Nokia has unveiled lower-priced versions of its Lumia smartphones to shore up its position in the basic handset market, where it has lost share while it focused on developing expensive smartphones, Reuters has reported. The €15 and €65 phones fill the gaps in Nokia’s product line-up between its high-end Lumia devices that run Microsoft software and mid-tier Asha feature phones. The Finnish company hopes the new phones will increase sales in emerging markets and help it regain its once-solid footing at the cheaper end of the market, where it makes the bulk of its handset revenue. Sales of basic phones fell over 20% in 2012 to €9.4bn.

By Agence France-Presse
Monday, February 25, 2013

The $1.0-trillion (750-million-euro) global mobile industry predicted Monday a boom in subscribers to four billion people by 2018 as the world’s largest mobile fair opened in Barcelona, Spain.

Already, 3.2 billion people pay for mobile services, nearly half of the world’s population, said a study by A. T Kearney and GSMA, which represents 750 mobile operators and organises the vast, four-day annual Mobile World Congress.

The report forecast that a further 700 million subscribers would be added by 2017 and the four billion-subscriber mark would be hit in 2018.
Revenues for mobile operators alone amounted $1.0 trillion, or 1.4 percent of the world’s gross domestic product, in 2012, the report said.

Most of the growth was in the Asia Pacific region, where operators were forecast to raise revenue by 4.0 percent a year up to 2017, adding $80 billion, or 23 percent, to their revenue of $350 billion, the study said. (more…)

Madanmohan Rao | February 13, 2013

PORT WASHINGTON, NEW YORK – FEBRUARY 11, 2013 –Mobile devices including tablets and smartphones are increasingly being used as portable music players, according to the new Audio Consumption Study from global information company The NPD Group. Forty percent of tablet owners report they use it to listen to music, while 56 percent of smartphone users say they use it for music listening. Among those using the smartphone for music listening, 39 percent said they listen to music at least once a day and half (54 percent) report they are using the device more for music compared with a year ago.

In the case of smartphones, 65 percent of the music users reported using Internet Radio, such as Pandora, while 30 are using on-demand services, such as Spotify or Rhapsody. However, many (60 percent) bring their own music to the device. Tablet owners have a similar passion for using Internet Radio, and half (49 percent) port their own music files to the device. (more…)

SMASHING MAGAZINE
By Karolina Szczur
January 18th, 2013

The popularity of mobile has skyrocketed over the past few years. We’ve seen six generations of iPhones, five iPad models, hundreds of Android phones and thousands of different devices being manufactured. Design and development have gone all the way from static and desktop-centric to responsive and device-aware. And it has been a very exciting journey.

The field is relatively young — we are all learning (usually by mistakes). Because of that, we are also struggling with generalizations and even stereotypes. Let’s have a look at common myths associated with the mobile universe.

(Smashing’s note: If you are looking for a good book on mobile, this is the one. Our brand new book on best design and coding practices for mobile, Responsive Web design and UX design for mobile. Get it now!)

Myth: Mobile Is Well-Defined

It has become widely accepted that “mobility” refers to handheld devices, which you can easily use on the go, for Web browsing or anything else. Following that thought, we could easily make an assumption that even a remote control or MP3 player could potentially be a mobile device. But are they?

Barbara Ballard, author of Designing the Mobile User Experience, does a great job explaining the idea behind mobile:

“Fundamentally, ‘mobile’ refers to the user, and not the device or the application.”

Mobility is strictly connected to the user and situation they’re currently in, not to the piece of hardware they’re using. This easily leads us to the conclusion that what really matters is the context, not the device. Some mobile industry luminaries have stated that the idea of context has been overblown. Indeed, it can easily lead to many unfortunate decisions and false assumptions which can drastically affect the end product.

As Jeremy Keith, author of HTML5 for Web Designers and mobile specialist, has said:

“We have once again created a consensual hallucination. Just as we generated a mythical desktop user with the perfect viewport size, a fast connection and an infinite supply of attention, we have now generated a mythical mobile user who has a single goal and no attention span.”

By defining mobile as a set of circumstances, a setting, we are in danger of making some sweeping generalizations. We analyze, we study reports and use cases, but mobile interactions are far less trivial than we think.

