Online marketing firm Monetate reports that for the first time tablets are outpacing smartphones in the amount of traffic they drive to e-commerce sites.
“In the first quarter of 2012, tablet traffic to commerce sites hit 6.52 percent, overtaking smartphones (5.35 percent),” reports GigaOM. “In the last year, tablets’ traffic increased 348 percent while smartphones visits grew by 117 percent over the same period. Almost all of the traffic (95 percent) was from the iPad, said Monetate.”
The increasing popularity of tablets is also impacting the PC, which saw its traffic to e-commerce sites drop four percent in one quarter.
“Tablets are at an inflection point, where its coming into its own as a primary Internet portal,” explains Monetate CMO Kurt Heinemann. “It’s only going to grow at this point.”
“Monetate found that tablets converted visits into purchases at a rate of 3.23 percent, not far behind the PC at 3.51 percent and well ahead of smartphones at 1.39 percent,” notes the post. “Tablet users view an average of 11.07 pages per session, compared to 12.05 page views for PC users and 7.18 pages for smartphone users. And tablet owners add items to their cart at a rate of 9.66 percent, compared to 10.2 percent for PC users and 4.25 percent for smartphone users.”
In a related story from TechCrunch, NPD predicts tablet shipments will grow from 121 million today to 416 million by 2017, “when they will overtake notebooks to become the most popular mobile PC device, driven by a drop in costs and a rise in features. Overall mobile PC shipments will reach 809 million units by 2017, from 347 million today.”
This rise in tablets is also expected to lead to a decline in notebooks. “One takeaway from this: although Apple with its iPad line of tablets has dominated the tablet world in market and mindshare up to now, the space is far from penetrated, and that means that companies like Microsoft, Google and others still have a lot to play for,” suggests TechCrunch.
The era of passive television viewing is about to end as mobile computing continues to dismantle the traditional silos of media consumption.
We are no longer reliant on magazines for articles or the radio for music. “Content can be consumed and interacted with across multiple platforms of varying form,” notes ReadWriteWeb.
The greatest change in this regard is set to take place with TV. “The future is not in the hands of network television conglomerates, reality stars or video-streaming services,” suggests the post. “It is in the hands of the developers.”
Although meaningful change has yet to emerge from attempts to create Internet-connected TVs, this is about to transform as companies develop smarter applications to connect TVs, smartphones and tablets. The article cites Apple and Google as potential game-changers.
“When Google announced the Nexus Q last week at its Google I/O conference, it was with a wink toward the developers in the audience,” suggests the post. “Without directly saying so, Google expects developers to hack the device. They might turn the Q into a device that automates home utilities, or creates dynamic media experiences that connect smartphones and tablets to the television.”
Additionally, Brightcove recently released updates to its App Cloud platform that will help developers create dual-screen iOS apps that connect to Apple TV through AirPlay.
This solution “enables media publishers to develop rich content apps for the iPhone and iPad that simultaneously control content, data and information presented on an HDTV while displaying synchronized content on the iPad or iPhone,” according to the company’s announcement.
Mozilla’s open mobile project known as “Boot to Gecko” has been officially named Firefox OS.
According to Engadget, “Firefox OS will be positioned as a low-priced, entry-level alternative to leading mobile operating systems.”
“Industry support is growing behind Mozilla’s plans to launch a new fully open mobile ecosystem based on HTML5,” notes the company press release. “The operating system, which Mozilla today confirmed will use its Firefox brand, will power the launch of smartphones built entirely to open Web standards, where all of the device’s capabilities can be developed as HTML5 applications.”
Firefox OS continues to win over carriers “including Deutsche Telekom, Smart, Sprint, Telecom Italia, Telefónica and Telenor,” reports Engadget. ZTE and TCL Communication Technology have already signed on to make phones based on the HTML5-powered operating system.
“The first Firefox OS powered devices are expected to launch commercially in Brazil in early 2013 through Telefonica’s commercial brand, Vivo,” explains the press release.
“The push toward HTML5 as a broader mobile platform comes at a time when some early advocates seem to be moving away from mobile Web applications out of frustration with their performance,” adds AllThingsD in a related article. “But Mozilla is doubling down on the Web. The named reference to Mozilla’s biggest brand is purposeful. Much as the Firefox browser targeted Internet Explorer, so Firefox OS is a major project meant to disrupt the existing smartphone leaders.”
