The International Data Corporation (IDC) has released numbers related to smartphone shipments, indicating massive continued growth and consumers’ appetite for full-featured mobile devices.

According to the research, vendors shipped 119.4 million smartphones for the first six months of 2010, compared to 76.8 million smartphones for the previous year.  The IDC expects total shipments of 269.6 million smartphones this year, compared to 173.5 million units shipped last year, representing a 55.4% overall growth.  Interestingly, this is 10% higher than the IDC previously predicted.

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MarketResearch.com has published an in-depth report and analysis on the mobile payments and technology sector entitled “Mobile Payment – Advanced Technologies (NFC), Strategies And Future Of Remote & Proximity Payment In The U.S.”

In it, the research firm details the technology associated with mobile payments — primarily NFC — which it says is in the nascent stage with an adoption rate of only 1.7%.  With the help of NFC technology, banks will be able to tap micro transactions made by cash, representing around 20% of the total transactions in the U.S., according to the research.  This will also help banks to capture the growing GEN Y population as well as the huge underbanked and unbanked population.

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Health care reform may be a particularly American concern, but mobile technology may offer improvements to patients’ lives that everyone could appreciate. In a new Issue Brief, the firm Deloitte says mobile devices like smart phones can help consumers enhance their own, taking certain costs out of the health care system.

Using electronic health records, and collecting information therein via cell phones or other personal portable devices, it may become possible to “analyze aggregate data to activate mobile, patient-specific output such as medication reminders, healthy habit tips and medical bill reminders,” according to Deloitte.

“The personal health record embedded in mobile communication devices (which Deloitte dubs “mPHR”) is the ‘killer app’ that may change the game for providers, consumers and payers,” Paul Keckley, Ph.D., executive director, Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, said in a release.  ”Considering that treating chronic disease accounts for more than 70 percent… of the total $2.4 trillion in health care spending in the United States, the business case for (health records in mobile phones) is solid for helping to reduce costs for managing chronic conditions, such as diabetes and obesity.”

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As the surge for smartphones continue, the vital parts necessary to produce them are running short according to new reports.

Chip makers rolled back production during the latter half of 2009 due to the recession and are now finding themselves playing catch up as hot new devices hit the market in droves.  Beyond smartphones, it’s also affecting wireless carriers — some of which are seeing delays in improving their networks — and could even raise computer prices.

Luckily, the problem isn’t an across-the-board shortage of chips, but rather problems with certain components here and there.  If just one of the 20 to 30 critical chips that go into smartphones is unavailable, the whole production line screeches to a halt.  The problem stems from the fact that chips that go into smartphones compete for production capacity with other chips at the gigantic factories run by contract manufacturers.

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The mobile app market continues to grow by an incredible amount year after year, with new research estimating the entire market will reach $15 billion by 2013.

Mobile research firm Research2guidance recently published a comprehensive report entitled “Global Smartphone Application Market Report 2010,” which was an update for the smartphone app market for the first half of 2010.  In it, the firm indicates the market has already reached $2.2B in the first six month of this year, well on track to reach the $15B estimate for 2013.

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New data out from Nielson and Forrester Research indicate that smartphone owners will surpass those with feature phones by the end of next year, indicating an interesting shift in what the future mobile user will be doing with their device.

Mobile phone penetration today already surpasses that of computers, and by the end of 2010, more than 240 million U.S. consumers — or almost 78% of the population — will have a mobile phone subscription, according to a new study from Forrester Research entitled “Profiling U.S. Online Mobile Consumers.”

What’s interesting is that while smartphones were once only the “playground of businesspeople on the go,” 22% of the population now have a smartphone, which opens the door to a host of new mobile activities, the study says.  Breaking down the demographics, the study notes that mobile phone owners with web access who use the mobile Web at least monthly tend to be “younger, smartphone-owning, wealthy males who are driven by entertainment,” the study says.  69% of these consumers own a smartphone; 26% a BlackBerry and 20% an iPhone.  13% own a Samsung, 11% a Motorola and 11% an LG, the study says.

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RIM today issued an update to its BlackBerry App World that includes some added bonuses for consumers, but takes a larger cut of ad-revenue away from developers.

On the consumer side, RIM is slowly adding much better billing options, including direct credit card payments and carrier billing to the mix.  In addition, it’s also lowering the minimum price to 99 cents and $1.99 per app from a much higher minimum of $2.99 before.  The addition of carrier billing will be a huge milestone, as it’s always been the preferred method of payment from a consumer point-of-view.

RIM said today that AT&T will be the first carrier to support carrier billing and others will start to support in the coming months, but it will be up to the carriers to announce.  The addition of better payment options will help induce higher revenue potential for Blackberry developers, but RIM also announced today that the revenue split will move to a 70/30 model instead of the previous 80/20.  This is the same model both Android and Apple use, but RIM had long been admired for giving such a generous revenue split.

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