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The necessity of having a clear and cohesive mobile marketing strategy has never been greater. Companies that do not have a mobile marketing strategy now are light years behind the curve in the face of booming smartphone adoption and changing consumer behavior. Research firm Forrester took a look at some of the biggest and best mobile marketing companies to see how they stack up and what benefits they can add for companies.

There is a problem with Forrester's research. Mainly, it looks only at the biggest and best. It is an enterprise-focused report that narrows in on nine mobile marketing companies and the strengths behind each. Fundamentally, this is the wrong approach to take in a world where dozens of innovative startups are tackling the idea of mobile marketing with fresh ideas and eager teams.

The Pew Internet and American Life project released details of a new survey today showing the trends in how U.S. adults download apps to the smartphones and tablets. Including those that have downloaded and app or have apps preloaded to their devices, about 50% of all U.S. cellphone users have an app on their devices. That correlates to about 42% of all U.S. adults.

The amount of U.S. cellphone users that have apps on their devices rose from 43% in May 2010. Pew points out that the demographic has not really changed, there are just more people from those demographics downloading apps. For smartphones, they tend to be young, have higher incomes and college degrees and live in urban and suburban areas. How do you fit in these demographics?

While cloud computing gains steadily in the U.S., U.K. and Germany (and rather slowly in Canada), it's taking off in emerging markets like Brazil, China and India. According to a study by GfK Custom Research, and covered by FineChannel,
cloud computing enjoys relatively high penetration rate in emerging markets, regardless of company size.

According to GfK, decision makers in Brazil, China and India have a much more positive view of cloud computing and cite cost-effectiveness, flexibility and security as the main benefits. In contrast, decision makers in the U.S. and the U.K. see security as a barrier rather than a strength, and view flexibility as the main advantage.

The last smartphone forecasts are out, this time courtesy of research firm IDC and the predictions might be a bit of a surprise. Windows Phone adoption is expected to skyrocket between now and 2015 top the point that one out of every five smartphones shipped will come from Microsoft. The loser in the forecast? Apple.

That is right, IDC is making a bet on Redmond over Cupertino in the worldwide smartphone wars. Again. The rationale is Nokia and its penetration into emerging markets. Does this make sense though? Nokia is in turmoil, partly because of its partnership with Microsoft. Symbian was the back that Nokia rode to its former place as the top mobile vendor. Its market share is eroding and Nokia will stop development of the platform within the next few years. Can it really be that simple for Microsoft to unseat the iPhone?

Two Microsoft researchers, Erik Meijer and Gavin Bierman, argue in a paper in the April issue of Communications that the growing number of non-relational databases (or more specifically, key/value databases) need a standardized data manipulation language like SQL in order to grow the market for NoSQL databases. It may seem run counter to the spirit of NoSQL - the creation of new databases for specific uses - but the idea is welcomed by some in the NoSQL community. Couchbase co-founder and VP of products James Phillips told PC World "There is little to disagree with in this paper."

Social networking will be a more popular communication mechanism than either voice or SMS, according to 31 global mobile operators cited in a new report from Airwide Solutions. The report, commissioned by Airwide and performed by research agency mobileSQUARED, asked operators across Europe, North America and in the Asia-Pacific regions what they believed would be the most popular applications and the top forms of communication in 2015.

Mobile advertising firm Millennial Media has just released its comprehensive report on the state of the mobile application industry, which includes a look at growth trends, platform diversification, platform popularity, 2011 trends and more.

According to the report's findings, developers plan to further diversify their app offerings next year and - here's some good news! - they expect to see "significant growth" in app revenue over the course of 2011.

New data from Nielsen out today delves into the behavior of the youngest mobile consumers: the American teenager. The study further solidifies what we've known for some time - teens are heavy-duty users of text messaging services. No other demographic group texts as much as teens do, with an average of 3,339 texts sent and received per month. (For girls, it's even higher - 4,050 texts per month!)

But the study also revealed that teens are now turning to mobile applications, too, with 38% of teens using downloadable apps like those from Facebook, Pandora and YouTube. And usage in this area is growing, says Nielsen.

The largest ever global research project into people's online activities has released its findings. The TNS Digital Life research involved 50,000 interviews with individuals in 46 countries, covering almost 90% of the world's online population.

The study aimed to uncover how the world's online behavior may be shifting, in terms of both consumption and communication. And among the findings were that online consumers in emerging, rapid growth markets are more engaged than those in mature markets, with Egypt and China, for example, having much higher levels of digital engagement than Japan, Denmark or Finland.

Research analysts at Gartner have forecasted that Google's Android mobile operating system (OS) will become the second largest platform in terms of market share by year-end 2010. Symbian, however, will remain number one. Garner also notes that by 2014, the end of the forecast period for this latest market research report, Android will vie for the top spot against Nokia's Symbian OS.

Yes, Android is officially on the path to world domination.