Visa and Samsung will soon debut a mobile payments application that will let consumers make contactless payments at the point of sale during the London 2012 Olympic Games.

Google Wallet will be not available on Samsung Galaxy Nexus phones from Verizon, a development that impacts the service’s growth going forward if other carriers also find reasons to not offer Google Wallet.

Samsung overtook Apple in smartphone shipments for the third quarter to become the world’s number one smartphone vendor, according to new data from Strategy Analytics.

Global tablet revenues will exceed $49 billion worldwide by 2015, with North America, Asia-Pacific and Western Europe leading the way as the most valuable regions for tablet vendors, according to Strategy Analytics.

As part of their sponsorships of the London 2012 Olympics, Samsung Electronics and Visa will let consumers make mobile payments using the Samsung Olympic and Paralympic Games mobile handset.

Worldwide mobile device sales to consumers exceeded 1.6 billion units in 2010, a 31.8 percent increase from 2009, with smartphones leading the way, according to Gartner Inc.

Dish Network LLC’s free application that lets its pay-television customers watch live and recorded TV on the go has been optimized for the higher-pixel Android tablet screens.

What are the key trends with mobile applications and what will Apple, Google, Microsoft, Research In Motion and others do that will affect brands in their marketing and commerce?

Mobile Entertainment Forum has launched a new mobile commerce initiative to help brands and retailers understand how to leverage mobile to drive customer acquisition, retention and conversion.

ABI Research found that 291.1 million mobile devices were shipped in the third quarter of 2009, which is evidence of how attached consumers are to mobility.