Day 74 Sales: Apple iPhone vs. Google Nexus One vs. Motorola Droid March 17, 2010
Posted by hruf in Mobile & Gadgets.Tags: Android, Apple, iPhone, Market, Market Trends, Mobile, Motorola Droid, Nexus One
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Through applications using Flurry for analytics reporting, Flurry can detect and count unique devices in the market such as Google Nexus One and Motorola Droids. Because applications embedded with Flurry have been downloaded to over 80% of all iPhone OS and Android devices, Flurry is able to make reliable estimates about total handset sales.[…]
So, why 74? Simply put, according to Apple, the original iPhone reached 1 million units sold in that many days. […]
The chart below compares the sales results through each of their respective first 74 days. The launch dates were: iPhone, June 29, 2007; Droid, November 5, 2009; and, Nexus One, January 5, 2010. Please note that we forecasted the last few days of Nexus One’s first 74 days sales based sales of the first 70 days we tracked at the time of writing this report.
Inspecting the graph, it’s immediately clear that Nexus One sales continue to pale in comparison to iPhone 1G and Motorola Droid, with each besting Nexus One sales by roughly 8 times over the same time period.
At the same time, an interesting side-story is that the Motorola Droid edged out iPhone 1G over the first 74 days, coming in at just over one million sold through, by our calculations. This was surprising enough that we re-ran our estimates several times and still came up with the same results. Thinking about the differences associated with each launch (operator, year, etc.), we believe there are three underlying drivers of Droid worth keeping in mind compared to the other two handsets:
1. Consumer Perception & Demand: Motorola Droid launched over 2.5 years after the iPhone 1G. (Nov 2009 vs. July 2007). When the iPhone launched, consumers’ concept of a mobile computing device as we now understand it, was very different. Since then, Apple has spent millions of dollars training and educating consumers about capabilities of such a device, which was no small feat especially after its first foray into the handset business (Motorola ROKR E1 in 2005). Until the iPhone was introduced, most consumers, especially in the U.S. had thought of their phones as, well, just phones. Finally, it’s worth noting that the Motorola Droid could be considered Android’s “third generation” handset, which benifitted from generated awareness by preceding G1 and MyTouch 3G handsets.
2. Relative Subscriber Bases: Droid launched on Verizon, a larger network with more subscribers than AT&T, especially when considering AT&T’s 2007 size (63.7 million at the time of iPhone launch) versus Verizon’s 2009 size (89 million at the end of Q3). Additionally, there was pent up demand among the Verizon subscriber base for an iPhone killer, which is exactly how Verizon positioned the Droid. Finally, Verizon backed the launch with advertising support of at least $100 million.
3. Holiday Season Sales: Droid benefited from launching on Nov 5 and having its first 74 days lifted by the holiday season, which is the highest selling period of the year for handsets. Neither iPhone 1G nor Nexus One’s first 74 days spanned a holiday period.
As Google and Apple continue to battle for the mobile marketplace, Google Nexus One may go down as a grand, failed experiment or one that ultimately helped Google learn something that will prove important in years to come. Apple’s more vertically integrated strategy vs. Google’s more open Android platform approach offer strengths and weaknesses that remind us of PC vs. Mac from the 1980’s. A key difference this time around is that Apple is enjoying much more 3rd party developer support, whose innovative applications push the limits of what the hardware can do. Ultimately, however, developers support hardware with the largest installed base first. For Android to make progress faster, from a sales perspective, it needs more Droids and fewer Nexus Ones going forward.
via Day 74 Sales: Apple iPhone vs. Google Nexus One vs. Motorola Droid.
Demolition Derby in Devices: The roller-coaster ride is on | VisionMobile :: blog March 13, 2010
Posted by hruf in Mobile & Gadgets.Tags: Android, Apple, Google, iPhone, Market, Market Trends, Mobile, Mobile Application
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[The economic realities will lead to a roller-coaster ride that will shake up the mobile industry. Guest blogger Richard Kramer talks about the impending price war, the implications for industry growth, and how this will alter the landscape of device vendors in the next decade]
With all the discussion of technology trends on the blogosphere, there are some harsh economic realities creeping up on the handset space. The collective efforts of vendors to deliver great products will lead to an all-out smash-up for market share, bringing steep declines in pricing.
In November 2009 I wrote a note about what Arete saw as the impending dynamics of the mobile device market. I called it Demolition Derby. This followed on from a piece called Clash of the Titans, about how the PC and Handset worlds were colliding, brought together by common software platforms and adopting common chipset architectures. As handsets morphed into connected devices, it opened the door for computing industry players, now flooding in.
