Digital Lifescapes

According to the latest market study by IDC, the advancement of mainstream personal computer usage no longer starts and ends with the traditional PC device. Since the first smartphone was introduced in 2000, and the introduction of the media tablet a decade later, we have witnessed many mobile device form factors and significant new innovations in hardware and software. These form factors are now extensions of personal computing. They are an apparent gateway to the future possibilities -- they are also a clear departure from the past. IDC believes that complacency and a lack of creativity in the legacy PC ecosystem has occurred during the past five years. As a result, PC market growth flattened in 2012 and will likely stagnate in 2013 -- as users continue gravitating towards ever more powerful smartphones and tablets. This year, over 2 billion users will access the Internet. What makes this compelling is not the number of users going online, but rather the number of devices tha...

According to the latest market study by ABI Research, as 3G and 4G mobile network deployment expands worldwide, and more enterprise employees adopt smartphones and media tablets, many ICT industry players are assessing the upside potential for mobile video collaboration services. Some consider this market to be primarily about video conferencing applications on the mobile device. However, the most immediate return on investment is likely gained when mobile video collaboration is used to support business processes -- particularly service operations. "For business operations support, there are over 500 million employees worldwide that could benefit from mobile video collaboration services. However, by 2017 less than 2 percent of these employees will generate service revenues, totaling about $500 million worldwide," said Dan Shey, enterprise practice director at ABI Research . The current low frequency of use creates much of the disparity between the size of the addressabl...

Infonetics Research released excerpts of the findings from its latest global market study of mobile broadband service providers, which provides insights into network operator's current and future plans for outdoor small cells and backhaul. "The challenge is on for small cell operators. They've been scrambling to test and trial a large number of technologies, products, and topologies for outdoor small cells, and they're under growing pressure to make the rubber meet the road -- not only from their technology and operations people, but even their business planners," said Michael Howard, co-founder and principal analyst for carrier networks at Infonetics Research . But, according to the current Infonetics' assessment, it won't be easy. These operators face some daunting challenges: outdoor small cell gear isn't small enough or cheap enough yet, and there are problems backhauling in dense urban areas -- includiing municipal regulations regarding the ...

The global shipments of phablets are set to more than double this year, according to the latest market study by IHS iSuppli. The "phablet" -- meaning a combination of phone and tablet features into one device -- is essentially a smartphone with a very large display. Shipments of phablets in 2013 are forecast to reach 60.4 million units -- that's up a notable 136 percent from 25.6 million last year. "The move to offer larger-display smartphones reflects the efforts of both device and panel makers to differentiate their products," said Vinita Jakhanwal, director of small and medium displays at IHS iSuppli . With consumers demanding more lifelike viewing experiences, the trend to offer hybrid devices makes perfect sense. Especially considering the increase in digital multimedia content that's now being made available on smartphones. Expansion in capacity related to low-temperature polysilicon liquid crystal display (LTPS LCD), as well as the resulting r...

Results from the latest market study by Juniper Research indicates that there will be a total of almost 70 million smart wearable devices sold in 2017. That market now includes smart glasses, health and fitness devices along with enterprise wearables, which is forecast to reach almost 15 million units shipped during 2013. Juniper says that they anticipate significant adoption towards the end of the forecast period, driven by the launch of augmented reality glasses and similar products from Google, Microsoft and Apple. Their latest report indicates that fitness and sports wearables, followed by healthcare devices, are forecast to dominate the market with a combined market share of over 80 percent in the final forecast year 2017. However, even though the number of fitness and sports devices bought per year is higher than the number of healthcare devices sold, the health sector will be slightly larger in terms of retail value due to higher price points. The report further not...

comScore has released their market study results showing that 182 million U.S. Internet users watched 38.7 billion online content videos in December, while video advertising views totaled 11.3 billion. Google Sites, driven primarily by video viewing at YouTube.com, ranked as the top online video content property in December with 153 million unique viewers, followed by Facebook.com with 58.8 million, VEVO with 51.6 million, NDN with 49.9 million and Yahoo! Sites with 47.5 million. Nearly 38.7 billion video content views occurred during the month, with Google Sites generating the highest number at 13.2 billion, followed by AOL, Inc. with 692 million. Once again, Google Sites had the highest average engagement among the top ten properties. Americans viewed 11.3 billion video ads in December, with Google Sites ranking first with nearly 2 billion advertisement views. BrightRoll Video Network came in second with 1.8 billion, followed by Liverail.com with 1.8 billion, Adap.tv with 1....