According to CNET: “Foxconn aims to use its investment in Sharp to land orders for Apple’s upcoming large-screen TV — so the ongoing speculation goes.”
The post cites Ho Chao-yang — former president of LCD maker Chimei Innolux and current chairman of Chi Mei Materials Technology — as its source.
DigiTimes reports in a related article: “It is a win-win strategy for Foxconn and Sharp, and the tie-up is believed to be able to create new markets, Ho stated.”
The Foxconn-Sharp theory was first floated earlier in the year. “We expect Apple to debut the iTV by the end of this year, and it is likely to adopt Sharp’s 10th generation TFT production line to produce TFT LCDs for iTVs,” wrote analysts from Daiwa Capital Markets at the time.
The analysts also noted that Foxconn’s investment in Sharp would allow Apple to utilize vertical integration in Apple iTV manufacturing.
Last month, Foxconn CEO Terry Gou refuted any claims that the company was working on an Apple HDTV. “But, hey, what else is he going to say?” asks CNET. “Apple’s biggest manufacturing partner would be the last company to tell the world it was working on an upcoming Apple product.”
“The wish-list of an Apple HDTV includes features such as a Retina Display, IGZO technology, iCloud integration, SIRI technology, and Facetime, among other goodies,” notes the post.
Enterprise mobility company Good Technology polled 1,000 U.S. workers “to get a better understanding of their mobile work habits,” reports TechCrunch.
The findings show that 80 percent of Americans continue to work after leaving the office, while half of those people feel they have “no choice” but to do so.
“Connectedness means customers demand fast replies. There’s no off switch,” notes the article. “Half of respondents check their email in bed, starting at around 7:09 AM. 68 percent check email before 8 AM. And you wonder why people hate email so much? God forbid we get a cup of coffee in us before dealing with the latest work emergency.”
The average amount of “extra work” taking place outside the office amounts to an average of 7 hours per week, or about a full day. “That’s nearly 30 hours per month or 365 extra hours per year,” according to TechCrunch.
The article suggests the need for implementing a new system of communication, perhaps even an updated email system that allows for status messages, simple yes/no responses for minor or follow-up queries, and an automated routing mechanism for those clocked in as “on duty.”
Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Matthew Sciarrino Jr. yesterday ordered Twitter to turn over the tweets of an Occupy Wall Street protestor for use against him in a criminal trial.
“The Constitution gives you the right to post, but as numerous people have learned, there are still consequences for your public posts,” wrote Judge Sciarrino. “What you give to the public belongs to the public. What you keep to yourself belongs only to you.”
The Manhattan District Attorney’s office has subpoenaed more than three months worth of tweets in its case against protestor Malcom Harris.
“Twitter had moved to quash the request from the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, arguing that like email, Twitter users have a reasonable expectation of privacy under the fourth amendment,” reports the Wall Street Journal. “The judge disagreed, saying ‘if you post a tweet, just like if you scream it out the window, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy.’”
“We are disappointed in the judge’s decision and are considering our options,” Twitter spokeswoman Carolyn Penner explained via email. “Twitter’s Terms of Service have long made it absolutely clear that its users own their content. We continue to have a steadfast commitment to our users and their rights.”
Twitter has released its first Twitter Transparency Report. The report is intended to show government requests received for user information, government requests received to withhold content, and DMCA takedown notices received from copyright holders.
“The report also provides insight into whether or not we take action on these requests,” adds the Twitter blog.
The report indicates that from January 1, 2012 through June 30, 2012, Twitter received 849 user information requests. Of those, 679 came from the United States where 75 percent produced some or all the information.
Twitter also received 3,378 copyright takedown notices affecting 5,874 users. In response, some 5,275 tweets and 599 media elements were removed.
“We’ve received more government requests in the first half of 2012, as outlined in this initial dataset, than in the entirety of 2011,” reports the Twitter blog.
Twitter will be releasing these reports every six months.
According to Todd Juenger, an analyst for Sanford C. Bernstein, “Netflix seems highly dependent on kids TV” content. Because of that, he advises Disney and Viacom to make their content more expensive or limited.
“His advice for entertainment companies is to be cautious about how much kids programming they make available to the online video streaming provider and in which windows,” according to The Hollywood Reporter. “We remain firm in our belief Viacom and Walt Disney should limit their content availability on Netflix,” writes Juenger.
