Digital Lifescapes

Mobile network service providers are going to be inundated with machine-to-machine (M2M) data. Extracting meaning and value from that mass of raw information is a huge undertaking. Analytics software platforms and professional services are part of the solution. ABI Research forecasts that the M2M analytics industry will grow a robust 53.1 percent over the next 5 years -- from $1.9 billion in 2013 to $14.3 billion in 2018. The ABI forecast includes revenue segmentation for the five components that together enable analytics to be used in M2M services: including data integration, data storage, core analytics, data presentation, and associated professional services. "Analytics will play a critical role in the evolution of M2M, serving as the foundation for an increasing number of M2M business cases," said Aapo Markkanen, senior analyst at ABI Research . In essence, such analytics-driven business cases will be about making previously opaque physical assets part of the digi

The growing penetration of smartphones and tablets, and their user's increasing dependency upon these devices -- which are continually generating data about their location, activities and preferences -- means that the mobile device channel has become a highly valuable proposition to all marketers. Juniper Research has found that increased utilization of analytics platforms, allied to the introduction of innovative ad formats and purchasing mechanisms, will push global mobile advertising spend beyond $39 billion in 2018 -- that's up from $13 billion this year. Findings from their latest global market study highlighted the opportunities offered by targeted in-app advertising, citing the dramatic success of monetizing native applications over the past year. Mobile now contributes 41 percent to Facebook's overall advertising revenue. Facebook recently announced that it is going to begin rolling out video ads -- a move illustrative of the wider industry trend for interact

The video game sector is constantly evolving to meet the expectations for product innovation. In a recent market study, Microsoft just beat out Sony for the top position in a game console competitive assessment -- based on expectations for the impact of Sony’s PS4 and Microsoft’s Xbox One game consoles. ABI Research evaluated a number of companies across three device categories: game consoles, smart set-top boxes, and TVs/Blu-ray players. Several factors were used to score each company based on two main axes of innovation and implementation. The assessment provides deep insight into consumer electronics ecosystems and modern video experiences in the connected home. Sony fell to second place in the game console assessment in part because key PlayStation 4 (PS4) differentiators -- such as cloud gaming -- are still untested and won’t be fully available at launch. Besides, Microsoft has shown more features on the broader entertainment front -- as an example, hybrid premium or over-th

Wearable devices have been in existence for a number of decades, but it's only recently that they have captured the imagination of the general public. Juniper Research has revealed that the retail revenue from smart wearable devices -- including smart watches and glasses -- will reach $19 billion by 2018 compared with $1.4 billion this year. Moreover, revenues will be driven by high price points for these devices allied to their anticipated strong market demand. Based on the findings from its latest market study, Juniper has revised upwards the adoption of devices in the two key segments of consumer electronics ‘Multimedia & Entertainment’, and ‘Multi-functional’ devices. Revisions such as these are common in the early years of a new technology category, and reflect the latest announcements from vendors across the sector. "It is worth observing that this change in adoption levels can also be attributable to heightened consumer awareness of wearable technology and a

Marketing leaders at multinational companies within the Technology, Media and Telecom (TMT) sectors have witnessed the slow but consistent decline of the trade publications that once dominated the marketplace -- as the go-to media for specific industry news and vendor insights. Today, many of these legacy trade media organizations within the TMT sectors are barely able to maintain solvency as advertising revenue continues to decline faster than they can find sponsors of their high-cost events. Ceasing their print publications did help to improve overall profitability, but losses have continued. Besides, the perpetual stream of displaced trade media senior editorial staff meant that most publishers lack the talent to research the marketplace and write meaningful or substantive stories. The remaining junior editors can barely keep up with re-purposing press releases into articles -- so that the few remaining advertisers are appeased with the promise that significant reader traffi

Mobile network service providers have a major business model impediment -- they're still subsidizing handsets, but not reaping the return on investment (ROI). The current global market outlook is troubling to analysts. Moreover, savvy Over-the-Top (OTT) service providers and software application developers continue to take revenue share in the evolving marketplace -- often at the expense of the network service providers. The pressure on mobile device subsidy ROI is caused by lagging worldwide carrier revenue growth which is not keeping up with subscription or connection growth -- or the cost of subsidizing expensive smartphones. Connection growth is 10.9 percent CAGR from 2008 to 2013 and 4.2 percent for service revenue over the same period, according to the findings from the latest market study by ABI Research. Device subsidy is the single largest cost for a mobile network service provider over the lifetime of a subscriber’s contract -- 68 percent of the revenue derived fr

