International Data Corporation has increased its forecast for the worldwide tablet market to 117.1 million units, up from its previous forecast of 107.4 million units for the year.
IDC also revised upward its 2013 forecast number from 142.8 million units to 165.9 million units. And by 2016 worldwide shipments should reach 261.4 million units.
"Despite ongoing economic concerns in most regions of the world, consumers continue to buy tablets in record numbers and we expect particularly strong demand in the fourth quarter," says Tom Mainelli, research director, Mobile Connected Devices at IDC.
Friday, September 21, 2012
IDC Raises Its Worldwide Tablet Forecast
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
Thursday, September 20, 2012
$35 Tablet for India
The Aakash UbiSlate 7Ci is a super-cheap tablet that will attempt to connect every student in India to the Internet.
The latest version of India’s $35 tablet comes equipped with WiFi and has an optional upgrade ($64) of a cellular Internet package of $2/month for 2 GB of data (roughly 25 emails, 25 websites, 2 minutes of streaming video, and 15 minutes of voice chat a day). More importantly, it is expected to launch in India in September 2012.
The latest version of India’s $35 tablet comes equipped with WiFi and has an optional upgrade ($64) of a cellular Internet package of $2/month for 2 GB of data (roughly 25 emails, 25 websites, 2 minutes of streaming video, and 15 minutes of voice chat a day). More importantly, it is expected to launch in India in September 2012.
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
Older Customers Like Voice "That Just Works," Millennials Prefer Bundles
Both Generation Y and Pre-Boomer (Millennial) customers are significantly more satisfied with their home telephone service than customers in other generational groups, according to J.D. Power and Associates.
J.D. Power and Associates defines “Pre-Boomers” as people born before 1946; Baby Boomers as born 1946-1964; Generation X as born 1965-1976; and Generation Y as born 1977-1994)
The study measures customer satisfaction based on performance and reliability; cost of service; billing; offerings and promotions; and customer service.
Overall satisfaction among Pre-Boomers with their residential telephone service is 709 on a 1,000-point scale, compared with 690 among Gen Y (Millennial) customers.
The average overall customer satisfaction is 682. In addition, Pre-Boomers and Millennial customers are significantly more satisfied with their phone service than are customers in the Gen X (667) and Baby Boomer (678) generational groups. according to J.D. Power and Associates.
Pre-Boomers are satisfied with their phone service because it is reliable, while Gen Y customers are satisfied because of their ability to bundle other services such as cellular phone service and high-speed Internet.
While the majority of Pre-Boomers are unlikely to switch providers, nearly one-fourth of Millennials are likely shop around for a different provider.
"Pre-Boomers tend to take an 'if it's working, why switch' approach to their telephone service, while Gen Y customers are not afraid to switch and will consider a provider offering a less expensive alternative," says Frank Perazzini, J.D. Power and Associates director of telecommunications.
Some 22 percent of Millennial customers indicate they "definitely will" or "probably will" switch phone service providers, compared with just 11 percent of Pre-Boomers.
Among Millennial customers who are willing to switch, 72 percent say they are willing to switch for a better price, compared with 60 percent of Pre-Boomers who say the same.
In addition, the study finds that 57 percent of Millennial customers say it would be "extremely easy" or "somewhat easy" to switch their phone service, compared with 51 percent of Pre-Boomers who say the same.
While Millennial customers have a high propensity to switch providers, they also present the greatest opportunity for growth. Among Millennial customers, 41 percent indicate they will buy additional products from their provider, compared with 31 percent of Gen X customers, 25 percent of Baby Boomers and 21 percent of Pre-Boomers.
About 12 percent of Millennials are interested in bundling home security services with their telephone service. Some 11 percent of Gen X customers, nine percent of, Baby Boomers and seven percent of Pre-Boomers have such interest.
Some 21 percent of Millennial customers use online video chat, compared with 13 percent of Gen X consumers, nine percent of Baby Boomers and seven percent of Pre-Boomers.
J.D. Power and Associates defines “Pre-Boomers” as people born before 1946; Baby Boomers as born 1946-1964; Generation X as born 1965-1976; and Generation Y as born 1977-1994)
The study measures customer satisfaction based on performance and reliability; cost of service; billing; offerings and promotions; and customer service.
