Got a cell phone? You're probably online with it, says Pew

Pew reporting:
If you're trying to engage your community with digital news and information: they're on their phones. You should be there, too. This week, a new report from Pew Internet underscores the importance of putting mobile first in engaging almost any community.
Pew found that nearly two thirds of U.S. adults now use their cell phone to go online -- nearly double the proportion since 2009. Furthermore, one in five cell phone owners report that their cell phone is their primary access to the internet.
…And that's in reference to all kinds of cell phones, including feature phones (many of which support e-mail and web access). When focusing only on the 56% of U.S. adults who currently own a smartphone, the vast majority (93%) of smartphone owners use their phone to go online.
Pew defines "cell internet users" as anyone who uses their cell phone to access the internet or use e-mail. Pew found that one third of all cell internet users rely mostly on their phone to access the internet (as opposed to other devices like a desktop, laptop, or tablet computer).
Pew did not specify whether "accessing the internet" means only accessing websites and e-mail, or whether it also includes using apps that deliver information transmitted via the internet -- something that many apps do, especially for news and information.
Some demographic highlights about cell internet users from the Pew report:
http://www.knightdigitalmediacenter.org/blogs/agahran/2013/09/got-smartphone-youre-probably-online-it-says-pew

Surprise: Android tops iOS for device satisfaction and brand loyalty

TabTimes reporting:

If you think the iPad and the iPhone are the undisputed champions of the tablet and smartphone, it’s time to think again. In the space of a week, two new studies claim that it is Android which now attracts greater user satisfaction and brain loyalty.

The first of these reports came from media brand researcher Brand Keys, which indicated that Samsung and Amazon are now beginning to overhaul Apple for brand loyalty in both the smartphone and tablet markets.
The firm even spelled out in its 2013 Brand Keys Customer Loyalty Engagement Index how Apple’s brand loyalty is slipping, paying particularly close attention to Samsung’s increasing market share in the smartphone space.
 “It is an enormous switch-over,” Robert Passikoff, president of the New York-based Brand Keys, told Mobile Marketer. “The more personal aspects beyond just connectivity are becoming the important emotional engagement factors and that, generally speaking, brands that cannot do that are not going to be at the top of the list...
...On Device Research carried out a study of 93,825 U.S. mobile users between July of last year and January 2013 and discovered that Apple’s iPhone 5 only ranked as the fifth best smartphone, a result which led the iOS device trailing four Android-powered models.

Users were asked to rank their smartphone between 1 ( “very unsatisfied” ) and 10 (“very satisfied”), and while the iPhone 5 scored respectively (8.23), it was still leapfrogged by the Samsung Galaxy Note 2 (8.26), the HTC Rebound 4G (8.32), the Motorola Droid Razr (8.5) and Motorola Atrix HD (8.57).
Announcing the results in London today, the researcher also highlighted that 4G smartphone owners are more likely to be satisfied with their device, and told TabTimes that the iPhone 5's relatively poor showing was down to the battery life, maps on iOS 6 and -- more surprisingly -- the size of the device, a sign perhaps of increasing demand for bigger smartphones....
http://tabtimes.com/news/ittech-stats-research/2013/02/08/surprise-android-tops-ios-device-satisfaction-and-brand

Forget The Smartphone, Forget The Tablet – The 'Phablet' Is THE Gadget Of 2013

Business Insider reporting:
SINGAPORE/HONG KONG (Reuters) - Call it phablet, phonelet, tweener or super smartphone, but the clunky mobile phone - closer in size to a tablet than the smartphone of a couple of years back - is here to stay.
A surprise hit of 2012, it is drawing in more users, more handset makers and is shaping the way we consume content.
"We expect 2013 to be the Year of the Phablet," said Neil Mawston, UK-based executive director of Strategy Analytics' global wireless practice.
While Samsung Electronics Co Ltd has blazed a trail with its once-mocked Galaxy Note devices, now other manufacturers are scurrying to catch up.
At this week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Chinese telecommunications giants ZTE Corp and Huawei Technologies Co Ltd will launch their own.
ZTE, which collaborated with Italy's designer Stefano Giovannoni for the Nubia phablet, is scheduled to launch its 5-inch Grand S, while Huawei brings out the Ascend Mate, sporting a whopping 6.1-inch screen, making it only slightly smaller than Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet.
"Users have realized that a nearly 5-inch screen smartphone isn't such a cumbersome device," said Joshua Flood, senior analyst at ABI Research in Britain.
Driving the phablet's shift to the mainstream is a confluence of trends. Users prefer larger screens because they are consuming more visual content on mobile devices than before, and using them less for voice calls - the phablet's weak spot.
And as WiFi-only tablets become more popular, so has interest among commuters in devices that combine the best of both, while on the move.
According to the latest Ericsson Mobility Report, the monthly data traffic for every smartphone will rise fourfold between now and 2018 to 1,900 megabytes

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/forget-the-smartphone-forget-the-tablet--the-phablet-is-the-gadget-of-2013-2013-1#ixzz2HOwMMw00

Android Takes Majority Smartphone Share Across Western Europe

eMarketer reporting:
Google’s smartphone OS efforts have already panned out in Germany, and that success extends to the country’s neighbors as well. June 2012 data from Kantar Worldpanel showed Android taking a strong hold on smartphones sales in Western Europe during the previous 12 weeks. The Android operating system ran on the majority of smartphones sold in four of the EU-5 countries—Great Britain, France, Germany and Spain. And in Italy, the fifth country in the group, Android held 49.6% of the market, just shy of a majority share. One year earlier, Android accounted for under 50% of sales in each of those countries during the three-month period.
In Spain, Google has made a particularly successful bid to become the first name in the smartphone market. The country saw Android’s share of the market more than double from 41% in June 2011 to 84% one year later.

