I was tied up for much of the day and didn't get to cover several developments that happened yesterday. The big one was Nokia's $70 million investment in Obopay. This could turn out to be huge for Nokia. Mobile banking and payments are already a big phenomenon in selected developing nations and will become a global standard. The question is when. In the West, it's likely to happen much faster in Europe than in the US.

Yahoo! launched its Inquisitor iPhone search app on a global basis. The results come from Yahoo!'s search index but there's no Yahoo! branding associated with Inquisitor. In the wake of the big announcement of the new, more integrated Yahoo! Mobile, the interesting question is why? Is it a laboratory for PC/mobile search? Is Yahoo! figuring that a new search brand might attract those who don't equate Yahoo! and search?

Google has brought Voice Search to BlackBerry. Google Voice Search has been available for the iPhone and G1. Yahoo! oneSearch for BlackBerry (with Vlingo-powered voice recognition) has been available since last year. Wall Street has become more bearish it appears on RIM (maker of the BlackBerry). The immediate reason is hypothetical competition from the forthcoming Palm Pre as well as a more competitive smartphone environment in general. Indeed, AdMob recorded a decline in mobile Web traffic from BlackBerry devices, although the Storm is apparently generating lots of usage.

There's also a rumor that RIM will introduce a mobile TV service for BlackBerry at CTIA early next month. 

Mobile marketing firm SmartReply bought mSnap to create "the largest SMS ad network in the US." Currently 4Info is the dominant text-based marketing firm. Scale matters in mobile and so the firms that can create the greatest reach are going to win over those that cannot. 

Charmin, the toilet paper brand from Proctor & Gamble, announced a sponsorship of mobile toilet-finder application SitorSquat. P&G has also done other unconventional advertising for Charmin, including setting up toilets in Times Square in New York. These efforts reflect some of the new directions that companies will need to pursue to get attention as conventional advertising becomes less effective.