There are 195 million cell phone users in the U.S. and 26% of them say they couldn't live without one. With more and more people using their cell phones and mobile devices for everything from sharing photos to ordering take out, now's the time to get your own .MOBI.

The general registration period has begun, so .MOBIs are now available on a first-come, first-served basis. This new Top-Level Domain promises to be a fast-seller — more than 100,000 have already been registered.

With a .MOBI, you can:

• Catch the latest wave in wireless technology. A .MOBI allows your family members and friends to surf your site directly from their cell phones, Smartphones, Windows® Mobile Devices and RIM® devices—on the train, at the coffee shop, anywhere!
• Tell the world your site is mobile-friendly! .MOBI is recognized worldwide as the Top-Level Domain of mobile-optimized sites.
• Publish mobilecasts. You can even share mobilecasts from your .MOBI site

Mobile search: Better targeting of the local user. "Find information anywhere, anytime" is the overall theme of mobile search. By contrast, a limitation of local search on the web is that is requires you to know and enter your own location. Mobile carriers, however, can automatically pinpoint your geographic position, with mobile search applications delivering specialty information they think is most relevant to your location. Popular mobile content search services include maps and directions, news and sports, flight updates, weather, white pages, stock quotes, chat services, and any mobile website as well. Features such as 'send-to-a-friend will be important to your new mobile web services, and this will also lead to more consumer generated content such as ratings, reviews, preferences, sharing of info between friends, and guides and trip planning type features for consumers on the go

Audience acceptance of advertising. Both users and non-users say they would prefer to use a free 411 service with advertising over paid carrier services. Consumers are willing to accept a lot of advertising. In fact, they'll accept 100 percent [of the content being] advertising (through sponsored links) if the relevancy's there.

Explosive growth. Surveys by industry analyst KPMG International tracked mobile local user growth of 30% from Jan-March 2006 alone. From $45M in 2005 to projections from industry analysts of between $1-$1.5 Billion for 2010.

High targeting. Mobile ads lend themselves perfectly for targeting users. They're always personal, and present at the point of decision and point of sale;. They're capable of rich profiling and targeting, interactive, local and location aware. Mobile advertisements lend themselves well to calls-to-action.

Rapid conversions . For example, the obvious click-to-call within an ad. This is all moving in the local search towards pay-per-click, pay-per-call and pay-per-action coupons

New audiences, bright future. The younger generation being more in tune with instant messaging and MySpace is going to prove to be a great market for the future of mobile Improving technology. New phone models for 2007 are going to be converged phones—have both cellular and WiFi capabilities. mNokia already have WiFi-only devices

Smaller screens. Mobile devices such as cell phones and PDAs have a very small screen size and typically hold only about 5-8 listings. Smaller space means smaller listings, which also means search marketers will have to be extremely succinct in both their Ad copy and URLs.