J.D. Power: Touchscreen Input Leads Smartphone Satisfaction
By Jason Ankeny
Smartphone owners with touchscreen-enabled devices enjoy considerably higher satisfaction than consumers with phones incorporating more conventional input mechanisms like text keyboards, according to marketing information services firm J.D. Power and Associates' 2010 U.S. Wireless Smartphone Customer Satisfaction Study.
Among smartphone owners with touchscreen, satisfaction averages 771 on a 1,000-point scale, nearly 40 index points higher than other wireless subscribers--J.D. Power notes that slightly more than one half of respondents indicate their smartphone includes a touchscreen interface, adding that Apple ranks highest among smartphone manufacturers with a consumer satisfaction score of 810, followed by Research In Motion at 741.
The J.D. Power study also reports that both smartphone and feature phone users are increasingly using their devices for entertainment and media sharing. A quarter of mass-market handset owners now send and receive multimedia and picture messages, up 25 percent from just six months ago, while smartphone users are nearly twice as likely to share multimedia messages. Moreover, 17 percent of touchscreen-based smartphone users say they frequently download and watch video content, significantly higher than the segment average.
Additional findings of the J.D. Power survey:
Sixty percent of smartphone owners report downloading third-party games for entertainment, and 46 percent download travel software, e.g. maps and weather applications. Thirty-one percent say they download utility applications, while 26 percent say they download business-specific software.
Thirty-five percent of feature phone owners indicate they want GPS features on their next handset, compared to 15 percent of smartphone owners.
Younger users are more satisfied with their handset, regardless of whether they own a feature phone or a smartphone. Satisfaction among feature phone users ages 18 to 24 is 35 index points higher than the segment average, while satisfaction among smartphone users within the same demographic is 18 index points above the norm. [FierceMobileContent]
How Smartphones, Netbooks Will Change The Future of Money
By Natasha Lomas
Companies have been developing mobile banking and e-payments options for a number of years, but the future is looking more complicated as higher bandwidth and more sophisticated devices such as netbooks and smartphones narrow the divide between fixed and mobile internet access.
Mobile banking and m-payments are on the increase and look set to become substantial markets - analyst house Juniper Research recently predicted 150 million people will be using mobile banking services globally by 2011.
Much of the hype around m-payments has so far centred on NFC-enabled 'wallet phones'. Earlier this month for example, mobile operator Orange and credit card company Barclaycard announced a strategic partnership to develop m-payments technology including mobile wallet handsets - which use near field communications (NFC) to make contactless payments.
But a wealth of other mobile payment options exist - and the smartphone-fuelled rise of full access to the mobile internet is increasingly blurring the boundaries between internet and mobile payments.
Gareth Lodge, regional research director for European payments at analyst house TowerGroup, told silicon.com: "There are hundreds of different [payment] solutions out there - both on the internet and on the mobile, so the challenge for the mobile operators is also working out which bet to place on which [payment] operators."
According to the analyst, payments markets are pretty incestuous already: "At the moment I can make a virtual credit card payment on my virtual PayPal credit card on my BlackBerry on a website - at the end of the day is that an e-payment, a mobile payment, a credit card payment?
Read more
Smartphones Now Yield a Third of All Mobile Ad Requests
By Jason Ankeny
Smartphones generated 33 percent of total mobile ad requests worldwide in February 2009--up from 26 percent the previous month--according to mobile ad marketplace AdMob's monthly Mobile Metrics Report. AdMob notes that the launch of HTC's G1 and the BlackBerry Storm galvanized increases in requests originating via the Android and BlackBerry operating systems--the firm adds that the growth is based on mobile web usage, not the volume of handsets sold, indicating the depth of consumer engagement with touchscreen devices. The top handsets from AT&T (Apple's iPhone) and Sprint (Samsung's Instinct) are also touchscreens, AdMob reports.
