XM and Sirius are fighting over satellite radio market share numbers posted this week by NPD Group, Mediaweek reports. The NPD report claims that Sirius had captured 56 percent of sales in September, narrowing the gap on market leader XM, but the NPD study was based on incomplete retail data. XM actually added more subscribers than Sirius in the third quarter, increasing its market share to 59 percent. However, with Howard Stern waiting in the wings, Sirius could catch up at the beginning of next year.

RealMoney.com (via TheStreet.com) takes a thorough look at the mobile music landscape, crowded now by the entry of mobile phone operators Sprint and U.K.-based mmO2. Why have they entered the fray? Mobile music is huge in Japan, where consumers are willing to pay significantly more for downloads to their cell phones. With ridiculously high price points, mobile operators stand little chance of competing with Apple's iTunes, Yahoo! Music, or satellite providers XM and Sirius for control of the pocket. Apple, Sirius, and XM are all having breakout years in the mobile sphere, and remain the ones to watch.

The New York Times weighs in on the overhaul at Microsoft, where the company is moving most of its core software online. The company's new Web-based offerings, the portal Live.com, Windows Live and Office Live, are a direct response to competitors Google and Yahoo! For a company that built its empire on paid software apps, Web-based software is a big departure, because consumers will no longer be locked into Microsoft applications like Office, free now to choose from the services of competitors. The programs will also be largely ad-supported, charging only for premium features and service--another departure for the company, …

The San Francisco Chronicle last week published a thorough report on the social networking phenomenon and how it's changed the nature of what we call friendship. People literally manage their friendships now, using different applications or Web sites, which need to be funded via advertising. The targeting opportunities for investors and advertisers are huge, with myriad social networking sites out there for countless subgroups. However, the article focuses on the latest darling of the social networking sphere: Facebook, which started last February and has now skyrocketed to become the 11th most visited site on the Web.

The marketing industry should take note of the rapidly developing economies inside massively multiplayer, online role-playing games. A Knowledge@Wharton article appearing on Forbes.com takes a look at the virtual economies inside games like Second Life and World of Warcraft, where users buy and sell real estate, fashions and food, and trade virtual dollars against the U.S. dollar. Whole companies have even been formed inside these worlds, selling products like magic potions and powerful weapons that can be used to competitive advantage. Analysts estimate that the total in-game market could reach $1.5 billion in 2005. Are there advertising opportunities? You bet, …

In a Cnet report, Analysts ponder whether Microsoft's strategy to compete head-on with Google and Yahoo! could be compromising its original, and very profitable, business model: software. Some say the services offered by Microsoft's rivals threaten software products like Office, but others worry that beating Google means Microsoft needs to beat itself.

High oil prices won't deter consumers from spending more online this holiday season, according to a Forrester study, via Internet Retailer. Web sales will increase 25 percent this year to $18 billion, despite flagging consumer confidence and rising inflation. The sales increase will be driven mostly by an added 2.5 million households using the Web for holiday shopping. Forrester warns retailers that first quarter spending is likely to be weak.

US consumers spent almost $1 billion on online content during the first half of the year, MediaPost reports, 16 percent more than the same period last year. The surge was led by substantial increases in entertainment and lifestyle purchases. However, worryingly for newspaper companies, news-content spending dipped 14 percent, bringing the pay for news model into question as consumers find ways to get their fill of news for free.

Shrugging off the intellectual copyright claims of those in the book publishing industry, online advertising behemoth Google said in a Wall Street Journal report it will resume the scanning of library books in the collections of Stanford University and the University of Michigan. The company stopped the process three months ago after a very public backlash by publishers over copyright issues, giving them until today to request that their books not be scanned--instead of formally asking for permission. Google says it will begin scanning out-of-print books first, which it thinks will help its argument that the project will not negatively …

MediaPost's Online Media Daily is publishing a three-part series on the future of behavioral targeting. Part I examines how search engines are working to integrate past search behavior into Web search. How much are marketers willing to pay for more targeted search? What are the privacy issues? Where does adware fit into this mix? Steve Smith has the answers