The Biggest Revolution in the digital is because of growth in technology.
The mobile market is substantially penetrated globally with approximately 6 billion mobile subscribers, or 87 percent of the world?s population. In the United States there are 325 million mobile subscriptions, a 103 percent penetration rate.
The rapid adoption of smartphones continues, representing greater than 50 percent of mobile handsets in the U.S. currently with further penetration gains anticipated. The smartphone is effectively a powerful mobile computer and its adoption and evolving use, along with tablets and e-readers, is resulting in new consumer behavior and expectations related to the consumption of information and the purchase of goods and services.
At the same time, the rapid emergence and consumer adoption of Facebook and other social networks is a sociological phenomenon unparalleled in human history.
Each day, Facebook processes 2.7 billion ?Likes,? 300 million photo uploads, 2.5 billion status updates and check-ins, among other countless bits of data.
There are approximately 600 million people using Facebook on mobile phones and, as smartphones further penetrate, Facebook expects even more mobile usage and greater engagement. ?It?s just this massive opportunity,? said Facebook founder/CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
As smartphones and tablets enter the global mainstream, an entire ecosystem of services and technologies are emerging to capitalize on the trend. We are in the early innings of a mobile revolution engendered by increasingly faster, more affordable mobile Internet access on a global basis.Success of Android ?
The iPhone ushered in a new mobile era and growing unit sales continue to generate incredible financial returns for Apple. It also generated an immediate competitive response from Google.
In 2008, Google launched Android as an alternative mobile operating system through a no-fee, open-source licensing model, providing device manufacturers and mobile carriers significant freedom and flexibility to design products while relying on manufacturers to build and promote Android devices and the carriers and other retailers to sell them to consumers.
Google?s no-fee licensing model has resulted in rapid adoption in the smartphone market such that Android is now the leading mobile operating system globally.
In fact, the Android OS accounted for 72 percent of all smartphone shipments in the third quarter of 2012. Samsung is the leading Android smartphone manufacturer by a large margin, accounting for 34 percent of global smartphone shipments in the third quarter of 2012.
While Android is now the dominant smartphone OS, the tablet market has proven more difficult to penetrate.
In the third quarter of 2012, the Apple iPad maintains a 50 percent market share, followed by Samsung at 18 percent and Amazon at 9 percent (both Samsung and Amazon use the Android OS).
The recent introduction for the holiday selling season of the iPad Mini and a slew of new Android-based tablets will make for interesting market share comparisons in January.
Apple is a manufacturer and retailer and generates revenue and a solid margin on the sale of each and every Mac, iPod, iPhone, iMac and iPad.
Google generates no direct revenue through the adoption by manufacturers of the Android OS.
On the other hand, all these devices are optimized for Google applications generating an enormous amount of consumer usage data that Google then monetizes through the sale of advertising.
Google also generates revenue through third party and direct sales of Nexus smartphones and tablets, although these Google devices are contract manufactured by third-parties.
Mobile subscriber stats ?
As noted earlier, at the close of 2011 there were approximately 6 billion mobile subscribers on a global basis. This represents a penetration rate of approximately 87 percent based on a current global population of 7 billion.
Developed countries represent 25 percent of these subscriptions with 122 percent penetration, while developing countries represent 75 percent of the subscriptions and 78 percent penetration.
Global subscribers are forecasted to grow at 5.4 percent from 2012-2016 according to Portio Research.
Smartphone and tablet subscriptions growing rapidly.
Entertainment and mobile video rules ?
There are a number of ways to express consumer behavior on mobile devices. One way is to analyze the type of traffic generated by mobile devices.
From this perspective and measuring traffic during peak period, real-time entertainment is the dominant traffic category on the mobile network, accounting for 49.9 percent of all bytes sent and received, followed by Web browsing at 16 percent and social networking at 10.5 percent.
Social networking apps typically generate far less traffic than real-time entertainment apps that stream audio and video, underscoring further their popularity and usage.
YouTube has become the dominant app on mobile networks (Netflix dominates on fixed networks) with a 28 percent aggregate traffic share, Facebook is ranked fourth with an 8 percent share and Pandora is now ranked sixth in upstream-downstream traffic usage. Facebook accounts for 15.4 percent of the upstream traffic on the mobile network, the largest single share.
How we spend our time ?
Mobile traffic is one means of identifying consumer mobile behavior, but since different apps generate greater/lesser amounts of traffic it is also important to understand how much time we spend on each app.
According to eMarketer, time spent on mobile devices has increased from 22 minutes per day in 2009 to an estimated 82 minutes a day in 2012, a nearly four times increase.
Tablets are not as mobile as smartphones ?
According to the Online Publishers Association, tablet owners are slightly older, more female and wealthier compared to smartphone owners.
The average age of a tablet owner is 34, compared to 30 for smartphones, while smartphone owners skew more male at 56 percent male ownership compared to 51 percent male ownership of tablets. Tablets are more of a shared device and less ?personal? than smartphones while the larger screen enables more multimedia consumption.
According to Nielsen data, 70 percent of consumers? time spent with tablets occurs at home. Tablets are used an average of 13.9 hours per week and more frequently at night, particularly during the 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. prime-time television viewing hours.
Forrester Research has recently reported that 85 percent of U.S. tablet owners use their devices while in front of the television, while 57 percent of smartphone and tablet owners checked email, 44 percent visited a social network and 19 percent searched for product information while watching TV.
Tablet usage behavior goes beyond interaction with the TV. Research indicates that 30 percent of tablet users actually spend more time reading news compared to before purchasing the tablet.