New categories of non-phone devices
A USB modem/datacard market of 70m units in 2009 should counted as an extra third of the smartphone market, as it connected a range of computing devices. By the end of 2010, I believe there will be many new categories of non-phone mobile devices to track (datacards, embedded PCs, tablets, etc.), and they may be equal to high-end smartphone market in units in 2011. Having looked at the roadmaps of nearly every established and wannabe vendor in the mobile device space, I cannot recall a period in the past 15 years of covering the device market with so many credible vendors, most with their best product portfolios ever, tossing their hats in the ring. I see three things happening because of this:
1. First, a brutal price war is coming. This will affect nearly every segment of the mobile device market. Anyone who thinks they are insulated from this price war is simply deluded. I have lost count of the number of vendors planning to offer a touch-screen slim mono-bloc Android device for H2 2010. The only thing that will set all these devices apart will be brand, and in the end, price. Chipmakers – the canaries in the handset coal mine – are already talking about slim HSPA modems at $10 price points, and $20 combined application processors and RF. Both Huawei and ZTE now targeting Top Three positions in devices, with deep engagements developing operator brands. They are already #1 and #2 in USB modems. Just look at the pricing trends ZTE and Huawei brought to the infrastructure market; this will come to mobile devices.
2. Second, growth will rebound with a vengeance. I expect 15% volume growth in 2010, well ahead of the cautious consensus of 8%. I first noted this failure of vision in forecasting in a 2005 note entitled “A Billion Handsets in 2007” when the consensus was looking for 6% growth whereas we got 20%+ growth for three years, thanks to the onset of $25 BoM devices. Consumers will not care about software platform debates or feature creep packing devices with GHz processors in 2010. Ask your friends who don’t read mobile blogs and aren’t hung up about AppStores or tear-downs: they will simply respond to an impossibly wide choice of impossibly great devices, offered to them at impossibly cheap prices.
3. Third, the detente is over. The long-term stability that alllowed the top five vendors to command 80% market share for most of this decade is breaking down. This is not simply a question of “Motorola fades, Samsung steps in” or “LG replaces SonyEricsson in the featurephone space”. Within a year, there could be dangerously steep market share declines among the former market leaders (i.e. Nokia) to accompany their decline in value share. Operators are grasping control of the handset value chain; many intend to follow the lead of Vodafone 360 to develop their own range of mid-tier and low-end devices. Whether or not this delivers better user experiences, operators are determined to target their subsidy spend to their favourite ODM partners. In developed markets, long-established vendors are getting eclipsed: in 2010, RIM or Apple could pass traditional vendors like SonyEricsson or Motorola in units. RIM and Apple already handily out-paced older rivals in sales value, and with $41bn of estimated sales in 2010, are on par with Nokia.
Hyper competition
So where does this lead us? Even with far greater volumes than anyone dares to imagine, there is no way to satisfy everyone’s hopes of share gains, or profits. With Apple driving to $25bn in 2010 sales and Mediatek-based customers seeking share in emerging markets, the mobile device market is entering a phase of hyper-competition. It is all too easy for industry pundits to forget that Motorola and Sony Ericsson collectively lost over $5bn in the past 2.5 years. More such losses are to come.
Never before have we seen so many vendors acting individually rationally, but collectively insane. Albert Einstein once famously said that “the defintiion of insanity was doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result”.
The men in the white coats will have a field day with the mobile device market in 2010.
– Richard
via Demolition Derby in Devices: The roller-coaster ride is on | VisionMobile :: blog.
Lenovo: mobile Internet to be 80% of sales in five years | Electronista March 13, 2010
Posted by hruf in Enterprise 2.0, Mobile & Gadgets.Tags: Business, Internet, Lenovo, Market, Market Trends, Mobile
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The vast majority of Lenovo’s sales will come from Internet-capable portable devices in five years, company chief Yang Yuanqing stated on Friday. He observed that ThinkPads and IdeaPads already outweigh desktops but that fully 70 to 80 percent of Lenovo’s devices will be mobile Internet devices of some kind within as little as three and no more than five years. Many of these will be smartphones, but they should also include crossover devices such as the IdeaPad U1 notebook/tablet hybrid and the Skylight smartbook.
Most of its strategy for 2010 will involve pushing into relatively underserved areas for the company, such as middle Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe. Its longer-term “protect and attack” strategy would focus on solidifying performance in China before shifting attention to other markets.
