However, while consumers will have the capabilities this year, the research firm finds that mass-market adoption is still years away, and the category will be crowded with players, ranging from financial services firms, card networks, mobile operators, device makers, point-of-sale terminal vendors and start-ups.

Sure enough, in the past few weeks, we’ve seen reports of Google; Sprint; a coalition of carriers excluding Sprint, PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, American Express; and a host of start-ups that are all jumping into the space.

The report, authored by Thomas Husson, defines mobile payments broadly as any transaction that is initiated using a mobile phone–in the browser or by tapping the phone against a terminal to pay in the store.

Husson writes that while adoption may still be years off, what we will see in 2011 is large shipments of near-field communication devices from large handset makers that will make these tap-and-go transactions a reality.

The first NFC-compatible Android device is Samsung’s Nexus S (pictured here), which is now shipping. But Forrester estimates that manufacturers will ship between 40 million and 50 million NFC-enabled devices in 2011.

Still, the vast majority of purchases that are being made with mobile phones today are not physical goods, but rather digital content, such as applications and music.

But smartphones are routinely considered a threat by retailers, who fear that consumers are using their stores as showcases to decide what they want to buy, then using their devices to scan bar codes and conduct price comparisons in the store–and ultimately buying online for less.

Adoption of these features, however, is still fairly low. In the U.S., Forrester said, eight percent of survey respondents said they used their phone to compare store prices with online prices. About half of those people said they purchased an item on their phone that was not available while they were in the store.

Overall, the survey found that 12 percent of U.S. respondents said they had used their mobile phone to buy a product.

Forrester made a few recommendations for catapulting consumer adoption of mobile payments. It recommended making NFC-capable terminals more widely available, including in mass transit scenarios, and creating incentives for consumers to adopt the technologies by integrating loyalty awards and coupon redemption into the process.

The company–whose roots are in e-commerce and not mobile–aspires to merchandise and sell apps better than Google does on its own platform.

And, potentially as well as Apple, which up until now has been the shining star in mobile.

Beginning tonight, the Appstore will be accessible online at amazon.com/appstore. Android owners will also be able to download a version of the store to their handset. The store will support hundreds of mobile operators and hardware manufacturers.

Amazon has been recruiting developers since at least January to convince them to get on board with the venture. Initially, users will have access to a catalog of 3,800 applications.

While selling apps is not a particular stretch for the company since it already dabbles in a lot of digital content, like music and e-books, working with mobile developers is not exactly a home run since their time and attention is fragmented among so many competing stores and platforms.

However, the company’s efforts seem to be paying off.

At launch, apps will be available from dozens of developers, spanning big names like Gameloft, Handmark and Glu Mobile. (It’s also worth noting that its efforts have also not gone unnoticed by Apple, which is suing Amazon, claiming trademark infringement and unfair competition over the name.

To start, the store will be nowhere near the long tail of applications found on Android Market or Apple iTunes, which respectively have catalogs of roughly 150,000 and 350,000 applications. But Amazon is trying to make a big splash in terms of quality. The store launches today with an Angry Birds exclusive to its new hit game based on the movie Rio.

“The developer response has been really strong,” said Aaron Rubenson, category leader for Amazon Mobile Services. “We’ll be launching with a broad range of paid and free and the customers will find lots of best selling titles from Doodle Jump to Call of Duty to Zagat and Tweetcaster. The list goes on and it’s just day one. We are adding more every single day.”

One problem that Amazon is trying to solve is discoverability.

While there’s a huge number of apps in the market, customers have a hard time finding the ones they want to buy. Conversely, developers have a hard time monetizing.

Amazon will be doing four things to help with that:

• Amazon will offer one free app a day to help with promotion.
• Amazon will offer a feature called Test Drive, which will allow a customer to try an app out before they buy. The technology is using Amazon’s cloud services. Users will be able open and use the app from within their computer browser. The simulation will last for about 30 minutes at which point they’ll have to buy it.
• Lastly, Amazon will drive recommendations based on a user’s purchase history. If they are someone who purchases cook books and high-end utensils, Amazon may recommend a recipe app.
• Amazon is also enabling one-click purchasing for anyone with a credit card on file.

