Welcome to the first post of 2011 on Mobile Marketing. This is a time of the year when we tend to be swamped with prediction pieces. So we thought, instead, we would kick off the year with a post that it at least based on primary research carried out among more than a couple of people in the office.

The survey was carried out by the mobile analyst firm, Chetan Sharma Consulting, and reveals that Microsoft is the firm most likely to make a mobile comeback in 2011. The analyst firm questioned 225 “executives and insiders from leading mobile companies across the value chain” on a variety of mobile marketing issues. Just over 30 per cent of the respondents plumped for Microsoft as the mobile comeback firm of 2011, followed by Nokia on 19 per cent, and Sprint and Palm (HP), both on 11 per cent.

Respondents were also asked who would end up having the strongest position in the mobile payments/commerce space. Here, the “Financial Guys” (e.g Visa, Mastercard) came out on top with 31 per cent of the vote, followed by Operators (18 per cent), Google (14 per cent), and PayPal (11 per cent). When respondents were asked what would be the most successful non-mobile phone category in 2011, Tablets romped home, taking 64 per cent of the votes, with eReaders a distant second on 12 per cent.

You can access the full results of the survey here.