Tablets are Not PCs, Google Finds

One of Google’s studies of tablet use over a two-week period, which had users recording every occasion that they used their tablet, shows that tablets really are not PCs, any more than smart phones are used in the same way that PCs are used.

Most consumers use their tablets for fun, entertainment and relaxation while they use their desktop computer or laptop for work, Google User Experience Researchers Jenny Gove and John Webb say. About 91 percent of the time that people spend on their tablet devices is for personal rather than work related activities.

And, as it turns out, when a consumer gets a tablet,  they quickly migrate many of their entertainment activities from laptops and smart phones to this new device.

The most frequent tablet activities are checking email, playing games and social networking. The study also found that people are doing more activities in shorter bursts on weekdays (social networking, email) while engaging in longer usage sessions on weekends (watching videos/TV/movies).

Tablets are multi-tasking devices with at least 42 percent of activities occurring while doing another task or engaging with another entertainment medium.

Also, tablets are more accurately described as “untethered” devices than “mobile” devices, to the extent that tablets primarily are used at home. Unlike smart phones that go everywhere and laptops that travel between work and home, few consumers take their tablets with them when they leave the house.

However, consumers do take their tablets on vacation or work trips where they use them as a laptop replacement and a small number take them on their commute. The  research also found that tablets are for the most part a one-person device, although there are consumers who share their tablet with other family or household members.

Tablets are used on the couch, from the bed and in the kitchen.


The activities and locations shown in the above chart were self-reported by respondents.

For many people, websites and apps designed for smart phones just don’t cut it on tablets. Instead consumers are taking advantage of the bigger screen and prefer using fully featured apps and the full desktop sites on their tablet. Users also seem to do things on tablets that are exclusive to the tablets.

That could indicate that people shift app use to the tablet from their smart phones and PCs, or only undertake use of some apps on the tablet, when they might do so on a PC or smart phone.



Google on tablet use

E-Reader Sales Grow Connected Devices Opportunity

A new report by analyst firm Juniper Research forecasts that e-reader shipments will reach 67 million by 2016, nearly triple the 25 million devices the company expects to reach the market in 2011.

While this is less than half the 55.2 million tablets that will be shipped this year, the price of the market-leading Kindle has fallen significantly (from $349 to $79) since it was launched, and electronic ink technology will ensure that the device continues to carve out a niche for itself in the wireless device ecosystem. eReader Shipments to Reach 67 million by 2016

Separately, Machina Research predicts wireless wide-area connected tablets and e-readers will grow from 66 million in 2011 to 230 million in 2020. Mobile service providers gain two ways from e-reader usage. There is the business-to-business revenue contributed by the e-reader partners, who use mobile networks to deliver content to the readers. 


There also is end user revenue supplied by connected devices. If half of the 2020 devices are e-readers, and just 15 percent of e-readers actually are mobile broadband connected, that is 17.25 million incremental broadband accounts in service. If, by 2020, half of the e-readers are capable of network connections, and are used as part of "family"-style mobile data plans that represent incremental revenue, then as many as 57.5 million new broadband accounts could be in service. 

Such trends are directly important for mobile service providers as many of those devices are equipped to work on mobile networks, and therefore represent a new class of devices that can be converted into new and incremental mobile broadband accounts. Greater use of Wi-Fi-only devices has relevance for fixed-network broadband providers to the extent that use of such devices increases the value of a fixed broadband connection.

People Now Watch Videos Nearly 30 Percent Longer On Tablets Than Desktops | TechCrunch

Viewer engagement by device

It perhaps is counter intuitive, but a new study by Ooyala suggests that people spend more time watching long-form video on their tablets, than on their PCs.


Even more surprising, there is evidence that smart phone users, on the smallest screens, might be watching video at levels approaching PC viewing.


In fact, the Ooyala study already shows that viewer "engagement," defined as the percentage of any bit of content that the user actually watched, is higher on smart phones than on desktop PCs or game consoles, both of which offer the biggest screens.

Granted, the Ooyala report does confirm that, given a choice, most people seem to prefer watching video on the biggest available screen. But what might be surprising is the amount of viewing on the "smallest" screen--the smart phone--so much of the time.

Tablet viewers watch for longer periods of time than viewers of desktops or mobile devices, and tend to watch more of any single bit of video as well.

For each minute watched on a desktop, tablets recorded “1:17 in played content”, which works out to 28 percent longer than the desktop average. People Watch Videos Nearly 30 Percent Longer On Tablets

That tablet viewers are more than twice as likely to finish a video than desktop users might be explained by the fact that much tablet use occurs "on a couch, rather than at a desk," meaning the user is in a more-relaxed setting without the "I'm at work" mindset.