In terms of mobile ad requests, the top five smartphones worldwide are now the iPhone, Nokia N70, BlackBerry 8300, Nokia N80 and Nokia N73--the iPhone is also tops in the U.S., followed by the BlackBerry Curve (the leading Verizon Wireless device), BlackBerry Pearl, Palm Centro and HTC G1. The iPhone was responsible for 33 percent of smartphone traffic worldwide in February and 50 percent in the U.S., according to AdMob; Google's Android contributed 5 percent of ad requests in the U.S.
The Symbian OS remains out front in terms of market share, with 43 percent of requests--AdMob reports a significant percentage of both Symbian and Windows Mobile devices are running older versions of their respective operating systems, suggesting those handsets may not have access to Nokia's Ovi Store and Microsoft's Windows Markeplace for Mobile when those application storefronts open later this year. [FierceMobileContent]
Entertainment, Games Top Smartphone Content Sales
By Jason Ankeny
Smartphone users are now downloading more games and entertainment applications than any other category of mobile content, according to smartphone content provider Handango. The firm's First Half 2008 Handango Yardstick global trend report notes that games--buoyed by strong sales from brands including EA Mobile and Capcom--jumped from fourth place at the end of 2007 to second place in the current rankings, just behind entertainment.
Handango says that in unit sales, categories focused on "killing time" now surpass applications emphasizing "saving time," i.e. business and productivity apps: Entertainment and games together totaled 42 percent of unit sales during the first half of 2008, followed by business and professional applications at 13 percent. Productivity apps like address books and calendars accounted for 9 percent of sales. A separate Handango survey reports that 86 percent agreed or strongly agreed that smartphone content makes their lives easier, while 76 percent agreed it makes their lives more enjoyable.
Handango reports its content catalog now boasts more than 140,000 entries across various categories--the company added more than 370 developer partners during the first six months of 2008, bringing its roster of developers to over 23,000. The BlackBerry 8830 and BlackBerry Curve were the top two devices adding software in the first half of 2008, with more than 1,000 new mobile applications added to the BlackBerry catalog during this period. "
Ringtones was the most searched term during the first six months of the year, with the top 10 also including "games," "themes," "GPS," "weather" and "music." Ringtones and streaming television applications remain among the best sellers across multiple platforms.
Global Smartphone Sales Grow 29 Percent in Q1
By Jason Ankeny
Worldwide smartphone sales totaled 32.2 million units in the first quarter of 2008, a 29.3 percent increase over the year-ago quarter, according to a new report issued by market research firm Gartner. North American smartphone sales totaled 7.3 million units in Q1, a 106.2 percent year-over-year increase, while smartphone sales in Europe, Middle East, and Africa totaled 11.7 million units, a 38.7 percent leap.
Nokia remains ahead of the vendor pack, commanding over 45 percent of the global smartphone market and notching a year-over-year sales increase of 25 percent--Research In Motion held on to second place, improving its worldwide market share to 13.4 percent and continuing to dominate the U.S. market at 42 percent.
Apple moved into the number three slot, with 5.3 percent of the global smartphone market and jumping to number two in the U.S. with 20 percent. Gartner anticipates touchscreens, usability and application integration will continue to drive smartphone growth, especially as vendors and operators expand their portfolios to include open-platform devices. [FierceDeveloper]
Linux To Challenge Symbian, Microsoft In Mobile Phone Market
Purple Magic is a 3G Linux reference feature phone that costs less than $100 and combines video telephony, music playback, high-speed Internet browsing, and video streaming.
By Elena Malykhina
As the smartphone market matures, Linux will become one of the leading mobile platforms, ABI Research predicted at its press event in New York City on Thursday, the same day as NXP Semiconductors and Purple Labs unveiled what they claim to be the first 3G Linux phone under $100.
Carriers worldwide will support three major mobile operating systems -- Symbian, Linux, and Microsoft, said Stuart Carlaw, a mobile and wireless analyst at ABI Research.
"Linux has an incredible destabilizing effect on this market. It will be a way a new entrant can come into market without signing up for the development cycles of Symbian or Microsoft," Carlaw said.
