HALF OF IPHONE USERS AND FORTY PERCENT OF IPOD TOUCH USERS DOWNLOAD A PAID APP PER MONTH, says AdMob in its latest mobile metrics report. This compares to just 19 percent of Android users, but users of both platforms spend a lot of time using apps: over half of them spend more than 30 minutes per day using apps. In absolute terms, though, it’s an average of 1 paid app per month on Android, 2.6 paid apps on iPhon...

THE PERCEPTION OF HIGH COSTS CONTINUES TO HOLD BACK MOBILE DATA USAGE, says a new survey from 3ple-Media. Last year, just 32 percent of mobile subscribers surveyed said that the believed receiving multimedia content on their mobile would be "too expensive", but that figure jumped to 58 percent this year. Meanwhile, 65 percent of operators surveyed agreed that cost was the biggest obstacle to users getting multimedia...

Editor's note: Apple has the first-mover advantage, and its App Store sets the bar. The result is a buoyant market for apps and ample opportunity for fast-followers to (perhaps) do one better. Benjamin E. Jacobsen - Co-Founder of Mobspot, Inc., a company championing "Mobile App developers and App users on any platform," and a new author to MSG - gives his take on the size of the market and the prospects for other pla...