On Monday, Polar Mobile – a platform provider for digital media distribution – announced a $6 million funding round that will help the company push ahead with a new product line.

Led by Georgian Partners, the new funding round adds to the pile of more than $3 million invested to-date from private investors. The cash will make it possible for Polar Mobile to roll out MediaEverywhere, a new product line that will “transform the media industry.”

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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 marketing has bowled a perfect game for AMF Bowling Centers.

According to the executives for the world’s largest owner and operator of bowling centers, the mobile channel has proven a vastly successful mechanism to connect with bowlers.

Since launching a multi-channel mobile strategy in January of 2011, the company said Wednesday, AMF Bowling Centers has connected with nearly 126,000 bowlers through opt-in SMS campaigns, with 28,000 coming direct from AMF’s mobile website as of October 2011.

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Today we continue 3Seventy’s “MobileMinute” weekly video series, where Andy Kennedy takes on the topic of mobile apps vs. the mobile Web in relation to an integrated mobile strategy.

There’s long been discussion on whether creating a mobile app is better than developing for the mobile Web and vice versa, but the fact is there’s no right or wrong answer to this debate.  Brands struggle with these decisions everyday and it comes down to what works best for each individual organization.

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New forecasts out from eMarketer peg mobile advertising spend in 2012 at $1.8B, growing a healthy 47% during the year.

A majority of the growth will be attributed to search and display (banners, rich media and video) ad units, in addition to continued adoption of smartphones, tablets and mobile Web usage.  “Mobile advertising is no longer a question of ‘if’ but of ‘when,’” said Noah Elkin, principal analyst at eMarketer and author of the new report, ‘Mobile Advertising and Marketing: Moving to the Mainstream.’  “A key factor pushing mobile advertising toward the mainstream is that mobile web access is fast becoming more the norm than the exception.  This makes mobile a greater imperative than ever for marketers.”

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It was announced today that 3Seventy, a company specializing in mobile CRM solutions, has launched a brand new SaaS-based enterprise mobile solutions platform targeted towards small to medium sized businesses.

The new platform, dubbed “3Seventy Local,” is designed to bring enterprise-level mobile solutions — including targeted SMS messaging in addition to mobile Web and mobile app solutions — to smaller organizations at truly affordable price points.  The company realized a larger issue in that advanced mobile solutions have been largely out of reach to smaller organization due to cost.

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Google today announced new mobile ad-units along with some interesting new stats in regards to mobile search.

According to the company, 40% of all mobile searches coming to Google are local in nature at this point, which continues to trend upward.  As such, the search giant also announced that “physical location,” or the proximity of a local business to a user’s location will become a targeting variable when serving ads to mobile users.

We reported yesterday that Google is now on track to bank over $2.5B in mobile ad sales this year, and it looks like the company’s “Click-to-Call” ads are driving a large portion of this total.  Google’s Surojit Chatterjee said that Click-to-Call is now driving “millions of calls per week” globally for the company.

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