As tablets and e-readers become more popular, “acceleration of e-book downloads…represented a strong driver of this growth,” ComScore says in its new report, “U.S. Digital Future in Focus 2012.”

Retail e-commerce spending—which does not include spending on travel—hit $161.5 billion last year, up 13 percent from 2010. Digital content and subscriptions were the fastest-growing category, followed by consumer electronics (you need devices to consume all that content, right?).

Download the full report here.

With the debut of the “consumer preview” version of Windows 8 now expected later this month at Mobile World Congress, Microsoft’s Steven Sinofsky wrote an epic blog post Thursday on Windows 8 and ARM chips. After Microsoft introduced Windows 8 last year confusion rose over whether or not applications for the ARM versions of Windows 8 devices would be able to run in the legacy “Desktop” mode, and Sinofsky used the opportunity to explain why Microsoft included that Desktop mode on the ARM version of Windows.

“Some have suggested we might remove the desktop from WOA (Windows on ARM) in an effort to be pure, to break from the past, or to be more simplistic or expeditious in our approach. To us, giving up something useful that has little cost to customers was a compromise that we didn’t want to see in the evolution of PCs,” Sinofsky wrote.

But only Microsoft will be able to write applications for that Windows Desktop experience on ARM tablets and PCs: all other developers who want to write applications for Windows ARM devices will have to write them in the Metro style, which also means they’ll have to distribute those applications through Microsoft’s Windows Store. Windows-on-ARM devices will be able to access the legacy Desktop mode from their Metro “Start” menus, but the only things they’ll be able to do in that legacy Desktop mode is run a new version of Microsoft Office (Office 15) designed for touchscreen devices and manage files in the old familiar way.

It’s sort of the best of both worlds for Microsoft. This approach allows it to postpone the creation of a Metro-style of Microsoft Office—perhaps the most useful set of Windows applications—until a later date while encouraging those who want to target Windows 8 devices to focus on Metro.

Windows 8 devices that will run on Intel (NSDQ: INTC) and AMD’s chips will be able to run applications written for the legacy Desktop mode, but developers will be able to use the same development tools to create Metro-style user interfaces for devices using either Intel or ARM (the back-end code, of course, would need to target a particular chip). Given the trends in the computer market these days, focusing just on the Desktop user interface means you’ll be concentrating on the slow-growing portion of the market.

But this is a classic problem for Microsoft; during each technology transition it finds it very difficult to make a clean break from the past given the huge installed base of consumer and corporate applications that run on older technologies. Windows 8 on ARM is an important step forward in that regard, in that anyone who wants their app to run on those devices will have to suck it up and move forward at Microsoft’s speed because older applications written for Intel’s chips won’t run on the ARM devices.

But it seems that even Microsoft can’t do all the heavy lifting to move Office to Metro, at least not right away. That means users will have to switch back and forth between Metro and Desktop in order to access some of Microsoft’s most valuable applications, and that could be jarring, although the Office 15 preview shown off Thursday does indicate that Word and Excel, among others, have been tweaked to more closely resemble the Metro design language.

The company also said that its partners plan to release Windows-on-ARM devices at the same time Windows-on-Intel devices are released, dispelling some fears that the ARM version of Windows might be delayed due to the technical complexity of the project. Most industry observers think those devices are scheduled to arrive around the end of the year, perhaps in time for the holiday shopping season, but Microsoft hasn’t directly addressed a launch schedule.

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From Thursday, Zeebox is starting to include “click to buy” slots in its iPad and iPhone app and to sell second-screen ads to brands, so that each generates money from people watching TV shows with Zeebox on their laps.

It works like this…

Thanks to speech-to-text, subtitles and other metadata including from Philips’ Civolution fingerprinter spin-off, the Zeebox iPad app already shows users a live stream of info “tags” corresponding to material in shows they are watching on their lounge TV. Right now, they link to Wikipedia articles.

