Mobile online traffic is one indicator for the popularity of a mobile OS. While it has already been reported that Android did catch up with and even went past iOS in Austria, a new tracking platform claims iOS is still leading with 49.1 of all mobile traffic.

According to a new report by researchers at Strategy Analytics, Samsung is now the largest smart phone vendor worldwide, while other researchers still see Apple in the lead. Strategy Analytics also says that Samsung and Apple capture more than half of global shipments. Furthermore, the overall market is 41% larger than a year ago.

Advertisers might want to align their ad in mobile apps with their TV ads. A recent study shows that purchase intent rises by 72% if ads for the same product are seen both on TV and a mobile device. As quite a few people handle their phone/tablet, while watching TV.

Trend Micro conducted a study on the security of mobile operating systems. The focus was on usage in the enterprise context. The results showed Blackberry ahead of Apple by far, Windows Phone came in third and Android proved to be the least secure in this list of four. The main reason for the low position was Android's slow update situation and the resulting inability to quickly fix vulnerabilities.

Saying things such as "2012 will be the year of NFC/HTML5/blue gummy bears" is always a bit of reading tea leaves. However, in the case of HTML5, there is a new rather well-grounded prophecy, indicating a future between the totalitarian native-only and HTML5-only worlds.

A recent poll found out that 66% of the UK population is nomophobic - i.e. afraid of being out of mobile phone contact. Especially prone to this pseudo-illness: Youngsters between 18 and 24 years: 77% of the young adults are terrified by the thought of loosing or forgetting their phone.

The most recent study by Gartner puts into numbers what the mobile world perceives as a gut feeling. It is all about the dynamic duo on top: Apple and Android. The analysis takes a look at the smartphone sales in Q4 of 2010. Cupertino is the world's biggest smartphone vendor accounting for 23.4 percent of the market. Android is the biggest OS controlling 50.9 percent of the market, uniting multiple manufacturers under its umbrella. The smartphone market in general is growing at a fast pace.

The week between Christmas and New Year's Eve was going to be huge for app downloads. A new smartphone was on top of the Christmas wish list of many and the number of activations on Christmas Day turned out immense. Inevitably, this had to lead to a lot of app downloads, but 1.2 billion in one week for Android and iOS combined is a number not everyone would have expected.

Did you send any text messages during Christmas this year? Or did you rather Facebook-poke your dearest on the occasion of this very traditional festivity? Times change and so do the communication channels, the numbers say. Almost all over the world there have been less text messages sent around the Christmas time than last year, says M.G.I Research analyst Tero Kuittinen.

Smart TV: This is the current trend of integrating the internet and Web 2.0 features into modern television sets and set-top boxes. With integrated software applications, TVs work as multifunctional devices and could become the new media channel.

Among the vast amount of smartphone apps, the challenge is not to find any, but the best and most useful apps. Especially top managers need to separate the good from the bad and find apps that help them supporting their everyday business life, but also to have fun sometimes. German senior managers were asked about their favourite apps. Here are their picks.

2011 was quite a mobile year. We have reached one million available apps. Freemium turned into a major monetisation strategy for developers. Both iOS and Android have shown major growth. The WP7 Marketplace moved ahead of the Nokia Ovi Store and BlackBerry App World - at least in terms of games. Read on for more details and additional insights.

We have learned about the most popular Android and iOS apps from different sources, but what about the big picture? Distimo has combined download numbers of the seven largest app stores to determine the most downloaded apps worldwide for 2011. Check out this cross-store Top 10 list.

You might like it or not, but ringtones are far from dead. It's a declining, but still a rather big industry in the mobile field. A new infographic shows that quite clearly. Be prepared the read the name "Lil Wayne" quite a few times.

In today's issue, the Austrian daily newspaper Die Presse has looked into the question of the business model of telco operators. The emergence of smartphones and apps are good for business, but the ones monetizing are the Silicon Valley players: the Apples, Googles and Facebooks. Telcos need to find ways to make money inside the app business.