The smartphone surge rolls on, with high-end handsets making up 19% of all handsets shipped in the second quarter, according to ABI Research. That represents a 12% increase over the first quarter, and a 50% jump compared to the same quarter a year ago.

Amazon is once again touting strong Kindle sales without providing actual unit sales figures for its e-reader. The online retailer Monday said sales of the new generation of lower-priced Kindle devices introduced in July had already outpaced total Kindle sales for the fourth quarter of 2009.

A new study by ABI Research today confirms that mobile subscriptions worldwide passed the 5 billion mark in the second quarter. The crossing of that dramatic threshold had been predicted earlier in the year, and Ericsson estimated the 5 billion mark was reached in July.

Coming to you from my local Starbucks after browsing the Starbucks Digital Network (SDN), which launched Wednesday with much fanfare and loads of media coverage. The offering is much what you'd expect from Starbucks, a "premium blend" of content from partners including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Apple (iTunes) presented in a slick package spanning areas like news, entertainment, business, health and local. A feature in the entertainment section called New Word City launches with an excerpt from marketing guru Seth Godin's new book "Graceful," which may describe how Starbucks would like users to think of …

Any expectations that Yahoo might disclose mobile revenue after Google last week did so for the first time -- to the tune of a $1 billion run rate -- weren't met during the Web portal's third quarter earnings call Tuesday. There was plenty of talk about mobile initiatives from Yahoo, but little in the way of numbers.

If mobile has become more than an afterthought for companies, it's still far from being a key part of their marketing or e-commerce efforts. A new survey of more than 200 global companies by Forrester finds that more than half (57%) don't have a mobile consumer strategy or are in the early stages of developing one.

When Tapulous last week launched a new Katy Perry-themed app in its hugely popular "Tap Tap Revenge" franchise, it marked the first time a new game in the series included a title sponsor: Bing.

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.