Christian Louca
Archive for the ‘Media & Entertainment’ Category
Guardian mobile site drives mores unique browsers & traffic than apps & tablets combined but where is the engagement?
Posted: May 17, 2012 in Digital Marketing, Industry News, Information communications technology, Internet, Media & Entertainment, Mobile Applications, Mobile Industry News, Mobile Internet, Mobile Platforms, Mobile Technology, Online, Publishing, Publishing Industry, Tablets, Technology, Uncategorized, User Experience & UsabilityTags: Android, App store, App Store (iOS), Guardian, Handhelds, iOS, iphone, iTunes, Mobile, Mobile phone, mobile statistics, mobile web, Page view, Smartphone, Statistics, The Guardian
the guardian (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
It has been some time since I first remember trying to sign The Guardian to the YOC media network, sometime in 2009. From memory at the time, 4th Screen were selling around 1 million page views per month. I have posted below the latest figures from their site**, that figure now stands at 6.2 million and generates more unique browsers and monthly page views than their iOS, Android and iOS tablet apps combined. These figures are somewhat surprising but not because their mobile internet has the biggest pull, rather that their mobile traffic has only 6 fold in 4 or so years and all their mobile channels are not generating significant page impressions.
I have always been an advocate for mobile internet and I do get and understand that having an app strategy for print and digital publishers makes perfect sense. After all, I have personally been involved in building so many for clients as such, why wouldn’t I think this. My bigger question is why is their mobile internet site and apps not generating higher levels of uniques or monthly page impressions? We know they have an award winning app and their paid for model seemed to work and made them a small profit after development costs.
But… why is their mobile internet site generating far less monthly page impressions in ratio to their applications? And… are their applications generating enough impressions in ratio to the unique users?
Mobile Internet
Generating 6.2 million page impressions from 2.5 million unique browsers can be averaged out that for every one customer visiting the site once a month is only generating 2.5 page impressions per visit. I am guessing that their customers are visiting more than once a month which would mean they are generating even less impressions per visit (just divide the impression number by the number of visits). As you can see from these states it becomes somewhat disappointing and raises some concern. Maybe I am interpreting unique browsers wrongly as unique users, but it sounds like the same thing to me.
The iphone app is a little better…
Again applying the same principle generating 1 million page impressions from 34,000 uniques can be averaged out that for every 1 customer using the app once a month is generating about 30 impressions per visit. Like their mobile internet users the reality is they are visiting more than once a month and therefore the impressions they generate per visit are even less.
Lets look at the rest, again applying the same methodology…
iPad app
45,113 monthly uniques generating 3.45 million page impressions equates to 1 customer visiting once a month generating 75 page impressions per visit.
Android app
11,000 monthly uniques are generating 1.2 million page impressions equates to 1 customer visiting once a month generating 110 page impressions per visit.
What does this all mean?
In summary, it shows that their Android app is generating a much richer experience than their other channels. Or maybe Android users are just more engaged than iOS users. We have to be careful here as their mobile internet site will have traffic from all devices but overall the statistics suggest that most of their mobile site users are less engaged than their app users.
In my experience, working with print and digital publishers it is typical for a user to generate up to 10 impressions per visit but at an absolute minimum of visiting the site or apps 2 to 3 times a week. This would mean you would have to divide those impressions (generated by the users) by approximately 12. In doing that, the numbers would suggest that only their Android app and iPad app are delivering a rich experience where the user is most engaged generating 9 to 6 impressions per visit respectively. The others fall well short of this and their mobile internet site alarmingly so.
m.guardian**
A dedicated mobile site giving users access to guardiannews.comcontent any time and from any device. It is optimised for mobile screen sizes and connection speeds.
Traffic:
2.5 million monthly unique browsers
6.2 million monthly page views
m.guardian is showing incredible growth and almost doubled its traffic over the course of 2011 – growth that is outstripping total growth of the mobile internet market (+25% yr on yr).
