Marketers and mobile service providers made major announcements in front of the 50,000 people attending Mobile World Congress that will affect mobile marketing this year. Here are some of them.

Mobile transaction network mBlox sender-pays data trial
Mobile transaction network mBlox has introduced what it claims is the world's first mobile cross-carrier sender-pays data trial.

The trial lets content and service providers bundle the associated data costs for the purchase of mobile content on behalf of the consumer. Consumers will be able to buy data-rich content with the data cost included at the point of purchase.

Taking place in Britain, the trial involves most British carriers covering three-fourths of all mobile consumers in that market. It has launched with four content providers comprising the film, music and games, marketing and education sectors.

For example, Fox Mobile Distribution is launching trials offering customers zero-rated games and music services; Shorts TV is delivering mobile video on demand; Incentivated is offering a mobile video drama called "Thmbnls"for the government's Department of Children, Schools and Families; and local authority Creative North is funding an educational application.

Mojiva, Billing Revolution partner on single-click buys from mobile ads
Mobile advertising platform provider Mojiva has incorporated single-click ability to advertisements running on its ad network.

The new partnership with mobile payments and billing services firm Billing Revolution will let consumers and merchants immediately buy what they see in a mobile ad. The goal is also to cut out steps in the checkout process.

Mojiva's commerce-enabled ads will let consumers clicking on the advertiser's ad buy the product even if that company does not have a mobile commerce site.

Using New York-based Mojiva's self-service dashboard, advertisers can create a mobile landing page for their product or service.

Billing Revolution's technology will let them create a custom checkout page linked to the mobile ad. Buyers need enter their billing information only once, enabling single-click credit card transactions from any Web-enabled mobile phone. No user name or PIN code is required.

The partnership will also let publishers receive a cut of transactions from such commerce-enabled ads on their mobile sites, in addition to monitoring the performance of campaigns that resemble pay-per-click models.

Accenture debuts global mobility business
Management consultancy Accenture has created a global mobility business practice targeting wireless carriers and mobile firms.

Called Accenture Mobility Operated Services, the new business will offer a mobile services store that covers the design delivery and management of vertical mobility applications using Accenture's software plarform.

The ready-to-deploy mobile apps comprise money management, voucher and ticketing, and mobile data collection, among other business- and consumer-focused services. The apps will rely on Accenture's Service Delivery Platform.

Accenture Mobility Operated Services has already launched in Italy, creating a PosteMobile service for the Italian post office to sell mobile phone services. It will expand to other parts of Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Americas this year.

The new service will initially target the communications, financial services, resources, automotive, public service and retail sectors. Pricing will be based on transactions or subscriptions, with costs depending on the clients' business volume, such as the number of subscribers, devices or transactions.

PacketVideo app to enable live TV on iPhone
PacketVideo has launched its mobile video application for the Apple iPhone, allowing the delivery of carrier-branded television and video services to the phone.

The application will be sold through the carrier channel. Carriers will offer the new app under their own brand name through the Apple App Store.

This is the first time carrier-branded TV and video services will be viewed on the iPhone, according to PacketVideo, San Diego. A major carrier is expected to launch this application within the next six to eight weeks.

PacketVideo's first commercial app for the iPhone is supported by its Core software platform that was shipped in more than 320 million mobile phones worldwide.

Jinny Software debuts mobile marketing and advertising service
Jinny Software, a supplier of messaging and media platforms to wireless carriers, debited a fully managed mobile marketing and advertising service.

The new service is designed to offer advertising from ad agencies to the carrier as a managed service and also to share revenue with the carrier. This revenue-share model cuts the need for carriers to spend upfront capital on building and implementing their own service, per Jinny, Dublin, Ireland.

Jinny's new service will manage all aspects of a mobile ad campaign, from insertion in application-to-person messages to the delivery of online advertising and inbound/outbound campaigns.

Also, Jinny will manage contractual relationships with the ad agencies and brands, invoicing them for campaigns running across the platform.

Adobe Reader Mobile SDK now available for mobile PDF support
Adobe Systems announced the availability of the new Adobe Reader Mobile SDK, a software development kit meant to enable download, management and display of PDF content and ebooks on mobile phones and handheld devices.

The new software engine will support reflowable PDF technology and the Epub file format, which is the XML-based ebook standard for the publishing industry.

Adobe also introduced the Adobe Flash Lite 3.1 Distributable Player, an over-the-air mobile runtime. The player lets developers and content providers create Flash-based apps that target the latest version of the runtime, directly distributing such widgets to millions of open operating system devices.

Adobe Flash Lite 3.1 Distributable Player initially supports the Nokia S60 and Windows Mobile devices. It will let aggregators such as GetJar, Thumbplay and Zed as well as content creators deliver apps to mobile consumers through their Web catalogs.

Meanwhile, Palm has joined the Open Screen Project, an industry effort to allow standalone apps and full Web browsing across television sets, desktop computers and mobile devices using the Adobe Flash Platform. The Adobe Flash Player for smartphones will now be available on the new Palm webOS platform.

Verizon extends mobile content portability relationship with FusionOne
Verizon is working with FusionOne to create and offer consumer and business services multi-service sync technology.

Subscribers will later this year be able to sync contacts and address books across Verizon services such as mobile, telecom and FiOS cable. Based on the same technology architecture, the mobile content portability deal comes on the heels of the deployment of FusionOne's Backup Assistant.

"A consumer can update their information in any one place and this ripples across any multiple services they subscribe to,"said Mohan Sadashiva, senior vice president of marketing for FusionOne, San Jose, CA.

"[Verizon] wants to enable the subscriber to do whatever the subscriber wants to across Facebook, across Picasa,"he said. "It's very hard for subscribers to download multiple services. They will allow you to upload it once and then share and publish in multiple places.

Indeed, Basking Ridge, NJ-based Verizon's goal is to make syncing easier between mobile, landline and broadband connections, thus eliminating the need to enter and re-enter the same names, phone numbers and email addresses. Verizon subscribers essentially need worry about only one set of contacts.