Read more at http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1009252&ecid=a6506033675d47f881651943c21c5ed4#RQZ9VpLwWd8MdlMi.99

Mobile Ads Drive Purchases on PCs

eMarketer reporting:  
Smartphone, tablet owners prefer to fire up a PC to purchase after seeing a mobile ad

One way to view smartphones is as a direct-response tool that consumers carry around in their pockets. Viewing an outdoor ad, for example, smartphone owners can act immediately via mobile to show interest or make a purchase. Yet while this behavior does occur, research shows that smartphone and tablet users who see ads on their mobile devices are more likely to act on those ads via the desktop.
July research from Nielsen indicated that 22% of US smartphone users had made an online purchase via PC after seeing a mobile ad, more than quadruple the percentage who had purchased on their phone. Notably, tablet users were even more likely to buy something on a PC after seeing an ad on their device. Given that tablets have a large-enough screen size and are more commonly used at home than out and about, users’ reasons for switching to the desktop to make a purchase suggest discomfort with mobile purchases, even when the individual isn’t on the go, or the possibility that retail sites are not well-optimized for tablet viewing or utilization.

Some smartphone and tablet users did report taking direct action on their mobile devices, such as clicking to view full product offerings. Tablet users were more likely than smartphone users to report interacting with ads in any way.

Read more at http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1009224&ecid=a6506033675d47f881651943c21c5ed4#t107PKy8iPmr3crR.99

Advertisers: Tailor Mobile Approaches For Smartphones, Tablets

online media daily reporting:
As smartphones and tablets have spread quickly in the last two years, some clear differences have emerged in usage. People turn to tablets mainly at home, while smartphones are used on the go, as well as at home. Tablets lend themselves to “lean-back” media consumption, while smartphones are geared to utility.
The differences in how the devices are used, and who’s using them, impact how advertisers should approach them, according to a new Forrester report. It lays out separate marketing tactics for tablets and smartphones across a range of areas, including apps, display advertising, games and search.
The main message is not to lump them together as mobile platforms, but tailor mobile initiatives according to the relative strengths of each device. That means marketers should not count on building one app for both screens. The report points out that Citi’s Private Banking app, for example, is geared to the tablet, since it offers deep market analysis better suited to reading at leisure on a bigger screen.
Robitussin’s Relief Finder app, by contrast, is designed for smartphones because people use it to find relevant products while browsing store shelves. The same goes for mobile Web sites. Marketers should not try to send smartphone traffic to a site not optimized for mobile, or tablet traffic to a site geared to mobile phones.
“For example, a tablet user viewing a site designed for smartphones can’t click to call and probably doesn’t need driving directions, but is interacting with a larger display that can therefore feature more content and controls,” noted the report authored by Forrester analyst Elizabeth Shaw. Without matching the experience to the device, marketing opportunities are missed.
When it comes to search, mobile is expected to contribute 25% paid search this year, according to a Marin Software estimate. But Forrester advises a separate search strategy for smartphones and tablets. Because the form has smaller screens and are used more on-the-go, search ads should be kept simple, with features likes site links, local offers and click-to-call. Ads on tablets are better suited to features like click-to-download because of their larger screens and lean-back use at home.

Read more: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/171367/advertisers-tailor-mobile-approaches-for-smartpho.html?edition=45159#ixzz1qbYuOGTO

Report: The Rise of Smartphones, Apps and the Mobile Web

Nielsen reporting:
Nielsen’s State of the Media: The Mobile Media Report provides a snapshot of the current mobile media landscape and audiences in the U.S. and highlights the potential power of mobile commerce in the near future.
Key findings:

• The majority of 25-34 and 18-24 year olds now own smartphones (64% and 53% respectively);
• The majority of smartphone owners (62%) have downloaded apps on their devices and games are the top application category used in the past 30 days;
• The number of smartphone subscribers using the mobile Internet has grown 45 percent since 2010;
• 87 percent of app downloaders (those who have downloaded an app in the past 30 days) have used deal-of-the-day websites like Groupon or Living Social;
• Younger groups text the most. In Q3, teens 13-17 sent and received the most text messages (an average of 3,417 each month).
• http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/report-the-rise-of-smartphones-apps-and-the-mobile-web/ 

Gartner: Android Now Over 50 Percent Of Smartphone Sales, The Rest Decline

paidcontent reporting:

Android may have some shortcomings, but Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has made enormous advances with manufacturers in terms of getting its OS on their smartphones, and in subsequently getting consumers to buy them. According to figures out today from Gartner, more than 50 percent of all smartphones bought by consumers in Q3 were built on the Android OS. That growth has been at all other platforms’ expense: the figures indicate that every other smartphone platform has declined in marketshare over a year ago.

Android’s current share of 52 percent is a big gain on last year when it only had 25.3 percent of sales. But as you can see from the table below, Android’s gains are outstripping the growth of the overall smartphone market, which is up by 42 percent to total sales of 115 million units.

That’s not the case for another big handset maker, Apple: Although iOS grew in actual unit terms by some four million devices, Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) has actually lost market share to Android overall. It accounted for 15 percent of handset sales compared to 16.6 percent in Q3 2010. RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) saw a similar decline but on a smaller scale, its sales grew by 200,000 devices but it still lost about four percent of its market share in sales.
Gartner includes Samsung’s feature phone OS, bada, in its smartphone category (a sign of things to come from Samsung, perhaps?). It was the only other OS besides Android in the rankings that saw a gain in market share, up to 2.2 percent from its previous share of 1.1 percent, as sales more than doubled to 2.5 million units in the quarter.
Meanwhile, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), Symbian and “others” (covering webOS) all declined both in sales and market share.
http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-gartner-android-now-over-50-percent-of-smartphone-sales-the-rest-declin/