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It's been roughly nine months since more than a dozen leading U.S. retailers including Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Sears and 7-Eleven first banded together to create Merchant Customer Exchange, a nationwide mobile commerce network designed to support smartphone-enabled purchases, consumer offers and mobile marketing promotions. The MCX initiative remains a work in progress, but here's what we know.

Google's Android long ago eclipsed Apple's iOS in terms of sheer size: Gartner reports that Android powers 74.4 percent of all smartphones sold worldwide during the first quarter of 2013, up from 56.9 percent during the year-ago period and widening its already considerable lead on iOS, which plummeted to 18.2 percent from 22.5 percent in the first quarter of 2012. But size isn't everything, and iOS has always maintained a number of competitive edges over Android.

Consumers aren't exactly putting out the welcome mat for Facebook Home: Roughly a month after the social networking giant rolled out the alternative Android homescreen, there's mounting evidence to suggest the concept is a dud.

Android security panic has hit Defcon 1. Security solutions firm NQ Mobile reports malware attacks on Google's open-source mobile operating system more than doubled in 2012, infecting 32.8 million devices worldwide, and the problem looks like it will get worse before it gets better. Lookout Mobile Security recently identified BadNews, a new malware family discovered in 32 Android applications with combined download totals between 2 million and 9 million.