Revenues for the European wholesale telecommunications market remained steady between 2010 and 2011, despite the economic downturn, intense competition, and regulatory actions. According to the latest market study by Ovum, the European wholesale market was worth $48.4 billion in 2011, that's only 0.5 percent less than in 2010, representing 11 percent of the leading wholesalers' total European revenues. Ovum's analysis of the size of the European wholesale telecoms market, based on the reported results of the 25 leading wholesalers, reveals a highly concentrated market. In 2011 the top four wholesalers in Europe (BT, Deutsche Telekom, FT-Orange and Telefonica) accounted for over 50 percent of total European wholesale revenue, with the top 10 responsible for nearly 75percent of the total. Yet almost all of the leading wholesalers in Europe experienced falling revenues from fixed voice. While some are mitigating the effect of this decline by broadening the attractivene...

This is a very difficult time to be leading a personal computer manufacturer that didn't anticipate the shift in consumer demand from netbook PCs to media tablets. Besides, those leaders that didn't fully comprehend the rapid evolution of commercial cloud services have suffered the most. Even those that had the foresight to see this shift coming may not have believed that the impact of the transition would be so swift and fatal to key segments of their legacy product portfolio. Worldwide PC shipments totaled 89.8 million units in the fourth quarter of 2012 (4Q12), that's down by 6.4 percent compared to the same quarter in 2011 -- and worse than the forecast decline of 4.4 percent, according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). Although the quarter marked the beginning of a new stage in the PC industry with the launch of Windows 8, its introduction did not change sluggish PC demand, and the PC market continued to take a back seat to compe...

U.S. broadband subscriptions are forecast to reach the same level as pay-TV subscriptions in 2016. Meanwhile, American cable and satellite TV service providers will soon reach a critical point in their evolution -- where future success will hinge on the adoption of their TV Everywhere services. "Based on our continuing analysis of TV Everywhere and over-the-top (OTT) services like Netflix, it’s clear that the U.S. pay-TV industry has reached a historic juncture," said Tom Adams, director and principal analyst at IHS iSuppli . Neither print nor audio media have been able to properly capitalize on -- or even just withstand -- the savvy Internet start-up service providers, according to the latest market assessment by IHS. The key question for U.S. pay-TV operators is will TV Everywhere help them to retain customers for video entertainment. Or, will most of their customers eventually leave to adopt the lower-cost offerings of OTT competitors? TV Everywhere is a service th...

Starting today, I'm evolving my Digital Lifescapes postings on a Saturday. First and foremost, my weekly summaries of research by eMarketer will now be posted on my Transmedia Newswire site. Going forward, my weekend posts will be different than in the past -- I'll be sharing more about that editorial transition in an upcoming post. The eMarketer study insights that I share will now be shorter, more frequent and include a link to the source webpage - here's an example from today. Moreover, that content will no longer appear on Digital Lifescapes. Note, I'm the editor and publisher of the Transmedia Newswire. If you subscribe to the Digital Lifescapes feed , then you may want to also subscribe to the Transmedia Newswire feed -- which now includes the eMarketer study summaries and noteworthy insights from numerous other sources. Perhaps you're wondering, why change the GeoActive Group daily publishing schedule? First, I've wanted to increase my ...