The approach puts it into more direct competition with both established notebook rivals like Acer and HP but also firms whose lineups have only partially overlapped with Lenovo’s in recent years, such as Apple and HTC. Lenovo has just recently entered touchscreen smartphones in earnest with the Ophone O1 and the upcoming LePhone, and devices like the U1 are likely to clash with the iPad as well as existing and widely rumored UMPC and tablet models from HTC.
via Lenovo: mobile Internet to be 80% of sales in five years | Electronista.
comScore Reports January 2010 U.S. Mobile Subscriber Market Share – comScore, Inc March 11, 2010
Posted by hruf in Mobile & Gadgets.Tags: Apple, Google, iPhone, Market, Market Trends, Microsoft, Mobile, Motorola, Palm, RIM
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RESTON, VA, March 10, 2010 – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released data from the comScore MobiLens service, reporting key trends in the U.S. mobile phone industry during the three month period between October 2009 and January 2010. The report ranked the leading mobile original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and smartphone operating system (OS) platforms in the U.S. according to their share of current mobile subscribers age 13 and older, as well as popular activities and content accessed via the subscriber’s primary mobile phone. The January report found Motorola to be the top handset manufacturer overall with 22.9 percent market share, while RIM led among smartphone platforms with 43.0 percent market share.
OEM Market Share
In the 3 month average ending in January, 234 million Americans were mobile subscribers ages 13 and older, with device manufacturer Motorola ranking as the top OEM with 22.9 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers. LG ranked second with 21.7 percent share, followed by Samsung (21.1 percent share), Nokia (9.1 percent share) and RIM (7.8 percent share).
| Top Mobile OEMs 3 Month Avg. Ending Jan. 2010 vs. 3 Month Avg. Ending Oct. 2009 Total U.S. Age 13+ Source: comScore MobiLens |
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| Share (%) of Mobile Subscribers | |||
| Oct-09 | Jan-10 | Point Change | |
| Total Mobile Subscribers | 100.0% | 100.0% | N/A |
| Motorola | 24.1% | 22.9% | -1.2 |
| LG | 22.0% | 21.7% | -0.3 |
| Samsung | 21.0% | 21.1% | 0.1 |
| Nokia | 9.3% | 9.1% | -0.2 |
| RIM | 6.4% | 7.8% | 1.4 |
Smartphone Platform Market Share
42.7 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones in an average month during the November to January period, up 18 percent from the August through October period. RIM was the leading mobile smartphone platform in the U.S. with 43.0 percent share of U.S. smartphone subscribers, rising 1.7 percentage points versus three months earlier. Apple ranked second with 25.1 percent share (up 0.3 percentage points), followed by Microsoft at 15.7 percent, Google at 7.1 percent (up 4.3 percentage points), and Palm at 5.7 percent. Google’s Android platform continues to see rapid gains in market share.
| Top Smartphone Platforms 3 Month Avg. Ending Jan. 2010 vs. 3 Month Avg. Ending Oct. 2009 Total U.S. Age 13+ Source: comScore MobiLens |
|||
| Share (%) of Smartphone Subscribers | |||
| Oct-09 | Jan-10 | Point Change | |
| Total Smartphone Subscribers | 100.0% | 100.0% | N/A |
| RIM | 41.3% | 43.0% | 1.7 |
| Apple | 24.8% | 25.1% | 0.3 |
| Microsoft | 19.7% | 15.7% | -4.0 |
| 2.8% | 7.1% | 4.3 | |
| Palm | 7.8% | 5.7% | -2.1 |
Mobile Content Usage
In an average month during the November through January 2010 time period, 63.5 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers used text messaging on their mobile device, up 1.5 percentage points versus three months prior. Browsers were used by 28.6 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers (up 1.8 percentage points), while subscribers who played games made up 21.7 percent (up 0.4 percentage points). Access of social networking sites or blogs experienced strong gains in the past three months, growing 3.3 percentage points to 17.1 percent of mobile subscribers.
| Mobile Content Usage 3 Month Avg. Ending Jan. 2010 vs. 3 Month Avg. Ending Oct. 2009 Total U.S. Age 13+ Source: comScore MobiLens |
|||
| Share (%) of U.S. Mobile Subscribers | |||
| Oct-09 | Jan-10 | Point Change | |
| Total Mobile Subscribers | 100.0% | 100.0% | N/A |
| Sent text message to another phone | 62.0% | 63.5% | 1.5 |
| Used browser | 26.8% | 28.6% | 1.8 |
| Played games | 21.3% | 21.7% | 0.4 |
| Used Downloaded Apps | 18.3% | 19.8% | 1.5 |
| Accessed Social Networking Site or Blog | 13.8% | 17.1 % | 3.3 |
| Listened to music on mobile phone | 11.6% | 12.8% | 1.2 |
via comScore Reports January 2010 U.S. Mobile Subscriber Market Share – comScore, Inc.