But Zeebox also had always hoped to leverage them to start linking to marketing messaging as well as to purchase options during the commercial breaks between shows.

So, during those breaks, Zeebox will denote actionable tag links with icons for songs, products, travel services etc. Those links will send users through to merchants like iTunes (for music), Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) (for DVDs), Tesco (for food) and Boots (for cosmetics) via Zeebox affiliate codes, so that it generates a percentage commission of any subsequent sales.

Zeebox is running the system so far on about 20 percent of UK TV’s commercial break ads, mostly for ITV (LSE: ITV) hcnanle.s

Will it work?

“Our consumer research told us that people want an easy way to buy things they see on TV,” Rose’s co-founder Ernesto Schmitt says in a press release.

Do affiliate links add up to a business model? Not in isolation. Shazam claims to make a percentage of music purchases worth $100 million a year that its app sent to stores last year. But it has tried to diversify its revenue streams.

Using just the affiliate commission model, Zeebox will need to generate click-throughs and actual purchases at a large scale in order to clock up significant total income. But the startup appears to be seeking other streams, too.

The prospect of selling specific second-screen tag ads to advertiser brands is exciting as an innovation. But brands would likely consider this experimental until such time as Zeebox is being used by large numbers of TV viewers.

Zeebox last month claimed “250,000 users” - but simultaneous prime-time users metrics are not publicised.

One route to scale for Zeebox is through BSkyB (NYSE: BSY). The UK pay-TV platform leader in January took equity in the startup with a deal through which it will leverage Zeebox features in a social-centric upgrade revision to its EPG app for its Sky+ PVR.

But, still, the whole prospect, for all such operators, depends on the usage scale of tablets or smartphones as engagement facilitators during TV shows. On that hinges the very notion of the second screen but, so far, much research points to a growing trend there.

You could argue that 2011 was the year of Android, given that the number of Android devices activated daily doubled from 350,000 to 700,000 between April and December 2011. Or perhaps it was the year of the mobile operating system war, with Nokia’s strategic shift to Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) Windows Phone OS. So what are the trends that will shape the mobile landscape in 2012? Let’s look at them in four categories: business, ecosystem, consumer expectations, and technology.

Mobile Is A Key Business Enabler

Professionals who hope to increase the sophistication of their mobile strategies will need to:

»  Develop a scalable approach to delivering mobile services. Organizations will need a strategic approach to building and spreading institutional knowledge as well as governance for the development of mobile services. It will be increasingly important to define key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the success of mobile initiatives.

»  Craft a mobile strategy that extends beyond phones. The emergence of tablets in particular will require a different approach than smartphones.

»  Differentiate on the delivery rather than the content of mobile services. In 2012, “how” mobile services are delivered will differentiate them—not what they offer.
 
Success In The Mobile Ecosystems Will Elude Incumbents And Embrace Newcomers

Expect incumbents across a range of industries to look to hold or gain share as mobile revolutionizes their business. Key 2012 mobile ecosystem trends include:

»  The emergence of mobile digital wallets and their ability to go beyond payment. New technologies are converting mobile handsets into digital wallets that combine not just payments but also receipts, vouchers, and loyalty schemes. As well as gaining the convenience of using the phone for payment, consumers will benefit from post-transaction elements such as location-based coupons and enhanced product information at the point of sale.

»  The continuation of the smartphone OS bloodbath. If you need a native application, iOS and Android are “must-haves.” However, there is still room for a third major OS platform. Windows Phone is a good candidate, but Nokia (NYSE: NOK) and Microsoft will have to execute perfectly to stay in the game longer term, even with a larger portfolio of devices in 2012.

»  Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) and Facebook becoming disruptive distribution forces. We don’t expect Amazon to succeed in replicating its Kindle approach in the crowded smartphone space—nor do we expect Facebook to invest in hardware. While their respective roles in the mobile space are still unclear, they could become disruptive forces that enable the distribution of products and services in new ways. Think about the use of social recommendations and personalization tools to facilitate the discovery of mobile services.
 