The retailer is also doing a few uncharacteristic things, including being the one to set the price of the app.

For instance, if the developer recommends the app be sold at $1, and Amazon agrees, they’ll make 70 percent, or 70 cents on each download. If Amazon decides to make it free for a day, the developer will make 20 percent off their original recommendation of $1, or 20 cents. The developer will always make whichever is greater.

Rubenson said the response has been positive. “As we’ve gotten closer to launch and have talked more tactically about our merchandising capabilities and programs, they [developers] are getting very excited about the potential.”

Amazon is clearly banking on Android’s success since it is unlikely to ever sell iPhone applications on Apple’s closed system. With more than 300,000 phones based on the operating system being activated everyday, and many more tablets coming, the company sees it as a very large opportunity.

Rubenson said Amazon works closely with Google in a number of ways, especially as a major reseller of its devices. It also maintains a site called Android 101, which teaches customers about the OS. “In that regard we are engaged on multiple fronts,” he said. “But one of the strengths of the OS is the openness. We’ve taken that and focused on making the best possible store for customers.”

So far, Amazon will mostly rely on driving traffic to their store through their own referrals. However, increasingly they expect to partner with carriers or handset makers. Rubenson said its first third-party partnership will be with Cellular South, which will make the Appstore available to its customers through preloads and other methods.

He declined to discuss revenue splits or the financial relationship with partners.

Rosenthal had focused on mobile business development in recent years, overseeing Facebook’s relationships with some 300 mobile operators around the world. She is not departing for a specific opportunity, though she said it was likely she’ll end up involved in another start-up.

Rosenthal had joined the company in February 2006, making her one of its earliest remaining employees. She’s the latest of many early Facebookers, including the three Facebook co-founders other than Mark Zuckerberg, to depart over the years.

“I’ve started to feel the pull of some new ideas,” said Rosenthal, adding that she felt Facebook had “unlocked real opportunities at the convergence of mobile and social” that she wants to explore.

By way of explanation for her own and other early-Facebooker departures, Rosenthal contended it’s just that Facebookers tend to be entrepreneurial, and recognize opportunities to extend the social Web in new directions outside of Facebook’s core mission. “It’s very alluring to try a specific idea in an industry you’re passionate about,” she said.

But for now, Rosenthal wants to take some time off. The only specific future plan she would share is to ditch her smartphone for a feature phone for a while in order to “extract myself a little from technology.”

Rosenthal has her MBA from Stanford and previously worked at General Atlantic Partners and Zazzle. She said her replacement has not yet been found, but that Facebook is hiring internationally to have biz dev folks overseeing carrier relationships on a local basis from offices in Europe, Asia and elsewhere.

Other significant recent Facebook departures have included ad sales head Mike Murphy, engineering director Aditya Agarwal and PR head Brandee Barker.

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

In a survey among mobile executives, the most likely category to break-out this year is mobile payments. In second is the closely related field of mobile commerce. (Mobile advertising and mobile coupons is third and fourth, respectively.)

What’s more, this group of insiders believes that the big winners within the category will be the financial guys: Visa and MasterCard, which garnered more than 30 percent of the votes.

After the large credit card companies, respondents voted for wireless operators, which are working together to build a mobile payments platform called Isis.

Further down the list is Google, PayPal and the handset makers. In sixth, execs placed the well-funded start-ups, such as Boku and Zong, which allow users to make purchases via their mobile phone bill, and Facebook ranked last with less than 5 percent of the votes.

The two companies noticeably missing were Apple, which has a healthy payments platform via iTunes, and Amazon, which also offers developers a mobile payments platform.

So far, the mobile payments industry in the U.S. mostly consists of buying-and-selling digital goods, such as music, or virtual goods in Facebook games. The industry has failed to break into physical goods because of the significant revenue splits demanded by all the parties involved. The cuts make it financially impossible to sell something that doesn’t have ridiculously high profit margins.

But that’s also expected to change, according to more than 30 percent of the respondents, who expect “selling of non-digital goods on mobile” to gain traction in 2011.

