Dubbed TV+, the company’s first smart TV will be produced by TCL Multimedia Technology Holdings Ltd, with a 48-inch screen costing 4,567 yuan ($746). Sales launched with the company’s announcement. A more competitively priced model will launch in November at a price of 2,999 yuan. The TVs will offer over 200,000 selected high-definition videos, movies and drama series for free.

“With the cooperation with iQIYI and Baidu, we have become the first Chinese TV maker to have incorporated the Internet business model into the conventional TV business,” said Hao Yi, Chief Executive Officer of TCL Multimedia, in a press release. “The launch of TV+ has not just reinforced our leading product strengths, but has strengthened the application of information technologies in our operations. This has established a firm footing in consolidating the Group’s presence in the league of world-class TV brands and has significantly accelerated its incorporation of information technologies in the conventional TV business.”

The smart TVs will offer content from Baidu’s IQiyi.com, which it acquired last year. The sale, which was combined with Baidu’s June acquisition of PPStream Inc, the Internet video company, gave Baidu the largest online video platform in China.

With this latest release, Baidu will compete against Alibaba, the Chinese ecommerce engine that released a set-top box TV last July. The device uses Alibaba’s ecommerce and online payment systems such as Tmall, Taobao and Alipay, which allow users to shop and pay bills from a television. Alibaba’s TV also features an app store for video game purchases and music streaming services. Both Baidu and Alibaba will also compete against Samsung’s and Apple’s smart TVs.

IResearch, the consultancy company, has estimated that the Chinese online video market will be worth 16.2 billion yuan next year, Bloomberg noted.

“Our biggest challenge is getting over this first hurdle, where we get enough people together, enough money together; this can’t be done on the cheap,” says Randolph Hencken of The Seasteading Institute. “So while there’s lots of people who wish they could just go tomorrow, it’s going to take a critical mass of people and capital to actualize the place.”

The Institute’s “Floating City Project” is a pipe dream made practical. Its mission may appeal to those fed up feeling voiceless in today’s political process, as seasteading gives people a fresh start.

“What holds seasteaders together is a penchant for new opportunities,” Hencken says. “A lot of that has to do with freedom from [overreaching] governments, [and] a lot of that has to do with just the excitement of trying something new.”

Floating-city settlers may choose to migrate offshore for the chance to shape their political futures. The Institute’s seastead will strive for de facto autonomy.

“The major goal behind seasteading is to give humans more opportunity in governance,” Hencken says. “We have 7 billion people and only 190 countries, so there’s not a lot of choice. And there’s so many great ideas for how we could live together or run a government that are unavailable to be tested because there’s no space to test them.”

Retaining autonomy can prove tricky, even on the ocean. It makes more sense economically to locate a seastead close to shore rather than in international waters; but coastal proximity means dealing with local territorial jurisdiction.

“We’ve spent a good process evaluating coastal nations for ones that we think would be most susceptible to reaching a bilateral investment treaty with us,” Hencken says. “We also plan to build a city that is of symbiotic relationship to the neighbor.”

Some potential boons for coastal countries considering a seastead: new jobs and an influx of people and product at their ports. Plus, Hencken says, seasteading could provide solutions to oceanic pollution exacerbated by agricultural runoff.

“There’s a lot of great opportunities in aquaculture that would be associated with a floating city that could remediate the waters,” Hencken says. “So it would be commercial benefits, environmental benefits, and social benefits of allowing a seastead to be in their waters.”

To build a maritime metropolis, the Institute must navigate diplomatic waters and get plans in hand. Their current Indiegogo campaign aims to raise $20,000 to pay Dutch firm DeltaSync to transform vision into design; the Thiel foundation will match whatever the public puts in.

“Eventually our goal for the floating city project in the next year is to conclude this feasibility study where we say, this is what the design could be, this is what the design would cost, here’s a location that we’ve already begun negotiations with the government, and here’s hundreds of people that want to live there,” Hencken says. “And then we take that project and we go to investors and developers and we say this is a worthwhile investment.”

“The total cost of [the feasibility study for] our floating city project is going to be probably closer to a quarter million dollars,” he says.

Besides actual capital, The Institute looks to Indiegogo for another kind of validation.

“It’s one thing to say on a survey, ‘Yeah, I would pay $800 a square foot.’ It’s another thing to actually put down as little as $10 or up to thousands of dollars to show that you’re really committed,” Hencken says. “And that’s what we’re asking of the community right now, is to prove their interest in seasteading by putting a little skin in the game.”