Linux developers differentiate themselves by introducing a lot of firsts to the smartphone and cell phone market, or so they claim.
OpenMoko last year began selling the first Linux smartphone based completely on open standards. The Neo1973 smartphone, developed in partnership with First International Computer, a manufacturer of motherboards and notebook, PC, and PDA peripherals, uses OpenMoko's mobile communications platform. All parts of the platform are open sourced, including the user interface layer.
Read more - Information Week
Startup a la Mobile Unveils First Google Android Apps
Linux systems platform and open-source mobile tech firm a la Mobile announced its support of Google's Android platform via what it's calling the industry's first demonstration of applications based on the Android application framework.
The Android app suite, running on HTC's Qtek 9090 advanced smartphone, includes a browser, phone dialer, audio player, maps, camera, games, calendar, contacts manager, calculator, tasks manager and notes, some boasting a la Mobile's own enhanced graphical user interface.
According to a la Mobile, its demonstration should allay concerns that Android is not quite ready for primetime. However, the firm also notes that the Android platform is an application framework, not a complete, off-the-shelf software stack.
"Despite the open-source nature of the Android framework, developing a complete mobile system solution with customized, differentiated features continues to present major technical challenges requiring considerable time, effort, and resources--a barrier and reach beyond the scope of many handset vendors," said a la Mobile president and CEO Pauline Lo Alker in a prepared statement.
"Our mission is to remove the complexity for handset vendors and mobile operators to enable them to accelerate their device time-to-market, ensure high quality while reducing total development and device costs. The experience we have gained in putting together this demo will enable us to trim a device's time-to-market by at least half," she added.
"The wireless industry is preparing itself for the growth in the use of Linux as the operating system for smartphones" said Bill Hughes, Principal Analyst with In-Stat. "Some industry participants are seeking to offer mobile Linux platforms that are only partially 'open,'with key interfaces being kept proprietary.
In contrast, a la Mobile is pursuing mobile solutions that are open and support third-party application developers and network partners to provide solutions that apply across multiple platforms. a la Mobile's demonstration of the Android framework on an actual smart device is a concrete example of this vision put into practice. Such efforts support the growth predictions In-Stat has made about the smartphone industry as a whole and the mobile Linux platform in particular." [FierceWireless]
Forecast: Mobile Phones to Dominate GPS Market
Mobile phone-based navigation is poised to dominate the GPS market, according to a new study issued by analysis firm Telematics Research Group. TRG reports that while portable navigation device makers like Garmin and TomTom remain worldwide market leaders, selling 30 million dedicated PNDs in 2007, handset makers like Nokia, Motorola, LG and Samsung are quickly gaining ground, moving about 20 million navigation-enabled phones last year.
TRG forecasts that annual navigation-enabled phone sales will outstrip dedicated PND (personal navigation devices) sales sometime in the next year, with the combined market reaching sales in excess of 220 million units by the end of 2012 and passing the 500 million-unit threshold by the end of 2015.
"Dedicated PNDs are mobile devices optimized for navigation while mobile phones with navigation are optimized for communications, which gives them an advantage in the emerging new world order for navigation," said TRG principal analyst Dr. Egil Juliussen in a prepared statement.
“In the years to come navigation-enabled mobile phones will be used for auto navigation, pedestrian navigation and many other types of location-based services,” says Juliussen. “This opens up a new world of services and capabilities.”
The pieces are in place and the players are making their moves. Recent acquisitions by TomTom and Nokia point the way toward the coming battle for the GPS consumer. Required for success in the GPS market of the future will be connectivity, inexpensive maps and rich point-of-interest content – addresses alone will not be enough.
Garmin and TomTom are adding connectivity to their devices. Mobile phone makers are adding maps. “A large volume market for inexpensive, dedicated navigation devices will live on past 2008,” Juliussen says, but survival for TomTom and Garmin may mean finding a way to compete for smartphone users.
