The growth of smartphone adoption and associated mobile technologies has been staggering. As of the end of 2011, the majority of U.S. adults under the age of 35 now own a smartphone. Sixty-two percent of them have downloaded apps (mostly games), and mobile Web usage among these consumers has grown 45% since last year.

Video is huge among smartphone owners, who watched about 35% more video content on their devices than they did last year. From the looks of Nielsen's list of top apps, most of that video is coming from YouTube.

While many of the results drawn in many of these types of studies are not exactly breaking news, what's intriguing is the massively increasing degree to which we're all walking around with tiny, Web-connected computers in our pockets and the ways in which those devices are embedding themselves deep into our day-to-day lives. From the iPhone alarm that goes off in the morning to the miniature news reading and emails we check just before bed, these things aren't just gadgets. They're practically extensions of ourselves.

As we approach 2012, we expect to see this growth in the smartphone market continue unabated.

"Too few eBusiness professionals use best practices to offer consumers good experiences once they've scanned a bar code," writes author Julie Ask. The study's conclusion is that consumer habits are driven by ubiquity and ease of access; just like with traditional 1D bar codes, consumers will get used to them the more prevalent they are. That means it's up to businesses to use QR codes wisely while not being afraid to keep up with consumers' interest in new technologies.

The study found that 5% of U.S. adults with a mobile phone use a 2D bar code reader, up from 1% in 2010. Among smartphone users alone, 15% use bar codes, up from 5% last year. Android users use 2D bar codes the most, thanks to more native integration of bar code scanning software. 23% of Android users scan 2D bar codes, compared to 19% of iOS users and 5% of RIM and Windows Phone users, respectively.

As previous studies have found, bar code users are typically younger, affluent adults. Of the recent users of bar codes in the study, 66% were between 23 and 45 years old. The largest income category, with 39% of respondents, was $100,000+.

How Can Businesses Get In On Bar Codes?

The study points out a few key ways for businesses to use 2D bar codes to lead consumers, rather than simply slapping them on everything and hoping people will scan them. Bar codes help consumers discover what to buy by linking to contextual content, and they help them decide between alternatives. 23% of smartphone users use their phones to find pricing information, and 2D bar codes are an effective way to provide it.

Since 2D bar codes can contain more sophisticated data than their 1D predecessors, they can even help consumers make purchases with their smartphones. Target's smartphone app offers this functionality, as does the Korean subsidiary of British supermarket chain Tesco.

Most importantly, though, businesses should only use 2D bar codes if they clearly support their overall mobile strategy. Having the codes all over the place will make users aware of them, but they'll only adopt and use the technology if it provides a pleasant and efficient experience. The study's findings urge business owners to "think of the experience beyond the scale" and incorporate bar codes into a complete end-to-end experience.

The study is available for purchase from Forrester.com.

We've collected some great feedback from RWW readers about QR codes. Do you use them? Join the conversation in the comments.

Spaniards are big multi-taskers, too. 50% of Spanish smartphone users actively browse the Web while listening to music, and 35% use the Internet on their smartphone and another device simultaneously. But given how much Spaniards love their smartphones, here's a surprising statistic: Only 10% of Spain's large companies have mobile websites.

Google's main interest in these statistics is in how Spanish smartphone users will use Google's mobile services. The study found that 55% have looked up directions or used a map on their phones, and 45% have searched for a local business.

Local business usage is the key stat. Google badly wants to be the provider of those searches and results. It's the key to their mobile ad business. With record sales of the iPhone 4S and the Siri search assistant it has on board, Apple is now Google's competitor on local business search.

Google has been imposing tight controls over local business listings lately in order to ensure the right results. That's the stick. The carrot is that Google's ad programs reward good mobile sites now. It even provides a free mobile site builder to get businesses on track.

Google's findings today show that only 10% of what they call "large companies" in Spain have developed a mobile website. That's a long way to go. Google wants all businesses to get there, and its research in Spain shows why: A Spanish hotel company has increased its mobile business 12 times since launching a mobile site.

Who has the best mobile site? Share your favorites in the comments.

