Smartphone penetration in the UK has reached 67 percent and in the three month average ending March 2013, over 33.4 million Brits owned a smartphone.

The growth of smartphone ownership provides advertisers with more opportunities to reach their target audience on the move. A comparison of multiple mobile ad formats shows that UK smartphone users aged 18-24 have an especially high recall of mobile advertising (38.1 percent), as opposed to the general smartphone population (26.5 percent). In regards to mobile social networking, 26.7 percent of 18-24 year old smartphone users actually clicked on an advert in March 2013, compared to only 16.5 percent of the total smartphone owners in the UK.

Source: http://www.comscoredatamine.com/2013/05/young-brits-have-a-higher-recall-of-mobile-advertising/

Samsung has developed technology to supposedly support ”5G” mobile networks which it said can deliver speeds “up to several hundred times faster than even 4G LTE-Advanced technology”. The South Korean vendor plans to commercialise the 5G technology by 2020.

The company claims to have built the world’s first adaptive array transceiver for the millimetre-wave Ka band, which could eventually become central to 5G. However, no official standard has yet been set to define exactly what makes up 5G technology and clarification is unlikely to arrive before the next World Radiocommunication Conference in 2015. Until then, talk of ’5G’ technology progress is arguably being driven more by marketing desire than R&D.

Samsung says its adaptive array transceiver technology uses 64 antenna elements, making it a viable solution for the radio propagation loss in millimetre-wave bands. The technology can transmit data at a frequency of 28GHz at up to 1.056Gb/s over a distance of 2km.

Chang Yeong Kim said the development of the transceiver has brought Samsung “one step closer to the commercialisation of 5G mobile communications”. The company hopes it will lead to international alliances and commercialisation of related mobile broadband services.

The industry has already begun jumping on the 5G bandwagon; last October Huawei and Samsung were amongst companies that gave their backing to development of a 5G R&D centre in the UK.

Source: http://www.mobileworldlive.com/samsung-touts-5g-first?utm_campaign=MWL_20130513%20not%20US&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua&elq=b9841672537742a28aa851896a4fe9c9

Apple is offering a $10,000 App Store gift card to the user that makes the 50 billionth download from its iOS store. It will also award $500 gift cards to the 50 people that buy an app immediately after the 50 billionth download has been made.

At the time of writing, the App Store is more than 750 million downloads short of the milestone.

Launched in 2008, Apple passed the 25 billion download mark in March 2012, when it gave away a $10,000 gift card to Chinese user Chunli Fu.

According to CNET, it took just 15 days for users to download around 700 million apps in the run up to the 25 billionth download.

The size of Apple’s app catalogue has increased substantially since then, with the most recent figures putting it at 850,000 titles, compared to 600,000 in April 2012.

Apple also listed its top 25 paid and free apps of all time. Rovio’s Angry Birds and WhatsApp topped the paid list, while Facebook and Skype headed the free rankings.

Source: http://www.mobileworldlive.com/apple-offers-10k-for-50-billionth-app-store-download

After Facebook released its fourth-quarter earnings report in January, CEO Mark Zuckerberg proclaimed that Facebook had “become a mobile company.” In the latest earnings report, the company further justified that claim.

Facebook had 751 million monthly active users on mobile as of the end of March, a 54% increase from the same quarter a year ago, the company revealed in its first-quarter earnings report on Wednesday. Overall, Facebook had 1.11 billion monthly active users in the quarter, a 23% increase year-over-year.

Mobile ad revenue now accounts for 30% (or about $375 million) of Facebook’s $1.25 billion in total ad revenue. In the previous quarter, mobile represented 23% of the company’s total ad revenue.

Facebook reported earnings of $0.12 per share on overall revenue of $1.46 billion for the quarter, falling just short of Wall Street’s profit estimates of $0.13 per share, but beating revenue estimates of $1.44 billion.

The company’s stock shot up by as much as 3% in after-hours trading following the earnings release, but dipped back down somewhat and was up about 1% as of publication.

Source: http://mashable.com/2013/05/01/facebook-q1-earnings/

Footfall is no longer a guarantee of success for high street retailers, according to research from Tradedoubler, which found that 60 per cent of connected consumers in Europe use their smartphones whilst out shopping.

Of those, vitally, 75 per cent partake in ‘showrooming’, and use their mobile to look up information on a product they see in a store. 70 per cent check for a better price elsewhere, and 60 per cent opting to buy the product online as a result.

The research also found that 92 per cent of connected consumers are making performance marketing apps and websites – including price comparison, voucher code and cashback sites – their first port of call when researching what to buy, rather than browsing on the high street.

“This is a wake-up call for marketers and high street retailers,” said Dan Cohen, Regional Director, Tradedoubler. “Retailers’ traditional metric – footfall – is now an irrelevant indicator of retail success and they need to embrace performance marketing strategies now that 51 per cent of mobile shoppers are searching for vouchers or discounts for products they have seen in-store and 44 per cent are using vouchers sent to their mobile. Retailers need defensive and offensive strategies to protect and grow their revenues and indeed, to even remain relevant in this intense multichannel world.”

The research was based on a survey of 2,500 connected users – consumers who own a smartphone and who shop online at least once a month – in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Netherland, Spain, Sweden and Poland.

Source – http://mobilemarketingmagazine.com/content/75-cent-mobile-shoppers-showroom-high-street