From its Indiegogo campaign to online survey, the Institute’s seasteading movement has welcomed crowdsourced input. Importantly, what the masses donate to, there’s a chance they can participate in. Many a Trekkie will tell you space is the final frontier; but with seasteading becoming a viable alternative to land living in the not-so-distant future, pioneers could settle new frontiers a bit closer to home.

“There’s so much energy put towards trying to take humanity to space and it’s a great idea, and I hope it will be that we will get there. But I don’t think we’re going to get there in my lifetime, not to a point where the common person could afford to go there.” “Yet it’s something that’s very feasible to make it so the common people could go live on the ocean, and there’s a frontier right there waiting for us that’s unexplored, uninhabited.”

Unexplored and uninhabited for now.

“I do believe that this floating city project that we’re working on, with the Indiegogo campaign is going to catalyze the first bona fide seastead,” Hencken says. “I’d like to see us begin construction on it in the next few years; hopefully by 2020 we can see hundreds or thousands of people living there.”

RH: Tell me about GCON.

TS: GCON started out late 2011 when we had the idea of having a girls’ gaming convention in Saudi. The gaming conventions here are usually male-only, and we’re not allowed access, so we’re kind of left out from that community. And there’s a huge female gamer community here, [and] us being gamers we definitely wanted to be part of these events, so we decided to host our own event…We came up with the idea and went through with it and somehow, we actually pulled off the first girls-only gamers convention here.

RH: What challenges did you encounter, planning GCON?

TS: We had around 3,000 people attend the event last year. Actually, the numbers are a bit messy because there was a storm that day, and we kind of had to shut down for the first day. [Laughs] That was one of the challenges we faced. But it was around 3,000 female gamers. We had very little marketing budget, of course…but if I have to go back probably the main challenge was convincing the companies that there actually is a female gamer community. I remember sitting in meetings with Sony, Microsoft and just saying ‘Really, we’re here, we exist, this is a good idea. We invite you to participate, please take place in this event.’ That was probably the first obstacle we faced.

RH: If companies didn’t know you’re out there, do you feel the separation of female gamers is an awareness issue, or one more embedded in social and cultural pressures around girl gaming?

TS: I would say it’s a little bit of both. It’s not exactly very ladylike to be a gamer. For a lot of people it is like that, not for the new generation, but for older generations that’s one thing. Another thing is, it’s like you said…they don’t know that these gamers exist because they don’t see them at events, because the events are male-dominant. So they assume that they don’t exist.

RH: Was GCON a way for girl gamers to announce their presence?

TS: Yes, we basically wanted to say ‘We’re here, we exist, and we would like to be paid attention to.’ That was our main point from last year’s event. Everything in the event last year was free. It was just about saying you know, there is a society, it’s right there, and we’re just putting it on the map.

RH: Right off the bat, you were sponsored by some of the biggest names in tech: Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. How did you get their attention?

TS: Access was not easy at all. I used to work in telecom, so I have some contacts in that area. But literally, we had to go knocking on doors and emailing info emails, and emailing someone who knows someone who might know someone who can connect us to that person that we need to talk to; in order to actually get their access was a bit difficult. Especially that we were females and…wasn’t really taken seriously at the beginning. And having actually achieved the fact that we’d managed to get them, all three companies, under one roof was huge for us. Even though it was varying participations––some of them went really big, like Sony, they went all in; other companies were a bit more shy––still, the fact that they were all there under one roof was a huge achievement for us.

RH: Did you feel like acquiring those sponsors validated your idea?

TS: Yes actually. Following the first event, especially Sony, they’ve been a huge supporter for us…last year, with our help actually, they created the ladies gamers day, and that was the first time ever they’ve done that. And this year they went all in with us, collaborating and making us an official event for them. Instead of just having GCON and ladies gamers day, we’re now officially partners with Sony for the event. So that was a milestone for us. Other companies…well, some of them basically don’t have females on their agenda, yes? In terms of the demographic that they want to serve. But there has been some attention. We’ve definitely gotten the media attention and at least now that they actually acknowledge the community. And it’s not just the gamers community by the way, we’re heavily focused on the developers’ community as well.

RH: So GCON’s also an opportunity to network.

TS: That’s what we’re trying to do, but our objective is mainly to get them working in the industry professionally. We don’t just want them to have this as a hobby. We don’t just want them to be gamers who occasionally do fan art. We actually want them to take those talents and put them to good use and get them in the industry.

