Research In Motion has published its second quarter results for the three months ended 28th August 28 2010. It says revenue grew 31% year-on-year to $4.62 billion, its subscriber account base grew by approximately 56% to over 50 million (although it had hoped for more) and BlackBerry smartphone shipments grew more than 45% over the same quarter last year to 12.1 million.

The latest forecast from Informa Telecoms & Media suggests that Android will overtake Symbian as the world's most popular smartphone operating system in around four years – with sales of new Android devices outnumbering Symbian smartphones in 2012.

Yesterday, technology news website TechCrunch reported rumours that Facebook was 'building' a mobile phone by creating the software and working with a third party for the hardware. It noted that Facebook wanted to integrate itself into the contacts list and other core functions. A possible partnership with INQ was suggested, which would follow in the footsteps of the INQ1 handset.

Microsoft's advertising business has launched two new products today: a Mobile Advertising software development kit (SDK) for Windows Phone 7 and Microsoft Advertising Exchange for Mobile, which it's describing as "the industry’s first real-time, bidded ad exchange in mobile".

The mobile phone market in Western Europe grew just 1.5% year-on-year to 43.3 million units in the second quarter of 2010, with smartphone growth offsetting a fall in the sale of traditional handsets. International Data Corporation's Mobile Phone Tracker says smartphone shipments were up 60% on Q2 2009 to 14.6 million units, while traditional phone sales fell 14% to 28.7 million units. That means 34% of all devices shipped were smartphones, up from 28% in the previous quarter.