The completion rate for tablet viewers was double what it was for desktop viewing, and is 30 percent higher than that of mobile devices. 


It is just a historical anecdote, but 30 years ago, the best and brightest video executives would have adamantly insisted that people would not watch entertainment video on small screens. But that was a long time ago. Before optical fiber changed fixed networks. Before most people had mobile phones, much less smart phones. Before 3G and 4G. Before digital video and video compression. Before high-definition video. Before the Internet and the Web. 


It's just a reminder that what seems true "now" might not have been true in the past, and might not be true in the future. 

Tablets are Untethered, not Mobile Devices

Ross Rubin, executive director of industry analysis for NPD Group, says the reality is that a lot of tablet usage seems to be at home or in Wi-Fi hotspot areas. tablets are untethered, not mobile

"Consumers are maybe reluctant to pay $15 or $20 a month when they may just need cellular access for a few hours," Rubin says. "Obviously, for some time there's been a lot of discussion about per-person billing versus device-based billing, and the tablet situation has really made that more of a real issue versus a theoretical issue."

In other words, if mobile service providers want to encourage more tablet use on mobile broadband networks, they probably will have to start offering the equivalent of mobile broadband "family plans" now common for voice and text messaging services.

ABI Research reports that less than half of tablets actually ship with a cellular modem, and less than half of those are ever actually activated after shipment.

Tablet Users Watch 30% More Video

Where it comes to online video consumption, device type matters. And it looks like tablets are shaping viewer behavior in new ways. Tablet users averaged nearly 30 percent more viewing time per play than those who watched on desktops, for instance, and they completed videos at double the desktop rate, according to data from Ooyala. 

Viewer engagement was generally higher on mobile devices than on desktops. Mobile viewers completed 75 percent of a long-form video at a rate of 20 percent, compared to 18 percent for desktops. As a general rule, device type heavily influences viewer engagement. In the third quarter of 2011, tablet viewers were the most engaged, while desktop and laptop viewers were relatively less engaged.

For each desktop viewer who completed a video, for instance, more than two viewers did the same while watching on a tablet. Across all plays, the video completion rate for mobile devices was slightly higher than that for connected TV devices and game consoles, as well.

In fact, the latest data suggests  viewers are turning to their tablets, mobile devices and especially their
connected TV devices and game consoles to watch medium- and long-form videos. You might think mobile users would watch shorter clips, while desktop PC users watch more long-form programming. That doesn't seem to be the case. 


Desktops or laptops are far more likely to be used to watch short clips, the Ooyala data suggests.  Videos shorter than three minutes, for instance, accounted for more than half (52 percent) of the hours of content viewed on desktops.


That same measure is 42 percent for mobile devices, 29 percent for tablets and just six percent for
connected TV devices and game consoles. 


By contrast, longer-form videos represent a bigger share of the hours played on non-desktop devices. Videos 10 minutes or longer accounted for 30 percent of the hours watched on mobile devices, 42 percent on tablets and nearly 75 percent on connected TV devices and game consoles, Ooyala reports. VideoMind Video Index

Device Usage Profiles: "Tethering" is a Big Deal

If you want to know why “tethering” of mobile devices is such a big issue for mobile service providers, consider that mobile PCs, including those which might be tethered to a Mi-Fi device or use a smart phone’s Wi-Fi hotspot feature, can use between 1 GByte and 7 Gbytes worth of data each month, according to new data provided by Ericsson.



A smart phone, by way of contrast, might use about 500 Mbytes a month. So demand-sensitive mobile networks might well be leery of encouraging use of the network by devices that create an order of magnitude greater demand than a typical smart phone.



At some level, even though mobile service providers might like to have the additional revenue and accounts mobile PC connections represent, it is inherently more difficult to maintain a user experience free of cap overage fees, which irritate users.



You might argue that service providers can simply offer bigger buckets of usage, but some might argue that will confuse many users.



Mobile PCs have the highest average monthly traffic volume per subscription over 3G networks (global average at 1 Gbyte to 2 GBytes), followed by tablets at 250 Mbytes to 800 MBytes. Smart phones typically use only 80 Mbytes to  600 MBytes.



The point is that a 4-Gbyte or 5-Gbyte data plan so outstrips typical usage of smart phone and tablet users that there is little chance most people would ever be faced with an unpleasant overage charge. That clearly is not the case for PCs connected to mobile networks, which rather easily can consume all of a 4-Gbyte or 5-Gbyte data plan.