Consumer Expectations Will Be Both High And Conflicted

Professionals developing mobile services should take the following into account:

»  Consumers will expect more contextual experiences. Phones will have the ability to collect a phenomenal amount of information about a consumer. They will offer new product and service opportunities, both on their own and when combined with others. Mobile phones will be the hub of consumer interaction—not only with other people but also with other services and machines, such as TVs, cars, and even medical devices like heart monitors. Physical products will increasingly ship with companion mobile services.

»  But they will also worry about privacy and security. When the press realized that several players were tracking user location to improve services, there was a public outcry. Location is the least of it. The mobile phone will know everything about an individual. Consumer concerns here will center on: 1) the commercial use of this information, and 2) security issues, given the increased use of mobile devices for banking and buying.

Emerging Technologies Need Standards And Scale To Succeed

New native technologies will enable new services, products, and navigation techniques that are unimaginable on the PC. Professionals excited by these new technologies should note that:

»  HTML5 has made phenomenal progress, but it is not a panacea. Adobe’s abandonment of Flash at the end of last year and support for HTML5 from heavyweights like Apple, Google (NSDQ: GOOG), Amazon, and Microsoft are elevating HTML5’s potential as a solution. Two key things continue to hold back this potential cure-all: 1) the experience and performance differences between native and web applications are noticeable, and 2) realizing the full benefits of HTML5 requires device- and OS-specific optimization.

»  Near Field Communications (NFC) will fail to live up to the hype. We expect dozens of millions of NFC devices to ship from a wide variety of device makers — including, eventually, Apple (NSDQ: AAPL). We expect events like the 2012 Olympic Games in London to serve as marketing catalysts and help showcase the numerous potential uses of the technology. However, a poor out-of-the-box experience, minimal consumer education, and the lack of NFC infrastructure will inhibit growth.

»  The cloud is still too congested or too thin. The consumerization of the enterprise IT notion of cloud computing is already a reality, with services such as Dropbox, Spotify, and Apple’s iCloud. The cloud will grow in importance, enabling cross-device services, but will be inhibited by limited network capacity and congestion.

Thomas Husson is a Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research serving Consumer Product Strategy professionals. Follow him on Twitter at @Thomas_Husson

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The Wall Street Journal, citing those all-knowing “people familiar with the matter,” said the DOJ might approve the deal as early as next week. Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has pledged to operate Motorola as a standalone company, and so the government’s main focus on Google has been whether or not it will use the patents acquired from Motorola in an offensive fashion.

Mobile rivals are already complaining that Google plans to uphold Motorola’s patent-licensing strategies on what have been deemed “essential” patents by asking for a royalty rate above what they consider fair as well as its willingness to leave the threat of an injunction on the table, which other companies have pledged not to employ for standards-essential patents. The report said regulators will watch closely to see how Google uses the Motorola patents post-acquisition.

And in related news, the DOJ plans to approve the $4.5 billion purchase of Nortel’s patent portfolio by a group of mobile companies that included Apple (NSDQ: AAPL), Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), and Research in Motion (NSDQ: RIMM), denying Google a chance to solidify its patent holdings for far less money than it will pay for Motorola. That event prompted Google to open talks with Motorola and to lash out at its rivals for playing the patent game more effectively than Google.

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AllThingsD didn’t have an exact date, but said Apple has settled on the first week of March to introduce what most people are calling the iPad 3. Less is known about the device itself, but it’s expected to feature a more powerful processor and a higher-resolution display than its predecessor.

This will be the company’s first major launch event since Jobs’ death last October, as January’s iBooks launch event was a much smaller type of introduction. Apple continues to dominate the market for modern tablet computers, and despite upstarts like Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) finally getting traction for tablet other than the iPad, Apple sold 15 million of the current model in the fourth quarter, far more than any other company.

