Smartphone usage by moms has risen 64% over the past two years and moms are 18% more likely than average to have a smartphone, according to a BabyCenter survey. More than half of the moms participating in the 5,000-person survey said they’d purchased a smartphone as a direct result of becoming a mom, and nearly half (46%) said they’d taken action after seeing an ad on their smartphone. Sixty-two percent of moms use shopping apps to research or compare prices, and 46% say the most convenient time to receive information about a product is in the store.

Physician requests of online drug samples were up nearly threefold over the same period in 2010 as of January, according to a Physicians Interactive Holdings study, and more than 75,000 physicians are participating in online sampling programs each month.

Pharma sector job cuts have fallen 87% from 26,165 positions eliminated a year ago to 3,385 this year, according to the latest Challenger, Gray & Christmas job cut report, which placed long time job loss leader pharma solidly in the middle of the pack for cuts, between electronics and consumer products. The industry cut 960 jobs in March – that’s out of 41,528 across all industries. On the downside, the sector didn’t even place in the firm’s top 15 industries by announced hires.