How The iPad, And The Slate Computer, Will Evolve In The Next Two Years March 11, 2010
Posted by hruf in Mobile & Gadgets.Tags: Apple, iPad, Market Trends
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With the iPad
hitting pre-order in two days and shipping in April, it’s important to think about when and why to buy the iPad. Based on our understanding of the product lifecycle and expected moves by Apple’s competitors, we foresee big changes in the ultraportable landscape with the ultraportable/netbook as we now know it mutating – or branching – into a new species of media oriented Win7 and Android devices. Here’s what we can expect.
April 3, 2010 – Big launch. Light crowds at the Apple Store. This isn’t huge-huge. It’s medium-huge and I don’t think you’re going to see an army of the pasty arriving at your local shop clamoring for iPads. This is Apple’s wait and see product, although I don’t doubt between 3-5 million won’t wait and see in 2010.
May-June 2010 – Chinese knock-offs will flood the market and we’ll see a nice collection of weird, mutated slates hitting the more esoteric sites. Nothing major and no big sellers.
Summer 2010 – Dell and HP release their devices. Dell’s is called the Mini 5 AKA the Streak and HP’s as of yet unamed. These guys will wait until the waters have been fully tested before they move with their devices.
via How The iPad, And The Slate Computer, Will Evolve In The Next Two Years.
Web Strategy Matrix: Google Buzz vs Facebook vs MySpace vs Twitter (Feb 2010) « Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang | Social Media, Web Marketing February 28, 2010
Posted by hruf in Internet & Communities.Tags: Facebook, Google, Internet, Market Trends, MySpace, Twitter
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Lack Of Signal In A Sea of Noise
There’s an incredible amount of media and blogger noise about social networks, yet most focus on “killer app” hype without an objective point of view. My career mission? To cut out the hype and help companies make sense of what to do. For those fraught with information overload, this definitive matrix distills what matters.
Situation: New Contender Shakes Up Industry
Google has entered the social networking play with “Buzz”, and by the look of it, this time it’s for real. There’s a lot of market confusion on how they could stack up, so here’s my take. Let’s cut the noise and get to the heart of it with a comparison matrix based upon my insights talking to these companies in formal briefings, observations, as a user, my former research and dealing with the brands trying to reach them.
Executive Summary: Brands Must Stay Focused On Where Customers Already Are
Google’s entrance causes media havoc but web strategists should stay focused. Find out where customers already are through developing data around consumer behavior called socialgraphics. Facebook continues to demonstrate a sophisticated marketplace for consumers and brands to mix about, however don’t discount MySpace’s active consumer base –but only if your customers are already there. Continue to monitor Twitter and respond if customers are tweeting –but they’ve yet to indicate sophistication to help marketers, instead rely on third party tools and agencies to respond. The feature set of newly spawned Google Buzz isn’t important, what matters is their ability to aggregate social content which will impact search strategy for businesses trying to reach consumers, read my first take analysis.
This scorecard has a limited shelf life, so I’ll likely create a new scorecard after future announcements from these players.
Web Strategy Matrix: Google Buzz vs Facebook vs MySpace vs Twitter (Feb 2010)
| Google Buzz | MySpace | |||
| One-Liner | A dark horse that has big backing and access to existing platforms. | A mainstay platform that needs to grow out of its shell. | The MTV of this generation is at risk during an ugly transformation. | Has opportunity to become utility-like infrastructure, but not a destination. |
| Vitals (see more stats) | Estimated to sit on a user based of over 100mm active gmail users, they have access to the most popular webpage in the world, google.com. Has access to mainstream users on Google.com and advanced email users on Gmail. | Boasting over 400mm users in just a few short years, they’ve saturated Gen Y in US, and show global expansion at record rates. | Recently reported at 57mm US unique users most of which are heavily engaged with site. Has saturation of coveted youth, working class and small businesses within US. | Although difficult to track, estimates indicate 75mm active users, but doubts are emerging about reduced rate of growth. Usage by tech savvy, media, and celebs. |
| Strengths | A large talent pool of engineers to pull from, Buzz stands on top of existing Gmail, mobile devices, and dominant search portal. As Buzz grows, they can integrate with all Google apps –and aggregate the entire internet. | Rapid US and international growth over last few years bodes well as quickly evolved feature set of platform and and FB Connect gain traction. Attracts top talent from Google –which are quickly defecting. | Big backing by a media giant, a super engaged audience, and rich history of reaching media starved young consumers. | Has clinched adoption over media elite, celebrities, and tech influencers. Incredible media buzz, and easy-to-use features. |
