iPhone Passes Blackberry in Global Market Share

Apple has passed Research In Motion in global phone sales. During this year's third quarter, 15.4 million iPhones were shipped globally compared to only 12.4 million Blackberries, the researchers at Strategy Analytics says.

With the shipments, Apple grabbed a 15.4 percent share of the market during the period, while RIM finished well behind with a 12.3 percent share. Nokia still leads with 26.5 percent of the worldwide market.

A major factor contributing to RIM's slipping numbers is its 'limited presence in the high-growth touchscreen segment,' according to Strategy Analytics.

iPhone Passes Blackberry in Global Shipments - PCWorld

It’s the Beginning of the End for the TV Biz, Says Analyst

"The TV and video business is about to face a nasty downturn, and it could happen faster than most people expect — like, over the next two years," says Lehman Brothers analyst Anthony DiClemente.

'We believe the feature film and TV content businesses are on the verge of structural changes that appear to impact the core revenue and profits of entertainment business models,' DiClemente said, Wired.com reports.

Few observers might agree that a change could happen that soon, though just about everyone thinks change is coming.

What might be more unusual is DiClemente's sense that the biggest losers are the major content companies, including Disney, CBS, News Corp., Time Warner and Viacom, for example, rather than the cable, satellite and telco distributors.

To be sure, a reasonable argument could be made that both dominant distributors and content companies have lots to lose. Content companies are right to worry that their gross revenues and profit margins will take a hit once alternate methods of digital distribution become more prevalent. The historic way of describing this dilemma is that content owners are exchanging analog dollars for digital pennies.

More recently, the phrase tends to be that content companies will exchange analog dollars for digital dimes. Either way, you get some idea of the magnitude of the potential changes.

Digital distribution, audience fragmentation and widespread file-sharing are eating into network and studios’ profits, and those profits may not come back, says DiClemente.

DiClemente thinks Apple’s iTunes and Google’s YouTube could emerge as winners in the distribution role. That would be only the latest turn in an on-going debate about whether "content" or "distribution" is king. At various times one or the other parts of the ecosystem has been seen as holding an advantage.

What might be different this time around is that both traditional "content" and "legacy distribution" parts of the ecosystem might face serious pressure, while new competitors in both content and distribution roles make headway.

It’s the Beginning of the End for the TV Biz, Says Analyst Wired.com:

Small Business "Software as a Service" Adoption Will Grow at 25% Through 2014

Small and medium business spending on software-as-a-service (SaaS) will increase exponentially over the next five years, eclipsing growth in investments in on-premise software by a significant margin, AMI-Partners predicts.

AMI forecasts a 25 percent compound annual growth rate for hosted business application services spending through 2014.

On-premises software spending will grow at about five percent. But change will be slower for applications such as enterprise resource planning, supply chain management, procurement, finance, and core human resources applications which have higher switching costs.

AMI-Partners - News :: Breakout growth for SaaS in the U.S. small and medium business markets

Mobile Video Hiccups Once Second Out of Every Six

Despite the protestations of network neutrality advocates, there's a very good reason why real-time services ranging from voice to conferencing to entertainment video actually require some form of optimization and even packet prioritization.

Recent data collected in mid-year 2010 by Bytemobile from networks operated by the likes of AT&T, China Mobile, China Telecom, KDDI, KPN, O2, Orange, Orascom, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, Telecom Italia Mobile, Telefónica, TeliaSonera and Vodafone show that every minute of mobile video consumed by end users includes about 10 seconds of stalling.

That's 17 percent of every minute of video, or a stall every six seconds. That is hugely disruptive of viewing experience and will not be acceptable once users become accustomed to using video content. It will be completely unacceptable once users start paying for video content services.

The problems currently are worse about 10 p.m. local time, and best at 5:30 a.m,, says Bytemobile. Expecting such congestion and disruption, most mobile users opt to watch videos at lower-quality settings to improve their media experience. That probably isn't what content owners or their business partners prefer, to say nothing of mobile service providers who will inevitably be tarnished by that sort of performance.

Nor does "more bandwidth" solve such problems. Bytemobile data shows that stalling occurs on even the fastest of networks and a quality user experience requires optimization of video content. In other words, packet prioritization and, or, other measures to keep latency and jitter performance optimal.

That said, as network bandwidth decreases, video stalling dramatically increases.

Consumption of high-definition video is nearly non-existent on wireless networks, at 0.07 percent of video-specific traffic volume.

Moreover, video traffic directly impacts bandwidth availability on wireless networks all over the world.

read more here

Rival Tablets Not Dead, No Matter What Apple Says

Apple says seven-inch tablets will be "dead on arrival," but developers and retailers are not convinced, and consumers will have to make the call about demand for tablets in various form factors, says the Wall Street Journal.

Verizon Wireless soon will be selling the Samsung Electronics Co.'s Galaxy Tab—a seven-inch tablet that runs on Google's Android software. Next year, BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd. plans to release its seven-inch PlayBook.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs says 7-inch devices were too small to create great tablet applications. 'Their manufacturers will learn the painful lesson that their tablets are too small and increase the size next year, thereby abandoning both customers and developers who jumped on the seven-inch bandwagon with an orphan product,' Jobs says.