Users are accessing a broad range of content through m.guardian with the top five most visited sections being world news, football, sport, technology and Comment is free. Comment is free alone delivers over 250,000 page views per month – an indication that users are valuable opinion leaders.
iPhone app
An award winning iPhone app featuring video, live blogs and more that is available free to users in the US.
Traffic:
34,000 monthly unique browsers
1 million monthly page views
With steady growth in unique browsers of almost 50% over the last four months, the iPhone app is another strong performer in GNM’s mobile portfolio. What’s more, the proportion of heavy users is high at just over 50%. That, combined with a strong frequency metric for user behaviour, indicates a very loyal and engaged audience.
In addition to the regular news content, users have a strong preference for football, sport and business content.
iPad app
We launched our critically acclaimed iPad app in October 2011 and since then it has been downloaded more than 500,000 times (globally). With a clean, modern design and easy navigation the Guardian iPad app is immensely readable.
Traffic:
45,113 monthly unique browsers
3.45 million monthly page views
Android App
Free to download and available from the Android market worldwide it contains the latest news, sport, comment, reviews, videos, podcasts and picture galleries from the Guardian website.
Traffic:
11,000 monthly unique browsers
1.2 million monthly page views
The app delivers a globally minded audience of opinion leaders and the most popular sections include football, Comment is free and world news.
Furthermore, over one in three are heavy users and this has steadily increased over the last few months – an indication that user loyalty and engagement is growing.
SOURCE**: Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/advertising/mobile?newsfeed=true)
YOC no more
Posted: November 18, 2011 in Ad Industry, Affiliate Marketing, Augmented Reality, Automotive, Content management, Customer Relationship Marketing, Data Privacy, Developers, Digital Display Advertising, Digital Marketing, Digital Trends, Display advertising, E-Commerce, Email Marketing, Industry News, Information communications technology, Internet, Location Based Services, M-Commerce, Marketing, Media & Entertainment, Mediation Platforms, Mergers & Acquisitions, Mobile Ad Exchanges, Mobile Ad Networks, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Applications, mobile banking, Mobile Developers, Mobile Gaming, Mobile Handsets, Mobile Industry News, Mobile Internet, Mobile Payment Solutions, Mobile Phones, Mobile Platforms, Mobile Privacy, Mobile Search, Mobile SEM, Mobile Social Media, Mobile Social networking, Mobile Technology, Mobile TV, Multichannel Marketing, Online, Online Advertising, Performance Advertising, Publishing, Publishing Industry, Retail, Smartphones, Sms, SMS Advertising, SMS Marketing, Social Media, Social Networking, Tablets, Technology, Telecommunications, Wireless TechnologiesTags: Advertising, Business, Christian Louca, Evolution of Communication, Mobile Theory, Telecommunications, YOC
I have now left YOC after 4 years since launching their UK operations. It has been an absolute pleasure working for such a fantastic organisation and I wish my old colleagues all the best for the future.
I am now looking at the next big thing and will update all via my blog in due course. It is exciting times for mobile and we are all moving at an incredible rate. So many fantastic new start ups with so many ingenious ideas all to make our lives better. I believe we strive to help people communicate, engage, consume, learn, inform and so much more.
This global society that we have born is the future and will change lives forever to come. No borders, no politics, no fuss. A generation of globally connected people wanting to share experiences and information from across all corners of the globe.
I am privileged to be part of such an amazing evolution of communication…
Mobile advertising: profit at your fingertips
Posted: June 10, 2011 in Digital Display Advertising, Digital Trends, Display advertising, Industry News, Internet, Media & Entertainment, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Industry News, Mobile Internet, Multichannel Marketing, Online, Smartphones, Tablets, Technology, Telecommunications, Television, Wireless TechnologiesTags: IAB, mobile statistics
Posted By ] James Robinson
Expensively produced adverts that were once only seen in glossy magazines are now being produced for many tablets and smartphones. Photograph: Jim Wilson/New York Times/Redux/eyevine
Mobile advertising is finally beginning to come of age as phones transform the relationship brands have with their customers in new, and sometimes unexpected, ways. The rate of growth is astounding, and the pace of change so rapid it is now difficult to believe that many companies greeted the predicted inexorable growth of mobile advertising with barely disguised scepticism a decade or so ago.