RH: Have you seen progress?

TS: So far, we’ve noticed that there’s an abundance of talent when it comes to art, and many of those are now being requested. We get requests from companies that, if we know any artists who’d be interested to work on projects…once they’ve actually started putting their art out there, through GCON, through other channels, they have been getting offers to actually start doing this professionally. That’s on the art side. On the development side the community is still pretty new. We’ve had the competition with Verso, Verso is a local business incubator for educational projects. We approached them since our theme for the development competition this year was education. So we approached them and they were very supportive actually. And they offered incubation for the winning projects to help them get the games going and publish them and so on.

RH: What drives you, personally, to pursue this passion?

TS: I wanted to have these opportunities presented for me, and now that I found myself in a place where I had the ability to make them available for myself and for others––I’m a developer as well. I began developing last year. I used to be a CS student and really didn’t know what to do with a CS degree, at some point. It’s like, do I work as a programmer or do I just get into marketing like everyone else does? So having these opportunities available for me would have been a great help at that time. So I feel that if I can make them available for me and other people as well, then, yeah, it’s worth it.

RH: What future developments do you hope to see in your region and sector?

TS: Right now, what we’re working towards is seeing the first game developed by a woman published locally. We haven’t had that yet, so that’s our mission. Whether it’s someone from our team or ourselves personally or one of the developers that we’ve been working with––we need a success story, and that’s what we’re focusing on for the next year. Hopefully after that we would be able to expand a little bit around the Middle East. We’re focused on Saudi Arabia for now as we’re based here, but we’re hoping to expand a little bit and maybe take the Saudi experience and customize it and share it around and, different countries where we see this pattern could actually work.

RH: In a far-off future, do you see GCON going co-ed?

TS: I don’t see that happening in Arabia. I mean we see them around, you’ve seen them in Dubai, you’ve seen them in Jordan, and the fact that the community––it’s not really about having an all-female event, it’s just more about having a more specialized event that focuses on women. That’s it, really. But I don’t see it happening in Arabia any time soon.

RH: Is that something coming from GCON, or do you see that as specific to the Saudi Arabian culture around tech and gaming?

TS: No, it’s very cultural, not just gaming. It’s a matter of, it’s what the general preference here. And honestly, it’s working for our advantage.

It’s a sign of the search giant’s push towards mobility as it struggles to transcend the shift from desktops to mobile devices. Baidu’s mobile app was used by only 9 percent of China’s mobile users as of last April, according to Bloomberg data.

Baidu is used for 82 percent of the searches in China, but competes against up and coming web players such as Alibaba and Tencent for Internet dominance. Launched last August, new competitor QiHoo quickly became the second largest search engine after Baidu, and is rumored to be considering acquiring Sogou, China’s third most popular search engine. Baidu needs to diversify its product line beyond simple search.

Baidu plans to purchase the majority stake from NetDragon Websoft, which owns about 57 percent of the company. It then hopes to purchase the remaining shares from third parties under the same terms.

The deal would give Baidu control over China’s most popular app stores as it strives for a greater mobile presence.

“Baidu is not as well established in the mobile Internet space as the desktop Internet space,” Andy Yeung, an analyst at Oppenheimer & Co Inc., told Bloomberg. “It’s a complementary strategy to enhance Baidu’s status in the mobile ecosystem.”

On an analyst call last year, Baidu CEO Robin Li h expressed plans to pursue acquisitions that increase the company’s valuation. This latest deal is in step with other recent major purchases of the company.  Two months ago, Baidu announced plans to acquire PPS Video for $370 million. Last November, the search engine purchased a majority stake in the video company iQiyi. The two deals made Baidu China’s largest video provider.

The size of the deal speaks to the value of China’s alternative app market. Its growth has been spurred considerably by Google’s absence in China, as Android has gain dominance in the country that has become the world’s second largest smartphone market.

Founded in 2007, 91 Wireless had been planned for an IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Obviously, $1.9 billion makes a great reason to pull it off the auction block.

Though some imagine Musk’s proposal as a higher-speed high-speed train, Hyperloop’s not just a faster horse. According to Musk, it’ll be a fifth mode of transportation––and the world’s fastest, shuttling travelers from Los Angeles to San Francisco in half an hour. “It’s a cross between a Concorde, a rail gun, and an air hockey table,” Musk said at the Wall Street Journal’s D11 Conference this past May.

