global

Today the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) announced new members of its global board of directors and officers. If you are unfamiliar with the MMA, it is an organization that is made up of agencies, advertisers, hand-held device manufacturers, carriers and operators, retailers, software providers and service providers, and other companies focused on the marketing with mobile devices.

Nearly 16 million people in the U.K. visited a newspaper web site in March, representing a 43-percent reach of the country's online population, according to comScore.

In the fourth quarter of 2008, global sales of smartphones reached 38.1 million units, an increase of 3.7 percent over the fourth quarter of 2007, according to Gartner. Worldwide sales of smartphone for 2008 reached 139.3 million, up 13.9 percent compared to 2007.

All of the Microsoft haters out there will love this one. When I got up this morning and went to my car to go to the office, I plugged my Zune in to get some tunes on for the drive, and to my dismay, I could not get a single thing to come up on the screen (much less out of the speakers) except the Zune logo. In fact, the device is currently sitting on my desk with the same problem.

Last week Google revealed the fastest growing search terms for the United States, which we looked at here. Now Google has released their year-end Zeitgeist, looking at a number of categories in (for the first time) over 30 different countries.

eBay has announced it will institute a global ban on the sale of all types of ivory that will go into effect January 1, 2009.The move comes after an investigative report from the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) that found more than 70 percent of all endangered species products listed for sale on the Internet occur in the United States.

Global sales of mobile phones hit close to 305 million units in the second quarter of 2008, an 11.8 percent increase over the second quarter of 2007, according to Gartner.Sales of mobile phones in the saturated markets of Western Europe and North America had a slight rebound after a shaky start. Western Europe reached close to 42 million units and North America exceeded 44 million units in the second quarter of 2008.

Global PC shipments hit 71.9 million in the second quarter of 2008, a 16 percent increase over the same time period in 2007, according to Gartner.PC shipments in the United States reached 16.5 million in the second quarter, a 4.2 percent increase from 2007. PC shipments rose during the quarter, despite the sliding economy. This was due to vendors cutting prices on PCs due to economic conditions.