The UK market was worth £83m in 2010, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), up from £37.6m the previous year, an 116% like-for-like increase. Online market research company comScore says that in 2010 there were 19.1 million monthly mobile internet users in this country, up by 4.6 million from the same month the previous year. US investment bank Morgan Stanley said this year that “online advertising may finally be entering a golden age”.
The bank believes that the mobile advertising market in western countries is set to reach the recent growth rates seen in Japan, where mobile ad spend rose threefold from 2006 to 2009, to stand at $1bn (£610m). FirstPartner, a consultancy company, predicts that the UK market will be valued at £992m by 2015.
Much of that growth has been driven by the mobile internet and, latterly, by smartphones. Jon Mew, head of mobile at the IAB, points out that 41% of the population already have a smartphone. “By next year that should be half of the population,” he says, “and it shows no sign of slowing.”
Rik Haslam, chief creative officer at leading digital advertising agency RAPP, says: “Clients sometimes ask me whether mobile advertising is really something they should focus on. I tell them that right now more smartphones are being built than laptops and desktops combined, that mobile internet use is ramping up almost 300% faster than desktop internet access did, and that more than 50% of people use a mobile device while watching TV. So yes, it’s something clients should focus on.” He adds: “If the internet revolution disrupted business norms, then the smartphone revolution is devastating business norms.”
Analysts at Morgan Stanley estimate that by 2020 there will be about 10bn mobile internet devices worldwide – 10 times the number of PCs currently in use.
But the story can’t be told by statistics alone, as compelling as they are. The arrival of tablets, Apple’s iPad in particular, and the popularity of location-based services, which use the GPS functionality of a smartphone to offer users services based on their location, have transformed the user experience – and the aesthetics – of mobile advertising. Put simply: it has become sexy.
“Traditional brands didn’t do much on mobile, but it’s changed dramatically in the last year,” says Mew.
In recent years, around two thirds of online advertising spend has traditionally been on ringtones and downloads, but 12% of spend last year came from companies that sell fast-moving consumer goods.
The look, feel and size, of the iPad, one of the fastest-selling new computer devices in history (it took just one month to sell 1m iPads; the iPhone reached the same target in 74 days), has prompted fashion brands and car companies to create sumptuous online campaigns that were only seen in glossy magazines or expensive television adverts until recently.
Generating a response
Although they have been talked about for some time, location-based services have only really started to take off over the past 12 months, aided by the launch of Google and Facebook products, such as Facebook Places. Those services are powerful, allowing carefully targeted advertising campaigns that generate far better responses among consumers. Research published by location data firm Navteq in August 2010 found that 41% of consumers who saw a specific mobile advert went into one of that retailer’s stores – and 53% said it was the advert that prompted them to visit.
Text messaging and advertising campaigns have become more targeted and more sophisticated. More people are using their phones rather than PCs to search the internet (10% of all UK traffic now comes through mobiles) and new mobile technology is enabling big corporations to experiment with reward schemes designed to attract and retain customers, which may, ultimately, make loyalty cards obsolete. M-commerce also continues to grow: mobile-generated sales at online giant eBay tripled to nearly $2bn in 2010, with the UK the fastest adopter.
Challenges remain for advertisers, however. The lure of the iPad and the iPhone, with their hugely popular apps, can make companies who want to establish a mobile advertising presence lazy. According to mobile marketing company 2ergo: “A lot of companies launch a mobile app and think they’ve ticked the mobile box – but an iPhone is only 11% of the total [mobile] market. You’re missing out on the bulk of your target audience.”