The Internet of Things will likely become a mainstream phenomena in a few key industries before it penetrates the whole global networked economy. Therefore, it will be important to share those early-adopter applications with others, so that more broader market development can occur over time. Infonetics Research released excerpts from its new "M2M Connections and Services by Vertical" report, which provides market size, analysis, and forecasts for machine-to-machine (M2M) connections and services by technology, vertical, and geographic region. "M2M is one of the fastest-growing major new segments for service providers," said Godfrey Chua, analyst at Infonetics Research . "We forecast global revenue from M2M services to more than double between 2012 and 2017, from just under $15 billion to $31 billion." That being said, what's often overlooked about M2M is that it will be delivered to the world by way of a portfolio of access technologies -- some

Personal computer shipments across the globe totaled 81.6 million units in the third quarter of 2013 (3Q13). Compared with last year, the market contracted -7.6% -- slightly better than the projected decline of -9.5% for the quarter, according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). While shipments remained weak during the early part of the quarter, the market was somewhat buoyed by business purchases of PCs, as well as channel intake of Windows 8.1-based systems during September. A slight uptick in business volume contributed to shipments. The top three vendors (Lenovo, HP, and Dell) -- which all have an important presence in the enterprise and public sectors -- each saw modest positive year-on-year growth during the quarter. Conversely, consumer sentiment for PC purchases remained tepid, as evidenced by the continued struggles of vendors such as Acer and ASUS. Despite some encouraging developments in the business space, emerging markets continued t

According to the latest market study by Portio Research , the all-time cumulative total number of downloads stood at 37 billion at the end of 2011, but reached 83 billion by the end of 2012 -- that's more than doubling in one year. Moreover, this doubling is forecast to happen again in 2013. Their forecasts show that 2013 will see 82 billion apps downloaded worldwide, taking the cumulative total to 165 billion apps by the end of the year. Revenues are set to grow too, after 2012 saw app revenues of $12 billion, in 2013 they forecast worldwide app revenues to reach $20.4 billion. From this doubling of the apps business in 2013, Portio forecasts that downloads will continue to grow to exceed 200 billion per year by the end of 2017, and revenues in 2017 will reach $63.5 billion. While worldwide the mobile subscriber base is forecast to grow at a CAGR of 4.8 percent over the period 2012 to 2017, and annual handset shipments are expected to increase at a CAGR of 6.6 percent over t

Securing devices with 24/7 mobile data access has become an ever increasing concern, both from a consumer and an enterprise point of view. According to the latest market study by Juniper Research, more than 80 percent of the total enterprise and consumer owned smartphone device base will remain unprotected through 2013 -- despite a steadily increasing consumer awareness of mobile security products. Juniper claims that the low level of adoption of security software can be attributed to a number of factors, including the relatively low consumer awareness about online attack on mobile devices and a widespread consumer perception that the price of security products is excessive. Their study found that nearly 1.3 billion mobile devices -- including smartphones, feature-phones and media tablets -- are expected to have mobile security software installed by 2018, that's up from around 325 million this year. Increasing Risks for Mobile Devices The study also found that security ri

Mobile internet access is the fastest growing offering for global network service providers. In all regions of the world there's typically one operator that pushes others to become more creative with there tariff pricing and related marketing efforts. In its latest Mobile Internet Tariff Survey, ABI Research compares the data tariff of the least expensive 20 markets between the third quarter 2013 and the third quarter 2012, and has found that the average mobile Internet price has dropped by 17.7 percent. "The decrease of data price was mainly driven by fierce competition and increased network capacity 4G roll-outs," said Marina Lu, research associate at ABI Research . ABI estimates that 38 percent of the lowest priced data plans worldwide are 4G tariffs compared to 21 percent a year ago. While mobile data subscriber pricing is on the decline, service provider data revenue has showed considerable growth due to continued strong adoption and usage of smartphones and

Known as subscriber churn, the loss of a current customer to a competitor is something that all mobile phone service providers would avoid, if at all possible. In the highly competitive industry where a significant segment of subscribers are looking for a better deal, any insight about those most inclined to leave would be valuable. According to the latest market study by Juniper Research, mobile network operators worldwide are set to gain from a significant reduction in subscriber churn through the adoption of Big Data and analytics techniques. What's the incentive? This one particular service provider application will be equivalent to an increase in revenues of almost $4 billion a year by 2018. Juniper found that the implementation of analytics platforms was enabling network operators to anticipate the likelihood of customers to churn, to take preventative action and thereby reduce revenue loss. Analytics Can Identify Priority Subscribers According to the study findi

comScore reported key trends in the U.S. smartphone industry for August 2013. Apple ranked as the top smartphone manufacturer with 40.7 percent OEM market share, while Google Android led as the number one smartphone platform with 51.6 percent platform market share. Google Sites ranked as the top mobile media property, while Facebook was the top individual software application. Smartphone OEM Market Share 145 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones (60.8 percent mobile market penetration) during the three months ending in August, up 3 percent since May. Apple ranked as the top OEM with 40.7 percent of U.S. smartphone subscribers (up 1.5 percentage points from May). Samsung ranked second with 24.3 percent market share (up 1.3 percentage points), followed by HTC with 7.4 percent, Motorola with 6.9 percent and LG with 6.7 percent. Smartphone Platform Market Share Android ranked as the top smartphone platform in August with 51.6 percent market share, followed by Apple wit

The legacy cloud-based services sector is mature. But it's still growing at a very rapid pace. ​ABI Research forecasts that the total number of Software-as-a-Service subscriber units will increase from 1.06 million at the end of 2012 to 16.8 million on a global basis by the end of 2018. Telematics is currently a high-grow market segment. SaaS-based telematics services are defined as software-based telematics applications residing in the cloud -- in either a public or private cloud infrastructure. It's where the intelligence or data processing essential to the functioning of the application is performed in the cloud, rather than by software and/or hardware residing locally in the commercial vehicle. "SaaS cloud-based services offer many benefits for telematics services providers compared to the traditional platforms," said Gareth Owen, principal analyst at ABI Research . For example, the platform is easily scalable and all IT services can be outsourced to the c

There are numerous applications for flexible display technology. That being said, smart watches will likely provide the biggest opportunity for flexible displays in the short term. A number of new smart watch vendors have incorporated some form of flexible display technology to maximize the screen size of the small device. ABI Research believes most of the digital smart watches -- and other fitness and health wearable devices -- will incorporate a flexible display over the next eighteen months due to the robust and rugged characteristics of the displays. Furthermore, flexible displays or e-ink displays could be used as secondary displays on smartphones and media tablets. Phablets are predicted to be a key application for secondary displays -- it is anticipated more than 6 percent of annual phablet shipments could include the display type in 2015. "Samsung's YOUM technology (flexible display) has been highly publicized and it is clearly understandable why people can s

With macro-economic uncertainty continuing in numerous markets around the globe, some chief marketing officers (CMOs) at large multinational companies are already being forced to make dramatic budget cuts to both their staffing levels and the associated annual operating budget. One key area of marketing that’s going to be hit particularly hard is the Corporate Social Media team. These organizations -- led by people who consider themselves as “Social Media Experts” -- are notorious for having difficulty justifying their leap-of-faith expenditures. But the savvy senior executive is no longer intimidated by their jargon, or tolerant of their demands for greater budget allocations. Game over. Experts, or not, they’ve now come under the close scrutiny of their CEO -- just as their counterparts in the legacy PR department did during the end of the 20th century. What’s happening here – and why is it surfacing now? The High-Cost of Low-Quality Business Communication B2B Social M

More analysts are assessing the upside opportunities for mobile health and fitness-related apps. In a new assessment of the mobile healthcare market, ABI Research finds wearable wireless device revenues will grow to exceed $6 billion in 2018. Of the four wearable device segments tracked, sports, fitness and wellness is the largest -- never dropping below 50 percent share of all device shipments over the forecast period. "Fitness activity trackers are quickly gaining popularity in the market. Different from other more single-use or event-centric devices, activity trackers monitor multiple characteristics of the human body including movement, calories burned, body temperature, and sleep tracking," said Adarsh Krishnan, senior analyst at ABI Research . Activity trackers are expected to grow at a 40 percent CAGR and overtake the 2013 shipment leader, heart rate monitors, in 2017. The second largest market -- home monitoring devices -- which, primarily target the growing

The increasing adoption of smartphones and media tablets this year has created a huge demand for mobile internet access around the globe. In response, Wi-Fi hotspots deployed by broadband service providers started to gain new momentum in 2013, driven by these increasing data demands and recent Wi-Fi technology advancements. In particular, savvy Cable TV operators are enthusiastically adopting Wi-Fi technology as an entrance into the wireless internet access market. ABI Research forecasts that Carrier Wi-Fi access point shipments in 2018 will reach 9.7 million with the Asia-Pacific region accounting for 70 percent of that growth. In the U.S. market, a new service delivery model was deployed by Cable WiFi : an alliance formed of five of the biggest cable operators in the country, including Bright House Networks, Comcast, Cablevision, Cox, and Time Warner Cable. Customers of any of the cable MSO alliance members can roam seamlessly in the biggest Wi-Fi network in the U.S. -- curre

The common application thread that define smartphones is that they are no longer just for talking and texting, but can satisfy many different needs -- how a device fulfills those expectations generally decides the relative position within the market. Price is often a key deciding factor. According to the latest market study by Juniper Research , a new Ultra-Low cost generation of smartphones are emerging, capturing large volumes of first-time mobile internet users within the emerging markets. Juniper forecasts almost 200 million in shipments by 2018 -- that's compared to nearly 10 million forecast in 2014. On a global scale, this means that the Ultra-Premium end of the smartphone market is set to diminish proportionally by volume over time, not due to a drop in sales but a faster level of growth at other price points. Juniper's latest assessment argues that this new generation of devices will permanently change the market -- splitting the global market in two -- with th

