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I have to admit, I read with fascination this morning the latest Techmeme headline from Techcrunch: "Yep, Apple Killed the CD Today." Of course, a headline like that is meant to cause a reaction - and it did, by the number of tweets, Diggs and comments. In my gut, I agree with the general trend (as it applies to computers) - the optical drive is becoming passé in favor of smaller portable storage options like USB flash drives and even file-sharing via Web-based tools.

However, optical media itself is not dead yet - far from it, mostly thanks to Blu-ray. So perhaps the headline should have read "optical drives in computers are not really all that important anymore, but Blu-ray is doing well." But that wouldn't have been as catchy.

According to a new report from the Luxury Institute, today's affluent mobile customers are getting into smartphone applications, with 34% having downloaded apps onto their phones and 11% reporting they have plans to do so soon.

So what apps are these customers go for? The free ones, of course. As it turns out, even though they can well afford to pay, 39% of affluent customers using mobile apps only download non-paid apps. Says the report, "having to pay extra for downloaded applications is the leading barrier to more widespread use of mobile apps." That may go for the rest of us too.

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.

Consumers will have downloaded 25 billion mobile applications by 2015, a trend which prompted technology mag Wired to ponder in August if the open Web is dead. But don't be fooled by these reports, says Adobe. In its new mobile consumer study the company found that while apps are popular, people often prefer the mobile Web.

ShopSavvy, BarcodeHero, Stickybits, CheckPoints, Tecca, Microsoft Tag, RedLaser, SnapTell, Shopkick, the recently updated Amazon Mobile - if you're like many smartphone owners, you've used at least one (if not more) of these mobile barcode scanning applications. In fact, you're now part of a growing trend of users who do.

Analytics firm comScore has just released a new study on mobile usage and behavior in the Japanese, American and European markets. The report's findings highlighted the "significant differences" between the consumers in these markets, in terms of mobile connectivity, application usage, mobile social networking, media consumption, gender-related behavior and more.

Below is a summary of the firm's report.

New data from The Nielsen Company shows that Google's Android mobile operating system is now the most popular OS among those who bought a new smartphone in the U.S. during the last six months, with a 32% share of recent acquirers.

Blackberry and Apple are meanwhile tied for second place, in a "statistical dead heat," says Nielsen.

Mobile browser maker Opera is out with its latest report on the state of the mobile Web, and this time, it's calling the growth "stunning." Since August of last year, the number of uniques has increased by 108.3%, page views by 143.2% and data traffic by 134.4%.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt, speaking to the audience at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco this week, said that his company expects mobile to dominate search at some point in the future. "Eventually, we think mobile will be the majority of the searches and the majority of the revenue," he said. But that future could take a long time to get here, he added.

Schmidt also touched on the future of search in general, at least as Google sees it, speaking of a time when Google searches become automatic and autonomous, leading to "serendipitous" discovery of the world around you.

A new study from Forrester Research has found a decline in the number of content creators across social networking sites, even while general use and participation on these sites has risen. The group of users classified as "Creators" - those who record videos, post blog entries, write reviews and post comments to articles online - are less active this year than they were in 2009, with shrinking percentages of users in the majority of markets studied. In the U.S., for example, the Creators category dropped from 24% to 23%.

The dips in each region may not seem like a lot - usually only a percentage point or two - but Forrester analyst Jacqueline Anderson says there's still reason to be concerned.