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In yet another case of the tricky line between sharing, mobile data, and transparency, Arun Thampi, a developer for Anideo, discovered Tuesday that Path was uploading the contact information of his iPhone address book when he created an account. Path’s intention was to make it easier for users to find friends using that information, but Thampi and several others found it “a little creepy” that the company felt entitled to the data in one’s personal address book without explicitly warning them first.

On Wednesday, Dave Morin, CEO and founder of Path, apologized (sort of) in saying “we are deeply sorry if you were uncomfortable with how our application used your phone contacts.” A new version of Path has been released that no longer uploads that data unless you explicitly choose to do so, and the data collected from current Path users has been deleted, he said in a blog post.

Once again, we see the dance that mobile apps tied to location and social networks have to do around show they handle of private information. Path’s misstep is just another signal that people are willing to share information with mobile service providers up to a certain point but they are not pleased when that sharing happens without their knowledge.

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After an explosive 2011, in which seemingly everyone involved in the mobile industry sued their counterparts, 2012 is shaping up as more of a slog. As weary companies start to strongly consider patent licenses instead of patent trials, the notion of FRAND patents—patents essential to tech standards that are required to be licensed on a “fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory” basis—is becoming more important, and different people have different ideas concerning what it means to be fair.

As a result, Apple has asked the European Telecommunications Standards Institute to clarify exactly what royalty rates its members can seek on so-called FRAND patents, according to The Wall Street Journal. Concern has surfaced regarding a royalty proposal made by Motorola (NYSE: MMI) to Apple that some consider exceedingly high, although the exact details of that proposal were not made public.

Meanwhile, Google is planning to send a letter to standards bodies that makes clear its intention to follow FRAND principles with Motorola’s patents should it be allowed to acquire the handset maker, according to Bloomberg. Google needs Motorola’s patents to help fend off attacks against its Android partners, but its rivals have speculated that Google could be planning offensive moves as well.

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Digital circulation and advertising revenue growth of 51 percent from the previous year came thanks to Future having pushed 65 of its titles to iTunes Store upon Newsstand’s launch early in October.

The result is finally an encouraging sign of light at the end of the tunnel for legacy media businesses which have spent years attempting to transition their efforts from analogue to digital.

Future CEO Mark Wood: “We are starting to see a significant change in the shape of the business as our digital innovation enables us to reach entirely new consumers in global digital markets.”

Future’s UK revenue for the quarter still fell by two percent, but that was mostly from the loss of a separate customer publishing contract, Future reported in Wednesday’s interim earnings disclosure.

Now, for some, the reality may be dawning that, despite many digital products reaping owners dimes rather than dollars when compared with print equivalents, publishing them at scale can nevertheless return a company to pre-digital revenue growth rates.

As paidContent reported in January, Future’s free container apps for its tablet editions have been downloaded nearly 10 million times since Newsstand’s October launch, generating individual sales of over 430,000 magazines during the period.

Forty percent of tablet edition sales are subscriptions, but some of them may be short-term renewals.

“Print sales will be challenging, but we expect digital revenue to maintain a vigorous growth rate,” the company added in its market disclosure on Wednesday.

In the U.S., Future has been more challenged by the more rapid evaporation of print magazine circulations. But, after the board jettisoned CEO Stevie Spring and its finance director in October, replacement Wood has tackled the problem by selling Future’s U.S.-facing music magazines for up to $3 million and by committing to launch U.S. versions of its Radar web portals, starting with TechRadar. Cost cuts have now offset U.S. revenue falls, Wood reports.

The company did not specify print circulation trends.

Google announced the new browser in a blog post Tuesday. It’s available only for Android devices running Android 4.0, also known as Ice Cream Sandwich.

Ever since Android was released Google has used a different code base for the browser at the heart of Android, although both Android’s browser and Chrome are based on the Webkit open-source platform that powers almost all mobile browsers these days. But Android’s browser was not considered as agile or stable as others in the Webkit family, while Google’s Chrome browser has been steadily winning converts on the PC.

