Digital Lifescapes

The overall PC market will grow by just 0.9 percent in 2012, as mid-year shipments slow and the global outlook continues to be bleak. According to the latest market study by International Data Corporation ( IDC ), 367 million PCs will ship into the market this year -- that's up just a fraction of a percent from 2011, marking the second consecutive year of growth below 2 percent. Slowing growth in the Asia-Pacific region has reduced the impact of emerging market growth, while more mature regions -- such as the United States -- have seen volume actually decline. People that were surveyed are apparently considering spending on other consumer electronics products -- such as media tablets and smartphones. IDC believes that product updates planned for later this year should help to revive PC growth, but I'm not convinced. The competitive environment is likely to entice buyers to get the most value for their money -- clearly, that's unlikely to be expensive new Ultrabooks that

There once was a time when a favorite American online activity was shopping, but given the current economic outlook many are now apparently spending more time on their finances. Are they concerned about the rising price of basic commodities and their shrinking buying power in the marketplace? comScore released its monthly analysis of U.S. web activity at the top online properties for July 2012. More Americans visited the Business and Finance category at the start of the third quarter of 2012, including Online Trading sites and Financial Advice sites. "Millions of Americans visited the Business and Finance category in July for up-to-the-minute reporting on the unsteady financial markets and for a mid-year health check on their investments and other financial interests." said Jeff Hackett, executive vice president of comScore . In July, two Business and Finance subcategories earned a spot in the top-gaining categories ranking, including the number one placeholder earned

The missed opportunities for incumbent traditional PC manufacturers, such as HP and Dell, to participate in the media tablet phenomenon has already raised doubts about their future growth potential. Moreover, the current slow adoption of Ultrabooks may erode the influence of legacy PC component providers, such as Intel. Clearly, the future belongs to those agile industry leaders who saw this demand shift coming and invested wisely in new product development. Strategic foresight will separate the winners from the losers, as this PC market transition plays out in the coming weeks and months. ​The April to June quarter of 2012 set a new record for media tablet shipments reaching nearly 25 million units -- with total shipments growing 36 percent quarter-over-quarter (QoQ) and 77 percent year-over-year (YoY). Apple iPad shipments represented nearly 69 percent of worldwide volumes for the period, according to the latest preliminary global market assessment of vendor share by ABI Resear

Japan is considered by many analysts to be one of the leading global markets for assessing new mobile communications trends. Most of the prior advanced applications for mobile phones, such as NFC payments, were pioneered and mainstreamed in this region. comScore recently reported key trends in the Japan mobile phone industry during the three month average period ending June 2012. The study surveyed more than 4,000 Japanese mobile subscribers. The Google Android platform accounted for the majority of the smartphone market at 64.1 percent, followed by Apple iOS with 32.3 percent of the market. During this reporting period, 102.7 million people age 13 and older used mobile devices in Japan (feature phone and smartphone devices). Device manufacturer Sharp ranked as the top OEM with 22.6 percent of Japanese mobile subscribers, followed by Panasonic with 13.6 percent share. Fujitsu captured the 3rd place ranking with 11.8 percent of mobile subscribers, followed by NEC at 8.9 percent

I've previously reported on the apparent lack of substantive innovation within IP-based television offerings -- essentially how most have merely attempted to emulate the legacy capabilities of linear broadcast TV. There's been some signs of new progress, but the inherent attributes of IPTV technology have barely been explored, so far. Infonetics Research just released excerpts from its "2012 IPTV Service Deployment Strategies: Global Service Provider Survey" report. Their latest worldwide market study is focused on video entertainment service providers that are currently providing IPTV services. These incumbent video entertainment companies were interviewed by Infonetics to assess their needs and to analyze trends in the IPTV marketplace. "Because it's so challenging to differentiate on content, pay-TV providers are looking to stand out from their competitors by offering additional services and features -- such as multi-screen viewing, social networking

eMarketer estimates the number of social network users around the world will rise this year to 1.4 billion -- that's up from 1.18 billion in 2011. The reported 20 percent increase is a slight drop from the growth rate in 2011. In fact, the global upside potential will continue to shrink as the market matures. That being said, if you want to connect with the most engaged online consumers in Latin American, then consider reaching out to Argentinians -- apparently, they're the most active social media participants. According to the latest market study by eMarketer , their global assessment of growth in social network usage highlighted that it's now driven primarily by the emerging markets. However, in Latin America growth will be slightly below the worldwide average, but it will still represent a 18.5 percent increase in social networking users this year. With relatively low penetration among the total population, social networks still have room to grow in the regio

