“In Russia, mobile web penetration will go from 29% of mobile users this year to 36% by 2015. Growth in India and Brazil will be more dramatic.”

dotMobi says businesses should keep in mind three factors when developing a mobile website: the site needs to be able to detect when mobile users are accessing it; it needs a way to adapt content to a mobile format; and it needs a way to present that mobile-ready content.

"We chose .mobi and it has been the right decision on a number of counts. Most notably, thousands of Search Engines and Mobile Directories use the ICANN information on new dotmobi sites ... We needed a name that would be: Easy to recall, easy to type on a mobile keypad, would convey the intent and be a good name to represent travel suppliers, a good name for Travel Brands and their mobile websites."

According to Marlin Mobile's Adrian Mendoza, mobile apps have an inevitable shelf life because they cause marketers to spend too much time and money with unpredictable returns. The source of the problem is the fragmentation in the mobile market which presents mobile application designers, developers and marketers with enormous complexities for creating a consistent brand experience.

A recent Comscore study examined consumers in five European countries and found 43.6% of all mobile subscribers have received an SMS marketing message. 26.3% of the messages were product, service or brand information, followed by donations to charities (11.6%) and coupons (10.3%).

The research firm found that 13.2% of households accessed their bank account through a mobile device in 2Q10 compared 20.8% who accessed their account using the bank’s customer service call center. The mobile share is up from 11.6% in 1Q10 while call center access has remained relatively flat quarter-over-quarter.

Over the last few years the mobile app has enjoyed great success in its mobile ecosystem. Looking to the future, however, the tides of change are upon us, with many mobile experts and analysts echoing that the mobile web browser is set to take over, thanks to HTML5.

The PC Web experience trained us to think that time spent on a site is a positive measurement, but time spent on a site from a mobile perspective may not always be a positive factor. It may be due to confusion or slow load times. That’s where more qualitative measurements come in.

It would be irresponsible to think that mobile alone will give us the complete solution to the nation’s healthcare problems; however, it will allow us to move major obstacles, just as direct-to-consumer communication did a decade ago.

Nearly one in two consumers are more likely to do business with a retail store if the store has a mobile website. The state of the economy has people using their phones as a research tool. As a retailer, if your promotions, prices and locations are available in mobile, you have a better chance of engaging potential customers.