It will probably take a while before Chrome on Android turns into the default browser, however, given the beta nature of the product and the fact that virtually everyone using Android is running an older version of the operating system. In an interview with AllThingsD, Chrome leader Sundar Pichai confirmed that Chrome will take over as the default browser on Android eventually.

That could mean trouble for companies like MoboTap, which develops the Dolphin browser as an Android browsing alternative. The majority of Dolphin users are on Android, and they’re the type of users that want a more powerful and stable browser: something that Chrome for Android might provide.

So what now becomes of Chrome OS, Google’s bid to redefine the computer as existing entirely within the browser? Google didn’t comment on that project in a few of the interviews it granted to discuss Chrome for Android, but Chrome OS has been a clear disappointment ever since it was announced, with very few people adopting Chromebooks as interest in the netbook concept has plummeted alongside rising interest in tablets.

Here’s a video explaining the features of the new browser:

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The staff attorney for the International Trade Commission plans to recommend to the judge overseeing the case that Barnes & Noble did not infringe Microsoft’s mobile patents with the Nook, according to a report by Bloomberg. This is an extremely preliminary development: the judge overseeing the case can decide whatever he likes when he issues his ruling in April, and that decision can be further appealed to a panel of ITC judges.

But the ITC, while a speedier venue for patent rulings than the court system, has not really rewarded patent holders seeking infringement rulings. Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) was able to get a final ruling against HTC, but for a minor piece of its smartphones that HTC has already said it can work around. Microsoft was able to get a preliminary ruling against Motorola (NYSE: MMI), but on only one of the seven patents it wanted to assert against Motorola.

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New data released by Canalys shows that smartphone vendors shipped 488 million smartphones during 2011, a 62.7 percent jump compared to 2010. Client PC shipments increased by 14.8 percent to 415 million units, and only hit that mark because Canalys counted the 63 million “pads” sold during 2011 (the overwhelming majority of which were iPads) as part of its total.

Personally, I think the tablet market should be counted separately as its own phenomenon: it bears little resemblance to the traditional PC and is used quite differently. But the true point is that the smaller screen continues to blow up as smartphones penetrate every corner of the planet.

And while the gap between the iPhone and Android devices sold in the U.S. may have narrowed significantly during the fourth quarter, thanks to the launch of the iPhone 4S, Android was still much larger on a worldwide basis. During the fourth quarter, Android phones accounted for 51.6 percent of the global smartphone market, compared to 23.4 percent for the iPhone.

The beleaguered BlackBerry managed to eke out a year-over-year gain in shipments, but fourth-quarter BlackBerry shipments fell 9.7 percent worldwide compared to the fourth quarter of 2010. Sounds like the BlackBerry 7 devices aren’t selling, and RIM’s argument that it is still growing in countries other than the U.S. may be losing steam.

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CNN reports that government has decided to use a special version of Android on commercially available Android phones as a way of letting its employees take advantage of the mobile computing revolution. Officials interviewed for the report discuss things as novel as soldiers being able to see the positions of fellow troops on the equivalent of Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus, as opposed to a more heavily modified phone like the BlackBerry used by President Obama.

Government IT professionals prefer Android because they can modify it as they see fit, according to the report. Apparently they reached out to Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) in hopes of gaining the same access to iOS, but Apple declined, which is surprising to absolutely no one.

But, as GigaOm pointed out, the government said it would be able to update its Android phones within two weeks of a new software release by Google (NSDQ: GOOG). Again: just two weeks to get a heavily modified build of the software designed for national security purposes working with a new operating system release.

The wireless carriers and handset makers who claim they need months and months to update their own Android phones with new releases should be embarrassed, either at their inability to provide updates to customers or by how obvious it is that they’d rather sell you a new phone than update your current one. This is one of the few cases where “good enough for government work” might actually be better than the standard.

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The service is called Bouncer, and much like the burly guy standing watch over a crowded bar, the idea is to weed out undesirables by scanning applications as they are uploaded to the Android Market. Google said in a blog post that it is revealing the service for the first time Thursday, and a company representative confirmed it has been up and running for a few months.

