Morning Brief: Report finds that major brands are eagerly adopting apps as a marketing tool; Samsung grows its smartphone shipments to pass Apple in the third quarter

A report released this morning by Distimo shows that brands are quickly embracing apps as part of their marketing missions, with app launches growing by over 40 percent in the past six months, by 50 percent the prior six months.

As you'd expect, major brands involved in media are leading the way as companies like Disney and Sony launch large numbers of apps in the Apple and Google stores. Distimo, who produced the report, said that half the brands in the report had some app store presence in March 2010, while 91 percent of the brands currently have at least one app in the major app stores.

The most popular app store continues to be Apple's, but Google's Android Market is not far behind. The BlackBerry App World trails far behind, though 26 percent of brands did launch an app into the store.

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More and more electronics companies continue to report "ship" numbers rather than "sold" numbers. Samsung, for instance, reported today a 44 percent jump in smartphone "shipments", claiming the top spot among smartphone makers, ahead of Apple.

According to the research firm Strategy Analytics, Samsung's shipped 27.8 million units, up dramatically over the prior year, while Apple sales shrank, mostly due to pushing the launch of the iPhone 4S back into October.

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The ratings for the World Series between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Texas Rangers has been on track to be the lowest ever, thanks no doubt to the fickle nature of east coast fans who continue to show that they don't really like baseball so much as their own teams. For the second year in a row the series in being played without an east coast team participating.

But the ratings will take a jump today as the series has reached a seventh game after a rather epic, entertaining, though not exactly well played game six.

Trailing by two runs going into the bottom of the ninth, and down to their last strike, the Cardinals' David Freese hit a drive over the head of Nelson Cruz, who didn't really look like he wanted to catch it anyways. That drove in two runs to tie the game. Freese ended up on third and Cruz was not charged with an error (though the game featured five of them).

But in the top of the tenth the Rangers Josh Hamilton, hobbled by an injury, and without a home run in the series, launched a two run blast that put Texas back up by two. Back again in the bottom of the tenth, the Cardinals were again down to their last strike when Lance Berkman, who earlier in the year had criticized the Rangers for not resigning Cliff Lee, hit a single into center that tied the game once again.

Finally in the bottom of the ninth David Freese proved the hero again with a solo home run to center to end the evening. Game seven is tonight to determine the series' winner.