Apple may offer unlocked iPhone 4 handsets

According to iOS developer Chronic, Apple plans to offer unlocked iPhone 4 models directly to consumers soon, in both black and white, with 16 Gbytes or 32 Gbytes of storage.

Apple may offer unlocked iPhone 4 handsets

Worldwide Ad Market Approaches $500 Billion

Advertising spending around the world is projected to increase about four percent in 2011to more than $494 billion, eMarketer estimates.

Total spending on directories, internet, magazines, newspaper, outdoor, radio and TV advertising will continue to grow at steady single-digit rates through 2015, according to the forecast. By that year, advertisers worldwide will be spending almost $600 billion on these media.

Worldwide Ad Market Approaches $500 Billion

Sarah Palin Email Gambit: Why People Hold Journalists in Such Low Regard

There's a reason journalists are held in such low public esteem, despite their own high self evaluations.

"The trove of more than 13,000 emails detailing almost every aspect of Sarah Palin’s governorship of Alaska, released late on Friday, paints a picture of her as an idealistic, conscientious, humorous and humane woman slightly bemused by the world of politics," says the U.K. Daily Telegraph.

"One can only assume that the Left-leaning editors who dispatched teams of reporters to remote Juneau, the Alaskan capital, to pore over the emails in the hope of digging up a scandal are now viewing the result as a rather poor return on their considerable investment," the Telegraph says.

"If anything, Mrs Palin seems likely to emerge from the scrutiny of the 24,000 pages, contained in six boxes and weighing 275 pounds, with her reputation considerably enhanced."

"The whole saga might come to be viewed as “an embarrassment for legacy media,” the Telegraph says.

In fact, repeated polls have confirmed the low and dropping esteem accorded to major media journalists. A 2004 poll by the First Amendment Center and American Journalism Review shows Americans remain critical of the professionalism and ethics of the people and organizations that deliver the news.

"They say that the press is biased, that it routinely falsifies and fabricates stories, and that it abuses its freedom," says the report. See http://www.ajr.org/article.asp?id=3731.

A 2009 study by the Pew Research Center found 63 percent of respondents said news articles were often inaccurate and only 29 percent said the media generally “get the facts straight” — the worst marks Pew has recorded — compared with 53 percent and 39 percent in 2007. See http://people-press.org/2009/09/13/press-accuracy-rating-hits-two-decade-low/.


In the 1997 Gallup Poll on honesty and ethics, two percent of respondents rated journalists as "very high" on honesty and ethics. About the same ranking gotten by members of Congress and car sales people. See http://www.gallup.com/poll/4294/honesty-ethics-poll-pharmacists-strengthen-their-position.aspx.

Honesty & Ethics: 26 Occupations Nov 7-9, 1997
	Very high	High	Average	Low	Very low	No opinion
Druggists, pharmacists	16	53	27	3	*	1
Clergy	17%	42	31	5	1	4
Medical doctors	10%	46	36	5	2	1
College teachers	11%	44	35	3	1	6
Dentists	9%	45	37	5	2	2
Policemen	10%	39	40	8	2	1
Engineers	9%	40	40	3	1	7
Funeral directors	7%	29	45	9	2	8
Bankers	4%	30	51	11	3	1
Public opinion pollsters	4%	19	55	12	2	8
Journalists	2%	21	53	17	4	3
TV reporters, commentators	4%	18	55	17	4	2
Business executives	3%	17	55	17	3	5
Local officeholders	3%	17	56	17	4	3
Building contractors	3%	17	53	18	4	5
Newspaper reporters	2%	17	48	24	6	3
Stockbrokers	2%	16	54	14	3	11
State officeholders	2%	15	53	24	4	2
Real estate agents	3%	13	56	20	4	4
Lawyers	3%	12	41	31	10	3
Labor union leaders	2%	13	41	26	12	6
Senators	2%	12	50	27	6	3
Advertising practitioners	2%	10	49	26	6	7
Congressmen	2%	10	49	28	8	3
Insurance salesmen	2%	10	47	30	8	3
Car salesmen	2%	6	31	40	19	2