The argument for a smaller form factor is pretty simple. For many, perhaps most users, the smallest devices are the essential devices carried everywhere in a purse, pocket, backpack or briefcase. For most users, the phone is basic, but iPods might be a close second.

Traveling workers mostly consider their phones and notebook PCs to be essential, with all other devices secondary. Some people traveling for work say they carry both an iPad and a PC, but over time, I suspect that will shake out in favor of one or the other devices. For those users, a 10-inch device is better.

Some day, when prices drop, that might also be a viable option for college students when going to class. For some, though, who carry a phone all the time and a PC when traveling, and for whom content creation is a big reason why the PC is carried, the iPad will remain a third or fourth device choice (iPods might be most commonly carried, after the phone and PC).

Many users, especially those whose work allows them to travel with just a smartphone, leaving the PC at home or the office, will find an iPad a reasonable option. But that's why there would seem to be a market opportunity for tablets in a couple formats. When a tablet can be the second or third device (assuming the iPod is the second device), the bigger screen is helpful.

When the tablet has to be the third or fourth device, there are weight and bulk issues that could be important.

But the market will decide.

Connected Device Market Potential Dwarfs Phones

Aside from notebook PCs, many Americans now own portable or mobile devices that already are capable of mobile communications, or increasingly will be capable of mobile communications.

According to Nielsen, the typical owner of any one of these devices actually also owns three to five additional devices within these categories.

That means a large potential base of mobile and portable devices that will be candidates for Wi-Fi and mobile broadband services in the future, in numbers that dwarf the installed base of "phones."

What remains to be developed are pricing plans that account for ownership and use of multiple devices, most of which are designed for content consumption or entertainment more than communications. Broadband plans that allow a user to connect multiple devices at various times, at prices deemed reasonable, will be a huge opportunity, going forward.

So far, most consumers have shown only modest interest in $60 a month plans that connect PCs, though mobile service providers now are experimenting with demand for $15 to $45 a month plans for tablet devices and smartphones.

Those are steps in the right direction, but what ultimately will be needed are the equivalent of family plans for data devices, where the "family" might be a single user or household wanting to use multiple devices on a single access account.

Social Will Grow 10 to 25x In The Next Five Years

Kleiner Perkins venture capitalists think social applications could grow 10 times to 25 times over the next five years.

Bing Gordon: Social Will Grow 10 to 25x In The Next Five Years

Mobile Marketing" Upstream of a Coupon, Downstream of Yellow Pages

“Weather is not the only category that is seeing a significant amount of the audience preferring the mobile channel, but if you are selling an over-the-counter flu medication, and you traditionally buy weather sites online– mobile now must be a big part of your digital spend,” says Paul Palmieri, president/CEO of Millennial Media.

He said that American mobile consumers are seeking and finding an explosion of content experiences across a range of devices, are receptive to advertising messages and are in many cases in close proximity to making a purchase decision.

One way of thinking about the value of mobile messages is that they arrive when a user is "downstream of the yellow pages and upstream of a coupon,” Palmieri says. In other words, after a user has identified a need for something and just before moving to take action on that need.

MoMA | Marketing & Advertising agencies who are just “Testing”

Small business paid search spending up 43% in third quarter

U.S. small businesses spent about 43 percent more on paid search advertising in the third quarter of 2010 than they did in the same quarter of 2009.

The average spend on paid search advertising was $2,327 in the third quarter of 2010, according to WebVisible. Some might note that the rate of growth is slower than it had been in the second quarter, when spending grew 159 percent.

Perhaps that indicates firms are becoming better marketers as they gain experience. More ominously, it might mean the economic slowdown that happened in the third quarter already has affected small business ad spending again.

Paid search ad spending growth continues, but slows - Search Marketing - BizReport

Marketing On Social Networks? Add Mobile

One of the reasons marketing on social networks is so popular is that the consumers a brand can reach are largely active, vocal and willing to connect, with each other and with their favorite brands, says Forrester Research analyst Melissa Parrish.

But social networking and social media are fast becoming mobile venues as well. About 22 percent of U.S. online adults with mobile phones access their social networks via mobile at least monthly.

Already Marketing On Social Networks? Then You're Already Marketing On Mobile | Forrester Blogs

How Mature Is Your Mobile Strategy?

Only a third of 200 enterprise respondents surveyed by Forrester Research have had a mobile strategy in place for more than a year.

Online companies, media companies and financial institutions are often more advanced than firms in other industries.

Forty-five percent of respondents are just waking up to the mobile opportunity and thinking about integrating mobile into their overall corporate strategy, just like they did a decade ago with the emerging online channel.

For the majority of respondents, mobile is mainly seen as a way to increase customer engagement, satisfaction, and loyalty.

Many respondents who think it is too early to focus on mobile tend to claim that they first need to fix the basics regarding their overall digital and social initiatives. While that makes a lot of sense, mobile quickly is becoming a key enabler for social networking and social media behavior.

