Can't Apple take a hint? The company continues to try to enforce its trademark on the term "App Store" despite a recent court setback in the matter. Independent app store (oops, is that a trademark violation?) GetJar last week said it was hit with a cease-and-desist letter from Apple in connection with its use of "App Store" on its site and elsewhere, saying GetJar should refrain from using the term in the future.

After long focusing on growth at the expense of monetization, Foursquare appears to be making some smart moves as it moves toward actually making money. The latest, and most significant to date, is its effort to partner with major deal sites including LivingSocial, Gilt City, zozi and BuyWithMe. True, no Groupon, but the company is in talks with the social buying giant as well, according to a Wall Street Journal story today.

With Verizon Wireless last week rolling out tiered data plans Sprint has been left as the only major carrier still offering a range of unlimited data options. In contrast to all the jockeying over the term "4G," that's a clear market differentiating factor in the wireless marketplace that Sprint should market aggressively.

As part of his "State of the Global Mobile Industry" for the first half of 2011, mobile consultant Chetan Sharma discussed wireless competition in markets worldwide. In particular, he noted a pattern in which the top three carriers in any nation control virtually all (93%) of the market.

All the venture and IPO money flooding into the mobile app space begs the question: Can an app be a standalone business? The investors who poured $50 million into Flipboard, the startup behind the popular social magazine app of the same name, clearly think so.

One thing that's clear from Zynga's $1 billion IPO filing last week is that mobile is a big part of its plans for the future. Without specifying numbers, the company said the number of daily active users -- one of its key metrics- -- on mobile devices increased 10-fold from November 2010 to June 2011. (Overall, Zynga said it had 238 million daily users in 166 countries, driven by the popularity of hit social games like "FarmVille," "CityVille" and "Mafia Wars.")

With the arrival of the HP TouchPad, another iPad challenger debuts today, facing a familiar catch-22: how to get developers to write apps for its tablet without a proven user base, and how to attract buyers without a large catalog of apps. For Hewlett-Packard, that may be especially tough since it runs the webOS operating system it picked up through its 2010 acquisition of Palm.