As studies show (PDF), over 70% of Americans use their phones while in the bathroom. In some countries, the percentage of people with Internet access that is solely provided by mobile exceeds 50%. According to ComScore’s Mobile Metrix, Facebook’s mobile app accounts for 80% of their traffic. These facts prove that assuming short attention spans and oversimplifying interfaces are not solutions to addressing the problem space. (more…)

By Michal Lev-Ram, writer January 22, 2013

South Korea’s Samsung is trampling rivals and gunning for Apple. Can its hot streak last?

FORTUNE — To understand how Samsung — yes, Samsung — became America’s No. 1 mobile phonemaker and thorn in Apple’s side, it’s helpful to rewind to last fall. On a mid-September morning, Apple (AAPL) CEO Tim Cook stepped onto a stage in San Francisco to unveil the iPhone 5. Several hundred miles away, in a Wolfgang Puck restaurant in Los Angeles, a group of marketing executives from Samsung Electronics followed real-time reactions to Cook’s remarks. They huddled around tables mounted with laptops and TV screens, carefully tracking each new feature and monitoring the gush of online comments on the new device via blogs and social media sites. As the data flowed in, writers from the company’s advertising agency, who were also camped out in the restaurant turned war room, scrambled to craft a response.

Two hours later, when Cook stepped off the stage, the Samsung group was already drafting a series of print, digital, and TV ads. The following week — as the iPhone 5 went on sale — the company aired a TV ad mocking Apple “fanboys” queuing up for the new phone. (“The headphone jack is going to be on the bottom!”) The 90-second commercial went on to become the most popular tech ad of 2012, garnering more than 70 million views online. More important, in the weeks following the launch of Apple’s iPhone 5, Samsung sold a record-breaking number of its own signature smartphone, the Galaxy S III. “We knew this was going to be a big moment in time, when consumers are really paying attention,” says Todd Pendleton, chief marketing officer of Samsung’s U.S.-based mobile division. “We wanted to take that opportunity and all that energy and make it Samsung’s moment.” (more…)

eMarketer

Tablet buyers grow sales at fastest pace

Mobile devices have become a key component of the digital shopping landscape, with both smartphones and tablets contributing higher levels of ecommerce sales as more consumers adopt the devices and become comfortable shopping on them.

Last year, eMarketer estimates, US retail mcommerce sales shot up 81% to nearly $25 billion. This year, a further increase of 55.7% in sales is expected, and mobile sales will account for 15% of all retail ecommerce. Mcommerce sales include all purchases made via smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices, excluding sales of travel and event tickets.

eMarketer’s mcommerce forecast reflects a confluence of three trends: first, the expanding number of smartphone shoppers whose behavior affects commerce in all channels; second, the growing number of smartphone buyers who enjoy the immediacy of purchasing through their phone and are expected to generate roughly one-third of mcommerce sales this year; and third, the rapid rise in tablet shopping, which will produce the bulk of mcommerce sales over the next four years. (more…)

eMarketer

Time spent on email near equal on PCs vs. smartphones

eMarketer estimates that 1.7 billion people around the world will access the internet via a mobile device in 2013. By 2016, there will be a staggering 2.5 billion mobile internet users worldwide. As internet usage increasingly takes place on mobile devices—and particularly on smartphones—it is important to understand how consumers’ internet behavior is adapting to these new devices.

An analysis conducted in July 2012 by GfK Group examined US consumers’ web activity on a smartphone vs. on a PC. The research found that in a number of categories, consumers on the two kinds of devices behaved quite similarly.

Both PC and smartphone internet users spent a little under one-fifth of their internet time on email, and both allocated roughly a 10% share of time each to gaming and search.

The most striking difference GfK found was that PC internet users were considerably less social than their smartphone counterparts. PC internet users spent a sizeable 18% of their internet time on social media activities, but on smartphones, social media truly dominated, accounting for a 31% share of internet time—nearly twice as much as the amount of time spent on email, the next most popular smartphone web activity. Clearly, social media is a prime reason smartphone users access the internet via mobile. (more…)

AVC Musings of a VC in NYC
Dec 29, 2012

The 10 Golden Principles of Successful Web Apps from Carsonified on Vimeo.