The survey was conducted by Chetan Sharma Consulting, which received responses from 225 executives. Thirty-three percent of participants were C-level executives, and 55 percent were from North America.

Another figure that points to mobile’s increasing influence on the retail industry was in response to the question: “Which enterprise segment will mobile impact the most?” The top answer–by far, with nearly half of the votes–was retail. Other answers included: Sales (less than 20 percent) and health (less than 20 percent).

Mopay Managing Director Kolja Reiss told eMoney that 2010 was an instrumental year for mobile payments as it became a major focus for wireless operators. Mopay, a mobile payments provider, recently expanded to the U.S. from Europe after opening an office in Palo Alto, Calif., this year. “I think what has changed is that all the [U.S.] carriers now have mobile payment specialists in house. A couple of years ago, they didn’t know how to treat it or how to maneuver their way around. They have dedicated people and there’s tons of initiatives that are based on those people.”

At the minimum, this year should see heated competition, with many players launching alternative products in the space. “We aren’t alone,” Reiss said, “which makes it even more interesting. There’s a race going on right now on who has the best product.”

Amdocs-owned OpenMarket, which has been handling payments for ringtones and other mobile content for years, is also forecasting that this year mobile devices will increasingly become an alternative to credit cards, especially for purchases under $25. Jay Emmet, general manager of OpenMarket: “Operators appetite for non-traditional services is increasing. They have competitive advantages, that a Google doesn’t have. They have a billing relationship with you.”

Evidently, clicking on a contentious query more than a few times invites a block that requires users to restart their browsers in order to regain access to the site. So Google.com.hk, the uncensored site to which Google (GOOG) has been redirecting Chinese searchers, is still available in China, but it’s usefulness has obviously been undermined. Oddly, Google’s Mainland China Service Availability page doesn’t seem to have noticed this yet.

Meanwhile, Tom.com stopped using Google to power its searches, and rumors are beginning to circulate that some of the country’s mobile operators are reconsidering plans to launch new phones running on Google’s Android OS.

Reached for comment, Google didn’t have much to offer: “It seems that certain sensitive queries are being blocked,” a spokesperson told me. “However, the Google.com.hk site is not currently being blocked.”

Yep.

• News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch tried to lower expectations that his Fox broadcast network would hire Conan O’Brien.
• Murdoch hinted that his book publishing unit is in line to get a new deal on e-books from Amazon, just as Macmillan has demanded (as will other publishers).

On the second point, here’s my on-the-fly transcription and paraphrasing of Murdoch’s comments about Amazon (AMZN), Apple (AAPL) and e-book pricing. It’s one of the most candid descriptions you’ll hear from a top executive about Big Media’s reluctance to embrace digital distribution at the expense of its existing system and revenue:

“We don’t like the Amazon model of $9.99….We think it really devalues books and hurts all the retailers of hardcover books. We’re not against electronic books; on the contrary, we like them very much” because they cost us less to distribute, “but we want some room to maneuver.” The Apple deal…“does allow some flexibility and higher prices” though e-books will still be lower than print versions. And now Amazon is willing to sit down with us again and renegotiate.

UPDATE: Here’s a more complete transcript from Seeking Alpha:

We don’t like the Amazon model of selling everything at $9.99. They don’t pay us that. They pay us the full wholesale price of $14 or whatever we charge. We think it really devalues books and it hurts all the retailers of the hard cover books. We are not against [inaudible] books. On the contrary we like them very much indeed. It is low cost to us and so on. But we want some room to maneuver in it. Amazon, sorry Apple in its agreement with us which has not been disclosed in detail does allow for a variety of slightly higher prices.

There will be prices very much less than the printed copies of books but still will not be fixed in a way that Amazon has been doing it. It appears that Amazon is now ready to sit down with us again and renegotiate pricing.

Again, it’s impossible to stress how scarring the music labels’ experience has been for Big Media. And they’re determined not to repeat the experience. Their takeaway, though, seems to be that they can stave off digital distribution by keeping prices high and inventory relatively scarce. Hard to believe consumers are going to go for that.