Senior executives at major U.S. broadcast television networks acknowledge that the shift to on-demand video viewing will disrupt their legacy status quo. They're also concerned that a recently redesigned Hulu offering may further accelerate the shift away from linear programming, and thereby reduce their video advertiser revenues. Should they be worried about the adoption of online video? Should they join the broadband service providers in lobbying the federal government to support broadband bandwidth caps -- in an attempt to curtail any further erosion of their legacy business model? Can they halt this transformation, without it erupting into a battle of the TV traditionalists vs. the digital media titans? comScore released data showing that more than 184 million U.S. Internet users watched 36.9 billion online content videos in July, while video advertising views totaled 9.6 billion. Google Sites, driven primarily by video viewing at YouTube.com, ranked as the top online v

Get used to the idea of talking to all your consumer electronics (CE) devices as a primary means of interaction -- for this is the future of human interface design, particularly with mobile communication devices. As mobile speech recognition technologies continue to improve in their efficacy, the vendors of the speech technology platforms are making concerted efforts to enable the long tail of mobile application developers with speech recognition capabilities. According to the latest market study by ABI Research, the efforts of companies such as Nuance, AT&T, and iSpeech should be noted for exposing their APIs and developer programs as the foremost strategy in reaching the long tail of mobile device applications.   "Reaching a varied group of developers working on different operating system (OS) and hardware platforms makes cloud based solutions the optimum approach to enabling the masses," says Michael Morgan, senior analyst at ABI Research . It is

Demand for new smartphone-related applications is driving the continued investment in mobile network infrastructure. This is a global phenomenon that few analysts anticipated, due to the current worldwide economic downturn. In fact, despite the trend of cut-backs in network equipment spending by most telecom service providers this year, purchases of mobile core gateway equipment -- specifically for packet core networks -- are set to increase 19 percent from 2011 to more than $1.2 billion in 2012, according to the latest market study by ABI Research. "Although the 1Q 2012 spend for mobile core gateways only shows a 0.1 percent growth compared to 1Q 2011 we expect the last two quarters to be stronger as spend gets pushed towards end of the year," says Jim Eller, principal analyst for wireless infrastructure at ABI Research . The main driver for the increase in mobile gateway spend is the deployment of fourth-generation (4G) LTE networks, which require Evolved Packet Core

According to the latest market study by ABI Research, by the end of 2012, almost 20 percent of annual smartphone shipments will include facial recognition capabilities to enhance the user experience. Five years from now, shipments of smartphones and media tablets with the new technology embedded will increase to 665 million annually. Currently, only Google Android (Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean) mobile operating systems support the facial recognition capability in significant volumes. The Samsung Galaxy SIII is one of the most notable smartphones to feature the facial recognition technology. However, ABI believes that over the next two to three years, many more software operating systems and mobile OEMs will incorporate the technology. Facial recognition has been on the mobile device manufacturer technology radar for some time. It was developed in the 1960s by three scientists: Woody Bledsoe, Helen Chan Wolf, and Charles Bisson. Historically, the major challenge for the

According to the latest market study by comScore , demographic analysis of media tablet users by platform revealed distinct differences across iPad, Android and Kindle Fire. Apple iPad owners skewed male (52.9 percent), slightly younger (44.5 percent under the age of 35) and wealthier (46.3 percent residing in households with income of $100k or greater) compared to an average tablet user. In comparison, Amazon Kindle Fire owners saw their audience skew female with 56.6 percent of its audience base represented by females. Both Google Android and Kindle Fire users saw household income below that of iPad owners, aligning more closely with the mainstream household income reported by smartphone owners. In the fast-evolving and highly competitive tablet market, understanding the factors that are driving consumers’ purchase decisions is critical for both providers of operating systems and OEMs. Analysis of the top purchase consideration factors for an average tablet owner found that

