Another trend is that consumers are spending more time on mobile devices. This, among other things, has hit Google, which is selling more advertisements on smaller screens, where rates are lower, whereas growth in more lucrative ones on bigger devices has slowed. For other firms this shift has been good news: Yahoo, a struggling online conglomerate, joined Apple in exceeding analysts’ expectations in large part because of a notable increase in mobile-advertising sales, which accounted for 17% of its revenue of $1.1 billion in the past quarter.
Read more in The Economist
Showing posts with label mobile devices. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mobile devices. Show all posts
Saturday, November 8
Saturday, October 25
Replacing wallets with mobile phones
Such technology has been around for years. It has failed to take off, however, in large part because so many firms have fingers in the mobile-payment pie, and often block others from grabbing a big piece of it.
Mobile phones have already enabled poor countries to leapfrog a few stages of development in telecoms and, in some cases, finance. Cheap mobile payments will allow them to jump further.
Read the full story at the Economist
Mobile phones have already enabled poor countries to leapfrog a few stages of development in telecoms and, in some cases, finance. Cheap mobile payments will allow them to jump further.
Read the full story at the Economist
Saturday, September 20
65% of smartphone users check their device upon waking
A third of all smartphone users in the U.K.—or 11 million adults—check their phone within five minutes of waking, according a report published Thursday from consulting group Deloitte. 67% of 18 to 24-year-olds do so within 15 minutes. And there is a set routine. Most smartphone owners first check their text messages (33%), followed by e-mail (25%), and then social networks (14%), says the report, based on data from a survey of 4,000 people.
The pattern of phone “addiction” continues during the day. One in six adults looks at their phones more than 50 times a day. 18 to 24-year-olds check their device on average 53 times a day, and for 13% the figure is more than 100 times.
Read more at the Wall Street Journal
The pattern of phone “addiction” continues during the day. One in six adults looks at their phones more than 50 times a day. 18 to 24-year-olds check their device on average 53 times a day, and for 13% the figure is more than 100 times.
Read more at the Wall Street Journal
Monday, July 21
In China, more people now access the internet from a mobile device than a PC
the latest report published by state-affiliated research organization China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) shows that the percentage of Chinese users accessing the Internet via mobile grew to 83.4 percent as of June 2014, for the first time surpassing the percentage of users who access the internet via PCs (80.9 percent). New numbers released today also show that the overall number of new internet users is still climbing, even if the rate of growth may not be as fast as before.
Read more at The Next Week
Read more at The Next Week
Saturday, July 19
How your iPhone is saving literature
Smartphones, even more than tablets and e-readers, have fostered a new type of reading, sometimes called “interstitial” reading. It’s the chapters, pages and paragraphs snatched up during those scraps of time that might once have been squandered on People magazine or just staring off into space. Interstitial reading happens while people are sitting in waiting rooms and the backs of taxis or standing at bus stops and in line for movie tickets or at the DMV.
Read more at Salon
Read more at Salon
Wednesday, May 28
new ways to pay your bills
New services to make spending money easier are springing up all the time. They are not confined to the rich world: in Kenya roughly 60% of adults—about the same number as have a bank account—use a mobile-phone payment service called M-PESA (see chart 4) And increasingly they cater to business customers too: services that integrate electronic invoicing and payments into a firm’s procurement and accounting system, or that help manage and raise working capital, are becoming commonplace.
Not surprisingly, the titans of the internet have started to eye up the payments business. Google offers a virtual wallet; Amazon recently set up a service to allow its customers to transfer money; Facebook and Apple have expressed interest in the field. There is much speculation that the latest iPhone’s ability to read fingerprints may be heralding a world-changing payment service. Telecoms companies (such as Safaricom, the firm behind M-PESA) and bricks-and-mortar merchants (Starbucks) are also dabbling in the field.
In China McKinsey expects it to increase by 42% a year between 2012 and 2017. Brazil is already the world’s second-biggest market for card transactions after the United States, according to Capgemini, another consultancy.
