Smart Phone Adoption Surges Despite Difficulty Accessing Internet, Rich Media

Smart Phone Adoption Surges Despite Difficulty Accessing Internet, Rich Media

More than 54% of US mobile-phone users say their mobile phone usage has increased by more than 25% over the last two years, and one in five respondents say it has increased by more than 50%,  according to  a report on mobile phone usage by Azuki Systems, Inc.

A significant catalyst behind this growth is the adoption of smart phones, with 62% of respondents indicating they either own or will own such a device in the next 12 months, the survey said.

Though  52% of respondents access the mobile web from their phones and 25% access video, an overwhelming majority (nearly 80%) of those surveyed say they wish it were easier to access information from the internet on their mobile phones, and an equal percentage wish it were easier to access rich media such as video clips and music.

The majority of respondents pointed to a number of current obstacles to enjoying rich media on mobile. Some 69% felt that the long time to download and/or play media ranked among their top three barriers, and 66% felt that difficulties finding and navigating to relevant content was a top-three inhibitor…

Ed: Huge potential for dumb-phone (90%) users to upgrade to smart-phones. Easy, fast, big screen access are the keys. iPhone leads the emerging segment. 

Nokia Reveals iPhone Competitor And Goes to Battle With iTunes

This Winter’s Smartphone Wars Are Set: Who’s Going To Win? (AAPL, RIMM)

Dan Frommer | October 3, 2008 6:36 AM

Now that Nokia’s taken the lid off its touchscreen “5800 XpressMusic” smartphone, the rosters are pretty much set for this Christmas shopping season’s smartphone wars. Who’s going to come out on top?

Unlike last year, when Apple’s iPhone caught the mobile industry with their pants down, pretty much every major gadget maker has a touchscreen smartphone to sell this year. But Apple didn’t spend the year standing still: Its phone now costs half what it did a year ago, will be available in ten times more countries than it was last year, and comes with access to the best widget marketplace in the business. For those reasons, we think Apple will easily clobber the competition this holiday season, selling at least the 5 million iPhones this quarter that Wall Street has been projecting…

Nokia Reveals iPhone Competitor And Goes to Battle With iTunes (UPDATED)

At an analyst and media event in London today, Nokia unveiled their company’s first touch-screen phone, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, otherwise known as the Nokia “Tube,” a device designed to compete directly with Apple’s iPhone.

Along with the phone, Nokia also detailed plans for their new “Comes With Music” service, a 12-month subscription service which offers unlimited downloads. There’s no charge to download the individual tracks because the cost for the music is bundled into the cost of the phone. [Note: this post has been updated throughout the day as news has come in]

Ed: Battle is PC versus Smartphone. 2009 may finally be the year when smartphones register a significant share of page views.

State of the Mobile Web: Long Tail Sites Increase Their Presence

Ed: Impressive growth for Opera, but not significant when compared to the global view. 

• Mobile phones swamp the number of PC users; yet, the 4 billion views is 0.4% of the total views, possibly less.
• 242 pages per month compares to over 1,000 average per month per user, possibly 2,500 in the USA. 
• In international counties, the mobile phone may be the only Internet access. Thus, these numbers are even less impressive. Still, mobile use is emerging and promising. iPhone and Google Android are likely to make these numbers a substantial portion of the total.

from ReadWriteWeb by Richard MacManus

Browser vendor Opera, which is a stronger player in the mobile browser market than it is on the desktop, has just released more data on of the state of the Mobile Web. The latest report tells us that usage of the mobile Web continues to grow in terms of unique users and page views. What’s more, ‘long tail’ sites are showing up well in the data too, which is a sure sign the Mobile Web is gaining traction in key growth markets like the U.S. and China.

The company states that in August, their mobile browser Opera Mini (our coverage) was used by approximately 17.3 million users, who viewed more than 4.1 billion pages – about 242 pages per user, per month.

Part 1: Growth

Number of Users

In August, Opera Mini was used by approximately 17.3 million users, a 9.1% month-on-month increase from July and more than 357% compared to August 2007.

Pages transcoded by Opera Mini per month

Pages Transcoded

Opera Mini users viewed more than 4.1 billion pages in August. Each person using Opera Mini viewed approximately 242 pages on average. For the third month in a row, the number of pages viewed per user has gone up. Since July, page views have gone up 11.7%. Since August 2007, this number is up 337%.

Total data consumed per month (in MB)

Data Consumed

In August, 17.3 million Opera Mini users generated more than 60.3 million MB of data for operators worldwide. Since July, the data consumed went up by 12.1%. Data in Opera Mini is compressed 90% on average. If this data were uncompressed, Opera Mini users would have viewed over 603 million MB of data in August.

---

Data shows US mobile data usage ready to pass the UK

from VentureBeat by Chris Morrison

Before long, the United States may become the world’s top user of the web on mobile devices, according to analytics and billing firm Bango. The company is releasing figures this morning showing the US at almost 19 percent of the world total, just short of the top country, the United Kingdom, which has about 19.4 percent…

Bango’s numbers also corroborate data released earlier this year, including Google’s report that mobile web usage of its sites is increasing…

It seems reasonable to assume, however, that devices will continue to innovate (or copycat, as with the Instinct, Samsung’s version of the iPhone), and prices for both devices and data will edge down as carriers compete. Applications and services also tie in; for more on how they’re helping expand mobile web usage, check out our article on five trends driving the mobile web.

In case it’s of interest, here are the runners-up that Bango listed: India had almost 11 percent of total usage, South Africa was approaching 9 percent, and Indonesia had 4 percent. 