If a company wants to reach all of its target audience, it has to create content that can be used on all of the popular operating systems, which combined make up the vast majority of the market. Google’s operating system for mobiles, Android, is growing market share, and Android-powered phones recently overtook iPhone sales. BlackBerry-maker RIM has won a new audience of young enthusiasts who use its instant- messaging service.
All of those platforms are likely to enlarge, but there are lingering concerns among consumers about privacy and there is still some resistance about using services such as mobile internet at all. According to a recent IAB survey, 21% of respondents said they only used their mobile phone for texting or calling. That seems set to change, however, as mobile phones become the next link in the internet’s evolutionary chain. There have been several false dawns, most notably when WAP-enabled phones, which allowed users mobile access to the internet for the first time, became available at the end of the last century and failed to live up to the hype that surrounded their launch. This time around, the hyperbole seems justified.
Via: http://www.guardian.co.uk/mobile-marketing-2011/mobile-advertising-profit-fingertips
Apple Snubs The iAd & My Personal View on the Mobile Ad Market
Posted: June 7, 2011 in Developers, Digital Display Advertising, Digital Marketing, Digital Trends, Display advertising, E-Commerce, Industry News, Information communications technology, M-Commerce, Media & Entertainment, Mobile Ad Networks, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Conference, Mobile Developers, Mobile Handsets, Mobile Industry News, Mobile Internet, Mobile Platforms, Mobile Technology, Retail, Smartphones, Technology, Telecommunications, Wireless TechnologiesTags: Apple, Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, Gmail, iAD, iCloud, iOS, IOS (Apple), iphone, San Francisco, Steve Jobs, Yahoo Mail
My Comments on the below:
It is very interesting that Apple have not mentioned iAD at the World Developer conference day in San Francisco yesterday as highlighted by Dan Frommer of Business Insider. Especially, as they were so keen to raise the bar in the mobile ad industry when they announced its release last year. That said the mobile ad industry is moving at such a fast rate and I no doubt Apple are fine tuning their product from the learnings they would have taken to-date.
We are seeing first hand the mobile ad-market exploding into the desk of most Marketers & Media Planners and Buyers. This is a subject that has to be on the list rather than off the list. There are dynamic shifts across regions in the type of advertisement whether it is brands, content companies or media owners all wanting to capitalise on the opportunity.
Mobile content companies that where present in the early stages are finding it hard to convert in the matured markets such as US and Western Europe. I believe this is due to user desirability and general maturity of the market. The old content subscription services are not so sought in markets with strong smartphone penetration. As the mobile web and apps that are enabled by smartphones offer content that is ‘King’. Whereas, in emerging markets like LATAM, ASIA, Indonesia with heavy feature phone penetration content is scarce and usability limited. Hence, the desire is still high for content companies to service this void.
Western society is dominated by the big Fortune 100 advertisers whether it is premium advertising with super sexy rich media and the explosion of HTML5 or more simple direct response campaigns pushing for an acquisition/sale of some sort.
We are starting to see the big brands shift some ad-spend into the emerging markets from certain sectors such as, Travel, Finance, Technology, Health and Automotive but this is still a small portion of the total ad spend in those markets that are dominated by content companies. The end user is still considered as someone with limited or no disposable income unlike its more matured Western Societies. This is changing thanks to technology and many other factors and presents a huge opportunity for M-Commerce as this will in many emerging markets leapfrog e-commerce.
This is when everything changes…
When we consider there are 3 billion people in the world that are not even connected to online and that these 3 billion people in the next five years will become connected via cheaper and still sophisticated smartphones it presents a world of opportunity and excitement. This is why I work in the most exciting and fastest growing industry of all time.
Posted By ] Dan Frommer
Remember Apple’s iAd? Apple might not, either.
A year after being shown off as a “tentpole” feature of iPhone software, Apple’s mobile advertising business didn’t earn a single mention today, as execs previewed a new version of iOS at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs even took the opportunity to trash ads.
While discussing Apple’s free, new iCloud email service, he took an apparent jab at Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and the others, which stuff ads in their free email services.
“No ads,” he boasted. ”We build products that we want for ourselves, too, and we just don’t want ads.”
