Mobile analytics and tracking firm AdMob has just released its latest mobile metrics report, a monthly snapshot of the smartphone industry based on data generated by ad requests within its network of 23,000 mobile websites and mobile applications. This current report, the last of its kind, notes the company who plans on reinventing the report to make it "more useful going forward," focuses on long-term trends across the industry.
Not surprisingly, the company found that Android has seen rapid growth thanks to the launch of new devices, Apple is still the top manufacturer and iPads are having an impact on mobile Internet traffic worldwide.
A recent survey of 2,733 mobile application developers has shed new light on the so-called Apple vs. Google battle that's taking place in the smartphone industry, pitting Apple's dominant iPhone/iPad operating system (iOS) against Google's mobile operating system, Android.
The survey, conducted by mobile app development company Appcelerator, asked a representative sample of its 51,000 customers to weigh the pros and cons of both the Apple and Google mobile platforms, among other things. According to the findings, developers view Apple's near-term outlook favorably, given its App Store, large market share and device line up. However, it's Android's adaptability as a platform that had developers pegging the OS as the best bet for long-term success.
Social media is going to rule the Web until at least 2012 - according to a post by Justin Kistner, a Social Evangelist at web analytics company Webtrends. Kistner also claims that Facebook has become the king of social media. In a panel at a Portland event today called Lunch 2.0, Kistner said that the current era of the Web "is Facebook's game to lose."
Data from Google Trends suggests that the term 'web 2.0' became popular in 2005 and peaked in mid-2007 (as measured by how many times the term was entered as a search term in Google). Towards the end of 2008 'social media' started to get popular and then rose steeply in 2009.
Online tracking firm Quantcast has just released new data that shows mobile operating systems' current market share in North America, with the newly renamed "iOS" (originally called "iPhone OS" - the OS powering the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch) in the lead...by miles. The Apple mobile OS dominates its competitors with a huge chunk of mobile market share, at 60%.
But don't let these numbers fool you. It's not how much or how little of the mobile landscape each OS has claim to, but how fast this picture has changed over the preceding months. The real winner here is Android, the OS whose rapid gains have come at Apple's expense.
There's a popular, but apparently unfounded, belief that those who watch videos on their mobile devices are mostly teens. This isn't the case, says Nielsen in its latest "Three Screen" quarterly report for the first quarter of 2010. More than half (55%) of the mobile video audience is actually adults, it finds, aged 25-49.
And while mobile video viewing on a smartphone still remains a niche activity in comparison to total audience size, its year-over-year growth (51.2%) is impressive.
The Hulu rumors resurface once again. This time, two sources have been cited by a Reuters report confirming, for what seems like the thousandth time, that indeed Hulu is poised to roll out a subscription service. And like the sources quoted last month by the L.A. Times, this will start soon - perhaps even within the next month or two.
The only new information in today's report is that this supposed paid version of Hulu may now be making its way to other devices, including Apple's iPad and Microsoft's Xbox 360.
At the CM Summit today, Mary Meeker from Morgan Stanley did another one of her trademark quickfire, but densely packed, presentations on Internet Trends. There were several new themes in her June update, including that there has been an "unusually high level of innovation" recently from big Web companies. She mentioned Apple, Google, Facebook and others. She also spent a fair amount of time on the impact of Apple's iPhone and iPad products on the Internet ecosystem over the past couple of years, which she termed "Apple's epic reinvention." You can find Meeker's slideshow on the Morgan Stanley website. Here are some highlights:
"When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks," began Apple CEO Steve Jobs at last night's D8 conference, trying to come up with an apt analogy for the recent changes we're seeing in the computing landscape of the new millennium. "But as people moved more towards urban centers, people started to get into cars. I think PCs are going to be like trucks. Less people will need them."
Jobs wasn't trying to disparage Microsoft. He was actually referring to the form factor of "personal computers" - laptops and desktops alike. It's a discussion about the upcoming era of computing where everything becomes radically different, from the form factor itself to the user interface and interactions that, combined, make up what we think of as "personal computing."
NBC isn't hopping on the iPad bandwagon, according to recent reports. The media giant known for popular shows like "The Office" and "30 Rock" reportedly told Apple it won't be making any of its online shows iPad-compatible anytime soon. And it's not alone. Sources cited by The New York Post's Claire Atkinson say that Time Warner and several other "large media companies" are forgoing what they claim is an expensive reformatting of their video libraries.
But is conversion expense the real reason why some media companies are eschewing the Apple iPad craze? Or is the fact that the ad dollars just aren't there yet to make it worth their while?
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg penned a public statement about Facebook privacy issues and what's being done about that issue by way of an article published in today's Washington Post. In the brief, carefully crafted mea culpa, Zuckerberg addresses the ongoing privacy backlash the site is now facing: "We just missed the mark," he wrote, referring to the overly complex, granular privacy settings and controls that offer toggles for everything from search engine visibility to whether or not your photo albums can be seen by your boss.
What wasn't addressed, however, was why the need for clearer, easier-to-use privacy settings became such an urgent matter in the first place. And that is at the core of Facebook's steamroller approach to forcing people into public sharing, a corporate philosophy that seems less about impact to its bottom line and more about fulfilling Zuckerberg's personal vision for a more social Web: "If people share more, the world will become more open and connected," he writes in the article. "And a world that's more open and connected is a better world."
