Google – maker of smartphone OS powerhouse Android – is making a power-play to win the hearts and talents of iOS developers everywhere.

Taking the fight for mobile supremacy deep into enemy territory, a new campaign by Google is underscoring the advancements that the Internet search giant has made on the rival Apple platform.

Specifically, Google is out with a new promotional video that attempts to lure top iOS developers into the Android fold by highlighting the ongoing work and achievements made by Google’s iOS specialists.

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While Canadians are all about microblogging and social media, recent numbers indicate they don’t care much for mobile marketing and advertising.  In fact, there are only 5.2M people in Canada who actively use their Smartphones for browsing and apps according to recent comScore data.

Following this surprising revelation, marketing and research firm Mediative put together a new whitepaper that takes a hard look at the mobile advertising ecosystem in Canada and uncovered some interesting stats and insight.  For example, Canada has a total of 20M residents that own cell phones, of which roughly 7.215M are smartphones.  With such low smartphone penetration, it’s easier to understand why only 5.2M actively use their devices for mobile browsing and apps.

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Mobile app monetization provider Fiksu has published new data comparing mobile app loyalty on both Android and iOS devices, finding user loyalty to be much higher on Android.

The company analyzed more than four billion “app actions” through its platform and applied a metric defining a loyal user based on the number of times he or she opens an app.  The data shows that on average, Android users are two times more likely than iOS users to open an app ten times or more.  iOS still dominates among premium brands but what this means is that there’s plenty of inventory available on the Android platform, where global traffic can cost much less than iOS traffic based on standard supply and demand principles.

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comScore has published its latest “U.S. Mobile Subscriber Market Share” report with data from its MobiLens service, in which it details all aspects of mobile market share — from smartphone operating systems to the leading mobile OEMs and platforms.

The research firm surveyed more than 30,000 U.S. mobile subscribers and found Samsung to be the top handset manufacturer overall with 25.3 percent market share, while Google’s Android continued to gain ground in the smartphone market, reaching 43.7 percent market share.

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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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The folks over at Mobile17.com have published a comprehensive infographic on the Android OS ecosystem, including general usage patterns and demographics on the people that use it.

Covering everything from Android market share to the spread of devices that run Android, to the areas in the world where Android is most popular, the graphic contains just about everything you’d want to know about how Android is taking over the mobile world.  What’s most interesting is the data on the Android users themselves, such as the fact that Android users 10% more likely to be male and that Android users are 35% more likely to have just one email address compared to other OS users.

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Baidu, the Chinese search engine that has significantly more market share than Google in China and other Asian countries, has announced plans for a new mobile OS.

Dubbed “Baidu Yi,” the new OS looks to mimic the same go-to-market strategy as Google’s Android, integrating the company’s cloud service along with other embedded apps such as Baidu search, maps, email, video and many others.  Not surprisingly, the new OS will center around third-party apps as well, and the company said it will share earnings with the device manufacturers it partners with to run the new OS.

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