According to the findings of several related market studies, the next big global disruption will occur in the traditional publishing sector. In the same way that the music recording industry lost control of their marketplace, the large legacy print media companies are equally vulnerable. As an example, according to the latest market study by eMarketer , they predict that sales of ebooks and the devices on which people read them -- i.e. ereaders, tablets and smartphones -- are on a steady upward trajectory. Much of the new digital publication revenue growth could come at the expense of print publications. The U.S. ereader user base is poised to grow at double-digit percentages this year and next, but by 2014 and 2015 the expansion will likely slow to about 5 percent. eMarketer believes that this reflects market cannibalization from media tablets, not necessarily a loss of interest in consuming ebooks. People are using these devices -- both ereaders and media tablets -- to read

The primary London 2012 Olympic games are over, but they're clearly not forgotten. Several market studies highlighted the multi-platform or multi-device media consumption trends. There were some interesting regional variations within the market study findings. As an example, according to a pre-Olympics market study by Ipsos , while 65 percent of survey respondents say they would be watching the competition on TV, 23 percent were rooting for their countries via the Internet -- a number that swells to 34 percent in APAC countries and 43 percent in BRIC countries. Six percent of people said they would watch at least part of the Olympics on mobile devices and 4 percent intended to watch on their media tablets. Ipsos said that they expected these results to rise as people become more comfortable viewing smaller screens and choose to watch in real-time, rather than coming home to hours and hours of recorded video. In fact, 20 percent -- 31 percent in APAC countries and 37 perc

According to preliminary data from International Data Corporation (IDC), a better than anticipated second quarter for the media tablet market will offer one of the few upside opportunities for traditional PC manufacturers in an otherwise uninspiring global marketplace. Total worldwide media tablet shipments for the second quarter of 2012 (2Q12) are estimated at 25 million units -- that's up from 18.7 in the first quarter of 2012. That growth represents a quarter-over-quarter increase of 33.6 percent and a robust year-over-year growth rate of 66.2 percent, up from 15 million units in the second quarter of 2011. "Apple built upon its strong March iPad launch and ended the quarter with its best-ever shipment total for the iPad, outrunning even the impressive shipment record it set in the fourth quarter of last year," said Tom Mainelli, research director at IDC . According to IDC's assessment, the vast majority of consumers continue to favor the iPad over compe

The American mobile communications ecosystem continues to evolve and expand, partly at the expense of the legacy wireline telecom segment -- as more attention is being directed towards this growth-oriented marketplace. comScore released the key trends in the U.S. mobile phone industry during the three month average period ending June 2012. The study surveyed more than 30,000 U.S. mobile subscribers and found Samsung to be the top handset manufacturer overall with 25.6 percent market share. Google Android continued to grow its share in the U.S. smartphone market, accounting for 51.6 percent of smartphone subscribers, meanwhile Apple captured just 32.4 percent. For the three-month average period ending in June, 234 million Americans age 13 and older used mobile devices. Device manufacturer Samsung ranked as the top OEM with 25.6 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers, followed by LG with 18.8 percent share. Apple ranking third with 15.4 percent of mobile subscribers (that's

An OLED (organic light-emitting diode) is a semiconductor where the emissive electroluminescent layer is a film of organic compound which emits light in response to an electric current. OLEDs are now being used to create digital television screens. ​However, OLED TVs are expected to comprise less than 1 percent of flat panel TV sales through at least 2013, reaching 9 percent of the shipped units by 2017. In contrast, LED/LCD TVs, which often offer thinner form factors and less power consumption over traditional (CCFL) LCD TVs, are expected to grow from 35 percent of the market in 2011 to 75 percent in 2017. This year OLED TVs from Samsung and LG are expected to cost well over $5,000 (likely closer to $10,000) at sizes less than 60” -- Sony and Panasonic are partnering to release larger screen OLED TVs in 2013. At these relatively high prices consumers are challenged with selecting picture quality and form factor over size -- consider that an equivalent sized LED TV costs thousa