| Weaknesses | Late to the party, Google has had a series of social networking misfires from Wave, Dodgeball, Orkut their culture shows signs of becoming corporate –like Microsoft. | Struggles with the conundrum of having promised users a ‘closed’ experience where to be successful requires them to be ‘open’. Historically poor track record in meeting privacy expectations of customers, and overall complex interface. | Complacent: they really let themselves go. In the eyes of the tech world, they are becoming irrelevant or even worse, a niched media play –not even a lifestyle network. This leaderless ship without a captain is undergoing radical internal turmoil and innovation has stalled. | Although features are dead simple, they are now a commodity –status update features are ubiquitous. Mainstream users confused by how to get started. Overhyped, the infrastructure has shown strain. Brands generally confused on how to interact. |
| Opportunity | The more information users share, tag, or create, the more data is created on Google’s platform to organize, giving them opportunity to monetize. | By integrating Facebook Connect everywhere, the service becomes ubiquitous, and therefore the default identity and default address book for consumer behavior. | A few hours ago, the CEO Van Natta was let go. Now a new chief can step up, and lead the recently formed executive team, fostering innovation and solidarity. | Must develop more features to increase the overall value of this utility of the this simple status messaging tool. |
| Threats | Mainstay email companies like Microsoft, Yahoo, and AOL have already shown social features ‘bolted’ onto their email systems, and could pose threat, although success hasn’t been proven by any. Secondly, Facebook has made notions to develop an email web client “Project Titan” that will threaten tech savvy users competing for Gmail’s attention. | Facebook is a conundrum as they must make experience open –yet this provides Google the opportunity to monetize as an intermediary. Social networks come and go, before MySpace was Friendster, they run the risk of becoming complacent, losing talent to Twitter and failing to innovate over the next few years. | Self-implosion from internal instability causes stalls, forcing media brands to develop their own social networking on their own sites, rendering MySpace a duplicate. Worse yet? Cool kids jump ship, and establish a colony elsewhere, leaving MySpace a wasteland of clueless advertisers. | Overhype from media leaves Twitter at risk for burn-out-syndrome like a Hollywood child star turned skid row. Secondly, the more successful they are, the more strain it put on the already questionable infrastructure. |
| Marketing Platform | Although not fully developed, expect advertising options to appear for brands who want to promote relevant ads wherever Buzz is located, especially on SERP pages | Confusing and overly complicated, there are too many marketing options perplexing brands. It’s not clear if brands should advertise, interact in pages, create widgets or do a combination of all. | Strong and straight forward. Established team has cut deals with many media companies and has legacy culture of understanding media. | Nascent. Although promises have been made for branded experiences, analytics, and other premium features, for most marketers it’s being treated like a chat room –not a marketing platform. |
| Future State | Buzz will aggregate the voices of their users –and those of other social networks, aggregate and serve up monetization options. | A communications platform for consumers and brands. Expect Facebook experience to be in many public experiences and mobile devices. | There are two paths: Integrate MySpace into TV and mobile devices or fade into pit of irrelevance like Friendster. | Like gas, water, or power, Twitter is likely to fade into the background and become a utility that’s integrated into everything –someday, even your fridge will Tweet. |
| What They Don’t Want You To Know | The collective already owns you –you just don’t know it yet. | They’re trying so hard to shift from closed to open, and like a nasty divorce, it’s tearing them apart from users. | Like an internal disease, the insiders are hurting, morale sunk, teams in disarray, yet they don’t want the public to know. | Not sure what they want to be when they grow up. |
| What They Should Do | Demonstrate success with Buzz, then quickly integrate into other tools like Search and Chrome. Kill off the confusing Wave, and consolidate teams and efforts. Aggregate public content from Twitter and Facebook, intermediate them and monetize their own content. | Get open now. Build a browser to quickly go transcend the web. Reward users to share more information in public like restaurant or media reviews in exchange for other values. Double down efforts on Project Titan email feature. | Quickly establish a chain of command and execute based upon a single vision. Have regular talent turnover to avoid complacency. Develop a white label product that can compete with Cisco EOS, Kyte, Pluck, or Kickapps (Altimeter client). | Develop a vision to become the dominant protocol over SMS, where teens and international cultures are already heavily texting. Continue to build out platform for developers to build on top of, becoming a data play, like a utility. |
Everyone has a morning ritual, for me, I invest up to two hours reading, thinking, and blogging each morning. I hope this helps you cut through the noise –if it was helpful, please pass it on, email to colleagues, tweet it, and blog about it.
Gartner Says Consumers Will Spend $6.2 Billion in Mobile Application Stores in 2010 January 18, 2010
Posted by hruf in Mobile & Gadgets.Tags: App Store, Apple, Google, iPhone, Market Trends, Mobile
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Consumers will spend $6.2 billion in 2010 in mobile application stores while advertising revenue is expected to generate $0.6 billion worldwide, according to Gartner, Inc. Analysts said mobile application stores will exceed 4.5 billion downloads in 2010, eight out of ten of which will be free to end users.