That’s obviously not the same thing as if Jobs were to say “we don’t like iAds” or “iAds stink.”
But it seems to underscore the awkwardness of Apple — a product-focused hardware and software company — trying to become an advertising company. (Much more about that here.)
Maybe there just weren’t any new iAd features to show off today. Apple certainly had a lot of more interesting new stuff to show off. But there wasn’t even a “hey, look how many ads we’re delivering every day” or “wow, we have all these amazing advertisers!” message. Or anything.
Via: http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-snubs-the-iad-2011-6#ixzz1OZxRyZFl
So Much For Apple Working Out That Deal With Facebook
Posted: June 7, 2011 in Business to Business, Handset manufacturers, Industry News, Information communications technology, Internet, Media & Entertainment, Mobile Applications, Mobile Conference, Mobile Developers, Mobile Handsets, Mobile Industry News, Mobile Platforms, Mobile Social Media, Mobile Social networking, Smartphones, Social Media, Social Networking, Technology, TelecommunicationsTags: Apple, Bret Taylor, Facebook, iOS, iphone, iPhoto, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, Twitter, Windows Phone 7
Posted By ] Dan Frommer
Apple and Facebook don’t appear to be any closer to working together on the iPhone.
Today in San Francisco, Apple unveiled a new relationship with Twitter, where Twitter sign-in and sharing features will be built right into Apple’s iPhone and iPad operating system. (A very rare thing for Apple, which is hesitant to rely on third party services for anything.)
Sounds like the sort of feature that would be just as good — if not better — with Facebook, which has many millions more users than Twitter? Indeed. But Apple had nothing to say about Facebook today.
While Apple has been able to integrate Facebook into some minor products, such as iPhoto, for whatever reason, the companies haven’t been able to figure out a deal for major mobile integration. Last September, for example, Apple had to remove Facebook support from Ping, a social network, at the last minute.
Why? Because Facebook insisted on “onerous terms that we could not agree to,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs told All Things D’s Kara Swisher at the time.
Several weeks later, Facebook CTO Bret Taylor told reporters in New York that he was “very confident” that Facebook and Apple would figure out a way to work together on Ping.
But, publicly at least, nothing seems to have changed since then. Meanwhile, today, Apple just announced a big partnership with Twitter, one of Facebook’s biggest rivals.
This leaves the door open for Facebook and Apple to potentially work something out between now and the fall, when iOS 5 ships to consumers, so Apple can announce Twitter and Facebook integration for the final product. Facebook, after all, is built into many other phone platforms, including Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7, some Android flavors, etc.
Even if Facebook doesn’t need Apple, and Apple doesn’t need Facebook, it would be better for all of their users if they worked together, after all.
Or maybe they just aren’t going to play nicely together.
Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs obviously both know that they run two of the most important tech companies in the world. They don’t need each other if they can’t come to terms they can agree on. And maybe that’s going to keep them apart.
Either way, watching this relationship evolve is only going to get more interesting over the years.