Consultants like to speak of “purchasing journeys” in which settling the bill is only the final step. Other waystations include advertising, internet search, participation in loyalty schemes and so on. Innovators, the thinking goes, could afford to undercut market prices for payments in anticipation of greater rewards at some other stage in the journey.
Read more at the Economist
Not surprisingly, the titans of the internet have started to eye up the payments business. Google offers a virtual wallet; Amazon recently set up a service to allow its customers to transfer money; Facebook and Apple have expressed interest in the field. There is much speculation that the latest iPhone’s ability to read fingerprints may be heralding a world-changing payment service. Telecoms companies (such as Safaricom, the firm behind M-PESA) and bricks-and-mortar merchants (Starbucks) are also dabbling in the field.
In China McKinsey expects it to increase by 42% a year between 2012 and 2017. Brazil is already the world’s second-biggest market for card transactions after the United States, according to Capgemini, another consultancy.
Consultants like to speak of “purchasing journeys” in which settling the bill is only the final step. Other waystations include advertising, internet search, participation in loyalty schemes and so on. Innovators, the thinking goes, could afford to undercut market prices for payments in anticipation of greater rewards at some other stage in the journey.
Read more at the Economist
Thursday, April 17
Are Touchscreens Melting Your Kid’s Brain?
The American Academy of Pediatrics is unequivocal: If your kid is under 2, no screens. For older kids, two hours a day, max. But the AAP doesn’t differentiate between activities; education apps, base-jumping videos, first-person shooters, ebooks, Sesame Street, and The Shining are all thrown into the same bucket. It’s all just screen time.
Trouble is, they’re not all the same.
Read the article at Wired
Trouble is, they’re not all the same.
Read the article at Wired
Tuesday, April 1
Can streaming slow the music industry’s long decline?
A report on March 18th by IFPI, a record-industry group (finds) music labels’ worldwide revenues fell by 4% last year to $15 billion, a reversal of 2012’s slight rise. But much of the fall was due to Japanese consumers finally giving up on CDs, as much as the rest of the world had already done. A closer look shows that streaming services are starting to bring the business back into profit in countries that have suffered steady declines, such as Italy.
Streaming now has around 28m paying subscribers, and several times as many who use free versions. Last year subscription-based versions like Spotify had combined revenues of more than $1 billion, up more than 50% from 2012. That figure does not include online-radio firms, which last year had revenues of $590m in America alone, a rise of 28% from the year before. In America, the largest music market, 21% of the industry’s 2013 revenues came from streaming, whose growth more than offset declines in CD sales.
Even so, only 4-5% of music consumers in America and Britain have so far signed up for subscription streaming, says Mark Mulligan of MIDiA Consulting.
Read more at the Economist
Streaming now has around 28m paying subscribers, and several times as many who use free versions. Last year subscription-based versions like Spotify had combined revenues of more than $1 billion, up more than 50% from 2012. That figure does not include online-radio firms, which last year had revenues of $590m in America alone, a rise of 28% from the year before. In America, the largest music market, 21% of the industry’s 2013 revenues came from streaming, whose growth more than offset declines in CD sales.
Even so, only 4-5% of music consumers in America and Britain have so far signed up for subscription streaming, says Mark Mulligan of MIDiA Consulting.
Read more at the Economist
Saturday, February 8
In 3.5 Years, Most Africans Will Have Smartphones
Worldwide, according to Gartner, smartphone sales exceeded feature phone sales in 2013, for the first time — but Africa remains a different story. Informa UK’s terrific Africa Telecoms Outlook (PDF) projects 334 million African smartphone connections in 2017, maybe 30% of the continent’s population. IDC is more pessimistic yet; it figures smartphones are currently 18% of the African mobile phone market, but they expect their number to “merely” double in volume by 2017. The available data seems to indicate that the penetration rate feature phones shot from 6% to 40% of the African market over a five-year period, and I still see no reason to believe that smartphones will do worse, and many to believe that they will move faster.
Read more at Tech Crunch
Read more at Tech Crunch
Saturday, November 23
Ubiquitous cameras
It is getting ever easier to record anything, or everything, that you see. This opens fascinating possibilities—and alarming ones.