Infonetics Research released excerpts from the results of its latest market study, which captures pay-TV service provider requirements for hybrid IP-based set-top boxes (STBs) to deliver video entertainment services. "In a change from the 2011 edition of our IP set-top box survey, Cisco is now perceived as the overall top IP set-top box supplier by operators, while Motorola was top dog last year," notes Jeff Heynen, directing analyst for broadband access and video at Infonetics Research . This is consistent with the Infonetics set-top box market share reporting -- where Cisco has led in global IP STB revenue share for a total of four straight quarters. Cisco's efforts over the past year to expand its IP set-top box lineup and customer base, and the major contracts it has scored with AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, and Telus are paying off -- according to the Infonetics assessment. That being said, device design and user interface innovation has been slow to emerge in

Do you remember the time when it was in vogue for nearly all upcoming marketing consultants to claim that they were "experts" in search engine optimization (SEO)? I remember it well.  After most of these folks discovered the social media trend, then they quickly shifted their focus. Regardless, today search remains a key component of savvy digital marketer campaigns. Perhaps the huge flock of self-proclaimed social media experts will rediscover search, once the current "social everything" fad has lost its appeal -- we'll have to wait and see. According to the latest market study by eMarketer , search can help to build strong brands by bettering their brand-health metrics. But creating long-term relationships with their valued customers is usually the top priority. eMarketer says "even though a majority of business-to-consumer (B2C) marketers now believe that search affects brand-building, digital marketing executives sometimes still find it tough t

The overall global mobile phone market grew by just 1 percent year-over-year in the second quarter of 2012 (2Q12), as Samsung and Apple shipped almost half of the world's smartphones. According to the latest market study International Data Corporation ( IDC ), mobile device vendors shipped 406.0 million units in 2Q12 compared to 401.8 million units in the second quarter of 2011. So, what happened that caused the slowdown in growth rate? It's complicated. Samsung and Apple have more than doubled their combined market share over the past two years, which has created more distance between the companies and the competition. "Samsung and Apple have quickly become the global smartphone heavyweights though both employ somewhat different approaches to the market," said Kevin Restivo, senior research analyst at IDC. According to IDC's assessment, Samsung employs a broad-based strategy wherein many phone types are created that cover a wide range of global market s

The economic outlook for the North American market may be unpredictable, but that hasn't halted the planned telecom infrastructure investment. As an example, some mobile network operators are already preparing their networks for next generation 4G service deployment. "North American mobile cellular capital expenditure is expected to hold its ground in 2012 year-on-year, with expenditure of around $10 billion," said Jake Saunders, VP for forecasting at ABI Research . In 2013, mobile capital expenditure is likely to surge by 4.9 percent to $10.5 billion -- as North American telecom service providers continue upgrading their networks. Signs of these network infrastructure investment plans include: In 2Q-2012, Verizon Wireless announced it had discontinued investment in the expansion and capacity enhancement of its 3G network as the operator has allocated those resources to building out its 4G LTE coverage. On a year-on-year basis, capital expenditure should trend f

comScore released results from a market study of first-time U.S. smartphone owners, which found that nearly half of previous mobile feature phone subscribers who acquired a new device during April 2012 switched to a smartphone. Among this group, the vast majority (61.5 percent) of consumers acquired devices running the Google Android platform, with 25.2 percent choosing Apple iOS devices, 7.1 percent opting for Microsoft OS smartphones, while RIM represented just 4.8 percent of the total. "The growing number of smartphones available to consumers, accompanied by the decrease in price points and surge in mobile media content, have made smartphone ownership possible and desirable for many more Americans," said Mark Donovan, comScore SVP of Mobile. Within the year, comScore expects to see smartphone owners become the mobile mainstream -- a major milestone that represents the enormous potential for marketers to reach a growing audience of savvy consumers. U.S. smartphone

Smartphone subscribers around the world will download about 36 billion mobile phone apps in 2012, according to the latest market study by ABI Research. This activity equates to almost 37 native apps for the average smartphone subscriber through the year. The forecast reflects a nearly 6 percent global increase to the 35 apps downloaded per smartphone subscriber on average during 2011. Despite the apparent market growth since 2011, Aapo Markkanen, senior analyst at ABI Research , believes the average download count will not increase substantially over the coming years. Rather, it is more likely to start decreasing. Markkanen explains, "When forecasting on app downloads one has to make a number of assumptions on -- for instance, the device mix, developer activity, and the demographics of existing and future smartphone users." The next waves of smartphone subscribers in the more mature app markets of the United States, Western Europe, and parts of Asia will be downloa

