulled overtime for one reason or another.

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While Black Friday brought a flurry of shoppers to retail stores, it also brought a flurry of barcode scans according to NeoMedia.

The company saw a dramatic increase of more than 240% in mobile barcode scans via its app on Black Friday compared to last year, including a 13% jump in 2D scans over 1D.  Looking deeper at the most popular types of barcodes being scanned, 2D is the front-runner by far with roughly 87% versus just 13% for 1D.  In 2010 for comparison, 74% of scans were 2D versus 26% for 1D codes.

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According to new data out from comScore, the total number of Americans who own mobile devices now tops 234M, with 90M of which being smartphones.  The study covers the three-month average period ending October 2011, and includes a survey of more than 30,000 US mobile subscribers.

In terms of mobile OEM data, Samsung remains the top handset manufacturer overall with 25.5% total market share, followed by LG with 20.6% marketshare and Motorola with 13.6%.  In terms of mobile operating systems, Android holds on to the number one spot — now sitting at 46.3% total market share.  Apple comes in at second place with 28.1% of the market — up only one percentage point over the proceeding three-month period.  RIM rounded out the top three with 17.2% share, followed by Microsoft in fourth place with 5.4% and Symbian in fifth place with just 1.6%.

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Mobile publishing and marketing provider Netbiscuits today published its latest Mobile Metrics Report in which it details the continued problem of mass fragmentation with smartphones, in addition to the lack of HTML5 adoption despite the recent hype.

The company says it processes more than 8.5 billion mobile pages and content items through its platform each month, and said that between November of 2009 and May of 2011, they averaged 2,872 unique devices requesting mobile sites through its platform.  Of these devices, a total of 10 operating system were analyzed including iOS, Android, Blackberry, Symbian, Bada, Windows Phone, Windows Mobile, WebOS, PalmOS and MeeGo.  Though Android and iOS hold the lion’s share, fragmentation is still a major issue, especially in terms of developing mobile applications for specific platforms.

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Finland-based mobile analytics provider, CEM4Mobile Solutions, has published new survey results detailing consumer preference in regards to mobile apps vs. the mobile Web in terms of engagement, unique users and mobile ad impressions.

The company completed its research by using a sample of over 56 million mobile impressions from devices where both apps and mobile Web browsing were supported.  The results show that while the mobile Web sees more traffic and unique users as opposed to native apps, the engagement is much higher with native mobile apps.  In looking at the survey respondents, 90.15% of all unique users used the mobile Web, while just 9.85% used apps.  The sum of all visits was similar, with the mobile Web seeing 81.66% of all respondents while apps saw just 18.34%.

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It’s an Android and iOS-dominated smartphone world. That much is clear from the latest data presented by the comScore MobiLens service.

Incredibly, 82.2 million people in the United States owned smartphones during the three months ending in July 2011. That figure represents a staggering 10 percent spike from the preceding three month period.

Once again, Google’s Android ranked as the top smartphone platform with 41.8 percent market share, up 5.4 percentage points. Apple, however, also gained added traction, boosting its #2 position with 27.0 percent of the smartphone market, up 1.0 percentage point from the prior reporting period.

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Vision Mobile has published an awesome infographic outlining the various mobile platforms and how they stack up from a development point of view.

Dubbed “The Mobile Platform Race,” the infographic (embedded below) contains data sourced from Vision Mobile’s recent “Developers Economics 2011” report.  Some of the data is what you’d expect, such as the fact that iOS, Android and the mobile Web are leading the charge in terms of mobile development these days.  Other data includes platform fragmentation, distribution channels and revenue models.

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