By 2013, it had amassed consecutive years of surging growth in mobile traffic and sales. "It's staggering," said Brandon McGee, who joined Dell Inc. in 2010 as director of global mobile operations. For the fiscal year ended Feb. 3, 2012, Dell's mobile revenue increased 121% over the prior year, followed by an increase of 79% for the year ended Feb. 1, 2013. For the 2012 Thanksgiving weekend, mobile commerce visits rose 89% year over year as revenue grew 125%.

The UK's mobile operator-backed m-commerce venture supported by Vodafone, O2 and EE, has reiterated plans to launch targeted advertising campaigns through apps this summer and a NFC-based mobile payments service next year. In an interview with the Financial Times (FT), the venture's CEO David Sear confirmed that more than 17 million UK customers are set to start receiving advertising on their mobile phones and tablets as the group opens up its large stores of data to major British brands.

Mobile shopping is the fastest growing segment within Japan's ballooning e-commerce sector. The latest figures from the Ministry of Internal Affairs & Communications suggest that mobile commerce jumped 16.2 percent in 2011 to 1.17 trillion. Merchandise sales made up the largest share, totalling 583 billion ($5.9 billion). Mobile commerce for merchandise was also the fastest growing segment, up 32.9 percent year-on-year.

A leading Spanish telecommunications company has announced a new partnership with CaixaBank and Santander to create a joint venture that aims to develop a new mobile banking solution that include launching a mobile wallet service for consumers. Mobile commerce has been showing strong growth throughout Europe, leading many telecommunications companies to make their way into this space in order to meet the changing needs of consumers. Banks have also been taking note of this trend and have been following in the footsteps of telecommunications companies.

Domino's Pizza has added a Windows Phone 8 mobile application to its ever-growing portfolio, giving the pizza giant a presence on nearly 95 percent of United States smartphones. The Windows Phone app release adds voice capabilities - a first for a Domino's mobile app. Domino's also has apps for iPhone, Android and Kindle Fire devices.

Based on a case study shared by the SMS marketing experts at Tatango this week, geotargeted SMS promotion continues to prove its efficacy across a wide variety of campaigns within an equally diverse array of industries. "After a long day of walking around, especially in the hot summer, a hard cider sounds pretty good, doesn't it?" asks Tatango boss Derek Johnson in a post shared Wednesday. "Using an SMS geofence, Bulmers Irish Cider was able to increase pub sales of their bottled cider by 50 percent in the UK."

A developer of SIM cards for mobile devices has announced that it will be supplying a new brand of NFC-enabled SIM cards to the MobiPag project, which is based in Portugal. The MobiPag project comes from a consortium of Portuguese companies that have a strong interest in mobile payments. These companies are eager to see mobile payments become more common throughout the country and believe that NFC SIM cards may be the best way to see this hope become a reality.

College bookstore operator Follett Higher Education Group is testing and proving the value of mobile marketing to bring more shoppers into its stores, Leeann Fecho, manager of emerging media and loyalty marketing, said at the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition 2013 in Chicago this week.

Rakuten Malaysia has extended a series of mobile social properties on Rakuten Online Shopping to spur transactions and e-commerce growth in Malaysia. The company had also established a strategic partnership with leading mobile messaging service platform, LINE, to set up a corporate official account in Malaysia. This partnership will enable Rakuten Online Shopping to engage and interact with mobile users by providing real-time updates, news and promotions.

7-Eleven has placed a mobile call-to-action on its Slurpee cups to get consumers to download its latest application and get exclusive coupons and offers. The call-to-action is a great way for the company to drive app downloads. 7-Eleven has been expanding its mobile portfolio to reach consumers no matter where they are.