Digital Lifescapes

As momentum in the mobile phone market swings clearly in favor of smartphones, more people are adopting mobile apps, while device performance increased and yet prices continue to drop. Meanwhile, the majority of U.S. mobile service subscribers still have a feature phone. But eMarketer predicts smartphone ownership will rise from 31 percent this year to 43 percent by 2015. Nearly 110 million Americans will have a smartphone by the end of 2015. "Smartphone owners already command the majority of marketer attention," said Noah Elkin, eMarketer principal analyst. Why? Smartphone users do more than their counterparts with feature phones: more messaging, gaming, listening to music, watching videos, social networking, shopping, using apps and browsing the web. At the end of 2010, eMarketer estimates 30 percent of U.S. smartphone users had a BlackBerry and 28 percent had an iPhone, the top two operating systems. But Google Android's share of the market is rising quickl...

If you already tune out and ignore most forms of advertising, then clearly you're not alone. With the exception of a couple of under-developed regions of the globe, most traditional advertisers have acknowledged that fact. eMarketer reports that the reality has convinced those who were previously hopeful for some sort of a miracle turnaround -- apparently it was wishful thinking. Three major advertising agency buyers around the world are moving beyond their prior denial, and are now forecasting more severe declines in their customer ad spending. Last month, GroupM, a division of WPP, predicted a 4.4 percent decline in global ad spending for 2009. That forecast slide was exceeded by one from Carat Insight, owned by Aegis, which put the worldwide ad spending decline for 2009 at 5.8 percent. ZenithOptimedia, the media-buying unit of Publicis, the world's fourth-largest advertising group, has boldly gone one step further than it's competitors -- by candidly predicting the large...

eMarketer estimates there were about 116 million U.S. user-generated content consumers in 2008, along with 82.5 million content creators. Both numbers are forecast to climb significantly by 2013. Clearly, today's marketer must understand the various activities that constitute digital content creation and consumption. And, to appreciate the complexities of the content ecosystem. But, is it really possible to describe a quantum leap in culture by simply applying new persona labels? In a 2008 Forrester Research attempted to segment user-generated content participants into the following groups: Creators : Those who make social content go. Critics : Those who respond to content via reviews, comments, forums. Collectors : Those who aggregate and organize content using RSS feeds, tags and voting sites. Joiners : Those who gather around social communities. Spectators : Those who consume user-generated content but do not respond to it publicly. Inactives : Those who neither create nor consu...

There once was a time when a few big media companies ruled over the news and entertainment industry. All was calm, as long as everyone in a position of power agreed to play by the same dysfunctional rules. Access to the legacy content distribution ecosystem was tightly controlled and longstanding restraint of trade barriers were successful in ensuring that most attempts at innovation never saw the light of day. Tactics like pay-for-play payola schemes were able to perpetuate the content scarcity model that fueled the industry's efforts to limit and manipulate what was considered popular (pop), and how it was going to be marketed to the awaiting mass-media audience. The macroeconomic theory of supply and demand can not reach its full potential in a closed marketplace model that restricts access to the chosen few participants. However, the oligopoly regime of legacy big media companies loathed any notion of creating an open market. Re-Booting the Media Business Model Make no mis...

The global market for set-top boxes will grow gradually over the next few years, then will peak at around 110 million shipments in 2012, according to the latest market study by ABI Research. Thereafter STB unit volumes for all platforms -- Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT), Internet Protocol Television (IPTV), Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS), and CATV (cable television) -- will begin a gradual decline. STB revenues show a different pattern. According to ABI Research principal analyst Robert Clark, "STB revenues for all platforms have declined significantly between 2007 and 2009, but will recover by 2010 and remain relatively stable through at least 2013." Sales of basic STBs have already been falling for some time; now HD-only and PVR-only STBs are also showing the first signs of downturn. From 2009 on, Clark expects to see a greater share of combined HD/PVR sales, especially in the DBS segment. Apparently, the decline in shipments after 2012 is due in part to the expecte...