Thanks to digital technology the world is replete with cheap and highly capable cameras. ABI, a research firm, reckons there were a billion built into the mobile phones and tablets shipped in 2012 (many boast more than one). Adding a run-of-the-mill digital camera to a phone, or pretty much anything else, costs about $10. Narrative, a Swedish company that has raised $500,000 through Kickstarter, is marketing a clip-on life-logger the size of a coin.
Read more at The Economist
Thanks to digital technology the world is replete with cheap and highly capable cameras. ABI, a research firm, reckons there were a billion built into the mobile phones and tablets shipped in 2012 (many boast more than one). Adding a run-of-the-mill digital camera to a phone, or pretty much anything else, costs about $10. Narrative, a Swedish company that has raised $500,000 through Kickstarter, is marketing a clip-on life-logger the size of a coin.
Read more at The Economist
Sunday, October 27
Texting in Class
A new study has found that more than 90 percent of students admit to using their devices for non-class activities during class times. Less than 8 percent said that they never do so. Texting in class is a source of constant frustration to professors, but about 30 percent of students reported that their instructors did not have a policy on the subject. (Of course there is a chance some of those students didn't read the syllabus.) Given how attached students are to their devices, it is perhaps not surprising that only 9 percent favor a ban on having them in classrooms. However, 54 percent said that they thought it reasonable to have a policy.
Read more at Inside Higher Ed
Read more at Inside Higher Ed
Saturday, October 26
Media bosses hope mobile devices will help, rather than hurt, television
Around three-quarters of American internet users regularly fiddle with a mobile device while watching the gogglebox. Media executives are abuzz working out how to turn this distraction into profitable transactions. Viewers who are multitasking with other devices tend to tune in for longer, because they are commenting on the shows online or interacting with extra content through the networks’ apps.
Read more at the Economist
Read more at the Economist
Friday, September 13
Internet users whinge about passwords but are none too keen on the alternatives
Some of the new ideas involve biometric data—in theory unique to each user. Apple may have a fingerprint reader in its latest iPhone, which is due to go on sale later this month. On September 3rd Bionym, a Canadian firm, launched Nymi, a bracelet which detects the wearer’s heartbeat. The Advanced Institute of Industrial Technology in Tokyo has developed a chair which detects—with 99% accuracy—the unique shape of a user’s bottom.
One answer is to supplement passwords (and gadgets) with something else.. A British start-up called PixelPin asks users to select some objects, in a preset order, from an image they have uploaded. Barclays, a bank, sets multiple-choice questions which require detailed knowledge of the customers’ past life and times.
Read more at the Economist
One answer is to supplement passwords (and gadgets) with something else.. A British start-up called PixelPin asks users to select some objects, in a preset order, from an image they have uploaded. Barclays, a bank, sets multiple-choice questions which require detailed knowledge of the customers’ past life and times.
Read more at the Economist
Monday, August 12
More Print News Subscribers Plan To Cancel Subs, Uptick In Mobile Consumption
The Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute’s “2013 Q1 Research Report,” revealed that 12.7% of print subscribers plan to cancel their subscriptions in 2013.
On the positive side, the decline in print subscriptions is clearly correlated with increasing consumption of news via digital channels, with a special emphasis on mobile.
Read more at Media Post
On the positive side, the decline in print subscriptions is clearly correlated with increasing consumption of news via digital channels, with a special emphasis on mobile.
Read more at Media Post
Monday, July 22
Streaming Audio, Video Surges In 2013
Online audio and video consumption surged in the first half of 2013, according to the latest figures from Nielsen SoundScan and Nielsen BDS, which tallied 50.9 billion audio and video streams in the first six months of the year, up 24% from 41 billion streams in the same period of 2012.
Read more at Media Post
Read more at Media Post
Saturday, February 16
Chip May Allow Smartphones to See Through Objects
Ali Hajimiri, a professor of electrical engineering at the California Institute of Technology, has created a chip capable of producing terahertz waves—radiation that can penetrate materials such as plastic and wood without the side effects associated with X-rays. When connected with a computer or mobile device, the 0.1 inch-wide silicon chip could help doctors locate skin cancer noninvasively and speed up passenger scans at airport security lines.