The danger with carrying a smartphone in your pocket is that it is essentially a piece of glass held together with metal and plastic with sophisticated electrical innards. Warranties from original equipment manufacturers tend to not cover a phone if it is broken or has water damage. What if you drop your brand new iPhone 4S into a puddle? The glass is going to break and it is going to get water inside. When that happens, you are in trouble like a half-plucked turkey the day before Thanksgiving.

The folks at SquareTrade like to break things. SquareTrade is a third-party device warranty company that basically offers insurance for what Apple or the other OEMs will not cover in warranties. The company posted a video positing a Samsung Galaxy S II against an iPhone 4S. The results are not for the fanboy faint of heart.

SquareTrade's iPhone 4S policy

The big retail stores offer the same type of services. What do you think the Geek Squad is but device insurance and warranty protection? In addition to SquareTrade, there is also Securranty, a company that offers the same functionality and pricing as SquareTrade. What these companies will not cover is data or device loss. There are other ways to find lost phones though, with mobile device management solutions (if your phone is tied to your business) or "find my phone" services through Apple or security companies like 3LM, Lookout and Norton.

What do you think about a third-party $99 warranty for your iPhone 4S, Android or other device? Is it worth it? Maybe, if you have a serious case of the drops. Let us know in the comments.

Phones account for the majority of non-computer traffic. Mobile devices drive 4.4% of total digital traffic, tablets contribute 1.9%, and other non-computer devices send 0.5% of traffic.

The comScore data come from a recent report entitled Digital Omnivores: How Tablets, Smartphones and Connected Devices are Changing U.S. Digital Media Consumption Habits. The white paper is available for free (with registration) from comScore's website.

We reported earlier this year that worldwide mobile data traffic is expected to increase 26-fold to 75 exabytes per year (!) by 2015. That's 19 billion DVDs, just to give you a sense. To put it another way, that's 75 times the size of the entire Internet in the year 2000. The mobile revolution is underway, and it behooves those who make Web content to get onboard.

How do you split up your Web use between desktop/laptop, mobile and tablets? Tell us in the comments.

If you're like me, that unthinkable list includes things like your personal email, work email, Mint.com account, Google Docs, and all of the data you have stored in Evernote and Dropbox. If they were feeling particularly mischievous, they could post embarrassing updates to Facebook and Twitter under my name and avatar, and even publish something wildly inappropriate on ReadWriteWeb.

More than half of consumers do not lock their smartphones, the survey found. Of those, 44% said it was "too cumbersome" to bother with. Thirty percent say they're not concerned about the security risk. All of this is despite the fact that about half of them use their smartphones for banking or some other financial purpose.

This has risky implications not just for individuals and their private data, but for the companies those people work for. As smartphones become more popular among consumers, people are increasingly using them to access work email and networks, even in cases when the device is not company-owned or administered by the corporate IT department.

Mobile security will only get more important moving forward, as the line between our work and personal lives continues to blur and as the eventual mainstream adoption of NFC turns our phones into a substitute for our wallets, our keys and much else. If you think the idea of losing your phone is nightmarish now, just wait a few years.

Apple just announced the iPhone 4S, a significant update to the iPhone's existing design. The iPhone 4 far outshone its predecessors, and a bump to that phone will surely prove popular. More importantly, the iPhone 4S is now a "worldphone." It contains both GSM and CDMA radios, so all carriers can now support the same hardware. Furthermore, the old iPhone 3GS is now free with a contract. But several Android phone manufacturers are neck and neck with Apple, and most of the mobile world doesn't even have a smartphone yet. Amidst the world's many phones, smart and dumb, where does the iPhone stand?

Google and Apple would each answer differently. The Android platform is the biggest, which means Google's software and third-party apps have the biggest install base, but Apple sells the most devices, and it, unlike Google, gets to keep all the profits.

Leaving tablets and iPod Touches out of the equation, Android prefers to tout its platform, which is installed on nearly half the smartphones in the world.