Facebook’s mobile global monthly audiences skyrocketed from 65 million users in September 2009 to 150 million users in July 2010.

Sixteen percent of Twitter users now start with mobile, versus five percent in April 2010. Over the same time frame, the number of mobile Twitter users has increased by 62 percent. It is becoming increasingly difficult, in other words, to conduct social media initiatives without considering the mobility angle.

How Mature Is Your Mobile Strategy? | Forrester Blogs

In Five Years, Social Network Connections Will Be Dial Tone

“In five years, everybody will always be connected to each other, instead of the web,” says Mark Pincus, Zynga CEO. It's the sort of thing you might expect a CEO of a fast-growing social network to say.

How right does Pincus have to be to create a new dynamic for services built around what we used to call "dial tone?" Probably not completely, or even mostly right.

Most people communicate mostly with a relatively small number of people, in their roles as individuals, family members, friends or members of various social groups. Even for most people in their roles as workers, the number of people one communicates with is relatively small.

So what is a social network, especially one with "presence" features? A way of creating the equivalent of "dial tone, the ability to initiate a communication.

Pincus says he often thinks of today’s social companies as providing the equivalent of “dial tone." It's an interesting comparison.

You might think non-real-time messages are not "communications" in the same way dial tone was. But even voice communications began to change with the advent of voice mail. Where once only synchronous communications were possible (a calling party reaches a called party), with voice mail non-synchronous communications began to be possible.

Since the advent of voice mail, other non-synchronous modes also have become important, including email, text and instant messaging, which can be non-synchronous, synchronous or nearly-synchronous.

In fact, blog posts have been said to be a form of non-synchronous communication very similar to Christmas letters, newsletters or traditional media, where point-to-multipoint messages are sent.

In that sense, social connections and networks do provide features and value quite similar to dial tone.

In Five Years, Connections Will Be To Each Other, Not The Web; We’ll Be Dial Tones

Native or Web Apps?

You might not be surprised if, at the end of the day, experts conclude that there are some apps that are suited to "native" or "Web" format and some that are suitable for specially-designed mobile apps. Still, there are some guidelines, Luke Wroblewski suggests, after hearing a presentation by Jason Grigsby.

Native mobile apps and mobile Web apps are both apps. Where performance is needed, native apps will always have better access to platform and resources. URLS don’t open applications, so mobile apps are better when a specific app needs to auto-run to provide the best experience.

The mobile Web is one area where most small businesses can benefit more from a native or Web app than a mobile app, Grigsby said.

The mobile Web also is more open, with few entry costs. Developers can hope to keep 100 percent of any revenue they can generate and can do instantaneous releases.

read more here

Orange Says Europeans Prefer Mobile Web to Apps

Mobile users in the United Kingdom, France, Spain and Poland surveyed on behalf of Orange say they prefer to use the mobile web rather than mobile apps. About 70 percent of Britons prefer the mobile web to mobile apps, for example.

In France, 68 percent of users favor the browser over 60 per cent who prefer apps.  In less mature mobile media markets, there is apparently more receptiveness to app use. In  Spain 42 per cent see, to prefer apps, while 45 percent of Polish users favor mobile apps and 39 percent favor the mobile web.

In large part, those opinions might be driven by the increasing use of mobiles as an end point supporting many of the same applications people use on their PCs. Some 58 percent of U.K. users want to find the same things on their mobile as on a PC, as do 55 percent of French users, 58 percent in Spain and 72 percent in Poland.

The study also suggests that mobile use is cannibalizing some amount of traditional media use as well. Some 16 percent of mobile media users in the United Kingdom say they read fewer magazines and 14 percent say they read fewer newspapers.

Mobile Internet use does not seem to be cannibalizing either television or fixed-line PC use, however.

PC browsing increased for 25 percent of respondents and television viewing increased for 14 percent of respondents.

About 40 percent of European mobile media users surveyed also say they quickly check information on their mobiles and then spend more time with content when they are back in front of a PC.

In the United Kingdom mobile media is accessed by 74 percent of users when they are out and about. On the other hand, when at home 59 percent use their mobiles to search the Internet as well.

Fully 70 percent of respondents say they use their mobile browsers when users are on the move. In the United Kingdom, Spain and Poland, respondents browse for longer on the Internet when they are outside rather than at home.

read more here

Networks Block Google TV Access to Their Programming

ABC, CBS and NBC are blocking TV programming on their websites from being viewable on Google's new Web-TV service, illustrating the problem with all efforts to create alternative ways of viewing TV programming.

Full-length episodes of shows like NBC's 'The Office,' CBS's 'CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,' and ABC's 'Modern Family' can't be viewed on Google TV, a service that allows people to access the Internet and search for Web videos on their television screens, as well as to search live TV listings, the Wall Street Journal reports.

As always has been the case, content owners will block any effort to disrupt their existing revenue models by denying legal access to the programming people want to watch, until some tipping point where content owners believe the results are at least revenue neutral, with further upside going forward.