It works like this: developers upload their apps to the Android Market as they always have. But behind the scenes, Google will scan those applications for known characteristics of malware, spyware, or Trojans, the company said. It will also simulate the behavior of each uploaded application on Google’s internal servers in order to detect whether or not the app is collecting and/or distributing personal information without informing the user.

Android malware in general is growing, thanks to the proliferation of several different app stores and the open development policy that Google has always employed when it comes to Android. But Google said it has reduced the amount of malware in the Android Market by 40 percent over the course of 2011.

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PocketNow got its hands on a video featuring Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore, corporate vice president and director for Windows Phone program management, which was apparently intended only for its good friends at Nokia (NYSE: NOK). (Whoops.) The video was not posted, but PocketNow summarized some of the major improvements planned for Windows Phone 8, and here’s a sampling:

»  Core experience: Windows Phone 8 will support multicore processors, something that its major competitors have already embraced. Nokia’s Lumia 910 was well-received at CES last month but one major knock is its reliance on less-powerful processors than Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) or Android partners can use in their phones.

»  Mobile payments: Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) will become the latest major mobile player to embrace NFC technology as a mobile-payments solution for Windows Phone 8 makers. PocketNow said Belfiore emphasized that Microsoft would let carriers brand the payments system themselves (something that Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has resisted) and that Microsoft’s mobile-payments system would also work on PCs. Nokia hinted this feature was coming earlier in the week.

»  Skype me: According to the report, Microsoft will do what many had expected following its purchase of Skype and incorporate that VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) application into Windows Phone 8. It will be very interesting to see how carriers react to that feature: it could increase the amount of mobile data used by the phone, but at the expense of regular voice calls. Updated: Paul Thurott at Supersite for Windows appears to have been briefed in more detail on Windows Phone 8, and said that while Skype will remain a separate app, it will have been improved.

»  No reinvention needed: Developers should be able to write apps for both Windows 8 PCs and Windows Phone 8 devices with a minimum of extra work, Belfiore reportedly said in the video.

Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 aren’t expected until the second half of 2012, so a lot could change between now and then. But it’s clear that Microsoft is moving to address some of the competitive concerns against iOS and Android.

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Changewave Research, which conducts surveys of U.S. consumers on technology products and services, found that 54 percent of those who have purchased the tablet since its November launch are “very satisfied” with their purchase, with an additional 38 percent declaring themselves “somewhat satisfied.” Last November 74 percent of iPad owners surveyed by Changewave said they were “very satisfied” with their tablets, whereas only 49 percent of those who bought something other than the iPad felt the same way.

The Kindle Fire launch was not the smoothest product rollout ever. But Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) hastily released a patch that fixed several nagging problems with the initial software build and that appears to have helped. Asked to list their biggest complaints, owners focused on hardware: 27 percent Kindle Fire owners surveyed by Changewave said they didn’t like the lack of a volume up/volume down button on the device, and 21 percent said they wished it had a camera.

Not surprisingly, most were drawn to the Kindle Fire by its price. Nearly 60 percent of those surveyed said the $199 cost of the device was the best thing about it, while 31 percent said they liked the fact it had a color screen. That suggests that, as many have noted, Kindle Fire owners are likely made up of previous Kindle owners upgrading to the tablet as opposed to those who compared it side-by-side with the iPad and chose the Fire.

Given Amazon’s trademark obfuscation when it comes to sales of its Kindle family, we’re not exactly sure how many devices are in the wild, but estimates range between 4 million and 6 million. Changewave surveyed 2,607 U.S. consumers and reported that 6 percent owned a Kindle Fire. It surveyed 254 Kindle Fire owners to come up with the preceding stats.

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What’s interesting is that while companies like Google are certainly making huge strides in mobile advertising (more on that below), there are a number of mid-range/smaller players that are also seeing significant growth, in a market that eMarketer projects will be worth $2.6 billion in 2012.

