Adota has an opinion piece on the current state and the future of mobile marketing. Some highlights:

Predictions around the rise of the mobile marketing space have come fast and furious. eMarketer states that the U.S. mobile advertising market, which was $1billion in 2007, will grow to $5 billion in 2011. While these numbers are impressive, what the experts seem confused about is when the mobile marketing revolution will begin. Instead the pundits are focusing on “what’s to come,” not what is happening now. This is a mistake. Truth is, there is a great deal happening present day. Marketers should not sit and wait for a formal invitation before making their move.

So what is happening right now?

One example of how mobile marketing is already providing real results for many brands is their use of SMS (AKA text messaging), which allows for the sending of short 160 character messages to and from a mobile phone. 160 characters might not seem like much but when they are highly targeted AND personalized to each individual user, the message can be quite powerful. According to a January 2007 CTIA Report, 96% of all active cell phones in the U.S. can be reached using text-messaging (more than 220 million users). In fact, text messaging is the fastest growing communication channel in history worldwide and already has twice the reach of the Internet (Computer Industry Almanac 2006). These figures cannot be ignored and they are not; currently 89 percent of major brands have stated that they are planning to market via mobile phone text messaging by 2008.

Read more at Adota.