​According to the latest market study by ABI Research, Western Europe's mobile service subscribers used 3,077 Exabytes in data traffic by the end of 2012 -- that's up by 39 percent compared to 2011. 3G mobile data usage contributed 64 percent of the total -- while 4G services are still attempting to gain more user adoption. "Moreover, 50 percent of Western Europe has a 3G data plan and they are making full use of it," said Marina Lu, research associate at ABI Research . Clearly, some of that data traffic is due to growth from over-the-top (OTT) software applications that have been downloaded into smartphones. That being said, ABI believes that while mobile data usage is gathering pace, a number of other core metrics are very much in retreat. In most countries around Europe, voice minutes of use has contracted up to 4.5 percent quarter-on-quarter. Similarly, text messaging was down between -0.5 percent and -7.8 percent for those countries quarter-on-quarter. ...

According to the latest market study by Juniper Research, over 1 billion mobile phone users will have made use of their mobile devices for banking purposes by the end of 2017, compared to just over 590 million this year. While their forecast represents over 15 percent of the mobile subscriber base in 2017, around half of all mobile phone service subscribers remain un-banked -- meaning, these are people with limited access to traditional financial services. The findings from the Juniper study suggest that many consumers are already seeing the benefits of accessing banking services on their mobile phones. Mobile banking technology is proven and currently available in most regions of the world, reinforced by exceptional consumer demand, especially within the developed regions. Juniper also found that most banks have at least one mobile banking offering -- either via messaging, mobile browser or a software app-based service. Yet a number of the larger banks are now confidently de...

After several years of mobile industry technical standards negotiation and planning -- plus, the many promises that progress was immanent -- fourth generation (4G) wireless services are finally becoming a reality across the globe. Findings from the latest ABI Research market study now predicts 785 million LTE subscribers by 2017, that's up from 58 million at the end of 2012 -- thereby generating $14 billion in annual mobile service revenues. Mobile device manufacturers have acknowledged the arrival of the new technology.  A case in point: Apple iPhone 5 and Samsung Galaxy smartphones have provided LTE-enabled handset shipments a substantial lift in 2012 -- even if it has not necessarily assisted the 4G mobile network operators with each and every LTE handset that's sold. According to ABI Research, when 3G handsets came into the market in 2003 and 2004, there was pretty much a 1:1 correlation between a 3G handset sold and a subscription upgraded from 2G to 3G mobile ser...

While the North American market for mobile network subscription is considered saturated, there's still significant handset upgrade activity. comScore released data that reported the key trends in the U.S. mobile phone marketplace during the three month average period ending November 2012. The study surveyed more than 30,000 U.S. mobile subscribers and found Samsung to be the top handset manufacturer overall with 26.9 percent market share. Google Android continued to lead among smartphone platforms, accounting for 53.7 percent of smartphone subscribers, while Apple iOS secured 35 percent of the market. For the three-month average period ending in November, device manufacturer Samsung ranked as the top OEM with 26.9 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers (up 1.2 percentage points). Apple ranked second with 18.5 percent market share (up 1.4 percentage points), followed by LG with 17.5 percent share, Motorola with 10.4 percent and HTC with 5.9 percent. 123.3 million people in th...

Almost every smartphone shipped today has an embedded rear camera and one in three smartphones have a front-facing camera, according to the findings from the latest market study by ABI Research. The number of media tablets with two cameras is even greater. People that buy these devices expect to be able to take reasonable quality photos with their smartphone or tablet -- and the popularity of video calling is driving the integration of front-facing cameras. ABI Research believes that one billion cameras were shipped in smartphones and tablets in 2012. Apart from Nokia’s PureView 808, the majority of smartphone releases in 2012 have kept camera resolution around 8 megapixels. Instead, mobile OEMs have looked into new features such as autofocus, rapid capture mode, best picture, and better image captures for low light environments. "Advancements in imaging technology are opening new doors for smartphones and media tablets," says Josh Flood, senior analyst at ABI Resea...