The implication here is that there is an opportunity, and one that is engaging users—or at least users are showing a great tolerance for the ads, as a tradeoff for other content. That opportunity is one that is being taken not just obvious Facebook competitors like Google, but many others.

Longer term that kind of fragmentation will probably lead to more consolidation, but for now as individual companies they continue to grow (and get funded, if you take the latest numbers from Rutberg on VC investments as an indication).

Here’s three examples of that growth from just the past day:

Today, mobile ad network Mojiva is claiming that it (not Google, not Apple (NSDQ: AAPL), not Millennial Media) has become the first mobile ad network to reach more than one billion unique mobile devices—smart phones, feature phones, tablets and touch screen devices such like the iPod Touch—globally on a monthly basis. It says that the U.S. is its single-biggest market, with 224 million monthly unique devices, within a reach that extends to 190 countries, covering 8,000 publishers and apps, with more than 45 billion monthly ad requests overall. (Note: we’re hoping to catch up with Mojiva to get clarification on how it has reached the one-billion mark before bigger competitors.)

That news comes on the back of a couple of other significant mobile ad milestones announced in just the last 24 hours—again some of the smaller players. Inneractive, a mobile app monetization exchange, says that in the last year it has seen some very significant growth on its own mobile network: ad clicks are up by more than 700 percent; ad requests up by nearly 700 percent; a 981 percent increase on Apple’s iOS platform ad requests; and ad revenues up by 522 percent. We’ve asked Inneractive if we can get more concrete numbers behind those percentages. In the meantime, there’s an infographic below with more details on their growth in the last year, including geographical breakdowns.

A third player, Jumptap, has some numbers specifically around how mobile advertising is playing out across tablets—again, using stats from its own ad network: tablet network traffic was up by 229 percent the day after Christmas compared to the same period a year ago. Over the whole of that month, apparently the Kindle Fire’s share on Jumptap’s network went up from 10 percent to 30 percent suggesting “a trend for lower-priced tablets.” And overall, it notes that Android has the majority of impressions on its network (up to 59 percent in December 2011, compared to 38 percent in December 2010), with Apple’s share diminishing further (down seven percent to 22 percent in December 2011).

And what about Google? (NSDQ: GOOG) It seems that for now its biggest strength in mobile advertising remains in mobile search, where it expects revenues to more than double in 2012 compared to 2011, bringing in sales of $5.8 billion compared to $2.5 billion last year—just under double the revenue that Facebook made in advertising on its main, non-mobile site last year.

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• Updated: Rutberg: Mobile Accounted For Over 40% Of All Tech VC In 2011

Instead, Samsung will be presenting it at its own-branded event, with less of a gap between the product launch and actual roll-out.

“Samsung is looking forward to introducing and demonstrating exciting new mobile products at Mobile World Congress 2012. The successor to the Galaxy S II smartphone will be unveiled at a separate Samsung-hosted event in the first half of the year, closer to commercial availability of the product. Samsung stays committed to providing the best possible mobile experiences for customers around the world,” a spokesperson told paidContent, via email today.

The Android-based S II (pictured here with its best enemy, the iPhone 4S) has been one of Samsung’s best sellers since launching last year—although Samsung hasn’t given exact sales figures—and many have been anticipating the upgrade, which will apparently feature a faster processor, better camera and other enhancements.

One of the big issues with the S II, however, was that while Samsung unveiled the device at the 2011 MWC event, it didn’t launch in Europe until summer, and the U.S. several months later, in September.

Did that possibly steal some thunder from the launch? As smartphone competition hots up—including leaks of the first BlackBerry 10 “London” devices and even a new iPhone coming this year—that’s a variable that Samsung probably doesn’t want to explore again.