Via: http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-facebook-twitter-2011-6#ixzz1OZvlAXYl
Shoes.com: 85pc of purchases come from mobile Web, not apps
Posted: May 11, 2011 in Digital Marketing, Digital Trends, E-Commerce, Industry News, Information communications technology, Internet, M-Commerce, Media & Entertainment, Mobile Applications, Mobile Industry News, Mobile Internet, Mobile Platforms, Mobile Search, Mobile Technology, Multichannel Marketing, Online, Publishing, Publishing Industry, Retail, Search, Smartphones, Strategy and Planning, Technology, TelecommunicationsTags: Android, iphone, McDonalds, Mobile Computing, Mobile Marketer, Mobile phone, mobile web, shoes.com, Website
My Comments on the below:
I am a bit late finding this article but there you go. I find the stats really interesting. Despite the fact they offer shoes for all, I am guessing here that their main user base is made up of Women. I can instantly relate to their experience. If I look at my partner who since purchasing her an android phone (6 months ago), who by the way is a kind of techno-phoebe, has moved from a 0 to a 10 user of the mobile internet (0 being not at all and 10 being everyday more than once). However, despite this amazing change of her use of phones not once has she been bothered by apps. This is not because she is not aware or has not tried them but she is used to searching for content when she wants. She finds it easy. She already knows which sites she has interest in and what sites she would buy clothes/shoes and whatever other flavour. It is interesting as her peers also share the same thought process, yet their male counterparts and very engrossed into both mobile internet & apps. In fact the more I think about it especially apps that help them not have to think for themselves or games of course! Anyhow, before I digress, this supports the experience shoes.com has described. As women, being the main demographic (again this is an assumption) of shoes.com, they are comfortable and familiar with SEARCH (and aren’t we all, no matter our gender) hence making more purchases via the mobile site than apps. Therefore, as long as the e-commerce site is mobile optimised and the URL re-directs are in place then their customers will happily discover and purchase via the mobile internet site (as we in the industry call m-commerce, a transaction made via the mobile device).
In the early adoption days of mobile internet we saw that many publisher, media owners and e-commerce sites were receiving anywhere up to 5% of their users online coming from a mobile device. Whilst with one hand this was positive news, with the other it was bad. As the sites that were not optimised for mobile you can start to work out the potential loss of revenues and/or damage to the brand/media owner by delivering a poor user experience and/or no real payment flow. Traditional publishers and media owners quickly woke up when they saw these stats. However, the retail industry was very slow to react. It wasn’t until Steve Jobs created the iPhone and apps that they retail sector started to take the space semi-seriously. It is great to see now how retailers or e-commerce sites are starting to understand and experience this space better and as the article suggests ‘not just jumping on the app-bandwagon’.
Posted By ] Rimma Kats
Shoes.com's mobile site
SAN FRANCISCO – A Brown Shoes Co. exec at the Mobile Shopping Summit said that 85 percent of mobile purchases come from the shoes.com mobile site and not its applications, proving that retailers should focus on having a Web presence before jumping on the app bandwagon.
Panelists during the “Mobile Roadmap Part I: Key Evaluation Criteria For Developing Your Initial Mobile Platform – The Keys To Mobile Merchandizing” session discussed the challenges and success their companies face with mobile. The panel was moderated by Marci Troutman, CEO of Sitminis, Atlanta.
“We had a strong ecommerce platform,” said Pete Hogan, vice president of ecommerce at Brown Shoe Co., St. Louis. “We were seeing a lot of agencies contact us about mobile and there were few players in the game two years ago.
“Eighty-five percent of our mobile sales come from the mobile Web and not apps,” he said.
Future of mobile
According to Mr. Hogan, the company’s long-term mobile strategy will involve the use of HTML5 to provide a richer experience to consumers on their mobile devices.
For companies that are looking to develop mobile sites or apps, it is important to keep the consumer in mind and try to make the overall mobile commerce experience as seamless as possible.
“Think about your business and how many times people touch your business,” Mr. Hogan said. “If you’re Starbucks then it’s daily, if you’re McDonalds it’s weekly.
“If our customer is a registered customer, we wanted to make sure we auto filled their shipping information,” he said. “That’s where you help them save time.”
A majority of consumers who download applications to their mobile devices do not use most of them.
A mobile site is an ideal tool to capture that consumer at the point-of-sale, per the panelists.
However, companies wanting to enter the application space should make sure that their apps provide a different experience than the mobile site. A lot of the time, mobile apps are geared towards loyalists, pushing deals and alerts to them daily.
There needs to be an incentive for consumers to click on that app icon when they want to shop instead of going to the company’s mobile site.
The mobile site, on the other hand, is an access point for existing and potential customers and should be treated with that in mind.
Brown Shoe first developed a mobile site and then an iPhone application.
Currently, the company has three iPhone applications, three mobile-optimized sites and three Android apps.