Overall satisfaction among Pre-Boomers with their residential telephone service is 709 on a 1,000-point scale, compared with 690 among Gen Y (Millennial) customers.
The average overall customer satisfaction is 682. In addition, Pre-Boomers and Millennial customers are significantly more satisfied with their phone service than are customers in the Gen X (667) and Baby Boomer (678) generational groups. according to J.D. Power and Associates.
Pre-Boomers are satisfied with their phone service because it is reliable, while Gen Y customers are satisfied because of their ability to bundle other services such as cellular phone service and high-speed Internet.
While the majority of Pre-Boomers are unlikely to switch providers, nearly one-fourth of Millennials are likely shop around for a different provider.
"Pre-Boomers tend to take an 'if it's working, why switch' approach to their telephone service, while Gen Y customers are not afraid to switch and will consider a provider offering a less expensive alternative," says Frank Perazzini, J.D. Power and Associates director of telecommunications.
Some 22 percent of Millennial customers indicate they "definitely will" or "probably will" switch phone service providers, compared with just 11 percent of Pre-Boomers.
Among Millennial customers who are willing to switch, 72 percent say they are willing to switch for a better price, compared with 60 percent of Pre-Boomers who say the same.
In addition, the study finds that 57 percent of Millennial customers say it would be "extremely easy" or "somewhat easy" to switch their phone service, compared with 51 percent of Pre-Boomers who say the same.
While Millennial customers have a high propensity to switch providers, they also present the greatest opportunity for growth. Among Millennial customers, 41 percent indicate they will buy additional products from their provider, compared with 31 percent of Gen X customers, 25 percent of Baby Boomers and 21 percent of Pre-Boomers.
About 12 percent of Millennials are interested in bundling home security services with their telephone service. Some 11 percent of Gen X customers, nine percent of, Baby Boomers and seven percent of Pre-Boomers have such interest.
Some 21 percent of Millennial customers use online video chat, compared with 13 percent of Gen X consumers, nine percent of Baby Boomers and seven percent of Pre-Boomers.
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
Verizon Wireless has Enough Spectrum for 4 to 5 Years
Verizon Communications CFO Fran Shammo says that Verizon Wireless now has enough spectrum to handle its capacity needs for the next four to five years. Granted, Verizon and other carriers have a vested interest in convincing regulators that they will need more spectrum to handle increasing demand, but there also is a reason most people assume the general claim is correct.
If one assumes demand is growing perhaps 40 percent a year, and even assuming more intense coding, cell division, more efficient signaling and Wi-Fi offload are among the other tools service provider have, more bandwidth will be needed.
The issue, one might argue, is that some of those techniques could be much more expensive than simply deploying more spectrum. And those additional costs will be passed along to consumers.
At a global level, Analysys Mason predicts that mobile data will grow at a 41 percent compound annual growth rate. That would be quite a slower rate than had been the case in 2011, for example, when growth was about 90 percent, on average, in the U.S. market.
According to a 2011 Nielsen monthly analysis of mobile phone bills for 65,000 lines, smart phone owners, especially those with iPhones and Android devices, were consuming about 435 megabytes in the first quarter of 2011, up from about 230 Mbytes in the first quarter of 2010.
Data usage for the top 10 percent of smartphone users was up 109 percent, as you would expect. The top one percent of users increased their usage by 155 percent from 1.8 GBytes in the first quarter of 2010 to over 4.6 GBytes in the first quarter of 2011, Nielsen said.
If one assumes demand is growing perhaps 40 percent a year, and even assuming more intense coding, cell division, more efficient signaling and Wi-Fi offload are among the other tools service provider have, more bandwidth will be needed.
The issue, one might argue, is that some of those techniques could be much more expensive than simply deploying more spectrum. And those additional costs will be passed along to consumers.
At a global level, Analysys Mason predicts that mobile data will grow at a 41 percent compound annual growth rate. That would be quite a slower rate than had been the case in 2011, for example, when growth was about 90 percent, on average, in the U.S. market.
According to a 2011 Nielsen monthly analysis of mobile phone bills for 65,000 lines, smart phone owners, especially those with iPhones and Android devices, were consuming about 435 megabytes in the first quarter of 2011, up from about 230 Mbytes in the first quarter of 2010.