But while Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) has pulled out of CES, and Apple has been running its own launch events for years, Samsung doesn’t seem to be bowing out of the trade show peep show altogether. There have been rumors of Samsung unveiling its first Tizen handsets—that is, the new linux OS that it is developing with Intel (NSDQ: INTC) from the ashes of MeeGo—which could point to a new direction altogether for the Korean handset maker. There are also reports of further tablets on the cards.

Related

• Samsung: Smartphones Up 30 Percent But You Have To Guess How Many We Sold
• Samsung Galaxy S II Hits U.S., Will Cost $199 At Sprint
• Update: Patent Plot Thickens: Apple Sues Samsung; ITC Pushes For Nokia, HTC

Crackberry, fresh off an interview with new RIM CEO Thorsten Heins, has somehow obtained a new image of the BlackBerry London, a concept device we’ve heard about before but that appears to have gone through a redesign or two. In a breathless and fawning account that skates over all the issues with the BlackBerry 10 software, Crackberry tells us that the phone resembles “a downsized Playbook” and that slightly different versions are planned for the U.S. and U.K. markets.

While it may have a few friends in the fanboy blogging community, RIM is going to need a lot more than that to reinvent its brand by the time these handsets arrive toward the end of 2012. And we’re not talking about cartoon superheroes.

It took RIM a year to make its BlackBerry 10 software compatible with its famous e-mail system, and the Playbook tablets have been a dismal failure. And it apparently still hasn’t settled on a chipset for these phones, with Crackberry suggesting the company is still debating between Texas Instruments and Qualcomm (NSDQ: QCOM) months after former CEO Mike Lazaridis told investors the phones would be delayed because RIM needed a special processor that wouldn’t be available until the middle of this year.

Should RIM be able to join the modern mobile software ranks, it might be able to reverse its decline in the U.S., but there’s an awful lot more that we’ll need to see before we can handicap those chances.

Related

• RIM In Trouble In Europe? Not In The UK, It Claims
• RIM's New CEO Thorsten Heins On Past Mistakes, Sell-Offs And Marketing
• Endgame: RIM's Balsillie, Lazaridis To Step Down From CEO Roles
• RIM Confirms Down Q3, But Management Assures Us Everything Will Be Fine

Leading the second round of investment were Qualcomm (NSDQ: QCOM) Ventures and Innovacom, along with participation from prior investors Creandum and Northzone; and takes the total amount of funding in the company to almost $18 million.

Videoplaza says that it will be using the investment to help fund its international growth and product development. Those two areas appear to be running fast at the moment anyway: the company says that its client base already spreads across 17 markets, and in the past year its ad serving volumes grew five-fold. Some of its clients include the publisher Dennis, French commercial broadcaster M6 and Spanish newspaper group La Vanguardia and the France-Telecom-owned interactive ad network Unanimis, and it partners with other established names in the business, like Brightcove, to help monetize their video ad traffic.

Videoplaza’s target is to tap into some of the $160 billion that is estimated to be spent on TV advertising annually at the moment, and following those ad budgets as media buyers try to chase down viewers as they start watch more and more of that TV content on an ever-growing variety of screens, from IP-enabled TVs to smartphones, tablets, cars and desktop computers—and who knows what else. Videoplaza projects that by 2020 there will be more than 10 billion connected devices in consumers’ hands that could be used for consuming streamed video.

It is not the only one: companies like YuMe, spotXchange, BrightRoll (a Videoplaza partner), Hulu, CBS (NYSE: CBS) and many, many others are also scrambling for substantial market share in this space. It’s still a fast-growing area, with the amount of ad-funded, streamed video content still very much on the rise—both in terms of volumes and consumption—but there is bound to be some consolidation on the cards among these ad players, too.

A stake from a company like Qualcomm—which plays a central role in making processors and other parts and software for mobile devices—could potentially give Videoplaza a leg up in that respect. At the moment the vast majority of video ad consumption for Videoplaza is still coming from PCs: only eight percent came from other devices. But the company believes that by 2013 (that is, in a year) that will shift to a 50-50 balance.