But that comprises many different phones by many manufacturers providing many different user experiences. It's an apples-and-oranges comparison (yes, I went there) with the iPhone, which is one experience from top to bottom.

Currently, in terms of manufacturers, Apple is number 1, but just barely. Apple has 18.5% of the market, and Samsung has 17.2%. Both of them overtook Nokia last quarter, which has 15.2%. In terms of physical phones in hands, the iPhone is already the most popular smartphone.

The Smartphone Players

The iPhone redefined consumers' expectations of what a phone is supposed to do. It was hardly the first "smartphone" on the market, but its interface made its predecessors look ridiculous. It screamed past RIM and the old Windows Mobile. It spurred on the development of Android, and the Android/iOS paradigm brought down Symbian, which used to lead the world.

To stay in the game, Nokia went with Microsoft's OS, which had to reinvent itself in opposition to Google and Apple. With the launch of the new Windows Phone 8 still off in the distance, Apple and Google are the whole smartphone story today.

The Smartphone Market Is Not The Story

Existing smartphone market is not where the action is, nor is that how Apple measures the iPhone's success. CEO Tim Cook said in his presentation today that the iPhone has just 5% share of the worldwide market for handsets. It's the worldwide movement toward a mobile Web that matters, and the vast proportion of phones in the world are not smartphones yet. But according to comScore, that proportion is shrinking fast. Global smartphone adoption is happening, and with today's new iPhone, Apple wants more than 5%.

Do you think the new iPhone will sell well in the global market? Share your thoughts in the comments.

By layering their data about iOS and Apple data usage on top of a chart from Ad Age showing TV and Web usage, Flurry was able to demonstrate something most us already had a sneaking suspicion of: That mobile app usage peaks in the evening hours, right around the time that TV-watching has historically peaked.

"Mobile consumers are using apps either instead of, or along-side prime-time television and the Internet," concludes Flurry. "In fact, the percent of relative mobile app usage is greater than that of relative Internet usage every hour of every day."

Flurry's analysis is intended to make a point about the new opportunities that exist for advertisers, who can "daypart" their mobile campaigns just as they can with television and radio advertising. But it also demonstrates just what a major force our mobile devices are becoming in our day-to-day lives. This isn't breaking news, but it's always interesting to see data points that demonstrate just how quickly that force is growing.

The China mobile application market is characterized by confusion right now. Already-strong local players like Tencent have launched mobile app platforms to sell apps for Android and iOS. But those platforms depend on partnerships with companies in Europe and the United States.

Mobile Roadie is tearing up that formula. It's a Western company that's letting local developers make apps for themselves.

"Our hope is to bring some semblance of order to the chaos with legitimate high quality apps for major brands. We think that even though it is chaotic, higher quality is still desired by major brands and businesses," says Schneider.

The company is working with local provider Q-Mobao as well as the two largest mobile phone providers in the country, China Mobile and China Unicom, to implement the launch.

China boosts nearly 100 million smartphone service subscribers, and companies as diverse as Microsoft and Coca-Cola are entering into agreements to push out their product marketing to increasingly savvy and high-spending consumers in China's largest cities.

The platform integrates with YouTube, Brightcove, Flickr, Twitpic, Ustream, Topspin, Google News, RSS, Twitter, and Facebook while providing a service for brands and musicians to spread their messaging to the mobile market. Musicians, like Madonna, now have an app-based platform to spread their music and influence to the huge China audience.

Some of the bigger local mobile tech players in China have opened up their own app platforms, and there are several Android imitation apps that work on local and cheeaper versions of popular Western smartphones.

China Mobile, which does not even distribute the iPhone, says that it has seven million iPhones using its network at the present moment. The market is also flooded with knock-off iPhones sold for as little as $80.

This is precisely the type of test that is the precursor to widespread adoption. Test are performed at universities, rolled out to other small communities and the businesses and large corporations. Within a few years, everybody is doing it. NFC-enabled smartphones are just starting to make that journey.