The PayPal and SpaceX entrepreneur is reportedly open to working with others on the project (so long as they agree with his philosophies) and plans to put Hyperloop out into the world open source, meaning he’s not currently looking to patent the tech.

If you’re wondering at the physics and practicalities behind Musk’s idea, take heart as you are not alone. While bullet trains already use magnetic levitation to achieve high speeds, Musk’s Hyperloop would be a new and different animal.

Word on the street is his Hyperloop could combine maglev tech with solar power and electromagnetic energy. Musk’s included reference to an air hockey table has some experts musing he means for Hyperloop’s carriages to travel through pressurized tubes instead of ones devoid of air.

To explain how Hyperloop might operate, many have involved a simplified, yet familiar image: that of the bank drive-through with its pneumatic tubes for deposits. Except with Hyperloop, the cylinders getting sucked up will hold people––and they’ll be moving at breakneck speeds.

With Musk’s claims that Hyperloop will save consumers time and money comes anticipation for next steps, especially as he’s been quick to point out problems with California’s high-speed rail project. Together with suggestions that the system will be crash- and weather-proof, his comments have raised eyebrows and expectations for August.

Until then, we can only speculate with the rest.

“We need…beautiful design to change people’s perception toward e-bikes in Asian market,” writes Tetsuya Ohashi, public relations manager for Terra Motors in an email to Red Herring. “When it comes to electric vehicle in Asia, a lot of people imagine Chinese e-bike. It is cheap but low quality, power, bad design etc…then it didn’t change people’s lifestyle from gasoline vehicle to electric vehicle  in Asia so far.”

For Asian drivers, a lifestyle change may be in order. According to Ohashi, 17,000 people per year die of air pollution-related diseases in Vietnam. And besides environmental issues, gas-powered vehicles also fuel dependence on petrol––which can cost upwards of $6 a gallon in Japan.

Concentrating on Asian markets, Terra plans to sell 100,000 of their new A4000i models, unveiled last week, by the end of 2015. The e-scooter, equipped with smartphone capabilities, lets drivers dock their iPhones in the bike’s dash where it can track speed, battery life and other data via wireless connection. Priced at $4,500, the A4000i saves drivers cash on gas; and with battery life listed at 50,000 km (about 31,000 miles), Terra promises it’ll outlast alternatives on the market by a longshot.

“Our originality is battery. Its lifetime is about 5 times longer than others,” Ohashi writes. “So customers don’t need to care about battery exchanging so much.”

Multiple aspects of city life make e-bikes and scooters an appealing alternative to cars and other gas-guzzling vehicles in Asia. They’re perfect for short-range trips (the A4000i gets around 31 miles per charged battery); they cut down transit-produced air pollution; and they’re priced right for the middle class urbanite.

“Depends on how long and how often you ride in a year,” Ohashi writes. “But we could say the cost of e-scooter usage is approximately 1/10 cheaper [than] gasoline motorcycle.”

Today, eighty percent of global sales for gas-powered motorcycles come from Asia. While droves of drivers have already turned to EV to save money on fuel, there are those who became disenchanted with cheap models that broke down when e-bikes first flooded the market.

“Though Chinese electric scooters have competitiveness in the prices, the quality is poor and maintenance network is not organized,” Ohashi writes. “That`s why the sales of Chinese electric scooters shrunk rapidly in South-Asian market.”

With so many riding bikes, tuk-tuk trikes and scooters, Terra saw an opportunity to create and sell vehicles drivers could trust not to die on them. Their company promise to stay on-call for after-sales support also set them apart. And with specific consideration for Asia’s transportation challenges, Terra is now poised to become the name in two-and-three-wheel EV.

They’re also gunning for credibility, as Terra looks to establish a reputation equal to other giants in the energy market. “[We] aim for the same positions in the electric two-wheelers industry as Tesla Motors in the electric automotive industry,” Ohashi writes.

While the company claims it’s number one in providing electric scooters in Japan, it’s also taking steps to ensure its preeminence in Southeast Asian markets.

Currently, 3.5 million gas-powered trikes and motorcycles crowd roads in the Philippines. To trim that number, the Asian Development Bank loaned the government $300 million to mobilize 100,000 e-trikes by 2016. And while the jury’s still out whether Terra’s got the job, the company’s presence in the Philippines and their futuristic tuk-tuk design can’t hurt.

“Bidding will be concluded after two month. There are ten candidate, and three will be chosen for the project,” writes Ohashi. “We are optimistic about the bidding, as we are the only manufacturer of electric vehicle within candidates.”

