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.

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.

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%.

Burger King is encouraging consumers to turn to their smartphones and place delivery orders at participating restaurants via a new mobile site. The BK Delivers delivery service has been expanded to Phoenix and Denver locations. The company, like many other quick-service restaurants, is ramping up its mobile ordering strategy.

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.

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.

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."

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.

Mobile commerce has been growing at an alarming rate. Throughout much of Europe, however, mobile payments have become a convenient way to purchase tickets for public transportation. This trend has begun to spread to Russia, where telecommunications network operator TeleSystems has been showing more interest in the concept of mobile commerce and how it can be used to make purchasing tickets more convenient.

UK mobile app company YPlan has secured GBP7.9m in one of the largest Series A funding rounds in Europe this year, led by US venture capital firm General Catalyst Partners, with backing from existing investors Wellington Partners and Octopus Investments. Formed seven months ago, the London-based mobile app start-up which enables users to book last minute events at discounted rates, says the funding will be used to fulfil its plans for expansion by launching the business in New York later this year.