JumpTap Raises $26 Million Series D For Mobile Web Ads, Portals

from Silicon Alley Insider by Dan Frommer

JumpTap, the Cambridge, Mass. mobile Web services company, has raised a $26 million D round. JumpTap makes mobile Web portals for carriers like AT&T (T) and U.S. Cellular (USM) and sells mobile ads for carriers and publishers, including NBC Universal (GE)…

Andreessen Invests In Mobile Live Streamer Qik

from Silicon Alley Insider by Michael Learmonth

Qik, a service that allows users to broadcast live video from mobile phones, has taken a “significant” investment from Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, NewTeeVee reports. Andreessen, co-founder of Ning, worked with Horowitz at Netscape and Loudcloud. The two are joining Qik’s board. Qik has raised $4 million in two funding rounds from investors including Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff of Salesforce, TeleSoft Partners founder Arjun Gupta and Jingle Networks CEO George Garrick.

A perfect application for the service happens to be under way right now, and the company says there are 15 “quikkers” shooting live video from the floor of the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

Hi5 introduces its mobile app in 26 languages, to bolster international growth

from VentureBeat by Eric Eldon

Hi5, one of the larger social networks in the world after Facebook and MySpace, is launching a mobile version of its site in 26 languages. Point your mobile browser to m.hi5.com to check it out, or take a look at the screenshot…

Wikipedia Comes to the iPhone with Wikipanion

from ReadWriteWeb by Corvida

A new school year is about to start and students nationwide will be clamoring for ways to keep up with their school work. With many schools starting to offer free iPod Touches, iPhones, and laptops, the iTunes App Store will be one of the first places to go for back-to-school apps.

The new school year also means that research via Wikipedia is going to be on the rise. Fortunately for those with iPhones and iPod Touches, they can now access Wikipedia anywhere while on the go with Wikipanion from the iTunes App Store…

Palm, Once a Leader, Seeks Path in Smartphone Jungle

By LAURA M. HOLSON

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — If anyone knows how best to survive a corporate near-death experience, it is Jon Rubinstein.

Enlarge This Image

Peter DaSilva for The New York Times

Ed Colligan, left, Palm’s chief executive, and Jon Rubinstein, the executive chairman, who was hired to revive the company.

Multimedia

Graphic

Can Palm Be Resuscitated?

In 1997 the former Hewlett-Packardengineer was asked by Apple’s founder,Steven P. Jobs, to lead the hardware engineering division at the company, which was then struggling. Apple was wallowing in financial losses and the Mac’s appeal was waning. Mr. Rubinstein agreed, and over the next nine years he and his team of engineers breathed new life into the company by helping develop the iMac and the iPod.

Those experiences should serve him well as he seeks to resuscitate Palm, whose roots in Silicon Valley go back to the PalmPilot, the revolutionary handheld computer, and the Treo, which turned heads as one of the first smartphones…

Wall Street Quote Of The Day, Palm (PALM) Edition

The New York Times checks in with Palm, which is trying to claw its way back to relevancy. Reporter Laura Holson talks to Palm execs who make their case. And for an opinion on the comany’s battered stock, she talks to a Wall Street expert:

‘It’s a binary outcome; it can go one way or another,’ said Jonathan Goldberg, a senior analyst at Deutsche Bank Securities in San Francisco. ‘They already have an aging product. If these new devices are great, the stock price will go up. If they are late, it will go lower.’

Palm Releases Treo Pro

from TechCrunch by John Biggs

Palm as just released their much anticipated – and leaked – Treo Pro, a Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional device with a touchscreen and UMTS/HSDPA GSM networking. The phone also includes G.P.S. and improved WiFi handling for better and easier WiFi hand-off.

The new Treo is thinner than devices like the 800w and is targeted at the mobile professional market and is not an “iPhone-killer.” Instead it is part of a conscious strategy by Palm to release a series of “great” products in order to bring themselves back out of the doldrums.

I love Palm OS – WinMo not so much – and each iteration of the Treo seems to be a step in the right direction. Can these WinMo phones save the company? I’m not quite sure. HTC, Samsung, and even LG are all releasing low-end, powerful smartphones for the casual to high-use business user. The Palm Centro has the casual set sewn up right now but not for long – contracts run out and the iPhone is quite tempting to the folks who once loved the Motorola RAZR. Motorola and Palm both have a big problem on their hands and we can only watch and wait to see how this pans out.

WSJ Creates BlackBerry App, Opens Some Previously Paid Content.

For those of you who read WSJ for the articles, the new BlackBerry-compatible WSJ.com Mobile Reader will open up the nasty walled garden that is WSJ.com. The application will be free and most of the content will be open, although there are plans to lock it down in the near future. The application will draw in stories fromWSJ.com, AllThingsD.com, and MarketWatch.com.

You can track specific companies and get 30-minute old stock quotes on the fly. Why no iPhone implementation? Until HSBC pulls the trigger on Apple, the iPhone isn’t quite WSJ’s audience.

More Changes At Motorola: Shaddock Out, Cipolla In (MOT)

More musical chairs at Motorola’s (MOT) beleaguered, to-be-spun-off cellphone division: Rob Shaddock (right), the SVP responsible for consumer mobile products, has resigned.

His replacement: John Cipolla, a 30-year Motorola vet, who will lead consumer products and report directly to new mobile devices CEO Sanjay Jha.

Cipolla was promoted to SVP for mid- to high-end cellphones in April in the same mini-reorg that named Shaddock head of consumer products. Shaddock was previously head of mass-market cellphones, and prior to that, was CTO of the mobile devices division.