According to Mr. Hogan, the company’s mobile site mimics its ecommerce site and now features personalized recommendations and ratings.
“We tried to add most of the bells and whistles,” Mr. Hogan said. “However, there are still a few missing things.
“Tracking is also important – we can see when customers are coming to our mobile properties,” he said. “The ROI is trackable.”
Mobile extension
Dale Monson, senior vice president of operations at The Sportsman’s Guide, said that the company is currently working on a second version of its mobile site.
Although the company has a mobile presence, Mr. Monson said that it has not invested in marketing efforts to promote its applications.
“When we launched our iPhone app, we wanted to make sure we were in the market,” Mr. Monson said. “The main challenge we had was a lot of items on our Web site and it’s difficult to push that into the mobile and have consumers shop easily.
“However, we have not had a good marketing program yet to push the downloads,” he said. “We have not invested in marketing efforts for our apps.”
Rimma Kats is staff reporter on Mobile Commerce Daily and Mobile Marketer. Reach her at rimma@mobilemarketer.com.
How new internet standards will finally deliver a mobile revolution
Posted: April 27, 2011 in Industry News, Information communications technology, Internet, Media & Entertainment, Mobile Applications, Mobile Developers, Mobile Handsets, Mobile Industry News, Mobile Internet, Online, Smartphones, Tablets, Technology, TelecommunicationsTags: Android, Clients, Google, Google Chrome, HTML, HTML 5, Java (software platform), Microsoft, Zokem
Image via Wikipedia
Posted By ] Bengi Korkmaz, Richard Lee and Ickjin Park
FEATURE
An arcane-sounding change with potentially significant implications for consumers and businesses is under way on the web: the shift to a new generation of HTML, the programming standard that underpins the internet. Senior executives, regardless of industry, should take note; like the exponential growth of device-specific applications, this evolution of HTML will further boost the power of mobile devices, accelerating changes in the way people consume content and the potential use of smartphones and tablets as both a marketing platform and a productivity tool.
The next generation of the internet standard will essentially allow programs to run through a web browser rather than a specific operating system. That means consumers will be able to access the same programs and cloud-based content from any device – personal computer, laptop, smartphone, or tablet – because the browser is the common platform. This ability to work seamlessly anytime, anywhere, on any device could change consumer behavior and shift the balance of power in the mobile-telecommunications, media and technology industries. It will create opportunities and present challenges. This article seeks to provide a primer on these changes for senior executives, who may feel the effects of the move toward ‘web-centricity’ much sooner than they think.
Web-centricity
In some ways, the evolution of mobile technology resembles the battle among PC makers in the 1980s. While today we take it for granted that Microsoft’s Windows operating system underpins hardware from countless manufacturers, it wasn’t always that way. Remember the operating systems that powered the Commodore 64, the biggest-selling PC of all time, or the Apple II? Before the emergence of Microsoft’s DOS and then Windows, PC users faced a tough decision about which technology to adopt, because that determined the games and utilities they could use, as well as the general usefulness of their computers. The same occurs today with mobile devices. Users must weigh the hardware and software merits and commit themselves to a technology, whether it’s a device from manufacturers such as Apple or Research in Motion, the ever-increasing array of tablets and smartphones running Google’s Android operating system or, soon, offerings from Nokia running on Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 operating system.
The next generation of HTML, known as HTML5, may narrow these differences between mobile devices. HTML5, the most significant evolution yet in web standards, is designed to allow programs to run through a web browser, complete with video and other multimedia content that today require plug-in software and other work-arounds. In theory, this will make the browser a universal computing platform: without leaving it, users could do everything from editing documents to accessing social networks, watching movies, playing games or listening to music. Not only would any device with a web browser have these capabilities, but consumers would also have access to all content stored remotely in the cloud independent of locations and devices.
