comScore today released a study on mobile map usage based on data from its comScore MobiLens service, indicating that 14 percent of mobile users in the U.S. accessed maps on their mobile devices in April 2010, as the mobile map audience reached 33.5 million users- up 44 percent from the previous year.

Interestingly, the study suggests that more people access maps via mobile apps than via browser.  For the three month period ending April 2010, 26 percent of smartphone users accessed maps via applications, while 19 percent accessed maps via browser.  In comparison, just 2 percent of feature phone users accessed maps via applications, with 4 percent doing so via browser.  Smartphone users drove growth in both application and browser map usage with app access nearly tripling to 12.7 million smartphone users, while browser map access surged 93 percent to nearly 9 million smartphone users.

“People are increasingly turning to their mobile phone for maps and directions when on the go,” said Mark Donovan, comScore senior vice president of mobile. “With summer travel season upon us, we expect even more mobile users to access both maps and location-based local search to help them navigate and find geographically relevant information.”

Firefox is set to release an Android-version of its popular open-source mobile browser in the coming months- setting the stage for Mozilla, makers of the widely popular Firefox desktop browser, to become an equally dominant player in the world of mobile browsing.

A mobile version of Firefox has long been a desire for the droves of Mozilla faithfuls, and has been in the works for what seems like an eternity.  Honing the feature-set made popular with the desktop version, the mobile version is set to be a world-class mobile browser, taking full advantage of all the latest improvements and technology in mobile browsing.

With support for HTML5, CSS, Javascript and tabbed browsing, Firefox mobile will be the latest and greatest mobile browser available, but extending its reach is what Mozilla is focused on more than anything.  Being available on Symbian and Windows Mobile devices was the first step, but porting a version to Android will put it in the spotlight and expose the benefits to both parties.

According to AdMob’s latest mobile metrics report, Android was the #2 smartphone platform in the US in the fourth quarter of 2009 with a 27 percent share of mobile requests, or exactly half of the 54 percent share belonging to iPhone OS devices.  Though the iPhone continues its smartphone dominance, Android is growing at a break-neck pace, and could position Firefox mobile as a leading smartphone-oriented browser for the endless amount of upcoming devices sporting the Android OS.

Though inclusion on the iPhone, iPod Touch and the upcoming iPad will never happen due to Apple’s lock-down, Firefox mobile has a bright future.  As mobile browsing and operating systems continue to consolidate and a less fragmented experience evolves, Firefox will emerge a clear leader as it has in the desktop space.

Alongside Millennial Media’s S.M.A.R.T report published today, Opera has released its monthly “State of the Mobile Web” report as well, showing usage and reach numbers from one of the most widely used mobile browsers in existence today- Opera Mini.

In fact, this month’s report states that Opera Mini users have matched the number of Opera’s desktop users for the first time ever, with over 46.3 million users.  From those users, Opera served up roughly 20 billion pages and compressed over 3 petabytes of data on a monthly basis.

Social networking, and in particular Facebook and Twitter, showed the strongest growth in terms of users accessing the services via Opera Mini, with Google, YouTube and Wikipedia coming in as top sites as well.  While growth around the world is skyrocketing, this month’s report focused on Southeast Asia to showcase usage and reach in that particular region.

In terms of growth rates in Southeast Asia- Vietnam and Indonesia lead the top 9 Southeast Asian countries in page-view growth (1,316.4% and 641.9%, respectively), while Vietnam and Indonesia also lead the top 9 Southeast Asian countries in growth of unique users (846.9% and 419.7%, respectively).  Brunei leads the top 9 Southeast Asian countries in page views per user, with each user browsing 987 pages on average each month- an impressive number no doubt.

Interestingly enough, among mobile Web users in Southeast Asia, Google is at the top of the rankings for numerous countries, with the very significant exception of Indonesia where Google is only at #6 and Yahoo! is at #2.  This is notable because the vast majority of Opera Mini users in Southeast Asia are in Indonesia.

It continues to amaze me how diverse usage, interaction, devices and so many other aspects are when comparing different regions of the world.  We all interact with our devices and the mobile Web in different ways, and that’s why reports like this — despite the accuracy of  reporting and sample size — are always interesting.

A new report published by Quantcast shows the mobile Web grew 110 percent in the U.S., and 148 percent worldwide in 2009.  Interestingly, the mobile Web still only makes up 1.26 percent of total U.S Web consumption, and a mere .99 percent worldwide- in other words, we still have a ways to go.

The growth was magnified by the proliferation of “full-web” -enabled smartphones over the past year, making the lines between the traditional Web and the mobile Web blurry at best.  Unsurprisingly, the iPhone/iPod Touch accounted for most of the growth in the U.S., but Android made the largest advances over the past year, overtaking RIM’s Blackberry with 12 percent of North American mobile Web pageviews.

