Ars Technica has picked up on some interesting research releated to text messaging and its applications for the ways that cellular networks can be managed:

Human communication patterns, particularly in the form of text messages, appear to follow a pattern that's a fusion of two mathematical models. In a paper published in PNAS on Monday, researchers analyzed a large set of text messages from service providers and found most users trade over 90 percent of their messages in bursts with only one other person, followed by an exponential drop into silence. The pattern may be due to interplay between the number and priority of tasks the two parties are trying to accomplish together, and the math behind them may help service providers manage their resources.

Scientists have lately been swimming in human communication data, from emails to texts and phone calls. As more and more people get cell phones and computers, all this information is begging to be analyzed for the benefit of mobile and Internet service providers, not to mention for its value as a wider indicator of human behavior.

To see if they could identify a communication pattern, a group of researchers culled data on text messages from three different mobile service companies over the course of a month. Specifically, they were interested in the length of time between messages, and wanted to know if there is a typical pace.

When they looked at the data, they noticed that 50 percent of users send 90 percent of their text messages to the same person. Since this covered a large chunk of all the text message business, they used this subset to see how time between messages was distributed.

Read more at Ars Technica.

Mobile Marketer has put together an excellent list of tips for brands that are planning out their holidy mobile campaigns:

Brand advertisers will be increasingly focused on running mobile ads to engage and communicate with holiday shoppers this year. What are some mobile advertising minefields to avoid?

With about 80 million consumers accessing the mobile Web regularly, the opportunity is definitely there. However, a proper holiday-tailored approach is needed.

“One common mistake to avoid in mobile advertising is not leveraging the personal nature of the mobile medium,” said Paran Johar, chief marketing officer of Jumptap, New York. “Mobile advertising, though a subset of PC Internet advertising, has less clutter and thus has a much greater chance of connecting with your audience and providing a value exchange for their time.”

Want to learn about the mistakes not to make? Head over to Mobile Marketer.

Android is officially the most popular mobile operating system...for new purchases:

Nielsen is adding its voice to the chorus  of research firms confirming the ascension of Android. Nielsen said among recent acquirers of smartphones in the last six months through August, Android was the top platform in the U.S. with 32 percent of new purchases, followed by the iPhone and Research In Motion’s Blackberry platform, tied at about 25 percent.
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The recent purchase numbers from August put Android’s momentum into better context. We can see that even with the boost from the iPhone 4, Apple smartphones are still getting outsold by a flock of Android devices. RIM’s slide is even more pronounced in these numbers as well, plummeting from 35 percent to 25 percent from June to August.

Read more at GigaOM.