Earlier

A first glimpse at News Corp.’s fourth-quarter earnings (which, due to the company’s weird fiscal calendar, is technically the company’s Q2 for 2010): Pretty good. And much better than a year ago (thankfully). After factoring out one-time charges, the company posted earnings of 25 cents on revenue of $8.7 billion.

The Street was looking for earnings of 20 cents on revenue of $8.23 billion, and analysts were also hoping the company would boost its earnings forecast, due in part to a bump from the ginormous success of “Avatar.” No word on guidance in the earnings release, though.

I’ll pick through the release for other worthwhile nuggets for the next few minutes. And then the real show begins at 4:30 Eastern, when the company’s earnings call–easily the most entertaining one in its peer group due to the censor-free presence of CEO Rupert Murdoch–begins. We’ll be looking for commentary on his battle/negotiation with Google (GOOG), upcoming content deals with Apple and the iPad, his thoughts on paid content in general, a dash of political commentary or two, and an update on the turnaround effort at MySpace.

From the release: A pretty nice quarter at most of the conglomerate’s divisions, including the previously battered broadcast TV and newspaper groups. News Corp. says print revenue at The Wall Street Journal was up five percent and ads on the Journal’s digital network were up 17 percent.

MySpace and the company’s other digital properties, shuffled into the “other” category, don’t get much of a mention, but don’t seem to have done much, not surprisingly.

But News Corp does mention that digital media earnings were down $32 million compared with a year ago, “principally due to lower search and advertising revenue.” And the company lost $29 million on “digital media dispositions”–i.e., the fire sale/giveaways of properties like Rotten Tomatoes and Photobucket.

Here’s the breakdown by segment (click table to enlarge):

Liveblog

CFO Dave DeVoe: “Extremely pleased” with the quarter.

Movies: Revenue up due to decent DVD sales (no MGM problem here). Also high costs due to “Avatar,” but big profits from the movie will be coming in during the next couple quarters.

Broadcast TV: Local ads are improving; the telecom, fast food, finance categories are all improving.

Cable: Revenue is up 18 percent. Affiliate revenue is up 21 percent (more money for Fox News subs), and there was a “single-digit” boost in ad dollars.

Newspapers: Journal dollars are up, operating costs down. Ad revenue got better as the quarter progressed.

Books: Revenue up, expenses down.

“Other”/MySpace: Digital media revenue down, but cost-cutting helped trim losses.

News Corp. is boosting its dividend by 25 percent.

Guidance: The company’s operating income growth rate is expected to grow from single digits to the high teens. Better than anticipated: Film group, TV and cable. But revenue goals for digital media, including MySpace, will take longer than anticipated.

Murdoch sings the praises of content. [I will not argue with him, for now]. “Avatar” is awesome, he says, a “harbinger of fundamental change in the industry.” Also really good: “Alvin and the Chipmunks.” Fun to hear Rupe say “Alvin and the Chipmunks.”

WSJ is the No.1 paper in U.S. in terms of circulation, influence, quality. WSJ.com is a “digital model for newspapers around the world.”

Fox News Channel’s audience is both “loyal and lucrative.” Roger Ailes is doing an “admirable job” [translation: Bite me, Michael Wolff--the author of a recent Murdoch biography].

Last year, Murdoch says, News Corp.’s pay-to-play ideas sounded nutty, but now “the content clan has gathered around our ideas.” Consumers must pay and will pay “to be entertained and informed.” All those awesome new gadgets being made in China and sold at the Consumer Electronics Show need content or they’re worthless. Content, content, content. Get it? Content, content, content.

Murdoch says he’ll be wringing more dollars from cable operators. And “when it comes to online news, we’ll be changing that model too,” adding that News Corp. is in “substantive conversations with device makers on developing subscription models” to deliver content. And don’t forget about 3-D!

Not performing well but “long-term growth drivers”: Sky Italia satellite service. Also Sky Deutschland. And MySpace is “not yet where we want it.” In the last quarter, however, MySpace “started to see signs of traffic stabilization.”

Shout-outs for Chase Carey and other managers (but not by name).

Q&A

Question: How big a deal is retransmission consent in coming years? $40 million a month? $100 million a month?

