We're gearing up to write a lot of research about mobile marketing (and mobile content and mobile commerce) in the next few months -- and we'd love your help in benchmarking the state of the industry. No matter how much or how little mobile your organization has used, we'd very much like you to spend a few minutes answering our mobile maturity survey. It'll only take you 10 or 15 minutes at the most, the results will be kept 100% anonymous, and in return for your time, we'll send you a free summary of the survey results. Please spend a few minutes helping us collect the best possible data on this topic!

UPDATE: My apologies, but since the survey doesn't seem to be working properly at the moment, I've taken down the link. Hopefully we'll get it back up and working again soon.

Nine months ago, I wondered if there was a life beyond the iPhone and beyond mobile applications. Recent data gathered by Forrester makes me think that such a life exists!

Bear with me one second. I am not denying the fact that iPhone owners are the heaviest users of mobile services. I am just saying that there are plenty of opportunities in the mobile space on other smartphone platforms and with selected audiences. Mobile is not just about applications or mobile Web sites. Even good old SMS can be powerful depending on the objectives you have set and the audiences you want to interact with.

What’s certain is that iPhone owners can only be a subset of your customer base. Only 2% of European mobile users report having an iPhone as their main mobile phone. Does that mean that there are no opportunities to target more mainstream audiences? Not at all.

A much larger near- and medium-term opportunity exists within other groups — particularly among young consumers, business users, and consumers with flat-rate data plans — as well as, increasingly, with new, competing smartphone platforms. In fact, if you’re not targeting them, you’re neglecting the majority of your customer base — including many consumers who are mobile-savvy but don’t have an iPhone.

Let’s make this even clearer. 96% of European 16- to 24-year-olds do not own an iPhone. Should you avoid engaging with youth via mobile because of that? I don’t think so.

Orange announced today its new industrial project, "conquests 2015." After NExT from Didier Lombard, the recently appointed CEO is now communicating Orange's five-year action plan.

One of the main objectives of the plan is the "conquest of employee pride" and the recruitment of 10,000 additional employees (including the 3,500 already announced for 2010) between 2010 and 2012. Following the unprecedented social crisis that took place in France, the company had no other choice than to offer a new management vision and to make sure employees can participate in the future of the company, involving them in such a way that they feel part of a long-term project.

Beyond this initial objective, a couple of other interesting conquests have been announced:

I spoke last week at The Big Money’s Untethered 2010 conference in NYC. I couldn’t stay for the whole event, but I really enjoyed seeing Phil McKinney, CTO of the Personal Systems Group at HP, interviewed by James Ledbetter. He wowed the audience with a little show-and-tell: a flexible screen display printed on a mylar scroll that’s bi-stable (meaning that, like an E Ink screen, it can use very little power to display text) but can also display video at 60 hertz.

[Photo courtesy of ZDNet UK (not from Untethered, but it’s the same demo)]

According to McKinney, we’re about 24 to 36 months away from seeing this display make it into products on the market. Imagine walls papered with the stuff, furniture covered with it. Your “device” would be your portable connectivity, which would trigger your data to appear on one of these screens in your home, office, or public space as you approach. I’m envisioning something that looks like the world in “Splinter Cell,” which my gamer husband has been playing on our Xbox 360: