• Kicking off for us is the brilliant Andy from MobiThinking, with a post about Mobile awards. What do they achieve? How should they be judged? With some great advice about submitting for mobile awards, it is also a chance to highlight MobiThinking’s listing of mobile awards and recent winners case studies.
• James Roswell over at The Fonecast writes about the Wholesale Application Community’s mission to take on Apple’s App store. Some big claims made, but with so many operators on board, I don’t doubt them at all! Check the post out here.
• Foursquare goes from strength to strength almost every day, and as the number of users increases, making sure you conduct yourself in the correct fashion is important as not to a) embarass yourself, or b) reveal information you do not want to. Eric over at MobileSlate gives you an insight into the cardinal sins of Foursquare, many of which I expect some of you have already done!
• C. Enrique Ortiz offers a great, succinct insight into reasons for the mobile boom, and how businesses, models and practice will continue to change. A particular favourite because it has a venn diagram
• Peggy Anne Salz interviews the brilliant Alan Moore about engagement marketing, and how mobile completely changes the way we should understand and conduct marketing communications. In this podcast, the common themes of permission and the relationship gap are explored in greater detail and offers a welcome change to the rest of the text only carnival submissions!
• And last, but not least, in true Tomi style, is a lengthy yet captivating piece about understanding the smartphone market by Mr Ahonen. Tomi tackles many common questions and arguments discussed by the industry, and addresses them head on. Grab yourself a cup of tea and a few biscuits for this one!

So thats it, that your mobile reading for this week! I hope you enjoy it all, and please do not forget to share this with your peers

Next week is currently hostless, so if you would like to take up responsibility for the hundreth time, or make your carnival debut, be sure to get in touch with Peggy Anne Salz.

Bye bye for now!

Mobilists of the world, welcome to Mobsessed, and the 218th edition of Carnival of the Mobilists. Its my first ever hosting of COTM, so feel very privileged to be part of its ongoing success.

We have quite the eclectic mix of posts this week, and for those of you who read this blog more regularly will be glad to hear there is no iPhone bashing from yours truly this week. Le’ts get the ball rolling.

Antoine RJ Wright addresses the justification for calling a phone ‘smart’, and believes Nokias BetaLabs experimental application ‘Nokia Bots’ could signal the beginning of true smartphones. The idea of phones understanding our behaviours in order to improve our experiences and enrich our lives is a very exciting prospect, which Antoine discusses in depth and with great passion.

I am a firm believer that mobile barcodes have a much bigger role to play in marketing than is currently evident, and these sentiments are echoed by Peggy Anne Salz in her post and interview with Carol Glennon, CEO of Renu Mobile. As well as addressing the challenges that face establishing a open, interoperable and global mobile barcode marketing campaigns, the other possible ventures in which barcodes can be employed are addressed, and offer up some incredibly exciting and innovative executions of barcodes in the public, security and pharmaceuticals sectors.

So 2009 was a rather monumental year for mobile, with some 1.3 billion mobile handsets now able to access the internet. All of the facts, figures, movers and shakers of Mobile Data can be found in Chetan Sharma’s updated Global Mobile Data Market report. The impact of the recession, app stores, smartphones and much more is considered in this brilliant factual analysis by Mr Sharma, which also explores revenues and growth in key markets.

With 2009 thoroughly analysed, the potential for 2010 is very clear, and Tomi Ahonen is the man to show us what we can look forward to this year. We are set to see the 10 billionth handset ever produced, 5 billion subscriptions and a Nokia for almost 30% of the global population; this and the other key headlines for 2010  are all explored in detail by the Godfather of mobile himself.

Marketing your mobile app is always difficult, especially when your particular market sector is so saturated. Affiliate marketers are becoming commonplace, and James Cooper takes a look at some of the affiliate stores and how they can help you and your app. Could this make traditional PR and mobile advertising redundant for marketing mobile apps?

Not an April Fools post here from Tsahi Levent-Levi, but he states that PDAs have won over mobile handsets! He is not of course referring to what we all know as PDAs, but the latest generation of smartphones that are, as he calls them, PDAs-that-also-make-phone-calls. Now I am not one to argue with the intent, as our mobile phones are more and more becoming the ‘remote controls of our life’, but even with the ever changing functionality of the mobile handset, they will always be called smartphones (more out of habit than anything!). What are your views?

And finally Terence Eden, ever the detective, has been getting to the bottom of the mystery surrounding what mobile the new Doctor Who has! Whadya think he has? Take a look.

Thats it! The 218th edition is over! My post of the week goes to Antoine RJ Wright, who is subsequently next weeks host! Thanks for stopping by and feel free to give any feedback!