Data usage for the top 10 percent of smartphone users was up 109 percent, as you would expect. The top one percent of users increased their usage by 155 percent from 1.8 GBytes in the first quarter of 2010 to over 4.6 GBytes in the first quarter of 2011, Nielsen said.
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
EU Wants Business, Government Users to Buy €45 billion Worth of Cloud Computing by 2020
Governments and industry should buy €45 billion worth of cloud computing services by 2020 as part of an EU strategy to generate an estimated €900 billion in gross domestic product and an additional 3.8 million jobs by the end of the decade, a new report European Commission report will advocate.
The European Commission's cloud computing strategy document is set to be released in late September by Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes,
The European Commission's cloud computing strategy document is set to be released in late September by Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes,
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
OTT App Providers, Telcos and Cable "Think Different" About "Out of Region" Sales
It is no secret that app providers and telecom, mobile, satellite and cable service providers "think different" about their respective "customer" bases and prospects. All access providers necessarily must work within frameworks set by regulators on a country by country, state by state or locality by locality basis.
There are franchises, certificates, spectrum or other regulatory requirements for being in business. That necessarily leads access provider executives to instinctively and logically think about services they can sell to people and businesses within their authorized areas of lawful service.
App providers, in contrast, do not have to "ask for permission" to be in business. In fact, an app provider wants the widest possible audience or customer base for their apps, irrespective of geography. Whether an app provider sells "packaged" software or cloud-based software, the typical goal is to sell "everywhere," as much as practical.
Telefónica is among tier one service providers exploring an out of region strategy based on apps, though it primarily remains a geography-based business.
But the main reason service providers do not like over the top services and applications is that they generally represent direct competition for key products service providers sell.
But that is one key to how things will change in the future. If a major reason over the top apps and services are disliked is that they pose a threat to revenue, then a major reason for adopting an over the top approach is if doing so can create new revenue opportunities.
In fact, partnership between operators and OTT players are the way Long Term Evolution suppliers can prosper, according to Gulzar Azad, Head of Access for Google India Google India.
In some ways, you would expect a major app supplier to say that. Access providers need to start thinking in terms of delivering services, not data plans, Azad suggests.
Where service providers traditionally think in terms of offering services to their own subscribers inside their own geographical market, “what they could be doing is offering services that anyone can sign up for, because that’s where all this is going,” Azad says.
The challenge, of course, is that this approach benefits a third party app provider more directly than an access provider.
Still, the conceptual and practical leap will be explored, and sometimes embraced, by a wider range of service providers, eventually. Think of it as a shift of focus from “selling services to current customers, where we have network” to “selling services to non-customers who are out of territory.” The addressable market for the former is far smaller than the addressable market for the latter.
There are franchises, certificates, spectrum or other regulatory requirements for being in business. That necessarily leads access provider executives to instinctively and logically think about services they can sell to people and businesses within their authorized areas of lawful service.
App providers, in contrast, do not have to "ask for permission" to be in business. In fact, an app provider wants the widest possible audience or customer base for their apps, irrespective of geography. Whether an app provider sells "packaged" software or cloud-based software, the typical goal is to sell "everywhere," as much as practical.
Telefónica is among tier one service providers exploring an out of region strategy based on apps, though it primarily remains a geography-based business.
But the main reason service providers do not like over the top services and applications is that they generally represent direct competition for key products service providers sell.
But that is one key to how things will change in the future. If a major reason over the top apps and services are disliked is that they pose a threat to revenue, then a major reason for adopting an over the top approach is if doing so can create new revenue opportunities.
That is not to say the task is easy. But many service providers have been "going out of territory" for quite some time, expanding into new geographies in a variety of ways, generally using both a licensed approach. What will happen in the future is more out of territory expansion using non-licensed, over the top approaches.
In fact, partnership between operators and OTT players are the way Long Term Evolution suppliers can prosper, according to Gulzar Azad, Head of Access for Google India Google India.
In some ways, you would expect a major app supplier to say that. Access providers need to start thinking in terms of delivering services, not data plans, Azad suggests.
Where service providers traditionally think in terms of offering services to their own subscribers inside their own geographical market, “what they could be doing is offering services that anyone can sign up for, because that’s where all this is going,” Azad says.
