Sure, mobility lets us buy just about anything anytime, anywhere, with the tap of a phone button. Still, certain rhythms of mobile purchasing have emerged, making 7:00 (a.m. or p.m.) the witching hour of m-commerce.

As the mobile universe continues growing at a breakneck pace, people are using mobile devices for everything from e-commerce to banking to dating -- not to mention sexting and various other possibly ill-advised activities. Still, a surprising amount of the information we send and receive via smartphones and tablets goes out unencrypted. Now a new app can tell you exactly which data is vulnerable.

After passing Apple's iOS in number of mobile ad impressions last year, Google's Android is now the leading platform for mobile ad revenues as well, although just by a narrow margin, according to the new State of Mobile Advertising report from Opera Mediaworks. (It should be noted the report is based solely on data from the company's own mobile ad business.) Meanwhile, iOS still captures a disproportionate share of ad dollars relative to its volume of ad impressions.

Android achieves a milestone, finally surpassing iOS in overall mobile ad revenue in Q1, at least on Opera Mediawork's massive ad platform. Which is not to say Apple has fallen behind on the engagement and monetization front, however.

There are significant differences in the ways men and women use mobile apps, according to a new report from Liftoff, which tracks downloads and usage and compiles the data in its quarterly Mobile App Engagement Index.

Catalina and 4Info claim they have solid numbers to show how effective well-targeted mobile banner ads can be for moving the retail sales needle. We meet this news with mixed feelings.

As reflected by Google's recent wide-ranging revamp of its search algorithm in favor of mobile-friendly sites, more and more search traffic is coming from smartphones and tablets -- and this week the search giant confirmed that mobile is now bigger than desktop in some key markets.

Media planners are obsessed with mobile, and now they can use it to do their jobs, courtesy of media planning software maker Telmar, which has introduced a Keystone Cross Media app for Apple devices. The app allows users to access a range of media analytics on Apple devices -- including on the Apple Watch.

Sure, thousands of apps are already in the Apple Watch store, but don't expect this new marketplace to behave in the same way as the original App Store.

With search still playing a dominant role in content discovery and e-commerce, Google's announcement earlier this year that it was revising search algorithms to favor mobile-friendly sites caused some understandable concern (and probably anticipatory gloating) on the part of publishers and online retailers. Well, the mobile shakeup happened last week and some early results are in.