App developers working in or for Austria can submit their apps to two different contests now: the Apps4Linz Prize of the Open Commons Region Linz and the Mobile Award Austria (MAwA) by the Economic Chamber of Austria (WKO). One of them even offer cash prizes of up to € 3,000.

MoPub, a mobile advertising start-up founded in 2010, extended its offer with a new launch. The MoPub Marketplace makes it possible for app publishers to connect with ad buyers in real-time.

Would you like to see your app honoured at the Mobile World Congress 2012 in Barcelona? You still have two weeks time to register your app for the 17th GSMA Global Mobile Awards. There's quite a lot of categories, including some in the ICT4D field.

If your company has (or is) a popular brand, there is basically no way around having an app. According to a new report by Distimo, this statement has turned into a generally accepted truth over the last year-and-a-bit. 91% of the Top 100 Brands do have at least one app. On average, they have 15 - and a favourite app store.

A recent study by Park Associates indicates that NFC will turn into the major mobile payment technology over the years. Meanwhile, most users prefer to be charged on their telephone bill. Also, the mobile coupon market is to grow, says Juniper Research.

The mobile marketing platform Clicku.com, based in South Africa, is looking for participants for their international Beta test program. The service provides the tools to create SMS/text messages including a link to a mobile page or website, connecting SMS push marketing with mobile websites. Clicku.com also includes campaign performance measurement and survey tools to better track the success of the marketing efforts. Meanwhile Ghana's developer scene got together at the Mobile Apps Showcase in Accra.

Google has introduced new mobile advertising concepts. Amongst other things they allow to directly advertise an app including its logo - and to link directly into an app. Some of this might be helpful to market your app. Here are the details.

Data presented recently suggest that the proportional use of the respective audience is larger for apps than for TV and Internet between 6am and 6pm. So in-app-advertisement is more likely to be seen on mobile devices during this time – at least according to the creator of this comparison, a mobile advertising company.

No matter whether you are a faithful Android follower, an Apple fanboy or a Symbian sympathiser - as a developer you cannot ignore other platforms. That is especially true if the apps you produce are social ones. User numbers published by messaging app Kik underline that quite graphically.

It is what can be called a "well-grounded rumour" that the US news enterprise Tribune Co. commissioned Samsung to create a newspaper-driven tablet. Coinciding with reports saying that the high price is one of the major factors keeping people from buying tablets, it raises a general question: Could tablets subsidised by content-providers (e.g. media houses) be a valid approach to boost the devices' sales?

Your app needs public attention? Come up with something half as creative and funny as the video the guys from Nosh.me made. They put together the "best 404 error page in the history of the internet", as Time Magazine tweets. The news is spreading and so is the word about the app behind the hilarious video on the site.

New guys on the block: all about apps, a full service agency for apps, wants to show the Austrian market how to improve and market your app. Although being new, they have quite known customers such as Red Bull, 123people, Wikitude and Runtastic, so Creating Apps paid them a visit. We talked with founding member Daniel Cronin about what defines a good app, how they tackle app discoverability, what he thinks about independent app stores and why useful apps are at least as cool as games.

Ad retargeting is one of the more interesting technologies in advertising these days. The idea is to show ads from websites the user has already visited. This results in higher clickthrough rates compared to randomly displayed ads. A number of big companies and startups are trying to tap the ad targeting potential. Tapad is one of them.

Ever needed a solution to cross-promote your new app through your existing titles? Chart Boost helps with ads within apps without having to spend time on building. Ads are displayed while the app boots or during loading times. ChartBoost is currently available for iPhone only.

Twitter uses group information for targeting its users.