The industry continues to buzz with discussions around Apple’s future in the wake of Steve Jobs’ departure, while new research has surfaced claiming that mobile app advertising could surpass online advertising by the end of this year. This week’s Fiksu Feed includes a recap of these stories and a number of other trends in the mobile space surrounding skyrocketing smartphone usage and changes to the Apple App Store.

After masterminding the iPhone, iPad, iPod, iMac and iTunes, Steve Jobs truly epitomizes the Apple brand. His resignation as CEO sent shockwaves through the tech community, marking the end of an era. An interesting Seeking Alpha article points to the “app economy” as the driving force behind Apple’s future success under new CEO Tim Crook’s leadership. Apple’s mobile app economy continues to strengthen and expand as paid downloads are expected to drive nearly $2 billion per quarter by the end of 2012 and mobile ads are predicted to generate around $3.3 billion worldwide by the end of this year.

With more than half a million apps available for more than 350 million iOS and Android devices today, it’s no secret that mobile app ad display inventory is thriving. Mobile analytics company Flurry published new data revealing that mobile app inventory is growing so aggressively that it could potentially absorb U.S. online display ad spend by the end of 2011. TechCrunch has more on these growth findings.

In other research news, new data from comScore revealed that 82.2 million Americans owned a smartphone as of July 2011, marking a 10 percent spike in just four months. Unsurprisingly, Google continues to dominate the smartphone space with 41.8 percent of market share, while Apple places second with 27 percent. The data also indicated that 234 million Americans 13 years and older use some type of mobile device. Of these users, about 40 percent have downloaded and used an app on their phone – a 2.8 percent increase from April. Read this Mashable piece for further details.

While the Windows Phone app store isn’t exactly ready to compete with Android and iOS, the new marketplace has reached a milestone worth noting. In just 10 months, the Windows Phone 7 marketplace now touts more than 30,000 applications. Mark Jones of Rethink Wireless notes one of the potential reasons for this lightning-fast growth could be that Microsoft is actively encouraging amateur app developers to submit their apps. As the overall app landscape expands, competition for visibility in the app stores continues to increase – spelling both challenge and opportunity for mobile marketers.

Borrell Associates has published a new report indicating that small and mid-size U.S. businesses are embracing mobile advertising in a big way. Driven by the explosion of social media, smartphones and daily deals, these businesses are expected to spend almost $800 million in 2011 on mobile ads, half of which will be spent on mobile promotions. According to the report, mobile ad spending is predicted to double every year for the next five years, bringing the total amount spent to $18 billion for advertising and $4 billion for promotions by 2016. Read more in Tech Flash.

If you’ve visited Apple’s App Store category pages recently, you may have noticed a new look and feel, similar to that of the home page. This re-vamped look has appeared in the Education and Games categories, featuring a large banner showcasing select, ‘New and Noteworthy’ apps. While it is still unclear if this streamlined design is a temporary or permanent change, The Next Web’s Matthew Panzarino predicts that we’ll soon see this uniform design across the entire Apple App Store.