A report from Gartner says the number of mobile payment users worldwide will exceed 108.6 million in 2010, which is a 54.5% increase from last year. This represents 2.1% of all mobile phone users.

Asia/Pacific is the leading region for mobile payment, with 2.6% of all mobile users - 62.8 million people - making payments on their phones. The report also notes that the Short Message Service (SMS) is still the dominant mobile payment technology in developing and developed markets.

A new report from Pyramid Research has calculated that the total download volume of free and paid applications will increase from 5.7 billion in 2009 to 41.1 billion in 2014. However, the proportion of free apps is increasing. Including downloads from operator portals, the proportion of free downloads increased from around 30% in 2008 to 54% last year – and is expected to keep growing until 2014, when it'll stabilise at around 80%.

Customer experience company Satmetrix has released its 2010 European Net Promoter Industry Benchmarks for the banking, car insurance, ISP, mobile phone carrier, mobile phone handset, computer hardware and television/DVD industries across the UK, France and Germany.

In the UK, O2 was the leading mobile phone network with a 'Net Promoter Score' that was 21 percentage points above average.

The Apple iPhone won best customer experience on a mobile phone handset with a score that was 80 points ahead of last place and 49 points ahead of the industry average.

The UK is leading the way in mobile commerce, according to a new report from the Mobile Marketing Association. A new report from the MMA and its research partner Lightspeed Research reveals that 19% of UK consumers currently participate in mobile commerce, followed by 13% of Germans and 9% of French. Purchasing on mobile phones is led by 18 to 34-year-olds; 29% of UK consumers, 21% of German and 15% of French consumers were in this age group.

A quarter of all electricity meters in the Asia-Pacific region will be 'smart meters' by 2015, according to a new research report from analyst firm Berg Insight.

It says the number of smart electricity meters in Asia-Pacific will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 91% between 2009 and 2015 to reach 116.5 million at the end of the period.