​There's been a big shift in product category leadership for media tablets in the mobile computing market. At the mid-point of 2013, ABI Research identified a trio of events signaling that the Apple iPad family of products had lost significant market share to the Google Android ecosystem. During the second quarter of 2013, the number of Android-powered tablets surpassed iOS-based slates for the first time, and tablet-related hardware revenues reached parity.  But the most important event was that the average selling price (ASP) of the iPad is rapidly approaching the market average. Overall tablet shipments in the quarter dropped 17 percent sequentially, while growing 23 percent year-over-year for the same quarterly period. "Smaller 7-inch class tablets are finally the majority of shipments," says Jeff Orr, senior practice director at ABI Research . The 7.9-inch iPad mini represented about 60 percent of total iPad shipments and 49 percent of iPad-related device re

Remote controls for a variety of consumer electronics in the home will start to get smarter as they're being redesigned for much greater utility. The new features and capabilities will help to redefine the inherent usability and value that these devices provide. In 2013 10 percent of the remote controls shipped with major home consumer equipment will be RF-enabled. This is just the beginning of a new trend -- the quest for the ultimate remote control. Over the next five years there will be a major surge in RF technology adoption for remote controls as vendors look to differentiate their products -- driving growth in smart home services, according to the latest market study by ABI Research. While at the same time RF solutions continue to fall in price, implementations become more simplified and lower powers are achieved. "RF technology has been considered for use in remote controls for many years but its adoption has been limited by a lack of perceived need among device

Even though 4G wireless technology overall share of cellular subscriptions stood at a meager 2.9 percent at the end of 2Q 2013, it is expected to account for slightly more than 20 percent of the total data consumed on mobile networks worldwide this year. After surpassing 3G mobile networks in 2016, 4G mobile networks will go on to capture two-thirds of data traffic by 2018, according to the latest market study by ABI Research. Moreover, 4G mobile data traffic will surge at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 82.2 percent between 2013 and 2018. Underpinning this high-growth traffic trend is the aggressive LTE network deployment by wireless network operators and the expanding portfolio of smartphones and tablets which are also falling in price. "These two factors work hand in hand to enable consumers to stream videos on their smartphones," said Ying Kang Tan, research associate at ABI Research . Already, Verizon saw video accounting for 50 percent of its network t

Communication service providers can no longer continue down their traditional path of revenue generation and expect to survive, due to the overwhelming evidence that their legacy business strategy is obsolete. Dramatic shifts and changes in the marketplace now require decisive action. Small incremental tweaks to old business plans and established financial models cannot result in the desired outcomes. A major crossroads has been reached. There are two options; either adapt to the apparent market realities or continue along the road to perpetual decline and eventual ruin. The global telecoms industry revenue will remain roughly flat over the next few years, with a decline in spending on voice services counterbalanced by growth in spending on mobile and fixed (broadband) data services, according to the latest market study by Ovum. In a recent market forecast analysis, it was determined that as growth slows, market realities mean that communication network service providers must fin

With smartphone and media tablet usage continuing to grow exponentially, broadband service provider deployed Wi-Fi networks are playing an increasing role in keeping users connected while on the go. A new market study indicates that advanced features such as seamless authentication, on-site enrollment of additional devices, and Wi-Fi roaming present mobile network operators with compelling opportunities to drive business value. The survey, conducted among more than 2000 users of both smartphones and tablets in France, Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, illustrates the hunger among users for a more seamless experience in public Wi-Fi networks. Findings from the recent market study include: Eighty-four percent of respondents are interested in having seamless discovery and authentication in hotspots. Seventy-four percent are willing to switch service providers in order to gain access to these advanced features. Ninety-one percent are likely to stay with their current servi

There once was a time when mobile phones merely made voice calls. That era of mobile technology now seems like a very distant past, given the typical capabilities of today's multifaceted smartphone.  The advent of voice-activated features on media tablets ads yet another dimension to evolving mobile devices. Furthermore, developments in display interface technologies are making it possible so that your personal mobile device may become the hub for all your computing experiences at home, in the office, and on-the-go over the next 5 years. According to the latest market study by ABI Research, hundreds of millions of PCs, displays, and projectors offer this interface capability today -- and 2.1 billion smartphones and tablets are forecast to ship with this functionality through 2018. For decades, PCs have included a VGA port to extend displays outside the box, such as monitors and projectors. Now, market demand is increasing for this functionality from the smartphone and tablet