Bernstein hosted focus groups to analyze how mothers are encouraging their kids to intake content. Of these findings, Juenger notes: “Moms are increasingly directing their kids to alternative viewing modes for content control, commercial avoidance and time management. The moms we talked to originally subscribed to Netflix for themselves, but have recognized the dwindling supply of content for adults and are now using the service primarily for their kids.”
“The content selection is perceived to be significantly better for kids than for adults, and the lack of commercials and ability to control the viewing choices are seen as positives,” he adds.
But for Disney, Viacom and others, it’s more financially beneficial to have viewers watch on traditional TV or through Video On Demand services. When these companies renegotiate deals with Netflix, according to Jeunger, they should either limit the availability of kids’ content on the streaming service or increase prices to compensate for falling ratings.
Bob Lambert forwarded this interesting commentary by Tom Foremski of ZDNet regarding how every company today is becoming a media company, based largely on the trend of constantly publishing via a multitude of channels.
“Every company needs to be able to talk and listen, and to master our two-way media technologies and publication platforms,” writes Foremski.
He cites Cisco as a pioneer in this area, a company that was leveraging RSS feeds, blogs, and top journalists as early as 2005.
Foremski notes that early in this process Cisco experienced significant traffic numbers: “It was greater than the combined traffic to several of the top industry trade publications. Wow! I thought: what happens when Cisco starts to cut back on the tens of millions of dollars it spends in advertising with these publications?”
The company just celebrated the one year anniversary of its online publication, “the network,” that employs a team of leading editors and journalists.
What makes its approach unique, perhaps, is that Cisco is more concerned with who is sharing the content, and not necessarily the total numbers. They are targeting the key decision makers who commonly control budgets.
“If you can reach a key decision maker like that, you can probably do the same for their counterparts in other organizations, too,” adds Foremski. “Buying millions of dollars in network equipment and other IT systems, will easily pay for the cost of producing a unit of media content.”
He suggests that quality of content is not an issue, but “the network” needs to improve distribution and promotion. But like other companies, Cisco is still learning how to become a media company.
“There is a significant shift going on this year, much more significant than we saw last year, from Web to mobile,” notes Fred Wilson, a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures. “It is most noticeable in games, social networking, music, and news, but it is happening across the board and it presents both great opportunity and great challenges.”
Companies that were significant Web presences such as Google, Yahoo! and even Facebook are being challenged. Meanwhile, mobile companies like Instagram, Foursquare and Twitter are flourishing.
Unlike the Web which requires feature richness, mobile demands small app specific services. Facebook should break out a number of small mobile apps such as Messenger, Instagram, and Camera.
“In the past fifteen years, we have seen Microsoft go from being an unstoppable force to being a non-factor in many important new markets, we have seen Google go from being an unstoppable force to being a non-factor in many important new markets, and I suspect we are going to see Facebook struggle with the same thing,” writes Wilson. “RIM is dying quickly now. Yahoo! is a question mark.”
He also notes that while mobile is today’s priority, next year it may be something entirely new.
A broad coalition of public interest groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge, Free Press, the Mozilla Foundation, and dozens of others have jointly issued the “Declaration of Internet Freedom.”
“We stand for a free and open Internet,” reads the document. “We support transparent and participatory processes for making Internet policy and the establishment of five basic principles.”
1) “Expression: Don’t censor the Internet.”
2) “Access: Promote universal access to fast and affordable networks.”
3) “Openness: Keep the Internet an open network where everyone is free to connect, communicate, write, read, watch, speak, listen, learn, create, and innovate.”
4) “Innovation: Protect the freedom to innovate and create without permission. Don’t block new technologies, and don’t punish innovators for their users’ actions.”
5) “Privacy: Protect privacy and defend everyone’s ability to control how their data and devices are used.”
The principles are intended to be nonpartisan and are supported by both liberal and conservative groups. There will be local meetups to discuss the principles and later plans to promote them to Congress.
Still, the declarations are vague and will require focused political pressure to insure changes in public policy, notes Ars Technica. An example of public pressure is a campaign from Demand Progress — “the Internet vs. Hollywood,” which suggests that government seizure powers such as those exhibited in the Megaupload case could be used in the future against mainstream Web services like Gmail and Flickr.
Adobe has introduced LevelUp, a new social game aimed to help customers learn Photoshop through missions, badges, and rewards.