Chase Carey: No numbers, but it’s going to be a “transforming event.” We have two of top 10 distributors done, more coming. It’s a three- or four-year process to knock these deals out.

Q: Does this fix the broadcast model?

Carey: “Yes, I guess you could say simplistically, it fixes it.”

Q: What’s the timing on an “Avatar” DVD, and what about a sequel? Also, how do TV ads look this year?

Murdoch: For “Avatar,” we think about 60 percent of profits will be in the next six months. Which means the DVD will be coming “as soon as possible,” but the movie will stay in cinemas for a while because we’re doing huge dollars in theaters still. Sequel? “Very early talks about it. Jim has ideas for one. We haven’t come to any agreement with him….Being Jim Cameron, I wouldn’t hold your breath for an early one.” Asked about the economics of a future release (“Will you keep the same revenue split?”), Rupe sort of rumbles and growls and sort of doesn’t have much to say. “Ask anybody; it is very easy to drop a $100 million in a hurry on a film, and we’d like to lay off some of the risk.”

Carey: TV trends for this year are “positive.”

Murdoch: TV stations will be up 18 or 19 percent, but last year was terrible. We’re still down compared with two years ago. Hard to see more than a quarter in advance. In newspapers, it’s hard to see more than a few weeks.

[Missed a question on Sky Italia here.]

Q: What are growth prospects for cable networks? They’ve been driven a lot recently by new subscriber fees. How much longer can you get those boosts?

Murdoch: Overall, “we think we have great potential for growth. Quite a long way to go yet.” Look at how NBCU’s USA is growing.

Carey: In the U.S., we’re moving to “quality over quantity”–we can wring more out of foreign exchange, etc. Fox News is only getting more powerful; it has “great upside.”

Q: Regarding newspapers, what growth came from organic increase versus currency fluctuations?

The majority is from foreign exchange.

Q: Does your guidance assume that the “Avatar” DVD is coming in the next two quarters?

Murdoch: “Yes, but it won’t be 3-D” [which I don't think the analyst was asking about].

Q: Back to retransmission consent: You’ve been getting more and more money from cable guys. Why can’t you get $4 or $5 per subscription for Fox broadcast subs?

Murdoch: “We’re modest people.”

Carey: Hyuk, hyuk. Real answer: It takes time. “We try to approach this constructively. We’ve built businesses with [cable guys], we’ve built valuable cable channels” [translation: patience!]. We want to extract more without killing the cable guys.

Murdoch: That said, we’re asking for the same thing [for broadcast channels] that the cable networks are getting, which “certainly won’t kill the cable companies.”

Q: Please talk about value of film libraries (i.e., MGM). They’re generating big operating profits for cable now. How long will this last?

Murdoch: Regarding the MGM auction, “you can count us out of that one altogether” because others will pay more than we’re willing. And we’re not pursuing the Miramax catalog at all.

Carey: A film library by itself, without new stuff coming through, is a “depreciating asset.”

Q: On guidance: You say the ad market getting better, etc., but it sounds like you’re saying Ebidta growth is slowing.

Murdoch: “We honestly do not have any visibility about the last quarter.”

Q: On books/e-books/Apple, what’s going on with that?

Murdoch: We don’t like the Amazon model of $9.99….We think it really devalues books and hurts all the retailers of hardcover books. We’re not against electronic books; on the contrary, we like them very much, lower costs to us, but we want some room to maneuver. The Apple deal does allow “some flexibility and higher prices” though e-books will still be lower than print. And now Amazon is willing to sit down with us again.

Press Q&A

Q: What’s up with plans to charge for newspapers on the Web?

Murdoch: “Not ready to announce yet [long pause]. We won’t be ready yet to make an announcement.” A “lot of talks with a lot of people.” There will be more to say within the next two months, Murdoch adds.

Q: Are you still going to fall $100 million short on the Google deal?

Murdoch: Yes. People using social networks don’t use search a great deal. Facebook has seen this, too. It’s “really too early to make confident predictions…but from going down, we’re beginning to go up.”

Q: Can we get some details about Time Warner Cable (TWC) deal?

Nope.

