According to the Google Mobile Ads Blog smartphone usage and ownership is surging across the globe.

Google and Ipsos partnered to gain the latest research from the US, UK, Germany, France and Japan. Key findings incude:

• Consumers are clearly shifting from feature phones to smartphones. Smartphone penetration reached 45% in the UK, 38% in the US and France, 23% in Germany and 17% in Japan.
• Web usage via smartphones is increasingly growing, with Japan topping global figures with 88% of Japanese smartphone owners accessing the internet daily.
• The tablet is being embraced by consumers as the fourth screen. Across all five countries surveyed tablet usage increased, with the highest seen in the US at 11%.

Click here for the full report.

Following up from our finalist nomination in the Best Non-profit or Government category at last year’s AIMIA awards, the CLD team will once again be heading over to Cockatoo Island to vie for a prestigious AIMIA award.

This year we will be showing support for our very own mobile app creation QuickerFeet, which is up for the Innovation Award.

Launched just five months ago QuickerFeet has achieved some notable success, with over forty national retail brands and hundreds of smaller independent retailers utilising the app to entice swarms of consumers into their stores. Participating brands include the likes of General Pants Group, Supre, Mad Mex, Billabong, Lorna Jane, Event Cinemas, STA Travel, AMF Bowling, Rydges Hotels and many more.

Visit quickerfeet.com for more information and check out the AIMIA site to see a full list of nominees.

Adobe Digital Marketing have released a study with further evidence of tablet devices fuelling online consumer spending on retail goods, asserting the need for a distint channel for tablet optimised sites.

The study, based on more than 16 billion transactions found that web visitors using tablets are spending 54% more per purchase than their smartphone counterparts and 21% more than traditional desktop and laptop visitors.

The report also takes a look at conversion rates across smartphones, tablets and desktop over the 2011 period. Click here for the figures.

Feel free to contact us to discuss your mobile web solution.

In a recent report by Roy Morgan, the profile of the typical iPhone user has been investigated. Research conducted over the 10/11 period found that a sample group of the now 2 million iPhone users in Australia were more likely than other Australians to shop, gamble, travel and engage in other leisure activities like going to the cinema or listening to the radio.

Across gender and age demographics the research found:

To find out more click here

Developed in conjunction with CLD, the National Geographic Channel have released an iPhone App to tie in with their popular Nat Geo Snap online photography community.

The app gives users the chance to have their photography featured on-air on the three National Geographic Channel stations, continuing the trend of broadcast and mobile convergence.

Uniquely, users are alerted to photography challenges both from social media integrated into the app and on the three National Geographic Channel stations. Once a user has taken a photo, it is uploaded to the in-app gallery for all users to view instantly, with National Geographic selecting the best photographs to subsequently broadcast.

Download Nat Geo Snap from the App Store now.

V2 of our Medicines List App produced for NPS has just landed in the App store.

After the success of V1 including two recent awards at the Society of Hospital Pharmacists of Australia federal conference, as well as an award for best Medical app at the 2011 Mobile Awards, the latest upgrade of Medicines List has been highly anticipated.

New features include the integration alarms and tracking features enabling users to set ongoing reminder alerts for their medicines and monitor a schedule of medicine taken.

Check it out!