Average monthly data traffic varies significantly between different types of devices, according to a new Ericsson report on mobile bandwidth and trends.



Another observation might be that “overage” and “breakage” are significant contributors to mobile broadband service profit margins. Ericsson reports that “breakage” (paid for, but unused megabytes in a data plan) ranges from a low of about 15 percent for users of 1-gigabyte plans up to about 60 percent for data plans of 15 Gbytes to 20 Gbytes.



Also, “overage” (use of more data than a user has paid for as part of the device data plan) ranges from about 30 percent for users of 1-Gbyte plans to about 12 percent for users of the the 15-Gbyte to 20-Gbyte plans.

Barnes & Noble Launches New "Nooks"

Barnes & Noble has announced the latest generation of its “Nook” e-reader and tablet line. New Nook

The new Nook Tablet costs $249 and features several hardware upgrades over its predecessor including a dual-core processor, 1 GB of RAM, and 16 GB of internal storage. It's on sale now for pre-order and will be available in stores the week of Nov. 14th, 2011.

Barnes & Noble says the Nook Tablet is the company’s fastest and lightest tablet, and also offers access to popular movies, TV shows and music from Netflix, Hulu Plus, Pandora and others, plus a collection of high-quality apps, fast Web browsing and email. New Nooks

The Nook Tablet is now available for pre-order at www.nook.com and at Barnes & Noble stores.

The Nook “Color” e-reader now is priced at $199. The new Nook “Simple” is priced at $99, without ads.

Next Amazon Kindle Fire to Feature 9-Inch Display?

Proponents disagree about the "right" screen size for a tablet or e-reader device. Apple has in public insisted only 10-inch screens are "right" for tablets. E-readers of course are another matter, but even there proponents might disagree about the "right" form factors. Best form factor?

Digitimes reports that Amazon is likely to change its product roadmap by shifting the display size of its next-generation Kindle Fire to 8.9-inch instead of 10.1-inch as originally planned, according to sources in Amazon's supply chain. 


Amazon's current 7-inch panel suppliers Chunghwa Picture Tubes (CPT) and LG Display (LGD) reportedly have begun to prepare production capacities for 8.9-inch displays, Digitimes reports. Amazon Kindle Fire 8.9-inch display


Following the launch of the 8.9-inch tablets, Amazon may also release 9.7- to 10.1-inch models in 2012.

How Much Will Tablets Drive Mobile Bandwidth Consumption?

Goldman Sachs figures tablet data consumption is increasing by 30 percent per year and by 2020 will account for 17 percent of all mobile data demand.

“We expect global tablet sales to grow over 300 percent through 2012,” Goldman’s analysts say. “Our forecast implies a 42 percent compound annual growth rate from 2010 to 2020 in network-activated tablet subscribers (tablets that actually subscribe to a wireless data plan) with monthly data usage assumed to grow at the rate of 30 percent per year from 1.5 GBytes month to over 20 GBytes per month in 2020,” Goldman analysts say.

That implies some future adjustment of mobile broadband plans, which at present tend to cap consumption at 4Gbytes to 10 Gbytes a month, with an average of about 5 Gbytes. Though it seems unlikely that smart phone consumption will reach those levels, tablet users using mobile broadband connections might easily exceed 5 Gbytes a month, if the Goldman estimates are correct.

How Much Will Tablets Drive Mobile Bandwidth Consumption?

Are Smartphone Sales Cooling Off?

Are U.S. smart phone sales growing or not? It's a bit of a rhetorical question, as the issue is not whether smart phone sales are growing, but rather whether sales rates are declining, flat or growing. 


Third quarter results might not be a completely-reliable indicator, though. Are Smartphone Sales Cooling Off?

Apple’s third quarter sales, for example, were most likely less than expected due to the coming iPhone 4S, which will have the likely impact of pushing third quarter sales into the fourth quarter.


New product introductions often cause consumers to see what’s coming before they decide to make a purchase.

In the market for Android-based phones, the situation is a little fuzzier. Most data shows healthy Android device growth. Android sales As with the iPhone, consumers wait to for the latest product, so a rapid pace of introductions can confuse consumers and slow sales, temporarily.

One suspects that tablet interest is also partly at work. Right now, tablets are "the" hot consumer product category, and that has to be shifting discretionary income away from smart phones, toward tablets, to some extent.  