Gartner forecasts worldwide downloads in mobile application stores to surpass 21.6 billion by 2013 (see Table 1). Free downloads will account for 82 per cent of all downloads in 2010, and will account for 87 per cent of downloads in 2013.
“As smartphones grow in popularity and application stores become the focus for several players in the value chain, more consumers will experiment with application downloads,” said Stephanie Baghdassarian, research director at Gartner. “Games remain the No. 1 application, and mobile shopping, social networking, utilities and productivity tools continue to grow and attract increasing amounts of money.”
Table 1
Mobile Application Stores’ Number of Downloads and Revenue, Worldwide
| 2009 | 2010 | 2013 | |
| Downloads (in M) | 2,516 | 4,507 | 21,646 |
| Total revenue (in $M) | 4,237.80 | 6,770.40 | 29,479.30 |
Source: Gartner (December 2009
An application can be free because the developer is offering it at no cost to the consumer while charging for other things within the application. There are also applications that are free to use but that charge for physical goods that you can have delivered through the application. There are many applications that are free to users and derive their revenue from advertising. This can be done with banners as well as full page advertising between game levels for instance.
Worldwide mobile application stores’ download revenue exceeded $4.2 billion in 2009 and will grow to $29.5 billion by the end of 2013. This revenue forecast includes end-user spending on paid-for applications and advertising-sponsored free applications. Advertising-sponsored mobile applications will generate almost 25 per cent of mobile application stores revenue by 2013.
High-end smartphone users today tend to be early adopters of new mobile applications and more trustful of billing mechanisms, so they will pay for applications that can meet their needs. Average smartphone users will become less tech-savvy as smartphones come down in price to have a mass market appeal and these users will be more reluctant to pay for applications.
“Growth in smartphone sales will not necessarily mean that consumers will spend more money, but it will widen the addressable market for an offering that will be advertising-funded,” Ms Baghdassarian added. “The value chain of the application stores will evolve as rules are set and broken in an attempt to find the most profitable business model for all parties involved.”
“Application stores will be a core focus throughout 2010 for the mobile industry and applications themselves will help determine the winner among mobile devices platforms,” said Carolina Milanesi, research director at Gartner. “Consumers will have a wide choice of stores and will seek the ones that make it easy for them to discover applications they are interested in and make it easy to pay for them when they have to. Developers will have to consider carefully not only which platform to support but also which store to promote their applications in.”
Additional information is available in the Gartner report “Dataquest Insight: Application Stores; The Revenue Opportunity Beyond the Hype”. The report is available on Gartner’s website at http://www.gartner.com/resId=1257213.
via Gartner Says Consumers Will Spend $6.2 Billion in Mobile Application Stores in 2010.
Gartner Highlights Key Predictions for IT Organizations and Users in 2010 and Beyond January 18, 2010
Posted by hruf in Enterprise 2.0, Internet & Communities, Mobile & Gadgets.Tags: Internet, Market, Market Trends, Mobile
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Gartner, Inc. has highlighted the key predictions that herald long-term changes in approach for IT organizations and the people they serve for 2010 and beyond. Gartner’s top predictions for 2010 showcase the trends and events that will change the nature of business today and beyond.[…]
Gartner’s top predictions are intended to compel readers to action and to position themselves to take advantage of coming changes, not to be damaged by them. Gartner’s top predictions for 2010 and beyond include:
By 2012, 20 percent of businesses will own no IT assets. Several interrelated trends are driving the movement toward decreased IT hardware assets, such as virtualization, cloud-enabled services, and employees running personal desktops and notebook systems on corporate networks.
The need for computing hardware, either in a data center or on an employee’s desk, will not go away. However, if the ownership of hardware shifts to third parties, then there will be major shifts throughout every facet of the IT hardware industry. For example, enterprise IT budgets will either be shrunk or reallocated to more-strategic projects; enterprise IT staff will either be reduced or reskilled to meet new requirements, and/or hardware distribution will have to change radically to meet the requirements of the new IT hardware buying points.
By 2012, India-centric IT services companies will represent 20 percent of the leading cloud aggregators in the market (through cloud service offerings). Gartner is seeing India-centric IT services companies leveraging established market positions and levels of trust to explore nonlinear revenue growth models (which are not directly correlated to labor-based growth) and working on interesting research and development (R&D) efforts, especially in the area of cloud computing. The collective work from India-centric vendors represents an important segment of the market’s cloud aggregators, which will offer cloud-enabled outsourcing options (also known as cloud services).
By 2012, Facebook will become the hub for social network integration and Web socialization. Through Facebook Connect and other similar mechanisms, Facebook will support and take a leading role in developing the distributed, interoperable social Web. As Facebook continues to grow and outnumber other social networks, this interoperability will become critical to the success and survival of other social networks, communication channels and media sites.
