Last night’s presentation of the Mobile Excellence Awards on the Paramount Studios lot began and ended with a performance by someone barely old enough to own a cell phone: nine-year-old Grammy winning solo pianist Ethan Bortnick.

But the MEA’s themselves were serious, adult business, although in a town where the awards circuit competition has brand names like Grammy and Oscar, the organizers of this annual celebration may want to come up with something a little catchier. With apologies to the techno-genius currently renovating a hillside home in Beachwood Canyone – the Mobby’s, perhaps?

Anyway, among the winners crowned Monday that caught FBLA’s eye are:

Best Mobile Application for Utility or Business: USA Today for USA Today iPad App

Best Original Content Made for Mobile: AEG Network LIVE for “We Are the World 25 for Haiti”

Best Mobile Marketing Campaign: NBC Universal for Sprint & NBC Heroes, “Slow Burn”

Congratulations to all the winners. With predictions of an additional 32.9 million iPads being sold in 2011, any newspaper not currently following the lead of USA Today and Rupert Murdoch‘s The Daily is likely to be seriously “excellence-challenged.”