Years ago, firms jumped the gun in making electric transport cheap. What EV used to lack in after-sales service (including access to parts and support), Terra will provide, ensuring e-bikes and trikes get talked about for the right reasons. Now, Terra vehicles hope to give EV a good name and may end up paving the way for future electric transit in Asia.

Amid reports of 10 percent employee layoffs and financial losses, Australian online retailer THE ICONIC has received $26 million in funding.

The fashion site, a venture by German-born incubator Rocket Internet, lined its pockets with capital from Verlinvest and previous-round investors Summit Partners and Kinnevik earlier this week. With $46 million already in hand, reports are calling Iconic’s new funding total Australia’s largest investment in an e-commerce site, ever.

ICONIC competes for consumers who prioritize convenience. Their clothes aren’t cheap but delivery is; when shoppers spend $50 AUD, shipping’s free. Plus, depending where you live, your order could land on your doorstep in three or four hours.

Yet its rise to prominence from founding in 2011 has yet to translate into profits. And emerging reports that the company’s deep in the red aren’t encouraging for a financially viable future. Site co-founder Adam Jacobs, however, insists that its losses in the millions are typical of a startup experiencing growing pains.

Rocket Internet, run by the Samwer brothers, is famous for both its successful ventures and infamously aggressive business tactics. Company correspondences from 2011 got brother Oliver in trouble when it was leaked he used the term “Blitzkrieg” in an e-mail in reference to sales strategy.

In 2012, ICONIC experienced tremendous growth (30 percent month-on-month) as it showed shoppers an alternative to traditional clothing stores existed in an emergent online retail space. Jacobs claims the site receives 4 million visits a month and has acceded the number one spot in Australia’s fashion e-commerce industry. ICONIC rep LJ Loch had this to say in an e-mail on the subject of funding:

“Key points from our end are that this is the conclusion of a round of funding that has been underway for some time; that the funding is a massive vote of confidence on THE ICONIC’s business strategy (which has seen an aggressive and highly successful market entry phase and which now involves a transition to a focus on profitability); and to reinforce the fact that typically ecommerce start ups take several years to reach profitability (and that we’re looking to accelerate that process).”

Time will tell if sinking more money into ICONIC will create a market champion or a company that could have been a contender.

The Series B round was led by GSV Capital Corp. (GSVC), Learn Capital, Laureate Education Inc. and International Finance Corp., the investment arm of the World Bank, with participation from Yuri Milner, . the Russian investor who manages DST Global.

“Demand for education in developing countries is growing rapidly due to population growth and the rising share of students seeking university education,” said Elena Sterlin, IFC Senior Manager for Health, Education and Services. “Coursera’s innovative model is a breakthrough in delivering low-cost university and continuing education to students through online courses.”

Coursera hosts free online classes taught by professors. Universities partner with the service to license the courses with their own students in exchange for a fee, saving valuable classroom time for discussion rather than a rote lecture. The company began offering the classes as a supplement to higher education, but then achieved ACE approval to offer accredited education. Antioch University, for example, offers credit for a Coursera web class taught by University of Pennsylvania faculty.

“We created Coursera in response to real and pressing demands for quality, accessible education around the world, and today we are proud to be part of a growing movement that is making a tangible impact on this global challenge,” said Andrew Ng, Co-Founder of Coursera.

The investment brings Coursera’s total funding to $65 million, an impressive sum considering the company is barely a year old. The brainchild of two computer science professors, Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller, the company collaborates with 83 educational institutions on four continents to offer about 400 college level courses for free online. The company has an enrollment of more than 4 million students.

Coursera will use the funding to double its staff to 100 over the next several months, as well as expand its mobile apps and Signature Track offerings, which charges students a fee to provide certification of the education. It also plans to invest in international expansion and multi-lingual platforms.

Education investments have been a rising trend, and this investment is the latest example. Venture investments in education grew 41 percent in 2012 to $632.3 million, the highest since the Dot.com peak in 2000, according to the National Venture Capital Association.

The company competes against Udacity, which also launched out of Sanford. Udacity has so far raised $15 million in October from investors including Andreessen Horowitz and Charles River Ventures.

“Coursera is on the forefront of transforming the $4.5 trillion dollar learning industry,” said Michael Moe, Chairman and CEO of GSV Capital. “In the global marketplace, knowledge is the currency that provides people the opportunity to participate in the future. Coursera is democratizing access to the best universities and professors in the world.”