“Dedicated PNDs are mobile devices optimized for navigation while mobile phones with navigation are optimized for communications, which gives them an advantage in the emerging new world order for navigation,” Juliussen concludes. [FierceMobileContent]
Top 10 Hot Business Technology Trends for 2008
With the holiday season in full swing and the new year only weeks away, chief information officers are making their lists and checking them twice to determine which key information technology initiatives will take flight in 2008. Verizon Business has identified ten business technology trends that are driving those New Year's "resolutions."
"They're responding to the business challenges of their enterprises — solving technical problems, boosting the efficiency of their organizations, wringing costs out of the business — delivering business benefits that are not merely financial or technical, but environmental as well.
Here's Verizon Business' list of ten hot trends for 2008:
Continued Globalization
Successful companies will continue to expand their borders in 2008 with workers, offices and facilities located around the world. While globalization can help multinational companies control costs, new challenges will emerge such as deploying a reliable communications infrastructure, whether an office is located in Seoul, Rio de Janeiro or Rome.
Securing the Extended Enterprise
The coming year will see an even greater proliferation of data as companies look to open their boundaries to connect partners, suppliers and customers. More than ever, companies will need to keep track of where their data resides and then develop a strategy to safeguard it.
Global Greening
Increasingly, converging communications and computing (IT) technologies will be the great enablers to help business and government address global warming by reducing their energy footprints. Use of audio, video and Web conferencing services will more often supersede business travel and reduce carbon emissions while helping increase productivity of employees who are actually working rather than waiting in long airport security lines.
Virtualization and On-demand Computing
As companies seek to maximize the efficient use of their infrastructure, achieve their green objectives and strengthen security, no technology holds more promise. Multiple dedicated servers — which may be underutilized and consume space, power and cooling in the data center — can now be replaced with virtual servers sharing network-based resources such as common storage. Businesses will continue to adopt this model because it helps them achieve data center consolidation and further reduce expenses.
Telepresence
Coming soon to a boardroom near you, the next generation of virtual meetings, enabled by immersive video technology, will bring people across the globe together face-to-face without ever having to hit the road. While today's state-of-the-art immersive video equipment is expensive, widely available and ever-more-affordable IP bandwidth will help lower the total cost of these high-end video conferencing solutions.
Outsourcing/Out-tasking
While outsourcing is not new, strong adoption is and will continue to be in 2008. What will become even more compelling is out-tasking — the process by which a company decides which functions to keep in house and which to hand off to a third party. Flexibility, scalability and the ability to achieve higher performance, increased reliability and stronger security will make out-tasking the preferred model.
Smartphones and Managed Mobility
Professionals will call on their smartphones to work harder in 2008, relying more and more on mobile e-mail, integrated calendars and contacts lists while away from the office. As a result, businesses will spend more on mobile devices and will need to manage and secure numerous devices as part of an overall global enterprise mobility solution. Managed Mobility will become the next frontier, helping businesses track, monitor, secure and manage the mobile devices accessing their corporate networks.
Unified Communications
The complexity of managing multiple communications devices will ease dramatically as more companies adopt unified communications to enhance workforce collaboration both in and away from the office. With the increasing prevalence of voice over IP in the workplace has come the ability to streamline communications while enhancing capabilities.
Soft phones — IP-based phones that can plug into any IP network — can control costs, particularly in this era of globalization where workers may need to connect from home with their colleagues in other regions of the world.
Work-Life Balance
The steady growth of communications technology in our lives has created a "love-hate" relationship with the smart phones and wireless laptops that increasingly blur the lines between the workplace and our personal lives. In 2008, professionals will continue to grapple with achieving a work-life balance. Telecommuting is one useful option.
The CIO as Business Strategist
CIOs will take on an even more pivotal role in determining how to invest capital most effectively to help their companies reduce costs, increase productivity and achieve a wide range of corporate objectives. CIOs also will be responsible for making supply-chain management decisions and environmental improvements.