ASU has partnered with HID Global to perform the experiment. HID is a supplier to original equipment manufacturers for authentication and credential management, secure identification along with a variety of other services. Student's smartphones have been fitted with HID's product called iCLASS SE which is a reader and credential platform that acts as an access-control endpoint. It is integrated with HID's Trusted Identity Platform for cryptographic keys. Essentially, it is the scan-able security badge gone digital and pumped into a smartphone.

To a certain extent, it does not really matter what company is providing the technology for the experiment. Of primary interest is how this is an example of the first steps that NFC is taking to change the fundamental nature of how people interact with their daily lives. Anybody who has been in college in the last 10 years or so knows that most of campus life is dominated by the student ID. At ASU, that is called the Sun Card. Student ID cards these days allow access to buildings, dorms and acts as a debit-card for meal halls or printing in the library.

Soon, all that functionality will be done through a smartphone.

Image: ASUNews

Just The First Steps

It is important to note that the experiment at ASU is just that ... an experiment. There are a variety of factors that need to mature before NFC truly changes daily life for a vast percentage of consumers. The first NFC-enabled smartphones are just now coming to market. It is unclear if the iPhone 5 will have NFC, though many think it will not. There is little in iOS 5 beta that would allude to it. It is important to not overlook the importance of Apple adopting NFC when it comes to changing user behavior. Soon in the United States more than half of consumers will own smartphones.

That is an inflection point that has not yet been reached, as currently about 40% of consumers have smartphones. At the same time, many consumers will be behind in the development cycle with non-NFC smartphones. Given the nature of the two-year carrier contract, that means that consumers are going to be locked in (or locked out of NFC) to their behavior pattern for the foreseeable future.

But, there is inertia. The NFC boulder has started to roll down the hill. Soon it will come to full speed. NFC will jump from universities to living rooms with the smartphone as its beating heart.

PC sales have already started to wane, but it won't be until 2015 that they'll really take a hit. That's the year that mobile Internet users will outnumber people accessing the Internet from PCs and other wireline devices, according to new information from International Data Corporation (IDC).

By that point, the total number of Internet users worldwide is expected to grow to 2.7 billion, which represents about 40% of the world's population.

This isn't the first time this type of prediction has been made, but it lends credence to the significance of tablet computers specifically. For years, we've heard about the number of smartphones outselling PCs worldwide, a prediction that became reality at the end of last year, when manufacturers shipped 100.9 million smartphones, compared to 92 million PCs sold.

While the revolution in computing spurred by smartphones is significant, it's worth noting that the tablet computer only started picking up steam with consumers last year. The device that inspired that was, of course, Apple's iPad, which launched in January 2010 and has seen explosive growth since, making up 21% of the company's revenue in the third quarter of this year. Apple is expected to remain dominant in the tablet space for years to come, even as competition from devices running Android heats up and Amazon finalizes plans to launch its own Android-powered tablet at a significantly lower price.

The impact the tablet has had on the growth of the wireless Web is huge, considering how young the market for those devices is. Coupled with smartphones (not to mention smart TVs and a whole range of Internet-connected devices and objects yet to come), they're paving the way for an age in which the personal computer is no longer dominant and computing shifts to handheld devices and a variety of other devices, objects and even household surfaces.

E-Commerce Spending to Exceed $1 Trillion

This latest survey also includes some numbers that will be of interest to Web marketers and media geeks. As more people connect to the Internet around the world, the amount of revenue generated by online advertising will grow by 61% from 2010 to 2015, IDC predicts. By 2015, online advertisers will make a total of $138 billion and the Web will increase its overall share of ad spending across all media to 17.8%

At the same time, e-commerce spending worldwide is expected to reach $1.2 trillion by 2015, a an 81% increase over 2010.

Cellular data usage has become subject of contention among consumers, carriers and federal regulators. Consumers want more data with less restrictions at manageable prices. The carriers want the opposite. The federal government is left to balance consumers' rights with spectrum allocation, bandwidth requirements, net neutrality and mergers that may disrupt the ecosystem.

There are a lot of balls in the air. It is likely that there will not be any type of compromise between the interests of these groups any time soon. Carriers are starting to set bandwidth limits into their data plans and throttling users who exceed those limits. The data plan needs to evolve.