American Way: Sarah Palin email frenzy backfires on her media antagonists – Telegraph Blogs

Maybe Mobile Advertising Really is Mostly About Location

Some would argue that Apple's iAd initiative has failed to get significant traction, and might wonder whether it means anything particular, other than that Apple has not immediately been able to show its ability to reshape yet another industry. One way or the other, Apple has not shown sufficient value to get many advertisers to move budgets. See Looks Like the iAd Hasn’t Cracked Mobile Advertising.

Maybe the issue isn't necessarily Apple's prowess in the advertising business. The mobile advertising business remains quite small by overall industry standards. Of the possibly $600 billion U.S. advertisers spent in 2010, about $48 billion was spent on all forms of digital media.

Marketers invested a total $47.6 billion in digital advertising and marketing in 2010 according to the Jack Myers Media Business Report. 2020 Vision: Media, Advertising and Marketing Economic Health Report 2000- 2020.

U.S. mobile advertising spend was estimated at $743 million in 2010, according to eMarketer. That is expected to reach $2.5 billion by 2014, but that is a small number in the advertising market. Some estimate the mobile marketing market already is bigger than that, but most think the mobile ad market still remains diminutive.

About one online marketing dollar in every five spent in 2010 went to a mobile campaign, says Borrell Associates, one of the more-robust estimates. By 2015, the mobile share will have grown to almost two of every three dollars spent, according to Borrell Associates. See http://www.mobilemarketingandtechnology.com/2010/toppost/mobile-advertising-will-be-23-of-total-online-spending-by-2015/.

The Jack Myers study pegs the digital total spend at nearly eight percent share of all marketing communications investments in 2010, which were reported by Myers at $601 billion. That total includes all advertising, trade and consumer promotion, event and direct marketing, and public relations, though, and some would not include PR spending in the advertising total, nor good portions of event marketing.

Perhaps the biggest upside could come if mobile advertising comes to be seen as the best form of local advertising, rather than national campaigns. Google would like that, even if Apple probably would not.

Asian Microvendors Have 13% Market Share

According to the latest Strategy Analytics research, more than 200 emerging handset brands, such as Micromax, Spice Mobile and Yulong Coolpad, captured nearly 13 percent of global mobile handset market share, shipping 48 million units globally in the first quarter 2011. according to Strategy Analytics.

According to Neil Shah, Strategy Analytics analyst, “out of the 200-plus legitimate microvendors worldwide, the top 25 brands shipped nearly 21 million units in the first quarter of 2011."

Rising cellular subscriber growth in Asia and Africa has led to the rapid emergence of low-cost, mobile handset suppliers to fulfill rising handset demand, the firm says.

Asian Microvendors Target 3G Handsets and Android Smartphones

Experts Trump Friends for Web Recommendations

According to research from Meebo, expertise trumps friendship when people are surfing the Web for content that matches their interests.

The study, which included a nationally representative sample of 1,473 people, found that 53 percent of Web users are looking for recommendations from 'everyday experts,' or strangers with knowledge on a specific topic. For questions about travel and cooking, the gap is even bigger: about 40 percent said they would connect with "everyday experts" while about 20 percent would ask people they know.

Content-Sharing Company Meebo Says Experts Trump Friends for Web Recommendations

Groupon, LivingSocial Serve Somewhat Different Market Segments

Groupon and LivingSocial appear to attract different types of customers. Groupon’s visitor base skews somewhat more towards younger users and females while LivingSocial’s is more normally distributed around middle-age users and proportioned roughly equally between genders.

Groupon and LivingSocial account for over 90% of all visits among all group buying websites tracked by comScore.

Groupon, LivingSocial Grabbing Different Segments of the Daily Deal Marketplace