Today's successful organization is reaching new heights through the tight integration of business and technology. By presenting a strategic point of view from the technology side, CIOs have become today's top business strategists, and with this comes a change in the boardroom. [WirelessIQ]
Bytemobile Offers Carriers New Mobile Advertising Inventory Channel
Bytemobile, Inc., today announced the general availability of its Unison Advertising Module (UAM), which enables operators to serve targeted ads in off-portal web pages on virtually all mobile devices. As a result, carriers can quickly create new ad revenue streams to complement data revenues and subsidize the cost of data delivery.
UAM is part of the latest release of Bytemobile's Unison Multi-Service Platform. It is fully integrated with Unison Web Fidelity Service (WFS), which provides intelligent content adaptation for open internet browsing on mass-market handsets, feature phones and smartphones. Inserting ads via the Web Fidelity Module, operators can monetize subscribers' off-portal experience, in addition to on-portal traffic, and potentially generate a multiple of their data revenues through a new ad inventory channel.
"In an increasingly competitive environment, where mobile convergence is changing the landscape, we are helping our customers to drive data plan adoption, deliver new and richer data services, and now sell advertising on the open Web," said Adrian Hall, vice president of Marketing and Business Development at Bytemobile.
"Mobile ads are proving highly effective for several reasons: the one-to-one personalization of the mobile device, its proximity to the point of sale, the value of subscriber data in ad targeting, and consumer receptivity to advertising in exchange for content. This is clearly the direction of the mobile Internet," he added.
According to ABI Research (April 2007), total spending by mobile advertisers worldwide will grow from approximately $3 billion in 2007 to $19 billion in 2011. A November 2006 research study sponsored by Amobee Media Systems found that mobile consumers chose ad-sponsored over pay-for-download video by 50 to 1 and that mobile ad revenues could total up to four times the equivalent download value.
In another study conducted by Harris Interactive and Enpocket in October 2006, 78% of respondents claimed that they would accept mobile internet advertising if it were targeted and relevant to their interests. [WirelessIQ]
2007: Mobile Phone Accessories Market Will Generate More Revenue
The market for mobile phone accessories will generate over $32 billion in revenues in 2007, more than the $28 billion expected from the Smartphone market. Around 77% of these revenues will come from the sales of "after-market" mobile phone accessories and the remaining from "in-box" accessories shipments.
According to ABI Research industry analyst Shailendra Pandey, "The number of mobile phone accessory products is expanding with new products driven by technology as well as by customer fashion and personalization needs appearing in the market.”
“Handset vendors and mobile operators are showing greater interest as accessories provide high margins and also opportunities to promote their brand and expand their product offerings. The growing interest among mobile operators is also driven by the realization that mobile phone accessories can lead to higher ARPUs," he added.
Handset vendors now recognize that to increase sales of their high-end mobile phones and smartphones, they need to provide accessories that allow users to fully enjoy and benefit from the features provided in those handsets.
Nokia is addressing the handset accessory market with a distinctive approach of "Mobile Enhancement" products while Motorola is playing special emphasis on the growing "Personalization" and "Self-Expression" trends. [ABI research]
Global Mobile Computing Market to Reach $89 Billion in 2011
The global market for mobile computing will reach more than $88.9 billion by 2011, up from $63.5 billion in 2006, according to a new report from BCC Research.
Notebook and laptop computer sales will reach $69.2 billion by the end of 2011, up from $53.7 billion in 2006. These portable computers will account for more than 96% of the mobile computing market in 2011, up from 84% in 2006.
Smartphones will have the highest growth rate of any mobile computing sector through 2011 with a 15.7% CAGR, reaching almost $17.8 billion, up from $8.6 billion in 2006.
Judging by the types of programs used in mobile computing, the sector is still driven by road warriors. By 2011, office-related, communications and global-positioning software will make up over two-thirds of all applications installed in handheld devices and mobile phones. [eMarketer]
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