Other social networks (including Twitter) will continue to develop, seeking further adoption and specializations with communication or content areas, but Facebook will represent a common denominator for all of them.
By 2014, most IT business cases will include carbon remediation costs. Today, server vitalization and desktop power management demonstrate substantial savings in energy costs, and those savings can help justify projects. Incorporating carbon costs into business cases provides a further measure of savings, and prepares the organization for increased scrutiny of its carbon impact.
Economic and political pressure to demonstrate responsibility for carbon dioxide emissions will force more businesses to quantify carbon costs in business cases. Vendors will have to provide carbon life cycle statistics for their products or face market share erosion. Incorporating carbon costs in business cases will only slightly accelerate replacement cycles. A reasonable estimate for the cost of carbon in typical IT operations is an incremental one or two percentage points of overall costs. Therefore, carbon accounting will more likely shift market share than market size.
In 2012, 60 percent of a new PC’s total life greenhouse gas emissions will have occurred before the user first turns the machine on. Progress toward reducing the power needed to build a PC has been slow. Over the course of its entire lifetime, a typical PC consumes 10 times its own weight in fossil fuels, but around 80 percent of a PC’s total energy usage still happens during production and transportation.
Greater awareness among buyers and those that influence buying, greater pressure from eco-labels, increasing cost pressures and social pressure have awoken the IT industry to the problem of greenhouse gas emissions. Requests for proposal (RFPs) now frequently look for environment-related criteria of both product and vendor. Environmental awareness and legislative tightening will increase recognition of production as well as usage-related carbon dioxide emissions. Technology providers should expect that they will be required to provide carbon dioxide emission data to a growing number of customers.
Internet marketing will be regulated by 2015, controlling more than $250 billion in Internet marketing spending worldwide. Despite international efforts to eliminate “spam,” marketing “clutter” is abundant in every marketing channel. Pressure for greater accountability means the backlash from annoyed consumers will eventually drive legislation to regulate Internet marketing. Companies that focus primarily on the Internet for marketing purposes could find themselves unable to market effectively to customers, putting themselves at a competitive disadvantage when new regulations take effect. Although experiencing high growth, vendors who focus solely on, and sell predominately to, Internet marketing solutions could find themselves faced with a declining market, as companies shift marketing funds to other channels to compensate.
By 2014, over 3 billion of the world’s adult population will be able to transact electronically via mobile or Internet technology. Emerging economies will see rapidly rising mobile and Internet adoption through 2014. At the same time, advances in mobile payment, commerce and banking are making it easier to electronically transact via mobile or PC Internet. Combining these two trends creates a situation in which a significant majority of the world’s adult population will be able to electronically transact by 2014.
Gartner research predicts that by 2014, there will be a 90% mobile penetration rate and 6.5 billion mobile connections. Penetration will not be uniform, as continents like Asia (excluding Japan) will see a 68% penetration and Africa will see a 56% mobile penetration. Although not every individual with a mobile phone or Internet access will transact electronically, each will have the ability to do so. Cash transactions will remain dominant in emerging markets by 2014, but the foundation for electronic transactions will be well under way for much of the adult world.
By 2015, context will be as influential to mobile consumer services and relationships as search engines are to the Web. Whereas search provides the “key” to organizing information and services for the Web, context will provide the “key” to delivering hyperpersonalized experiences across smartphones and any session or experience an end user has with information technology. Search centered on creating content that drew attention and could be analyzed. Context will center on observing patterns, particularly location, presence and social interactions. Furthermore, whereas search was based on a “pull” of information from the Web, context-enriched services will, in many cases, prepopulate or push information to users.
The most powerful position in the context business model will be a context provider. Web, device, social platforms, telecom service providers, enterprise software vendors and communication infrastructure vendors will compete to become significant context providers during the next three years. Any Web vendor that does not become a context provider risks handing over effective customer ownership to a context provider, which would impact the vendor’s mobile and classic Web businesses.
By 2013, mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common Web access device worldwide. According to Gartner’s PC installed base forecast, the total number of PCs in use will reach 1.78 billion units in 2013. By 2013, the combined installed base of smartphones and browser-equipped enhanced phones will exceed 1.82 billion units and will be greater than the installed base for PCs thereafter.
Mobile Web users are typically prepared to make fewer clicks on a website than users accessing sites from a PC. Although a growing number of websites and Web-based applications offer support for small-form-factor mobile devices, many still do not. Websites not optimized for the smaller-screen formats will become a market barrier for their owners — much content and many sites will need to be reformatted/rebuilt.
