Survey Finds Small Business Use of Tablets at 56%

A survey of 175 of iYogi small businesses customers found 56 percent of the small businesses already are using tablets at work,. iYogi Insights reports.

iYogi is a provider of tech support services to consumers and small businesses in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and UAE.

That survey is consistent with other studies that show high small business adoption of tablets. More than half of small and midsize businesses in the United States have employees using a tablet computer, according to a study by iGR. The survey of more than 400 businesses found that 52 percent currently use a tablet like an Apple iPad or Google Android-powered device to help run their business.

Intermedia, for example, likewise reports that 25 percent of all ActiveSync device activations conducted by Intermedia are tablets. Intermedia manages more than 400,000 premium hosted Exchange email accounts. 

CDW surveys indicate that nearly 60 percent of polled organizations use tablets. While more prevalent among medium and large-size businesses (62 percent), nearly half of small businesses reported tablet use (47 percent). 

Among government IT decision-makers, tablets were more commonly used at the state level (59 percent) than the federal level (48 percent). While the popularity of tablets has grown steadily, only 19 percent of IT decision-makers reported that tablets have replaced some of their organization’s personal computers. Among those not currently using tablets, 31 percent plan to do so in the next six months.

450 Million Tablets to be Sold in 2016

There are lots of reasons why tablet sales are growing so fast. 

Average sales price of tablets are falling. The average selling price of an iPad is down more than 11 percent from its 2011 price. 

The introduction of mini tablets, beginning with the Kindle Fire, disrupted the pricing dynamics of the market and will drive the huge drop in average selling prices over the next few years. 

Tablets also are cannibalizing the e-reader market, which sold more than 20 million devices in 2011. 

Tablets also vastly improve upon the media consumption experience, and as it turns out, that has become a primary reason for using a computing appliance connected to the Internet. 

There also are other markets, including business and education markets. Enterprises buy about $420 billion worth of devices and hardware every year, for example. 

U.S. kindergarten to 12th grade schools also spent about $5.5 billion on textbooks in 2010, and college students spend hundreds of dollars per semester on textbooks they'll only use once. Those markets also are candidates for tablet disruptiion, Business Insider argues. 

Netflix has 82% Share of OTT Paid Video Market

Netflix has about 82 percent share of the paid over the top video market, with Amazon Instant Video at 22 percent. Apple’s  iTunes has 16 percent share, while Hulu Plus has eight percent share, 451 Research Changewave says. The September 2012 survey shows all the other contestants gaining share on Netflix.

The September survey of 1,115 North American consumers also looked at the leading Internet-connected devices people are now using to stream video.

Facebook Phone is Coming?

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has flatly said Facebook is not interested in creating a Facebook-branded smart phone. But people, companies and politicians sometimes do not really tell the truth. 

Now there are new reports that indeed Facebook has been working with HTC to create such a device. 

Reportedly, the HTC Opera UL is an "OEM product" for Facebook.

Untethered Access Rules, for U.S. Android Users

A new analysis by NPD illustates the widespread use of Wi-Fi access by users of Android smart phones. In fact, Android device users on Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile USA and MetroPCS networks consume more data using Wi-Fi than they do on the mobile networks.

In some cases, as on the AT&T network, about 80 percent of all consumption is on a Wi-Fi network. Verizon Android users consume nearly two thirds of their data on a Wi-Fi network.

The point is that data consumed on a mobile data plan can represent far less than half, and in some cases as little as 20 percent,  of all data used on a smart phone. 

That usage pattern is the result of a likely combination of background drivers. For starters, much smart phone usage occurs at home or at work, where Wi-Fi access is readily available. Users also have learned they can save money by offloading access to a Wi-Fi network. 

Availability of public hotspot service also apparently encourages users to shift usage. In total, the usage pattern shows the growing importance of untethered access for today's end user devices and applications. 

Mobile is useful in many cases, to be sure. But much of the value a smart phone represents is supplied when users are in untethered modes, not full mobile scenarios.

Google Wallet Adds Online Purchases

A casual observer can be forgiven for finding mobile commerce and mobile payments a confusing development.

Is it about paying with a mobile phone or a credit card? it's both.

Is it about payments at retail stores or online purchases? Both.

Is it about marketing, advertising offers or transaction fees? All. 

Is it about "contact-less" payments, bar codes, facial recognition or fingerprint identification? All the above. 

In the latest twist, web sites that accept Google Wallet also enable use of a single sign-in process that relies on mapping physical accounts to the Google Wallet icon on a smart phone. That means users can avoid entering 17 to 20 fields of information on a small screen while having to click and scroll through multiple pages to provide shipping and billing information. 

Google Wallet now makes the "Buy with Google Wallet" a simple process on 1-800-Flowers.com, Rockport.com and FiveGuys.com (at select locations), for starters. 

As has been the trend in recent months, the direction in mobile payments has been to blur the line between offline and online shopping. 

Android Gets 75% Market Share

The Android smartphone operating system got 75 percent market share in the third quarter of 2012, according to International Data Corp.

Total Android smartphone shipments globally reached 136 million units, while total shipments were 181 million units shipped. Some observers will wonder whether we are not seeing another replay of the Apple-Windows scenario, where Windows took most of the share, using an "open" approach,  compared to Apple's "closed" approach.


             Top Six Smartphone Shipments,  Q3 2012 (Units in Millions) 

Operating System	3Q12 Shipment Volumes	3Q12 Market Share	3Q11 Shipment Volumes	3Q11 Market Share	Year-Over-Year Change
Android	136.0	75.0%	71.0	57.5%	91.5%
iOS	26.9	14.9%	17.1	13.8%	57.3%
BlackBerry	7.7	4.3%	11.8	9.5%	-34.7%
Symbian	4.1	2.3%	18.1	14.6%	-77.3%
Windows Phone 7/ Windows Mobile	3.6	2.0%	1.5	1.2%	140.0%
Linux	2.8	1.5%	4.1	3.3%	-31.7%
Others	0.0	0.0%	0.1	0.1%	-100.0%
Totals	181.1	100.0%	123.7	100.0%	46.4%

Source: IDC Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker, November 1, 2012