Digital Lifescapes

Major retailers can no longer solely rely upon their in-store point-of-sale (POS) terminals for transactions. They must quickly evolve their POS strategy to offer both online and mobile payment options to customers, that's according to the findings from the latest market study by Informa Telecoms & Media. Retailers that offer multiple payment options -- including a mobile checkout facility -- will be able to serve more customers and reduce loss of sales due to the busy shopper's reluctance to wait in line, especially during the holiday season. The use of mobile POS terminals can help retailers to serve more customers during busy times and issue paperless receipts to customer e-mail addresses, rather than making customers wait in long lines to pay at fixed POS terminals. During the 2012 Christmas holidays, lifestyle brand Alex and Ani implemented mobile checkout technology in several of their U.S. stores and witnessed an impressive 318 percent increase in sales just fr...

Despite a seven percent year-over-year dip in global TV shipments, retail sales in North America have been steady and unit shipments were up by almost 3 percent in the third quarter of 2012 -- after posting small declines in the first half of 2012. The trend in the U.S. market has been toward bigger and less expensive TVs, which is expected to be the focus during the holiday season. "Inventory has been building overtime to a level that will satisfy the demand," said Paul Gagnon, director of global TV research at NPD DisplaySearch . The following is a summary of the findings from the latest NPD DisplaySearch market study. Worldwide TV shipments fell on a Y/Y basis for the fourth straight quarter, as demand in Japan and Western Europe fell sharply. TV shipments in Japan were down over 70 percent Y/Y for the second quarter in a row, while Western Europe shipments fell more than 15 percent. Flat panel TV growth in emerging regions were lower than expected, especially in...

According to the latest market study by International Data Corporation ( IDC ), smart connected devices -- including PCs, media tablets and smartphones -- saw shipments of more than 916 million units and revenues surpassing $489 billion in 2011. "Whether it's consumers looking for a phone that can tap into several robust app ecosystems, businesses looking at deploying tablet devices into their environments, or educational institutions working to update their school's computer labs, smart, connected, compute-capable devices are playing an increasingly important role in nearly every individual's life," said Bob O'Donnell, vice president, Clients and Displays at IDC. Looking ahead, unit shipments for smart connected devices should top 1.1 billion worldwide in 2012. By 2016, IDC predicts shipments will reach 1.84 billion units, more than double the 2011 figure, as consumers and business around the world are using more smart connected devices. This upside gr...

The demand for advanced mobile phones that contain significant processing power, additional memory, large screens, and open operating systems has dominated the mobile handset market for the several years. Smartphones will continue to lead the market into the foreseeable future. According to the latest market study by In-Stat, unit shipments of smartphones will reach nearly 850 million by 2015 -- as they approach the 1 billion shipment mark. "There are several critical factors that drive smartphone success," says Allen Nogee, Principal Analyst. "These include a powerful browser, a wide variety of apps, an easy to navigate user interface, and a good keyboard or touch screen." Additionally, other intangible smartphone attributes, such as being fashionable, and perhaps that your friends have one of the latest design devices, are important market drivers. In-Stat's latest market study results include: - More than half of U.S. handset shipments will be smar...

In 2015, 3.8 billion mobile handsets -- more than 60 percent of the total installed base worldwide -- will contain mobile web browsers, according to the latest market study by ABI Research . That doubles today's penetration rate. "Mobile browsers are evolving along two paths," says senior analyst Mark Beccue at ABI Research. On one hand, highly sophisticated browsers, which we are calling full Internet browsers, will be found in all smartphones and a growing number of enhanced (or feature) phones. Such devices can host these browsers because they have advanced application processors, expanded memory capacity and adequate screen size and resolution. These full Internet browsers typically require about 64 Mb of memory to run. A real key to the growth of full Internet browsers in higher-end feature phones is the falling cost of sophisticated applications processors. But there is also a second path. Parallel to this development, a new family of browsers has emerged:...

The quest for connectivity continues to drive Consumer Electronics (CE) manufacturers to enable their products with Wi-Fi wireless technology -- both for incremental home networking applications and ongoing access to public hotspots while mobile. The next 5 years will see an increase in the number of Wi-Fi-enabled devices, from over 500 million in 2009 to nearly 2 billion in 2014, according to the latest market study by In-Stat . Devices leading the pace of adoption include Blu-ray disc players and recorders, e-readers, digital televisions with built-in IP connectivity and low-cost IP video set-top boxes -- such as the Roku digital video player. "The reality of 802.11n-enabled devices being available is that many of the technical issues that constrained Wi-Fi adoption in video-centric CE devices in the past have been remedied," says Frank Dickson, Vice President of Research. "As a result, we expect the adoption of Wi-Fi in the living room to accelerate. Across ...

Internet video device shipments will experience global growth of 78 percent year-over-year from 2009 to 2010, according to the latest market study by IMS Research . The Internet-enabled device categories that will see the most significant uptake in the short term are connected TVs and connected Blu-ray players. Rebecca Kurlak, author of their report, states "With the Blu-ray Disc Association releasing the Blu-ray 3D specification a month ago, and the continued decline in the device category's average selling price, IMS Research expects consumers to welcome Blu-ray players into their homes." With nearly all Blu-ray players manufactured with IP connectivity enabling access to video on demand (VoD) libraries like Netflix, Amazon, Vudu, and CinemaNow, Blu-ray players are now more compelling for purchase consideration than they have been since their market debut. Adoption of these new consumer electronics (CE) devices will ultimately increase the use of over-the-top IP video s...

The portability of content from one digital device to another represents the future of media consumption, according to the latest assessment by eMarketer . The market is constantly shifting, due to changing user preferences and an evolving consumer electronics landscape. Device manufacturers, marketers and content publishers are all challenged to make digital content available anywhere, anytime and on any user preferred device. "Even as the landscape evolves, the market for portable electronics is growing unabated," said Noah Elkin, eMarketer senior analyst. Morgan Stanley expects high-speed wireless Internet-enabled device shipments to more than double worldwide between 2009 and 2013. Other researchers and analysts agree that the mobile device market will continue its upward trajectory. "From their in-home television and entertainment networks, consumers have grown accustomed to an on-demand culture," said Mr. Elkin. The combination of always-on devices and broadb...

According to the latest market study by comScore , more than 170 million U.S. Internet users watched online video during November 2009. Nearly 31 billion videos were viewed during the month, and Google Web sites accounting for 39 percent of all videos viewed online in the U.S. market. Google continued to rank as the top U.S. video property in November -- as it delivered 12.2 billion videos viewed with YouTube.com, accounting for nearly 99 percent of all videos viewed. Hulu ranked second with 924 million videos viewed (3.0 percent) followed by Viacom Digital with 500 million (1.6 percent) and Microsoft Sites with 480 million (1.5 percent). More than 170 million viewers watched an average of 182 videos per viewer during the month of November. Google attracted 129 million unique viewers during the month (94.7 videos per viewer), followed by Yahoo! with more than 55 million viewers (8.5 videos per viewer) and Fox Interactive Media with 50 million viewers (8.9 videos per viewer). The averag...