The number of active users who access Facebook every month via a mobile application has just passed 300 million, according to Benedict Evans from research company Enders Analysis.

He notes that Facebook announced 350 million mobile users in total a few months ago, from an overall total of 800 million users.

Berg Insight has calculated that the global mobile marketing and advertising market will grow in value from €2.6 billion last year to €17.2 billion in 2016, which is the equivalent of growing by 37% each year.

This will correspond to 15.2% of the total online advertising market in 2016 and 3.8% of the global advertising spend across all media.

US-based eCommerce business Shopatron predicts that the percentage of visits to its retail partners from mobile devices will grow to between 18% and 20% by the end of 2012.

It’s seen the number of mobile visits to Shopatron brand partners grow from 6.5% to 12.2% this year.

Internet privacy business Connect In Private has announced a new secure email and browsing application for BlackBerry smartphones.

The app offers BlackBerry users an email account and a web browser that accesses the internet from behind CIP’s own secure servers. When the user closes the application, no evidence of email or surfing remains on the smartphone other than any attachments they’ve chosen to save.

Mark Bridge writes:

“He knows if you’ve been bad or good...”

You don’t need to be Santa Claus to appreciate that RIM’s quarterly results have marked a disappointing end to a disappointing year. Yes, the company’s sold millions of BlackBerry phones - but PlayBook sales haven’t been good, its new OS is delayed and its market share appears to be falling. You could argue that 2012 is a make-or-break year for Research In Motion... or at least for its current management.