Smartphones and Tablets Drive Nearly 7 Percent of Total U.S. Digital Traffic - comScore, Inc

Wi-Fi Offload podcast

Mobile phones and tablets now represent 6.8 percent of U.S. traffic in August 2011, with approximately two thirds of that traffic coming from mobile phones.

And users are shifting 37 percent of their mobile device access to fixed connections, using Wi-Fi. The percentage of usage grew nearly three percentage points in just three months.

In August 2011, nearly 10 percent of traffic from tablets used a mobile network connection, a fact of some importance for mobile service providers, since that means additional revenue.

Today, half of the total U.S. mobile population uses mobile media. The mobile media user population (those who browse the mobile web, access applications, or download content) grew 19 percent in the past year to more than 116 million people at the end of August 2011.

Smartphones, Tablets Drive 7% of U.S. Traffic

Bearish View of The Smart Phone Business

Here's a bearish view about the smart phone business. Microsoft and Apple are extracting royalty payments from Google Android suppliers, squeezing their margins.

Apple missed targets for iPhone sales and sales of Research In Motion’s BlackBerry have "collapsed," not to mention the recent multi-day global outage.

Analysts may argue that the rise of products like powerful tablets have hurt smart phone sales. Some of us think that is partly true. Tablet sales have grown much faster than did sales of Apple iPhones or iPods.

So attention now has been diverted to tablets, to some extent. But Mary Meeker, Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers partner doesn't appear to share the pessimism.

But lower-cost smart phones now are about to pour onto the market, and the high penetration of mobiles means there still is a huge replacement market.

The Smartphone Business Loses Its Luster

What Needs To Happen For Tablets To Replace Laptops?

Tablets, for the most part, are not a very good substitute for the work capabilities of a PC. Sure, you can add an external keyboard, which might or might not work so well, depending on how much you routinely must create text, and how fast you can type.

Slow typers with little volume of input can make it work. But if you look around you at conferences or other venues when people are away from their desktops, you often can see that tablets are one more device to carry around, as people now have their notebooks, their smart phone and now a tablet with them.

There will, over time, be more changes in both tablet and PC spaces, to try and blend the two functions of "content creation" and "content consumption." In some, perhaps many cases, it might even work. If you think about a "dockable tablet" or a one-pound notebook, you get the likely trajectory.


What Needs To Happen For Tablets To Replace Laptops?

Amazon's New Kindle Fire Claims a Clear Niche

“Why should somebody buy this instead of an iPad?”


Up to this point, even the answer "it's cheaper" hasn't been possible, since most other devices actually cost as much, or more, than an iPad.


Amazon's Kindle is the first device that answers the question, and it is not about "speeds and feeds."


 Both the iPad and the new Kindle Fire are gateways to a rich content ecosystem.

That’s the difference that other tablet makers missed. Motorola, Samsung and Research in Motion have essentially been chasing the iPad on specs, building the best tablet they can manage at the same starting price of around $500. Watch Jeff Bezos introduce the Kindle Fire

The Kindle Fire is the first device with a good answer. It is much cheaper than an iPad and offers a digital content ecosystem that rivals Apple’s (fewer apps, but more books).

Also, Amazon built an alternative to the iPad, rather than a direct competitor. That's why some might say the Kindle Fire is something different. It is sort of an iPod "touch" content consumption device with a more-usable screen, that is optimized for multiple content types, including reading books and magazines, video and audio, plus web browsing.

Amazon's Kindle does not compete with iPad

Is Amazon Kindle Fire Really a Tablet?

Amazon’s launch of a new seven-inch, color screen “Kindle Fire,” priced at $199,  got most of the attention, talked about by many as an “iPad” competitor, but Amazon actually also released three other new Kindle devices that aim to strengthen Amazon’s grip on the e-reader market.

One of the new Kindle e-readers does away with the touch screen and 3G features that the other new Kindle models employ, using Wi-Fi and a directional pad instead, and will cost just $79. That is an attempt to lock up the e-reader market at the low end. Amazon launches Kindle Fire

The other two Kindles that Amazon introduced are based on the black-and-white “E Ink” displays. The Kindle Touch 3G uses infrared senors for touch, and thus eliminates the tiny keypad below the screen. It includes free wireless 3G data service, which will work in over 100 countries, for just $149. The Kindle Touch model is identical but lacks the free 3G service, relying on Wi-Fi instead, for just $99.

Some will say the Kindle Fire is designed to compete more with the Barnes & Noble Nook than the Apple iPad, at least in the current form factors. Until a larger-screen Kindle is introduced, the Kindle will largely remain a content consumption device, where the Apple iPad can be used for some work tasks as well.