What about Conan O’Brien on late night?

Murdoch: If the programming people can show us we can do it and make a profit on it, we’ll do it in a flash. I’m sure there have been conversations with Conan, but “if you mean real negotiations, no.”

[Missed two questions here.]

Q: Another late-night question: If you do go into negotiations with Conan, how do you placate your affiliates?

Murdoch: It’s a different deal than NBC. They screwed up 10 pm, which reduced the lead-in to local news. Our affiliates run syndicated programming at 11:30, though, so it will take time to adjust there.

Call ended. This one seemed short to me.

More or less redundant disclosure: News Corp. (NWS) owns this Web site.

“We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”

Palm CEO Ed Colligan, December 2006

“Five hundred dollars? Fully subsidized? With a plan? I said that’s the most expensive phone in the world and it doesn’t appeal to business customers because it doesn’t have a keyboard, which makes it not a very good e-mail machine.”

– Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, January 2007

At 37.9 percent, Nokia’s share of the global handset market is the largest in the industry. Odd then to learn that it is not the most profitable. And odder still to learn that that honor belongs to Apple, which has been in the handset market for just two years.

According to Strategy Analytics, Apple’s third-quarter iPhone operating profit was $1.6 billion, while Nokia’s was $1.1 billion. Driving Apple’s profits: Strong sales, high wholesale prices and tight cost controls.

“We have identified at least 4 key factors underlying Apple’s success,” Strategy Analytics analyst Alexander Spektor explains. “First, Apple created a simple sub-brand–the iPhone–which was memorable and easy to remember. Second, the firm developed an attractive family of models with standout usability that enabled Apple to charge way-above-average prices to operators and consumers. Third, Apple distributed and co-marketed its handsets through top-tier carriers in numerous high-value countries. And fourth, the vendor has kept a solid grip on production costs by working with Foxconn, the world’s largest contract handset manufacturer.”

Quite an achievement for Apple (AAPL) and a major humiliation for Nokia (NOK), which has seen its dominance eroded by the likes of Apple and Research in Motion (RIMM), and not just in North America, but in Europe. Indeed, in its latest quarter Nokia’s smart-phone market share dropped by six points.

As Strategy Analytics analyst Neil Mawston noted at the time, “[Nokia has] no iPhone killer to drive a major revival in its smartphone volumes. [It] is still struggling in the U.S. smartphone market, and with competition intensifying in China as well, Nokia’s battles can only get tougher in 2010.”

GE’s (GE) NBC Universal, for instance, just posted second-quarter results that were as bad as its first quarter. Jeff Zucker’s TV and movie unit said revenue was down eight percent and profit down 41 percent for the three months ending June 30; in the previous quarter, revenue was down only two percent, while profit was down 43 percent.

Per usual, GE said NBC’s cable business was doing okay (which makes sense since it gets a guaranteed income stream from cable operators), but that its overall ad business and local TV markets were getting killed. Or in technical terms, they’re seeing “continued pressure.”

Three months ago, GE went out of its way to make the point that if you stripped out one-time charges like write-downs, its earnings drop would have only been in the 15-25 percent range. It may make the same argument again during the earnings call later this morning, so I’ll check back then.

UPDATE: Once again, NBC is arguing that its earnings aren’t that terrible. The company had to take nearly $100 million in charges this quarter, and last year it had some one-time gains. So really, the company argues, its earnings are down a mere 24 percent. Here’s the highlight reel from the earnings call. Note the lines about upfront sales being slow and Web display ads being hit. Click chart to enlarge.

“Android has fast been winning healthy support among operators, vendors and developers,” said Strategy Analytics director Neil Mawston. “A relatively low-cost licensing model, its semi-open-source structure and Google’s support for cloud services have encouraged companies such as HTC, Motorola, Samsung, T Mobile, Vodafone and others to support the Android operating system. Android is now in a good position to become a top-tier player in smartphones over the next two to three years.”

If that comes it pass, it’s bad news for Palm (PALM) whose Pre handset and WebOS will be facing off against a powerful mobile triumvirate: Apple (AAPL), Research in Motion (RIMM) and Google (GOOG).