So-called T-rays have been used mostly in experiments in medical and dental imaging. Typically, the rays are created with bulky, expensive machines, which “see” using a single large beam that can image only a narrow area. Hajimiri, working with postdoctoral researcher Kaushik Sengupta, got thousands of tiny transistors to operate in concert, producing terahertz waves from a smaller package.
Installed in a smartphone, the chip could be used to quickly scan packages at a post office for security threats or to find art hidden behind the paint on the walls of historic buildings. Unlike X-rays, which have such high energy they can change the chemistry of objects they enter, T-rays are relatively harmless, Hajimiri says. The chip’s functionality comes with a price, however. If people can see through walls, McGregor warns, “there’s going to be a whole bunch of red flags thrown up by people around privacy issues.” If the device goes into mass production, he adds, it could cost as little as a dollar.
Read more here
So-called T-rays have been used mostly in experiments in medical and dental imaging. Typically, the rays are created with bulky, expensive machines, which “see” using a single large beam that can image only a narrow area. Hajimiri, working with postdoctoral researcher Kaushik Sengupta, got thousands of tiny transistors to operate in concert, producing terahertz waves from a smaller package.
Installed in a smartphone, the chip could be used to quickly scan packages at a post office for security threats or to find art hidden behind the paint on the walls of historic buildings. Unlike X-rays, which have such high energy they can change the chemistry of objects they enter, T-rays are relatively harmless, Hajimiri says. The chip’s functionality comes with a price, however. If people can see through walls, McGregor warns, “there’s going to be a whole bunch of red flags thrown up by people around privacy issues.” If the device goes into mass production, he adds, it could cost as little as a dollar.
Read more here
Bringing Apps to PCs and MACs
BlueStacks App Player software can run Android apps designed for a mobile phone on most computers, allowing players to experience the game on a larger display. Once installed on a PC or Mac, the software lets users operate games and other apps with their mouse, touch pad or microphone.
With Apple and Google apps both running on Windows, the best platform will win, he says. Apple, Google and Microsoft declined to comment. Many more apps are available for mobile devices than for desktops and laptops. Apple's App Store contains more than 800,000 mobile apps, and Google Play offers more than 700,000.
As of last month, the Apple Mac App Store had about 14,000 apps, while Microsoft had about 43,000 for Windows PCs, according to app tracker Distimo. "For PC makers, increasingly, the latest, greatest and most desirable experiences aren't available on their platforms," says John Jackson, an analyst at IDC.
In the future, the software might even let an Android tablet or phone run an iPad app, he says. "Any computer - a tablet, a phablet (a smartphone with a screen of 5 inches or more), a desktop - could use BlueStacks," says Manju Hegde, a corporate vice president at AMD.
Read more here.
With Apple and Google apps both running on Windows, the best platform will win, he says. Apple, Google and Microsoft declined to comment. Many more apps are available for mobile devices than for desktops and laptops. Apple's App Store contains more than 800,000 mobile apps, and Google Play offers more than 700,000.
As of last month, the Apple Mac App Store had about 14,000 apps, while Microsoft had about 43,000 for Windows PCs, according to app tracker Distimo. "For PC makers, increasingly, the latest, greatest and most desirable experiences aren't available on their platforms," says John Jackson, an analyst at IDC.
In the future, the software might even let an Android tablet or phone run an iPad app, he says. "Any computer - a tablet, a phablet (a smartphone with a screen of 5 inches or more), a desktop - could use BlueStacks," says Manju Hegde, a corporate vice president at AMD.
Read more here.
Sunday, February 3
Growing Mounds of Electronic Scrap
Poor countries have long been a popular destination for the rich world’s toxic trash. Waste consisting of dead electronic goods, or e-waste, is growing at three times the rate of other kinds of rubbish, fuelled by gadgets’ diminishing lifespan and the appetite for consumer electronics among the developing world’s burgeoning middle classes. In 1998 America discarded 20m computers; by 2009 that number had climbed to 47.4m. China alone retired 160m appliances in 2011, 40% of America’s haul. A 2011 report by Pike Research, a consultancy, estimates that the volume and weight of global e-scrap will more than double in the next 15 years. In the Guiyu area of southern China 100,000 people work in e-waste recycling.
