USA TODAY is to print short code numbers that readers can text message to access real-time news, whilst the Financial Times will run an in-store poster campaign across 1,250 retail outlets offering cash vouchers in reply to a text response.

Matt Jones, director of mobile strategy at Gannett Digital, a unit of USA TODAY’s parent company, confirms:

a lot of marketers are thinking of how they can best leverage mobile phone users

The US broadsheet publisher will combine a mobile search platform with standard-rate text messaging in an effort to provide up-to-the-minute news on the go – including sports scores, weather forecasts and stock quotes.

Mobile is basically a downstream distribution point for all of the national and local content we produce… We want to make our news and information available to consumers in the format that they choose.

The Center for Media Research today reports on a new study on mobile content revenue, the Telephia Premium SMS Report. In Q1 2007, premium SMS brought in $273M, or 32% of all mobile content revenues.

For this study, premium SMS included everything from voting for American Idol to “off-portal storefront purchases,” which included ringtones, screensavers and the like. Naturally, off-portal storefront purchases generated the highest amount of revenue: $214.9M or 79% of premium SMS revenue.

Other large revenue categories included voting and sweepstakes entries, with $35.4M (13%), chat/community, with $5.7M (2%), and “other,” with $17.4M (6%).

Reuters is reporting a redesign for Microsoft’s MSN for mobile phones.

Microsoft’s new MSN Mobile portal — http://mobile.msn.com — offers news, sports information, entertainment features and access to services like e-mail, search, maps and instant messaging all on one page.

When a user accesses the portal, the MSN platform detects the handset and optimizes the site for that device, adjusting things like font sizes for different screens.

Having recently switched to the Blackberry 8830, I’ve found new enjoyment in using my cell phone for mobile apps. While on Oahu, I’ve used it to look up restaurants, find driving directions and even used Google Maps to locate secret filming locations for Lost. There’s no doubt that with the upcoming iPhone about to ignite the mobile browser, 2007 continues to shape-up as the year mobile content finally makes its way towards mainstream.

In his opening keynote at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference on Monday (June 11), Steve Jobs teased open the Web 2.0 door to mobile developers (with the safety chain well and truly left on!), revealing a slim ray of light from Apple’s impending smartphone sunrise on June 29, by announcing that mobile developers will be part of the success story.

Apple has been criticized by the mobile development community for refusing third-party access to the iPhone – unlike Windows Mobile from Microsoft, which provides application programming interfaces to developers – arguing that the best strategy to maintain security and high performance is to keep tight control over the iPhone’s OS.

But moments later Jobs halts the door from swinging wide open – confirming Apple’s strategy for third-party software on the smartphone will be based mainly on Apple’s Safari Web Browser and not so much on its native operating system.

Nielsen, the king of audience measurement and the company Search Marketers have come to be autonomous with Search Share Rankings, have split their initiative Nielsen Wireless away from its sister service Nielsen Games in an effort to push forward the tracking of mobile phone users beyond media measurement – in particular to investigate the usage of mobile content services.

Mobile Vector, the venture’s first product, will segment existing TV metering by wireless carrier using ‘in the home’ media behaviour. The objective will be to give brands and agencies insights that were previously unavailable. (Full report expected July 2007)

Interesting information is already emerging – including viewing preferences:

• more than half of primary users of video-enabled mobile phones lived in households with total incomes of $75,000 or above

Mobile technology bridge, Bango, claims that it can provide a unique insight into mobile web usage – measuring the number of user visits to mobile websites from each country.

Latest statistics show a three-fold increase in usage across the US during the last 12 months. Interestingly Bango have indicated that this is a direct result of users hunting down new content and services using mobile search platforms. By April 2007 over 20% of US mobile users were accessing the web – rapidly catching the UK at 27% and overtaking South Africa and India.

Anil Malhotra, SVP of Marketing at Bango, confirms that flat-rate data charges will also play a major role in the growth of mobile web usage.