The growing popularity of the Android operating system is apparent with Motorola’s Droid, just one of many Android-based devices on the market, which helped Motorola gain a 10x improvement in North American mobile Web share in 2009- despite it being launched late in the year.

Still, Apple finished the year with a commanding lead of 65 percent total market share of mobile Web access, though only 41 percent of which was attributed to the iPhone.  The iPod Touch accounted for 24 percent of Apple’s total market share even though it’s not connected to mobile data networks.  This fact alone proves the mobile Web could still grow by leaps and bounds even without wireless carrier connections.

With 2010 being aptly dubbed the “year of mobile,” the growth we’re expected to see should be even more substantial.  While Android and the iPhone seem to garner the most attention, Blackberry devices, Java-based devices (which still hold significant market share in countries such as Africa) and even Palm’s WebOS might continue to rise in popularity and market share this year.  Either way, it will be fun to watch the infinite battle brewing between everyone involved.

Like Millennial Media’s monthly S.M.A.R.T report, Opera’s monthly “State of the Mobile Web” report gives an inside snapshot of how the mobile Web is being consumed around the world and how users are interacting with mobile as seen from one of the most widely used mobile browsers in existence.

In November’s report, released today, usage has once again skyrocketed over the previous month and November of last year with Opera reporting a total of 41.7 million users — more than double the amount of users in November of 2008 — and a 5.3 percent increase over October 2009.

Opera users viewed 18.8 billion pages in November, a 231 percent increase over the previous year, and generated over 285 million MB of data for operators worldwide.  It’s interesting to note that Opera compresses up to 90 percent of the data used by consumers, so without this compression, users would have viewed over 2.6 PB (petabytes) of data in November.  Overall data traffic was up 213 percent over November 2008, showing just how much the mobile Web has matured over the past year.

This month’s report also highlighted mobile Web usage and reach in Africa, where usage has grown exponentially over the previous year.  Ghana and Kenya, for example, lead the top 10 African countries in terms of page-view growth — 4,348.6% and 615.4%, respectively — while Ghana and Ivory Coast lead the top 10 African countries in growth of unique users-1,558.8% and 330.2%, respectively.  Kenya also leads the top 10 African countries in page views, with each user browsing 525 pages on average each month.

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Opera has released its monthly “State of the Mobile Web” report for September, and like usual, it paints an excellent picture of where the mobile Web currently stands- from the perspective of one of the most popular mobile browsers in use today.

This month’s report outlines the typical growth in all categories including pageviews, data transfered, overall users and more, but also includes the bold statement that Opera is saving mobile consumers over $8 billion per year in data-usage charges (based on their mobile data compression technology) – more on that later.

In terms of users, more than 35.6 million people used Opera Mini last month- an 11.5 percent jump over August ’09 and more than 150 percent compared to September ’08.  Opera introduced the first beta of Opera Mini 5 last month and reports two major milestones in terms of sheer usage- Opera’s mobile browsers facilitated more than 500 million pageviews per day, on average, and processed a hefty 2 petabytes of data via its servers in one month’s time.  To put it in perspective, 2 petabytes is equal to 2,000 terabytes (TBs).

Because of Opera’s compression technology, which is estimated to compress up to 90 percent of the data to save network bandwidth, the company says users in the top 10 countries (Russia, Indonesia, India, China, Ukraine, South Africa, United States, United Kingdom, Poland and Vietnam) save up to $672 million USD per month, or over $8.1 billion USD per year, thanks to the compression rate of 90% and the subsequent savings in mobile data charges from users’ wireless providers.

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There’s been healthy competition recently between makers of so-called “full Web capable” mobile browsers from the likes of Opera, Mozilla and others, but who will come out on top once the dust settles?

Skyfire, a mobile browser we’ve kept our eyes on for a while now, is ramping up its efforts and making a few changes internally to better compete in the increasingly crowded segment of mobile browsing.

Along with recently hiring former Travelocity CFO Jeffrey Glueck, the company has closed a series B round of funding in the amount of $5M, raising its total capital investment to $22.8M since its inception.  To put it simply, the Mountain View-based company has big plans for its browser.

As you’ll remember, Skyfire is still the only free browser available that includes support for PC-Web capable technologies such as Flash, Silverlight, Ajax, JavaScript and many others- bringing a true full-Web experience to mobile devices once and for all.  The only problem has been that it’s not available for a wide range of platforms- only Windows Mobile and Symbian for the time being.

The company has plans to introduce a Blackberry version soon, with other platforms hopefully following suit.  With so much going on internally at the company, Skyfire will undoubtedly make its mark soon.  With competition also ramping up its efforts, Skyfire needs to bring its exclusive technology to as many platforms as possible before others sweep in and steal its thunder.