Of course, many of use would argue that the iPad, though it can be used for a bit of work, also mostly is a media consumption device.

What is clear enough is that, as expected, Kindle will be designed to be a razor to sell razor blades. The idea is to put a low-cost device widely into the hands of users and then create revenue by commerce and content sales.

The comparison to the Apple iPad will be irresistible, but some of us would argue the Kindle Fire and the other devices more directly represent an evolution of the e-reader device.

Originally designed to support reading books, the e-reader is becoming a portable multimedia platform, supporting consumption of magazine, video and audio content as well.  Kindle Fire not a direct iPad competitor

In that sense, Amazon might be on the verge of dominating one part of the media consumption device space that more closely resembles the iPod touch market segment than the iPad.

Though it remains to be seen how end user behavior could develop, retailers say tablets already have changed end user online shopping behavior. Tablets still account for only a small percentage of overall e-commerce, but account for a higher percentage of commerce activity.

While the conversion rate—orders divided by total visits—is three percent for shoppers using a traditional PC, it is four percent or five percent for shoppers using tablets, says Sucharita Mulpuru, an analyst at Forrester Research. Tablet Users Spend More Online - WSJ.com:

Many retailers also report that tablet users place bigger orders, in some cases adding 10 percent to 20 percent to their orders, than shoppers using PCs or smart phones. In a behavioral sense, a tablet seems to facilitate different behavior than a PC or a smart phone.

It remains to be seen how other behavioral differences might emerge as the tablet space and the media consumption device space begin to differentiate.

Kindle to Get eBook Lending, Periodicals

It looks like Amazon is going to be adding newspaper and magazine subscriptions for iPads and iPhones. The Kindle for Android app and other apps will get the same update too later down the line. Kindle to Get eBook Lending, Periodicals

Will the new Amazon tablet also get e-book lending?

What People Do on Their Tablets

Tablets clearly are content consumption devices, a survey by IDG shows. People browse the web, read emails,  watch videos, use mobile apps, play games, read magazines, newspapers and books.



Tablet Apps and User Behavior

Tablet Shipments Exceeding Forecasts

IDC says that tablet shipments in Europe, the Middle East and Africa were close to 4.4 million units in the second quarter of 2011, about 700,000 more than the researchers had originally forecast.

That translates to a growth of nearly 400 percent over the same quarter last year, and 82 percent more than the first quarter of 2011.

Overall, the region is on track for shipments of 22 million for the full year. Juniper, which has today released worldwide figures, predicts that tablet shipments will reach 253 million by 2016—the figure for 2011 it says will be 55.2 million units. Tablet Shipments Exceeding Forecasts

Majority of tablet customers activate 3G, AT&T says

The majority of customers who buy tablets from AT&T Mobility now also buy mobile broadband service with their devices, says Glenn Lurie, AT&T president of emerging devices, wholesale and partnerships. Most of those devices seem to use a prepaid data plan, rather than a postpaid plan. More tablet users buy mobile service


That would be a significant development, as one might argue most users will typically have to spend $50 a month for a prepaid service including 1 Gbyte of usage.

Day	$ 15	100MB
Week	$ 30	300MB
Month	$ 50	1GB

That's a big deal. In fact, for the first time in the U.S. wireless history, non-operator branded wireless connections were  the majority source of customer additions in the second quarter of 2011.

Also, almost half of the increase of mobile connections came from customers that are mostly unaware of the network they were actually using. Amazon Kindles, Barnes & Noble Nooks, countless other connected devices, and MVNOs such as TracFone were driving the growth of the industry with more than 52 percent of net additions, says Roger Entner of Recon Analytics.

The second largest growth segment was no-contract with almost a third of new subscriber additions. Contract net additions were less than 16 percent of overall net subscriber additions. B2B now drives mobile broadband

Device Usage Has Shifted from "Work" to "Play"

When digital devices first appeared, in the form of the personal computer, the initial applications were heavily work related.

Over the last few decades, as new digital appliances have emerged, most of them have been mostly for "play" or "personal" use.

Though notebooks, tablets and mobile phones can be used either for work or personal pursuits, the trend is towards use of devices for entertainment, personal communication, learning and expression, and less and less for "work."

A recent survey of European users by Forrester Research illustrates the trend. Asked what sorts of applications and activities they used their various devices for, it is pretty clear that the multi-purpose devices get used more often for play, personal reasons and entertainment, rather than "work."

The corollary probably is that application development has shifted overwhelmingly to personal, entertainment  and leisure time activities as well.