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Mobile analytics firm Zokem just published a new study comparing mobile application usage on smartphones and tablet computers to the time spent Web browsing. The results are not surprising - application use is far more popular than using the Web browser on these devices, the firm found.

Also of interest, especially to mobile application developers, are the differences in app and Web usage between tablets and phones. On smartphones, apps are 6 times more popular than Web browsing, while on tablets, the difference is not as significant.

Japan's largest mobile operator NTT DoCoMo and Twitter have announced a partnership that allows the operator access to Twitter's database. As a part of the deal, users will be able to tap phones in order to follow each other on Twitter. The operator will also integrate Twitter updates and other related content in its feature phone portal called i-mode and on its smartphone portal, the DoCoMo Market. In total, the new integrations will reach 58 million NTT DoCoMo customers in Japan.

Although not part of the press release, a Twitter-based location-based alerting service is in the works too, according to reports. This service will involve harvesting tweets to alert Twitter users about local events and places, among other things.

There's an interesting trend happening in mobile these days. Companies - major companies like Samsung, Motorola, Kyocera, RIM and Microsoft - are launching unfinished, unpolished products and then asking us, the consumers, to buy them based on their "potential." Despite the fact that the new BlackBerry tablet computer has no email client or wide selection of apps, or that Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 can't even multi-task, or that Android Honeycomb is only a few months old and, frankly, still a little buggy, we're expected to place our hard-earned dollars, and, in some cases, even sign multi-year mobile contracts for these gadgets, based on "what could be."

Not biting? Well, you're not alone.

Momentum surrounding the Android mobile platform has reached a plateau, with developers now refocusing their efforts on building apps for Apple devices. This somewhat surprising conclusion is just one of many new trends spotted by Appcelerator and analyst firm IDC in their jointly produced developer report based off a survey of over 2,700 active developers worldwide.

According the report, developer interest in Android is waning due to concerns around fragmentation issues and the early, disappointing results from Android tablet sales.

Mobile carriers in the U.S. will soon have expanded Family Locator solutions in place that offer far more controls than simply tracking family members' whereabouts. Instead, these services will offer tools that allow parents to stop teens from texting while driving, stop "sexting" from occurring and stop kids from communicating with unwanted parties. Parents will also be able to read the content of text messages, preview mobile photos before being posted publicly on the Internet or sent to friends and will be able to specify what types of applications can be downloaded to kids' phones and when those apps can be used.

According to the new tablet forecast from the analysts at Gartner, Apple's iPad will dominate the tablet market for years to come. Up until 2015, iOS will account for over half of tablet market share. In 2011, 69% of media tablets will run Apple's mobile operating system, but that number will slip as Google's Android operating system takes hold, the firm predicts. By 2015, 39% of tablets will run Android, says Gartner.

In Android market share news, analysts at Gartner are now forecasting the Google-created mobile operating system will reach 49% smartphone market share by the end of 2012, based on handset sales. By the end of this year (2011), Android will be the most popular operating system in the world, as worldwide smartphone sales reach 468 million units.

Programming language adoption rates are tough to determine, but always of interest. We've looked at a couple attempts to measure it before: a Github language survey and the TIOBE Index. Now RedMonk has published some data from code management vendor Black Duck.

Black Duck has a knowledge base containing a huge amount of open source code. It gave RedMonk data regarding how many lines of each programming language can be found in its knowledge base. It's not a perfect representation of language usage, but it provides some insight into what open source developers are doing.

No, that's not a typo. Analysts at IDC are now forecasting that the Windows Phone mobile operating system will be the number two smartphone platform by 2015. And Android will be number one. "Android is poised to take over as the leading smartphone operating system in 2011 after racing into the number two spot in 2010," says senior researcher Ramon Llamas. But it's Nokia's recent shift from Symbian to Windows Phone that will have the biggest impact on the market going forward, Llamas believes.

This morning, at the CTIA Wireless 2011 conference in Orlando, Florida, Samsung officially introduced the newest version of its Galaxy Tab, the 8.9-inch edition. For those keeping track, that means that Samsung now has three different Android tablets: the original 7-inch, the 10.1-inch announced in February at Mobile World Congress, and now this medium-sized tablet.

On stage, Samsung execs touted "personal choice" and a strategy where "one size doesn't fit all," but is that the case? Or is this just an expensive experiment in determining which tablets consumers will actually choose, if they're given the option to do so?