Poorer countries already produce a quarter of the world’s e-waste pile; they could overtake rich ones as early as 2018. Choking off the trade will not stop the acid cauldrons bubbling.
Read more at The Economist
Poorer countries already produce a quarter of the world’s e-waste pile; they could overtake rich ones as early as 2018. Choking off the trade will not stop the acid cauldrons bubbling.
Read more at The Economist
Sunday, January 20
The Future of Video Journalism
The use of an Instagram exposure on the cover of Time tells us volumes about not only where the photography business is going, but where the video business is sure to follow. How long will it be before iPhone videos replace the work of video professionals at TV's highest levels? I guess five years. Maybe fewer.
Read more at the Huffington Post
Read more at the Huffington Post
Thursday, January 3
10 things every journalist should know in 2013
Here are 10 things every journalists should know in 2013.
1. It's all about skills, skills, skills
Aron Pilhofer, editor of interactive news at the New York Times, has one piece of advice for journalists wanting to get ahead: "Skills, skills, skills, skills, skills, skills."
"Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, it is just not enough any more to just be able to turn a phrase, or do the traditional kinds of reporting," he told Journalism.co.uk. "You need to be a little bit of a jack of all trades; you need to be able to shoot and cut video or do audio or code or do data analysis," he said.
"And it's even more important now than it ever has been in this shrinking industry to have those kinds of skills."
Steve Herrmann, editor of BBC News online, agrees. He looks for those with skills in social media, data journalism and with "an ability to appreciate the importance of still pictures, of video, graphics and audio in communicating and telling stories".
"It's not necessarily being expert in all of those things," Herrmann said, "but being aware of their importance and appreciating when they can be really effective and have impact."
9. Online journalism is mobile first
Mobile is an important traffic driver for news sites, we are regularly reminded. At particular times of the day the Guardian's mobile traffic exceeds desktop traffic; on an average weekday 24 per cent of readers of BBC News access via mobile, with that rising to a record of 30 per cent on the day of the US election last November, the BBC Editors' blog reported. And more than a third of New York Times traffic now comes from phones and tablets, according to this post by Martin Belam.
But while some sites have a mobile first strategy when thinking about how to present data visualisations, features and multimedia, many journalists have desktop in mind when creating the story.
In a presentation at December's news:rewired digital journalism conference, Belam said: "Think reader before editor. Think software before content. Think simplicity before features. Think mobile before desktop."
Read more here
1. It's all about skills, skills, skills
Aron Pilhofer, editor of interactive news at the New York Times, has one piece of advice for journalists wanting to get ahead: "Skills, skills, skills, skills, skills, skills."
"Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, it is just not enough any more to just be able to turn a phrase, or do the traditional kinds of reporting," he told Journalism.co.uk. "You need to be a little bit of a jack of all trades; you need to be able to shoot and cut video or do audio or code or do data analysis," he said.
"And it's even more important now than it ever has been in this shrinking industry to have those kinds of skills."
Steve Herrmann, editor of BBC News online, agrees. He looks for those with skills in social media, data journalism and with "an ability to appreciate the importance of still pictures, of video, graphics and audio in communicating and telling stories".
"It's not necessarily being expert in all of those things," Herrmann said, "but being aware of their importance and appreciating when they can be really effective and have impact."
9. Online journalism is mobile first
Mobile is an important traffic driver for news sites, we are regularly reminded. At particular times of the day the Guardian's mobile traffic exceeds desktop traffic; on an average weekday 24 per cent of readers of BBC News access via mobile, with that rising to a record of 30 per cent on the day of the US election last November, the BBC Editors' blog reported. And more than a third of New York Times traffic now comes from phones and tablets, according to this post by Martin Belam.
But while some sites have a mobile first strategy when thinking about how to present data visualisations, features and multimedia, many journalists have desktop in mind when creating the story.
In a presentation at December's news:rewired digital journalism conference, Belam said: "Think reader before editor. Think software before content. Think simplicity before features. Think mobile before desktop."
Read more here
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