Today, what's the primary purpose of the website for a major brand? Should content from social media drive traffic to the brand's website? Or should brand sites drive traffic to social sites? If a brand’s social media activity gets more traffic than its website, is it necessary to maintain both? These are the key questions that eMarketer attempted to answer during their latest market study. Perhaps 2013 is the time to rethink the inherent goal and objectives for maintaining a corporate branded website. Regardless, when potential customers search for online information during their buying cycle, they eventually arrive at a company's primary site. That being said, eMarketer believes that product marketers are typically spending more effort to engage with customers outside of their company website -- on Facebook and numerous other social media channels. Brand web pages are still a primary resource for people seeking information about products and the companies that m...

It's estimated that there are 425 million devices connected to the Internet in U.S. homes, according to the latest market study by The NPD Group. They found that while personal computers are still the primary connected device, numerous others are diminishing the PC’s relevance to the broadband content marketplace. This trend is being fueled by devices such as gaming consoles and blu-ray disc players adding to the number of Internet connected HDTVs -- and direct IP connectivity to a Smart TV set. Strong consumer retail sales in developing categories -- such as tablets and smartphones -- are also impacting the traditional PC’s share of Internet connected devices. By the end of 2013, a shift towards more screen-sharing across devices is expected. Smaller screens such as the smartphone have the greatest reach now with an estimated 133 million users -- with tablets contributing another 31.8 million screens. The development of the shared screen experience, by diverting conte...

The legacy telecommunications sector was challenged continuously by upstarts during last year, as these savvy over-the-top companies targeted the incumbent's customers with attractive offers. That being said, 2013 will be equally challenging. Global telecom service provider revenues exceeded $2 trillion in 2012, with 60 percent of that amount going to mobile network operators, according to the latest market study by Ovum . No doubt, more competitors will seek to tap that huge market in 2013. While overall revenue growth is expected to be minimal, Ovum believes some segments will still have above-average growth, and significant incremental revenues over the next five years at each level of the value chain. Ovum's global analysts have revealed that mobile broadband presents the single largest opportunity for legacy service providers to win back revenue. Their forecasts show mobile broadband growing 19.2 percent annually and generating $122.9 billion in incremental revenue...

Mobile app stores have become strategic assets that are the focal point of a forward-looking independent software developer ecosystem. Any company that can lead in this market has a competitive advantage that their peers will want to try and replicate. That being said, Apple recently won the ABI Research competitive assessment of mobile application storefronts, with Google finishing second and Microsoft third. In the ABI assessment, the leading app distributors were ranked by two dimensions -- implementation and innovation. In terms of implementation, Apple came first, ahead of Google and RIM. The company’s superior performance in this dimension is mainly due to its effective approach to monetization, large market share over the app industry, and the ability to achieve a large inventory of titles while maintaining a reasonably strict quality control. However, in the innovation dimension Apple is narrowly beaten by Microsoft, with Google claiming the third spot. ABI Research...

Infonetics Research released results from their latest market study of the video on demand (VOD) entertainment landscape, which tracks equipment sold to telco IPTV, cable video, and satellite video service providers. Moreover, Infonetics assessed the current pay-TV IP, cable, satellite, and hybrid set-top box (STB) and over-the-top (OTT) media servers market. "Operators are being extremely cautious with their video infrastructure spending right now, looking to sweat their assets as much as they can -- knowing that a spending spree looms on the horizon to support more unicast and multi-screen services, including RS-DVR, start-over, look-back, and streaming delivery to mobile devices," said Jeff Heynen, directing analyst at Infonetics Research . Infonetics said that they expect a noticeable increase in video equipment spending during 2013. Clearly, this year will be a challenging one for most pay-TV service providers in the saturated markets -- such as North America and E...

Across the globe, there is a delicate balance between sustained investment in essential infrastructure and a corresponding advance in socioeconomic progress. Telecommunications platforms have become the driver of growth in the twenty-first century. It's now the forward-thinking key performance indicator that all economists must monitor, in addition to the GDP. Infonetics Research has released excerpts from its latest market study, which analyzes global and regional market trends and conditions affecting telecom service providers, enterprises, subscribers, and the global networked economy. "As 2012 ended, Europe's crisis remains un-contained and is now spreading to Germany. The potential of shaking business confidence everywhere in the world has risen to new heights, and the IMF lowered its growth forecast and is warning of recession risks due to downward revision of global GDP, which now stands at 3.3 percent," said Stephane Teral, principal analyst for mobile i...