That’s the first reason web-centricity holds particular promise for mobile devices. The second is that it helps overcome the relatively weak processing power of smartphones and tablets compared with PCs and laptops. It’s partly this lack of horsepower that has fuelled the explosive growth in applications (or ‘apps’) to optimise the performance of specific devices: the average smartphone user now spends more than 11 hours a month using apps, more time than either web browsing or talking, according to a March 2011 study by research firm Zokem. HTML5 has the potential to improve the mobile experience – its specifications enable browsers to locally store 1,000 times more data than they currently do, so users can work when offline – writing e-mails, for example – and their devices will automatically update when a network becomes available. What’s more, programs and applications run faster because complex processing tasks are handled by network servers, although mobile-network capacity must go on growing to deal with heavier data demands.
Of course, not all programs are suited to running through browsers, nor is HTML5 the first would-be universal platform to emerge: Sun Microsystems (purchased by Oracle in 2010) promised that with its Java language, programmers could “write once, run anywhere”. Things haven’t worked out that way. And there’s never a guarantee that one kind of standard will prevail. The rate at which developers are writing apps and consumers are buying them is dizzying, and ingrained behaviour can be hard to change. Web-centricity may raise security fears among users because programs are no longer installed on specific devices and because data is stored remotely. And there could be fragmentation issues with both the standard and the browsers – after all, existing ones, such as Google’s Chrome, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox, don’t all treat the current standard, HTML4, the same way.
Despite these possible headwinds, the number of HTML5 websites is increasing by the day. Hardware manufacturers are lining up behind HTML5, and the development community is undertaking efforts to safeguard data in the cloud at a very fast pace. We therefore estimate that more than 50 per cent of all mobile applications will switch to HTML5 within three to five years – and the rate of transition could be considerably higher and faster. No matter how quickly the shift occurs, it will affect both consumers and businesses significantly.
SURVEY OFCOM – Young people would ‘rather go without television than their mobile phones’
Posted: April 20, 2011 in Digital Trends, Industry News, Information communications technology, Media & Entertainment, Mobile Handsets, Mobile Industry News, Mobile Phones, SmartphonesTags: mobile statistics, Mobile Tends, Youth Mobile Stats
Posted by ] DAILY MAIL REPORTER
- 28 per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds would miss their mobile phone more than the Internet or television
- Children aged between 12 and 15 are also most attached to their mobile handset
It is proof, if any were needed, of the increasing dominance that the mobile phone has in our lives.
Young people would rather give up watching television than go without their mobile phones, according to a survey by Ofcom.
For the first time since the media regulator began conducting research in 2005, 28 per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds said they would miss their mobile handset more than either the Internet or television.
Survey: Twenty-eight per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds said they would miss their mobile handset more than either the Internet or television
Twenty-six per cent said they would miss the Internet the most, while 23 per cent could not do without television.
Children aged between 12 and 15 are also more attached to their mobile phone, with 26 per cent saying they would struggle more without it than without the Internet or television, which both attracted 24 per cent of the vote.
For adults aged 16 and over, television remains the medium that would be missed the most, but the figure has decreased from 50 per cent in 2009 to 44 per cent in 2010.
Those aged 12 to 15 spend 17.2 hours each week watching television – with time spent on the Internet not far behind at 15.6 hours.
The time that adults spend on the internet has also increased from 12.2 hours in 2009 to 14.2 hours in 2010.
Ofcom’s research found that the number of text messages sent by 12 to 15-year-olds has doubled to 113 each week compared to 54 in 2007.
Meanwhile, 40 per cent of adults, down from 46 per cent in 2005, have concerns about television such as offensive content, programme quality or repeat.
James Thickett, Ofcom research director, said: ‘While TV remains the most used media among younger people, the internet is quickly catching up, and TV is no longer the media that would be missed the most among this age group.
‘Younger people are spending longer online and this is being driven by increased take-up and use of smartphones and games consoles to get online.’
Ofcom’s adult media literacy report surveyed 2,117 adults aged 16 and over and the children‘s literacy report surveyed 2,071 children aged five to 15 and their parents.
Via: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1378783/Young-people-television-mobile-phones.html#ixzz1K41AX5Be