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AT&T to Start Data Throttling, How Will It Affect Users?

In Preparation for the iPhone, Verizon Plans to Throttle Its Heaviest Data Users

Scenario: Families' Data Plan Headache

Imagine that you are a parent trying to balance your budget. You have a teenage son and daughter (let's call them twins for sake of argument) and the family is fairly well off, perhaps upper middle class. There is money, it just needs to be managed between the mortgage, old school loans, the car, household utilities and the ever growing web of data plans for every member of the families devices.

Mom and Dad both have smartphones and some type of tablet on a data plan. That is four data plans between them. Then, let's say each of the twins has a smartphone and they share a tablet. That is seven data plans for a four-person family ranging from $15 to $30 per device. That is not outrageous for a well-off family in a connected world, especially as smartphones and tablets continue to penetrate the market.

But every member of the family does not use their devices the same way. For instance, Mom uses a lot of data because she travels a lot for business and likes to download and stream movies and upload pictures. Dad uploads the occasional picture but really uses his devices mostly for email and checking up on the news. Between them, the twins use a fair amount of data between social networking, pictures and watching short videos. Mom often exceeds her data limits while Dad comes nowhere near his. The twins come close to their monthly data allotments, sometimes under or over. Regardless of the usage, the family is paying each month for those seven data plans.

Carriers Want To Increase ARPU

The carriers like it like this because the average revenue per user is high. Yet, it drives Mom and Dad crazy because they have to manage all these disparate bills and the fact that they are not reaching maximum return on investment for data not used. It is confusing and expensive.

This is a system that needs to change. One way to do it would be to block a set amount of data for the entire family that can be used between every device, with unused data rolled over into the next billing cycle.

In this scenario, there is one data plan for the seven devices. Let's call it 15 GB per month, slightly less than 2.5 GB per month per device, which is basically what the average data plan between Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile is currently, with fluctuations between each carrier. That 15 GB can be allocated to the family as a block and spread between the devices. One plan, one bill, less headaches. There will be months where Mom is not traveling and streaming as much content and the family will come in well below that number. Or perhaps they go over on a month. The family should not be throttled or forced to pay for extra data depending on the circumstances of the month if they have unused data from another month.

The carriers will hate this. Data is the new version of text messaging, which was the new version of voice minutes. It is the cash cow for carriers because they can set the plans and rates in such a way to maximize ARPU. The last thing that the carriers want to be are "pipes" that are just conduits for data usage through block data plans.

Content and The Pipe: What The Carriers Want

The carriers want to grow their networks. That means they want more users with more data plans on faster networks that handle data flow better. That is what is happening as smart devices proliferate and "4G" such as LTE comes to maturation. The more user that have data plans on multiple devices and the more efficient the network itself becomes, the higher the margins for the carriers.

Yet, the carriers are in a fight over content, ostensibly the source of data usage. When a user streams a Netflix movie over their iPad and stay within their data limits, the carrier does not make any more from that user. From the carrier's perspective, they are just the "dumb pipe" that delivers the over-the-top content. In their minds, that is unacceptable.

That is why you are seeing more carriers trying to throttle usage while also setting up their own content delivery networks. AT&T's U-Verse is a prime example. If the carriers can make money both from the data being used and the content going over the network, they are making money on the same data flow twice. In a blocked data plan scenario, this would be less lucrative.

Regulators Sticky Issues

The AT&T-T-Mobile merger puts a lot of this in to perspective. The Department of Justice thinks that if the merger goes through, the three remaining major carriers can do just about anything they want. Seven data plans for a family of four? Certainly! Let's charge more for every GB they use and then throttle them or make them pay more if they go over. The DOJ thinks that the carriers could collude to increase prices without actually intentionally doing so. All it takes is for one carrier to start increasing data prices and the others will follow, calling it "industry standard pricing."

But what if T-Mobile were to stay free? To compete with the bigger companies, they institute data blocking plans with rollover of unused GBs per month. That is precisely the type of competitive practice the DOJ thinks will be inhibited in a three-carrier ecosystem.

