Mobile Category Will Dominate Consumer Electronics Growth in 2011

Mobile computers will provide the consumer electronics industry's primary revenue growth in 2011, according to the Consumer Electronics Industry.

CEA projects that mobile computing, which includes laptops, netbooks and tablet computers, will reach more than $26 billion in shipment revenues by 2011, and "most" of that segment's growth will be driven by tablet PCs.

Wireless handsets, which have driven growth in recent years, also will represent about $26 billion worth of revenue, says CEA. Together, mobile PCs and phones will represent about 53 percent of total consumer electronics industry revenue.

CEA Says Mobile PCs, Mobile Phones Will be 53% of Consumer Electronics Revenues

Orange UK Study: Women Send More Pictures; Men Watch More Video

Women send more multimedia messaging service (pictures) messages than men, as much as 48 percent more than men in some age groups, says Orange UK.

But 71 percent of all mobile TV clips have been purchased by men, Orange UK says.  Likewise,
75 percent of all mobile videos have been purchased by men.

Also, some 64 percent of customers using Orange social networking sites were men and 36 percent were women.

On average, iPhone customers use 165 megabytes of data per month. This compares to an average of 115 megabytes of data for other smartphone customers, says Orange UK.

Of these data points, the one which strikes me as being most important is the statistic about data consumption. Where a fixed broadband connection might represent scores of gigabytes worth of usage each month, a mobile broadband connection might represent perhaps a gigabyte or two.

The fact that iPhone users average about 165 megabytes is interesting in that it suggests smartphone devices, though far more numerous than PC dongles, represent an order of magnitude less bandwidth demand on the mobile networks than PC devices.

That could have implications for the marketing of mobile connections to replace landline connections, given that some fixed connections represent an order of magnitude greater load on a network than a mobile PC connection.

On the other hand, the spatial distribution of PC devices, compared to mobile phones, during peak hours of use, likely is quite different. It might also be the case that mobile PC connections get used much the same way as fixed connections, with peaks in the evening.

Since most mobile networks have spare capacity in the evenings, and since evening use is likely to be distributed over a much-wider area than rush-hour traffic, mobile dongle services might mesh relatively well with smartphone usage, in the same way that business use and consumer use of broadband tends to complement, rather than compete.

How PC Usage is Different from Mobile

To state the obvious, users behave differently on their mobile devices than they do on their PCs, which ought to have implications for a world where perhaps half to two thirds of all Web and Internet access is from a mobile device.

A study of 16 information workers over a period of time illustrates some of the differences (again, keeping in mind that habits likely continue to evolve).

Mobile service providers, for example, know there is a huge difference between users on PCs and smartphone users.

Namely, PC users consume lots more data. And that is what the study conducted by Microsoft and the University of Washington also noted. The other obvious observation was that phones are used for voice and text messaging. PCs can be used for those applications, but in this study of office workers, that was not the case.

And productivity applications, though important for desktop use, was not the focus on mobiles, where "maps" seem to be more important, as you might expect. Users relied on both devices for email and Web access. Beyond that, the usage profiles were different.

Aside from the sheer difference in volume, understandable given the "on the go" nature of a mobile phone, users did different things on their mobiles. One might hypothesize that mobile device input-output limitations and time constraints (people are on the go) account for much of the difference in behavior. Heavy document or file interactions are not prevalent on mobiles.

That doesn't mean people will stop doing things at their desks that require full PC support. It does suggest that as use of mobiles becomes a bigger driver of Internet usage, the key applications will change. Mobiles are "becoming PCs," but that does not mean they will be used the same way, at all. The Microsoft study simply confirms that fact.

Terabyte PC Coming

It's just a data point, but note that Asus, the Taiwanese computer maker, is planning on bringing to market a notebook PC with two 500 GByte hard drives from Hitachi Global Storage Technologies.

That's a terabyte. Those of you familiar with enterprise storage, think about it: a terabyte per user. Those of you who have to do your own backups, think about it: losing a significant portion of 1 Tbyte of data if your hard disks crash.

The upside is that such a user can 1,000 hours of video, or more than 350 feature length movies, or 250,000 four-minute songs. The downside? If those files are not backed up someplace, huge collections of audio or video can vanish.

The point is that storage continues to emerge as a function that is becoming harder to manage. It is harder to backup, harder to restore, harder to secure, index and retrieve. Part of the reason is that simply is so much more information to store. This graphic from searchstorage.com simply makes the point that storage and backup requirements grow steadily.

Which makes the argument for storage in the cloud ever more compelling. If one's authorized copies of music, video or other material are stored in the cloud, local hard drives can crash with little threat of losing the content. Not to mention that the files can be used on any number of endpoints (I didn't say downloaded to those endpoints).

Will Android Disrupt PCs?

Though most of the speculation about Android's impact concerns what might happen with mobile apps on mobile devices, mobile Web, mobile carriers and device manufacturers, there are other angles. Let's assume lots of apps start to get developed around Android. Then assume people really do start spending lots more time with Web apps of various types on their hand held devices, even if today that does not seem to be common.

Once those apps are written, will they start to port to PCs? After all, any app well-enough written to run on a mobile with severe display and input capabilities, compared to a PC, might be fun to use even on a PC that suffers from none of those limitations. Basically, anything Android runs can appear as a widget on a desktop or laptop. Widgets are fun. They are personal. They are customized. They are easy to add and delete. They don't require lots of thinking, processing or storage.

Of course, that might have really serious implications for PC operating systems. In a new way, we might see yet another iteration of the thin client approach to applications. In essence, that is what software as a service is all about. Android just might change the paradigm for PCs, since it essentially will assume services are in the cloud. It will take a while before we can determine whether this is realistic or not.

Google has argued Android and its ecosystem might lead to ad-supported devices. Might it also someday lead to a resurgence of interest in thin client PCs? Microsoft will hope not. But network-centric participants in the communications and entertainment industries might see new possibilities.

Photo by Andy Voss at the BroadSoft Connections conference. Can you figure out why I think thin client and mobile Web access seems promising, even when multiple mobile smart and feature phones are in the quiver? I have an office and a desk. I just don't use them, even when able to use the "office." A nice view of the animals and the vegetation is much better, so long as I have power and wireless access of one sort or another.