Customers download LevelUp for free and then complete levels in their existing Photoshop software. Beginner levels can earn 20 to 30 points while more advanced levels can earn up to 850 points. Points can be applied to drawings for prizes such as Adobe Creative Cloud memberships.
“The directions are very clear: In each stage, the navigation bar tells you exactly what shortcuts to use or what buttons to click to move on the to the next stage. You can opt to use Photoshop’s sample images, or even open one of your own to learn from the ground up,” explains Digital Trends.
Users can also share scores on Twitter and Facebook for increased chances at prizes. Customers can track their progress on weekly leaderboards as well.
LevelUp is available for Photoshop Creative Suite versions 5 and above.
While Google and Asus supposedly created the new Nexus 7 tablet in four months, the device may simply be a version of an existing product minus some features to bring down the price.
At CES, Asus was showing its Eee Pad MeMO ME370T, a 7-inch tablet that looked like the Nexus 7 but also included a rear-facing 5-megapixel camera, a microSD slot, and a micro HDMI port. While it had a Qualcomm chip at the time, Asus announced they would replace it with an Nvidia Tegra 3, but the device would cost $250.
After CES, Nvidia announced a family of low-cost Tegra 3 tablets designed to sell at $199. Removing some of the ME370T’s features and reducing the memory may simply have been a way to get the price point down to the $199 target.
“While the base design and setup was completed in the 370T to meet a certain price point and option list, the efforts required to get that design to $199 meant going back to the drawing board and starting over on just about every aspect of the unit,” an Asus rep told The Verge.
“But if Asus, Nvidia, and Google hadn’t made it a priority to challenge Amazon’s Kindle Fire, the ME370T could have been just another outdated Android tablet on the pile,” concludes the post.
Sources tell BGR that Amazon plans to release two new Kindle Fire tablets in 7- and 10-inch models.
“With Google having unveiled its Nexus 7 tablet this week, it’s vitally important for Amazon that it doesn’t mess up with the launch of its second-generation Kindle Fire competitor, which could happen as early as next month,” notes Digital Trends.
Amazon has experienced immense success with its 7-inch Kindle Fire, and the new version will reportedly feature a more solid build than its predecessor, including “a metal casing instead of the soft-touch plastic body found on the first-generation device,” explains the post.
“They’ll reportedly be thinner than the original iPad, with the 10-inch model featuring a front-facing camera,” reports Digital Trends. “There’s no mention of a camera on the 7-inch device, but with Google’s recently-released Nexus 7 tablet — which is set to go head-to-head with the Kindle Fire — sporting a front-facing camera, it’s hard to believe Amazon will omit such a feature.”
Reports suggest the new Kindle Fire tablets are likely to be available in the coming months.
E-book apps from Amazon, Apple and Barnes & Noble track reader behavior and pass that information back to be analyzed as an aggregated data pool.
The apps can determine how much time readers spend with a book, where they lose interest, which search terms they use to find books, which sentences they highlight, and much more.
Barnes & Noble, for example, found “nonfiction books tend to be read in fits and starts, while novels are generally read straight through, and that nonfiction books, particularly long ones, tend to get dropped earlier,” reports the Wall Street Journal. “Science-fiction, romance and crime-fiction fans often read more books more quickly than readers of literary fiction do, and finish most of the books they start.”
“The bigger trend we’re trying to unearth is where are those drop-offs in certain kinds of books, and what can we do with publishers to prevent that? If we can help authors create even better books than they create today, it’s a win for everybody,” explains Jim Hilt, Barnes & Noble VP of E-Books.
Still, some publishers are skeptical about using the data. “The thing about a book is that it can be eccentric, it can be the length it needs to be, and that is something the reader shouldn’t have anything to do with,” says Jonathan Galassi, president and publisher of Farrar, Straus & Giroux. “We’re not going to shorten ‘War and Peace’ because someone didn’t finish it.”
The Electronic Frontier Foundation working with the ACLU has argued that people’s reading habits should be private. They are lobbying states to enact privacy provisions as California has done.
There is one company that has taken this approach to an extreme. Coliloquy is not only gathering reader data to help authors craft their works to best fit reader interests and behavior; it uses a proprietary data platform that allows readers choose from different paths through the story.
Online marketing firm Monetate reports that for the first time tablets are outpacing smartphones in the amount of traffic they drive to e-commerce sites.
