Today MSG concludes its three-part series dissecting the mobile developments impacting the mobile industry and our society at all levels, as documented in the Netsize Guide. The focus is expansion and what it means when Web goes mobile and mobile gets real....

In brief: The first in a series of reports looking at heightened interest in personalization and the options available to mobile operators determined to do battle with Google, Apple & Co. We kick off with Bytemobile and an analysis of Widget Bar, an application designed to simplify the mobile browsing experience by providing useful, personally relevant information in real time to people via a personalized toolbar...

In brief: An analysis of what Blyk's partnership with Vodafone Netherlands really means, an exclusive Q&A with Blyk co-founder and CEO, Pekka Ala-Pietilä, and some big questions mobile operators can't ignore: Why is advertising the major revenue source for every mass media except mobile? And how do operators plan to compete with media and Internet companies to capture the most value in mobile media? It's been...

MORE THAN 1.5 BILLION APPS HAVE BEEN DOWNLOADED FROM APPLE'S APP STORE, the company said this week. iPhone and iPod Touch users have racked up the downloads in just a year, with the store now holding over 65,000 applications (though that figure has been questioned by some, as it's inflated by so-called "bulk apps"). Source Meanwhile, GetJar, which runs an independent, multi-platform app download site, says it, too...

The popularity of location-based services applications - particularly their top-notch position in a variety of app stores - indicates that location apps are crowd-pleasers, but are they really game-changing? Nate Janewit - an MSG columnist and a computer scientist at Stanford University sharply focused on the larger issues around LBS - suggests companies need to think differently about location in order to wring more...

SMARTPHONES ACCOUNTED FOR ALMOST THREE TIMES more usage than their relative market share, according to AdMob's April 2009 Mobile Metrics Report.The report compared usage of mobile websites to usage of HTML sites on mobile devices and found the relative usage of both to be highest on Apple and Android devices. The iPhone's OS had 8 percent of the smartphone market, yet generated 43 percent of mobile web requests and...