  As the CES 2013 event in Las Vegas approaches, let's consider the evolution of video entertainment in the home. Specifically, what are the known market drivers for connecting a television set to the internet? Moreover, what are the usage characteristics for those people that have adopted this practice. Clearly, market adoption has gained momentum in the last year. eMarketer now estimates that usage of connected TVs in American households was up by more than 25 percent in 2012, and will continue to be adopted by more Americans at double-digit rates through at least 2016. By the end of 2013, eMarketer expects 35.1 million U.S. households will have at least one television set connected to the internet, and at least one person in the household will be actively accessing the internet through that TV set on a monthly basis. The current definition of connected TV includes any television set that's connected to the internet -- whether it’s an internet-enabled Smart TV or a ...

Infonetics Research released excerpts from its latest market study, which tracks global mobile services revenue, mobile voice and data average revenue per user (ARPU), and mobile voice and broadband subscribers. "As we approach mobile phone market saturation, the mobile industry is undeniably shifting from voice to data, and over-the-top voice revenue is shifting away from mobile operators," notes Stephane Teral, principal analyst for mobile infrastructure and carrier economics at Infonetics Research . Infonetics reports that SMS use is now fading in places like Japan, the U.S., the Netherlands, and the UK market. It's being replaced by free applications over mobile broadband that enable internet browsing, email and -- more importantly -- video. Those services may be free to the smartphone app users, but carrying the associated data traffic is not free to the mobile network operators. Mobile service providers are investing a significant amount of their profits to ...

Informa Telecoms & Media released its top ten trends for 2013. Five of their predictions relate directly to telecom service providers and the other five address the pay-TV, digital media and Over-the-Top (OTT) communications sector. 1. Wi-Fi Will Become a Victim of its Own Success There will be a shift in operator sentiment away from public Wi-Fi as it becomes evident that the growing availability of free-to-end-user Wi-Fi devalues the mobile-broadband business model. Mobile operators will respond by articulating the value of their cellular networks better, but others not affected by this trend will double down on their public Wi-Fi investments to continue to propel the deployment and monetization of Wi-Fi. 2. Facebook Goes all in On Mobile Facebook is having a tough time translating its popularity on mobile devices into revenues. Although its most recent financial results at last showed some improvement in mobile advertising revenues, Informa doesn't believe that this...

As the CES 2013 event in Las Vegas approaches, let's consider the overall market impact from technology innovations and new product launches. Meaning, that for every positive advancement in a new product category there is often a negative result in another category. As an example, prior product enhancements made to smartphones -- and now media tablets -- continue to take market share away from other portable consumer electronic (CE) devices. According to the latest market study by ABI Research, annual shipments of handheld game players are expected to decline by at least 4 percent year-over-year (YoY) -- with the North American market experiencing a fall of nearly 13 percent. In the digital camera market, shipments are expected to decline by over 11 percent YoY worldwide and nearly 20 percent in the North American market. New devices like Sony’s 3G Vita and Samsung’s Galaxy Camera are trying to bridge the divide between portable CE devices and cellular-enabled mobile device...

What does the future hold for the Technology, Media and Telecommunications ( TMT ) investment banking sectors in 2013? One thing is certain, this year will include several significant events that we can forecast and yet others that will be somewhat unpredictable. We can expect to see both progress and setbacks as these evolutionary market shifts and changes unfold in the weeks and months to come. This is the first of several forward-looking updates about those market transitions. ABI Research says that we should watch for Augmented Reality (AR) to continue its progress through evolved smartphone platforms -- not only via new purpose-built eyewear. Prior announcements about consumer eyewear gadgets -- including Google Project Glass and Vuzix Smart Glasses M100 -- has led some market observers to speculate that 2013 might be the year when AR finally becomes more than a mere gimmick. That level of development would equate to a long and arduous journey of exploration. AR will lik...