Additional information is in the Gartner report “Gartner’s Top Predictions for IT Organizations and Users, 2010 and Beyond: A New Balance.” The report examines the impact these long-term changes will have in combination with the ongoing trend toward the democratization of IT capabilities. The report is available on Gartner’s website at http://www.gartner.com/resId=1268513.
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via Gartner Highlights Key Predictions for IT Organizations and Users in 2010 and Beyond.
Mobile Megatrends 2010 January 15, 2010
Posted by hruf in Mobile & Gadgets.Tags: Market Trends, Mobile, mobile internet
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[In our third annual Mobile Megatrends 2010 research we look at the future of web platforms, app stores, revenue models, open source, mobile recommendations, OEM monetisation, and operator strategies]
After many months in the making, we ‘ve released our annual Mobile Megatrends 2010. It’s our third and biggest Megatrends research we ‘ve published to date featuring 64 juicy slides with detailed analysis on the future of mobile.
After many months in the making, we ‘ve released our annual Mobile Megatrends 2010. It’s our third and biggest Megatrends research we ‘ve published to date featuring 64 juicy slides with detailed analysis on the future of mobile.
So what are the overarching trends of mobile in 2010? We ‘ve covered 8 core themes:
1. Vertical integration: one way street or quick detour? We present a novel way of studying the evolution of the mobile industry, from 1985 to 2010+ and the trend-setting milestones for handset OEMs and network operators. We use this tool to demonstrate how handset OEMs have evolved twice as fast as network operators and how vertical integration (as practiced by Apple, RIM, Nokia et al) is a 20-year cyclic trend, not a panacea.
2. The evolution of revenue models. We re-introduce Value Quadrants, our novel tool for mapping the evolution of revenue models, and present how revenue flows are changing in 2010 and beyond. Here we discuss upstream monetisation, productisation of systemware and completely new revenue models that are emerging such as per inventory, per reach and per activation.
3. App Stores: the long-tail future. We compare the top-5 App Stores across their key figures (installed base, downloads, applications, revenues and revenue share). More importantly, we go behind the scenes to uncover the five key ingredients of the app store recipe, and why a succesful recipe must fuse ingredients from very opposite ends of the value chain. We also review the evolution of app stores throughout 2000-2012 and place predictions on five key tenets that will determine the future of app stores; abundance, diversity, co-existence, low barriers and the dominance of retailing.
4. Web platforms: why the future of software development is still elusive. In this trend we review the evolution of the mobile web, from WAP to widgets and WebKit. We compare and contrast 3rd parties (developers) vs 2nd parties (handset OEMs and their partners) to demonstrate how the need and 2nd and 3rd parties are diametrically opposite. We then show how web platforms address very few OEM needs and therefore why the web is simply a means to an end to attracting developers, but little else.
5. In Open is the New Closed: how companies are using open source to further own agendas we update our seminal research on licenses vs governance models. We then poke under Symbian Foundation, Google Android and LiMo Foundation to show how each of these initiatives is using open source as part of a capitalist governance, rather than a socialist one that the open source moniker implies.
6. Recommendations everywhere: raising the bar for mobile services offers a state-of-the-market update on one of the most underhyped sectors in mobile: recommendation (a.k.a personalisation) solutions. The analysis goes into the many types of recommendation solutions, key suppliers for each and reviews 8 key vendors in recommendation technology: Xiam, Changing Worlds, Ericsson, Loomia, Pontis, July Systems, Olista and Choice Stream. The trend analysis concludes with an outlook on recommendation systems, including the next challenges in academic research and commercial evolution, and why we expect M&As to ensue in this sector.
7. In OEM Monetisation: products, services or distribution we present a ‘reverse engineering’ of the mobile value stack to uncover where are the remaining unique assets handset OEMs can tap into. We then present two promising strategies for OEM monetisation; inventory distribution and integrated device+UI design.
8. In the final trend Operator futures: bit-pipes or supermarkets? we discuss 7 strategies with which operators can change course away from a bit-pipe future. Based on a top-down analysis of the remaining ‘value pockets’ in the mobile value stack we present our theses on unique brand deliverables, matchmaking between consumers+brands, customer and service analytics, reach-beyond-VISA, in-the-hands experience, idle-screen monetisation and other smart-pipe strategies.
We ‘ve already presented earlier versions of our Mobile Megatrends as part of closed customer events and conferences, including as part of Rutberg’s invitation-only Wireless Influencers event in San Diego. The next presentation of the Mobile Megatrends 2010 is taking place in early February in Lund, Sweden courtesy of Cybercom. To request a on-site presentation of Mobile Megatrends please contact us.
Comments welcome as always,
– Andreas
follow me twitter: @andreascon
Liquid Media 