Please click here to download Mobile Marketer's Mobile Outlook 2010

The outlook for mobile marketing, media and commerce in 2010 is just like this edition?s cover: peachy.

As Mobile Marketer editors and reporters Giselle Tsirulnik, Dan Butcher and Chris Harnick explain in their succinct analysis of mobile marketing, brands and agencies are now completely alert to the potential of the medium to influence branding and customer acquisition and retention.

Mobile Marketer?s Mobile Outlook 2010 is designed to supply brands, agencies, publishers, retailers and mobile marketing firms with the necessary intelligence to make smart decisions to include mobile into the multichannel marketing and retailing mix.

It is quite clear from recent market activity ? Google buying AdMob and Apple absorbing Quattro Wireless, Apple iPad and Google Nexus One launches, eBay?s record $500 million in mobile commerce last year ? that mobile is no longer considered a niche medium.

Buoyed by results of mobile campaigns initiated last year, many brands are expected to ramp up their spending from six figures to seven. Richard Ting, mobile chief at No. 1 interactive agency R/GA, projects that mobile budgets will grow this year between 100 percent and 150 percent.

On a tear ?
Of course, with growth comes upheaval and a change in status quo. So expect some mobile sectors such as ad networks to undergo more consolidation.

Wireless carriers will face even more pressure with the increased consumption of mobile Web. The jury is still out whether consumers will pay for mobile news content, while not hesitating to fork out 99 cents for a song or application.

Phones from all sorts of manufacturers, new and old, will dominate headlines. So will new mobile devices such as the Apple iPad and others of its ilk.

The big story this year will be the growing consumer acceptance of mobile commerce. Better phones, easily navigable mobile sites with transaction capabilities, more confidence in mobile payment security and hyperbolic press will simply boost the prospects for mobile shopping and buying.

Retailers and marketers will discover fresh uses of SMS, mobile sites, applications and mobile coupons to drive traffic in-store. Opted-in SMS databases will continue to build.

Overseas, mobile marketing is at various stages of development, as Draftfcb?s excellent international roundup shows. That chapter is a must-read.

? but tears as well
With all the hype and exuberance, expect some pinpricks.

Concerns over privacy and targeting will be further heightened. Carriers will need more pushing to accelerate the common short code provisioning process. Carrier networks will strain to bear data traffic that is growing almost in line with Moore?s Law.

Also, Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Nokia, Dell and other manufacturers and software companies will vie to promote their own walled-garden mobile devices. So standards for mobile content and commerce will rend apart.

And let?s not forget the maze of lawsuits that these same manufacturers are lobbing at each other, crying foul over copyright and patent laws. Expect more legal wrangling.

In other words, mobile is beginning to look just like a regular marketing medium.

We hope you enjoy this read, and are emboldened to take the next step in mobile marketing.

Many thanks to our editorial staff, Mobile Outlook 2010 columnists and ad sales director Jodie Solomon, as well as art director Rob DiGioia, who worked on this edition and, as usual, summed this effort best: ?It?s not Outlook ? it?s look out!?

Please click here to download Mobile Marketer's Mobile Outlook 2010