Change Will Come For The Carriers ... Eventually

Regardless of whether or not the AT&T-T-Mobile merger is approved, data plans are going to change in the future. The carriers are going to try and squeeze as much revenue as they can from each user, until they face a backlash from both consumers and the government.

It is probably inevitable that the carriers are going to be caught between regulators and users and be forced to change data plans to something that is more consumer friendly. Yet, the next several years will see data plans become more expensive, overage and throttling more frequent and consumers feeling the strain.

Personally, I was partial to the Motorola Dynatac 8000X. I never owned one, but I was a big fan of Saved By The Bell and Zack Morris. Those of an earlier generation may have been partial to the Get Smart shoe phone, which, admittedly, still seems like a cool idea. Before smartphones started to become ever larger devices, Ben Stiller in Zoolander lampooned the popularity of the shrinking smartphone.

Check out the infographic below, pick out your favorite evolution and let us know why you liked it in the comments.

Lead Image: Smartphones (Samsung BlackJack, BlackBerry Bold 9000, Samsung Galaxy Captivate) taken with a Motorola Atrix.

Nokia plans to fight back against the other two dominant platforms with its next generation of smartphones, which will run Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 operating system. The company is phasing out its once-dominant smartphone lines from the U.S. market in preparation. Windows Phone OS is a natural choice for Nokia to distinguish its phones from the leading competitors because its underlying structure is different. Whereas Android and iOS are built around navigating between different applications, Windows Phone 7 arranges everything around your contacts. And there's something to that idea; it is a phone, after all.

Whether these streamlined interactions make app-based phones "outdated" remains to be seen; certainly, existing Windows Phone 7 devices are not showing much traction. Much of the success depends on the hardware, and Nokia is not the only company planning to build devices to run Mango. HTC, Samsung and LG are, as well, but they all have Android businesses to think about.

Nokia has been in position for a while to make the most out of WP7, and CEO Stephen Elop has laid out a foundation of five principles behind the move. The company has planned its biggest marketing campaign ever behind the new devices, which Weber said would hit the U.S. market "in volume" in 2012.

Will Nokia Get Its Second Wind?
Nokia used to rule the smartphone world, but all of that has changed this year. Nokia reports that it sold 16.7 million smartphones last quarter - nothing to sneeze at - but Apple sold 20 million, eclipsing Nokia for the first time.

In Q2 2008, Nokia's Symbian platform ran on 47% of smartphones. Android came out later that year. Today, Android owns 48% of the market, iOS has 19% and Symbian is in third place, now running on 16% of smartphones. Tellingly, Nokia has revealed that it will no longer sell Symbian devices in North America, a treatment Nokia also gave to its MeeGo phones this year. But this has given Nokia a long runway to prepare its next generation of devices, which will run an operating system that has already been tested in the field. Does this vision sound more like the future than the app-driven models of iOS and Android? Watch the interview and decide:

Nokia: Apple iOS and Android are "outdated" from Venturebeat on Vimeo.

Mobile companies like Nokia and Ericsson have been inventing next generation prototypes for years. But it's the breakout products like Apple's iPhone that ultimately win out. Some of the features shown below may be in whatever is the next iPhone, whether it be created by Apple or another company. You be the judge: videos of the two winning concepts are embedded below.

As eYeka CEO Francois Petavy explained, the Roundphone concept would also connect to objects in your house:

"Take it into a shower and you will know the temperature of water. Connect it to a fridge and you will know what food you are missing. This is a phone for the future that connects to the "internet of things". It adapts with what it touches and becomes simply a part of our everyday life."

The second video was labeled a "Flexphone" and is more likely to occur in the short-medium term.

It's a folding screen device, which can take on different form factors depending on what screen size is best: phone, tablet, gaming device.

This concept would make use of flexible OLED technology.

You can see all of the eYeka community submissions for future smartphone concepts here and here.

Both of the two winning concepts are intriguing glimpses at future generations of smartphones. Which of the features on display here do you think we're likely to see first?