With Google for the first time disclosing its mobile ad revenue on an annualized basis, you have to wonder if the search giant didn't want to wait until it had a nice round number ($1 billion) to report. As Sean Parker tells Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in "The Social Network," "A million dollars isn't cool. You know what's cool? A billion dollars."

After all the speculation surrounding the Verizon iPhone in the last couple of years, it's the Verizon iPad that's hitting stores first. As you may have seen, Verizon will offer a Wi-Fi-only iPad bundled with its MiFi 2200 Mobile Hotspot device for $20 a month for 1 GB of usage, starting Oct. 28. The iPad models plus MiFi will sell for $630 (16GB), $730 (32GB) and $830 (64GB).

As one of the first publishers to jump on the iPad, Conde Nast already has more experience than most when it comes to testing the Apple tablet as a new medium for magazines. With that in mind, the company has come out with a set of rules for iPad advertisers and broader findings based on 100 hours of one-on-one interviews and some 5,000 in-app surveys.

The Verizon iPhone is sounding more and more like a reality next year, leading to speculation about what kind of campaign the company would run to promote the long-awaited marriage of phone and service provider.

With Microsoft's rollout of Windows Phone 7 ranking as one of Microsoft's biggest product launches in recent years, a lot is riding on the ad campaign that will accompany it. The software giant again tapped Crispin Porter and Bogusky, the vaunted creative shop that also developed Microsoft's "I'm a PC" spots and the "Windows 7 was my idea" campaign.

Reports that Amazon plans to jump into the app store race with its own app storefront for Android-based phones at first glance looks like bad news for Google. Here Google is just starting to gain momentum with 80,000 titles in its Android Market -- and along comes the Web's retailing Goliath to eat its lunch on the very platform Google created.

Government bashing was at the top of the agenda at CTIA's fall convention in San Francisco, according to reports Thursday. Steve Largent, the wireless trade group's CEO, warned against too much government intervention in the industry.

Fresh data underscoring Android's remarkable growth seems to come in almost every day now. But Apple may get a new weapon in its arsenal against Google in the smartphone wars, with a new report saying Apple will begin mass producing a new iPhone model by year's end that would allow Verizon Wireless to start selling the device in early 2011.

Reports emerging late Monday that Qualcomm would pull the plug on its FLO TV business by year's end didn't come as a huge surprise, given company statements earlier this year acknowledging consumer uptake had never met expectations for the mobile TV service the company invested hundreds of millions of dollar to create.

Promptly refunding customers for accidental charges is apparently a foreign concept to Verizon Wireless. The nation's largest carrier said Sunday it would pay up to $90 million to about 15 million subscribers who were incorrectly billed for accessing data services they didn't use. Verizon explained it "discovered" that over the past several years customers without data plans were charged for "data sessions on their phones that they did not initiate."