The challenge, of course, is that this approach benefits a third party app provider more directly than an access provider.
Still, the conceptual and practical leap will be explored, and sometimes embraced, by a wider range of service providers, eventually. Think of it as a shift of focus from “selling services to current customers, where we have network” to “selling services to non-customers who are out of territory.” The addressable market for the former is far smaller than the addressable market for the latter.
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
80% of U.S. Smart Phone Owners Used Device to Get Retail Content in July 2012
According to comScore, 80 percent of U.S. smart phone owners--some 85.9 million people–used their smart phones to view retail content on their devices in July 2012.
Amazon Sites led as the top retailer with an audience of 49.6 million visitors, while multi-channel retailers including Apple (17.7 million visitors), Wal-Mart (16.3 million visitors), Target (10 million visitors) and Best Buy (7.2 million visitors) also attracted significant mobile audiences as well.
Across both smart phones and desktop computers, males and females represented nearly equal proportions of retail category visitors. However, females accounted for a higher share of time spent on retail destinations at 53.4 percent of minutes on desktop computers and an even greater share of retail minutes on smart phones at 56.1 percent, comScore says.
Smart phone shoppers were also more likely to be younger than their desktop counterparts with 70.7 percent of smart phone retail visitors under the age of 45 compared to 61.1 percent of desktop users.
Engagement among these audiences showed even greater disparity with visitors under the age of 45 accounting for nearly 3 in every 4 minutes spent on retail content via smart phones, compared to 61.6 percent of retail minutes on desktop computers.
Amazon Sites led as the top retailer with an audience of 49.6 million visitors, while multi-channel retailers including Apple (17.7 million visitors), Wal-Mart (16.3 million visitors), Target (10 million visitors) and Best Buy (7.2 million visitors) also attracted significant mobile audiences as well.
Across both smart phones and desktop computers, males and females represented nearly equal proportions of retail category visitors. However, females accounted for a higher share of time spent on retail destinations at 53.4 percent of minutes on desktop computers and an even greater share of retail minutes on smart phones at 56.1 percent, comScore says.
Smart phone shoppers were also more likely to be younger than their desktop counterparts with 70.7 percent of smart phone retail visitors under the age of 45 compared to 61.1 percent of desktop users.
Engagement among these audiences showed even greater disparity with visitors under the age of 45 accounting for nearly 3 in every 4 minutes spent on retail content via smart phones, compared to 61.6 percent of retail minutes on desktop computers.
Smart phone retail audiences were more likely to reside in higher income households compared to desktop computer users, likely as a result of smartphone ownership skewing towards higher income segments compared to an average consumer.
Among smart phone audiences accessing retail destinations, nearly 1 in every 3 had a household income of $100k or greater, with this income segment driving a comparable 31.2 percent of minutes spent on retail sites and apps.
Among smart phone audiences accessing retail destinations, nearly 1 in every 3 had a household income of $100k or greater, with this income segment driving a comparable 31.2 percent of minutes spent on retail sites and apps.
| Selected Retail Properties by Unique Smartphone Visitors(000) (Mobile Browser and App Audience Combined) July 2012 Total U.S. Smartphone Subscribers Age 18+ on iOS, Android and RIM Platforms Source: comScore Mobile Metrix 2.0 | ||
| All Smartphones | ||
| Total Unique Visitors (000) | % Reach | |
| Retail Category | 85,905 | 80.6% |
| Amazon Sites | 49,636 | 46.6% |
| eBay | 32,583 | 30.6% |
| Apple | 17,684 | 16.6% |
| Wal-Mart | 16,295 | 15.3% |
| Target | 10,041 | 9.4% |
| Best Buy | 7,177 | 6.7% |
| Ticketmaster | 5,699 | 5.3% |
| CVS | 4,468 | 4.2% |
| The Home Depot | 4,353 | 4.1% |
| Blockbuster | 4,017 | 3.8% |
| Barnes & Noble | 3,804 | 3.6% |
| Walgreen | 3,707 | 3.5% |
| Limited Brands | 3,261 | 3.1% |
| Lowes | 3,246 | 3.0% |
| Etsy | 3,160 | 3.0% |
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
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