The global volume of mobile data traffic is now forecast to exceed 107 exabytes in 2017, according to the the latest market study by ABI Research. This worldwide total mobile network traffic velocity will be eight times more than what is expected during 2012. But how significant is this anticipated growth rate, exactly? ABI Research senior analyst Aapo Markkanen points out that although the numbers may seem really big, they shouldn't be misinterpreted as yet another warning of the unmanageable scenario that mobile network operators often try to portray -- mostly for their public policy and regulatory relief objectives. Markkanen says, "It looks like 2015 will be the last year when the traffic volume will grow by more than 50 percent annually. And, that will happen despite of the fact that the monthly average per wireless subscriber, worldwide, will increase to almost 1.5 gigabytes by the end of our forecasting period." A lot of the overall data consumption wil

British consumer products advertisers have been looking forward to the London 2012 Olympics. The total media advertising spend is set for a significant increase in new growth this year -- due partly to Olympics related promotional activities. eMarketer now estimates that with total spending forecast to reach $24.21 billion -- it's increased by about 4.5 percent. In a tough European economic environment, that's considered to be a big bonus. And, according to the results of a recent market study, a record amount of that ad spending will be online. eMarketer estimates that fully one in three ad campaign spending in the UK will be digital this year -- a figure that will rise to nearly one in two by 2016. Mobile ad spending is on an even stronger growth trajectory, estimated to be up by 70.3 percent this year after a record rise of 144.8 percent in 2011. Mobile spending is still growing from a small base, however, and as total spend increases, growth will moderate. By 20

Mobile network service providers conceded the smartphone software application ecosystems to other companies. The resulting transfer of market influence will clearly have a lasting effect on their core business model -- as the apparent marketplace trends are now gaining momentum. ​According to the latest market study by ABI Research, mobile email and over-the-top (OTT) mobile applications (apps) -- such as Whatsapp, Viber, and iMessage -- have been altering the underlying behaviors of mobile smartphone end-users, which is impacting usage patterns. In 1Q-2012, minutes of use (Voice) per user showed the greatest declines in North America (-5.3 percent), Asia-Pacific (-0.6 percent), and Western Europe (-0.4 percent). “The only region with any meaningful positive growth is the Middle East (3.5 percent)”, said Ying Kang Tan, research associate at ABI Research . Messages Sent is also experiencing slow-downs but more so in emerging markets than developed markets. Latin America, Afri

Seventh generation video game console market penetration is highest in North America -- at just over 50 percent of TV households, at the end of 2011. That's followed by Western Europe with nearly 30 percent, the next closest is Asia Pacific at just over 3 percent, with Japan being a significant contributor. With the next generation of consoles around the corner (Nintendo Wii U will be first to market late 2012) the replacement cycle will start anew, with these three primary regions expected to consume the majority of units. "Some regions such as Latin America continue to see growth opportunity, but high prices, due to taxes and tariffs, still put a damper on expectations," said Michael Inouye, senior analyst at ABI Research . Other regions like Middle East and Africa have limited fixed broadband penetration which reduces the value proposition from features like multiplayer gaming, downloadable content, and services like over the top video. Other large markets --

Smart set-top boxes that are used for streaming online video often garner less attention than other connected consumer electronics (CE) devices like TVs and game consoles. Apple has referred to its Apple TV device as a hobby -- although it apparently leads the market with around 4 million units shipped through 2011. Roku has also had some success -- passing 2.5M units in 2011. But according to the latest market study by ABI Research , the future outlook is challenging for these dedicated streaming devices, as they attempt to break out of a niche market status. TV sets, game consoles, Blu-ray players, and even mobile devices are quickly conspiring to engender a very competitive market for the digital living room. Even so, streaming digital media set-top box shipments are expected to reach as high as 57 million by 2017. "Google has a split personality in this market," according to Sam Rosen, practice director of TV & video at ABI Research. On the one hand, China,