Now the company has raised a Series C $22 million round led by Menlo Ventures and Iris Capital, with participation from FSN PME and all existing investors, including Idinvest Partners, OMNES Capital and Galileo Partners. The new funding will fuel global marketing efforts as well to spur research and development.

Scality’s RING Organic Solution provides petabyte-scale storage that distributes data across multiple references to eliminate the risk of failure or the need to go offline. One of the company’s first customers, Telenet, signed in July of 2010, has multiplied its data center capacity more than 10 times yet has had to shut down a data center in order to update its systems. “Every hard drive will fail at some point, but we move the data around based on drive functionality so we create a system that is extremely autonomous,” Jerome Lecat, CEO of Scality, told Red Herring.

Selling technology since 2010, the company four of the top 10 cable operators in the U.S. and leading telecom companies in France, Italy, Germany, and the UK as clients. Adoption is steamrolling at 500 percent year over year growth.

“Our investors are a perfect match for the DNA of the company:  They share our vision for the future of data storage and they understand the global market place,”  Lecat said in a statement.  “I have managed several start-ups, but this is the first time I have seen a 5x sales growth on an annual basis.  A disruption is happening in the market and we are driving it.  This is very exciting.  We are going to continue growing and are recruiting to sustain this growth including increasing our investment in R&D.”

Facing a $100 billion storage market, Scality meets a price point unequaled in the industry with an attractive scalable model.

This latest round brings Scality’s total funding to $35 million. It has offices in San Francisco, Paris, New York, Washington DC, and Tokyo.

“The growth opportunity in the software storage market is very exciting for us,” said Doug Carlisle, managing director, Menlo Ventures.  “The intersection of Mobile, Social, Big Data and Cloud Infrastructure is creating a disruption in technology innovation.  Scality is leading the disruption in software defined storage technology.  Since its introduction in 2010, Scality’s RING software storage product has seen rapid adoption by companies eager to try a new storage approach.  We look forward to watching Scality continue to innovate in data storage solutions for the web scale infrastructure markets.”

Scality was a 2012 Red Herring Top 100 North America winner in 2012.

“Mobile is coming into its own as a powerhouse advertising medium,” says Anna Bager, Vice President and General Manager, Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence, U.S. IAB. “Today’s advertising is happening in a world where ad campaigns can be planned and bought across global networks on multiple media, but the massive and continuing acceleration of mobile’s international impact provides new and exciting frontiers for content and communication.”

More specifically, the numbers indicate mobile search grew 88.8 percent, mobile display ads grew 87.3 percent, and mobile message ads jumped 40.2 percent.

When it came to geography, Asia Pacific and North America were nearly neck and neck in mobile ad spend, with Asia Pacific earning $3.558 billion and North America at $3.525 billion. In terms of international revenue breakdown, IAB reported:

• Asia-Pacific: 40.2% ($3.558 billion)

• North America: 39.8% ($3.525 billion)

• Western Europe: 16.9% ($1.499 billion)

• Central Europe: 1.3% ($112 million)

• Middle East & Africa: 1.2% ($109 million)

• Latin America: 0.6% ($50 million)

“This study is extremely relevant to advertisers as it assists companies to make investment decisions and accurately access market opportunities as we experience a monumental shift across communication platforms,” explained Kimon Zorbas, CEO of IAB Europe. “In Europe we are still experiencing significant economic turmoil and unemployment. Despite this reality, our sector is a positive beacon for recovery and growth. The message to European policy makers is they should take into careful consideration the promising opportunities our sector offers and focus on removing barriers to growth.”

Each region showed considerable growth. North America grew the fastest at an 111 percent increase in 2012 over 2011, while Latin America grew 71 percent, Central Europe 69 percent, Middle-East and Africa 68 percent, and Asia-Pacific 60 percent.

“From a creative and communication standpoint, mobile advertising is hyper-personal. But more so than other media, from a business perspective, it is global,” said Daniel Knapp, Director Advertising Research at IHS, and author of the research. “Mobile advertising is being planned, bought and sold across national borders and regions. This makes a global market sizing initiative ever more urgent.”

Mobile ad spending rides a growth wave fueled by wide smartphone use, increased 3G and 4G penetration, and more intelligently targeted ad technology.

“We have seen a shift from a very fragmented landscape to one that is becoming more networked,“ Knapp explained. “Technological innovation has simplified buying mobile inventory at scale, enabling advertisers to better reach larger audiences across multiple publishers and advertising networks.”