BII MOBILE INSIGHTS: Cheaper Tablets Pushing IT Spend Down

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Devices Spend Growth Revised Down Due To Cheaper Tablets (Gartner via TechCrunch)
Gartner has increased its forecast for worldwide IT spending in 2013, revising its prior figure up from 3.8 percent growth to 4.2 percent higher than last year’s figure. Gartner is now forecasting that worldwide IT spending will hit $3.7 trillion in 2013.

Gartner WW IT Forecast 2013

Gartner’s forecast for worldwide devices spending (including PCs, tablets, mobile phones and printers) is expected to reach $666 billion in 2013, up 6.3 percent from 2012, but revised down from the previous forecast of $706 billion and 7.9 percent growth. Weak PC sales as well as increased competition from cheaper Android powered tablets has contributed to the reduction in its devices spending forecast. "The tablet market has seen greater price competition from Android devices as well as smaller, low-priced devices in emerging markets. It is ultimately this shift toward relatively lower-priced tablets that lowers our average selling prices forecast for 2012 through 2016, which in turn is responsible for slowing device spending growth in general, and PC and tablet spending growth in particular."

Mobile SEO: Top 7 Best Practices For Beginners Enterprise (Techno360)
Mobile SEO is the latest buzzing doing the rounds of the search industry. Recent market surveys conducted have suggested that more than 30 percent of all Internet search queries come from mobile devices. Here are a seven tips meant to boost trade prospects for mobile SEO entrepreneurs:

Understanding audience behavior before building a mobile website
Increasing the visibility quotient of a website in mobile search results
Identifying popular keywords used by mobile search users
Avoid developing apps until the creation of a credible mobile website
Creating links with other mobile sites and desktop sites that discusses mobile content
Enhancing social media profiles, images and other mobile content for mobile-specific keywords
Create and adjust mobile applications before submitting them to Android Market

It is equally important to find trustworthy information resources and periodically examine new best practices to confirm their efficiency. Since mobile search is still in the early stages of development, mobile content developers may fall prey to incorrect information supplied to them by so called experts. However, this field is also making rapid strides and has made steady progress from the rudimentary stages of development to effective marketing.

Samsung Still Rules U.S. Mobile Market (comScore via CNet)
Samsung continues to reign over the rest of the mobile-phone industry in the U.S., according to the latest stats from comScore. Looking at the three months ending with November, Samsung won 26.9 percent of all mobile subscribers in the U.S., a 1.2 point gain from the prior three-month period. Apple took home second place with 18.5 percent of the market, a gain of 1.4 points. Samsung continues to wear the crown, but its share hasn't grown much from a year ago. In contrast, Apple has slowly been rising up the ranks. For the three months ending with November 2011, Samsung's U.S. mobile share was 25.6 percent. At the same time, Apple was in fourth place with a share of just 11.2 percent.

top mobile oems nov

For the three months ended with November, 123 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones, accounting for 53 percent of all mobile-phone ownership. Check out comScore for platform figures as well.

Google+ Makes Gains Worldwide But Struggles On Mobile (WSJ)
You can't win them all. As Google integrates its popular websites with Google+, it is challenging social media leaders Facebook and Twitter in terms of unique monthly visits by PC users around the world, according to new data from comScore. Globally, Google+ had 105.1 million unique visits by PC users in October 2012, the most recent month for which comScore released data, up 60.9 percent from 65.3 million in October 2011. Facebook had 822.1 million, up 4.3 percent. At the same time, Google+ in the U.S. has seen slow adoption among mobile-device users, despite the popularity of Google’s Android operating system. On mobile, Google+ had 7 million users vs. 91.3 million for Facebook.

How Mobile Phones Could Kill The News Media (Business Insider)
Mobile devices will most likely become so advanced that they won't need a special mobile-optimized ecosystem to function. They'll just handle the Web like laptops do, and the whole mobile problem will solve itself: Phones will simply be small computers, and publishers will not need to adjust their tactics. But what if mobile does become the dominant way news is consumed by readers? A huge chunk of the Western world no longer works near a "computer" on a desk. JC Penney is switching its entire checkout staff to iPads. Most large drug companies have supplied their entire sales-forces with tablets. There are hundreds of companies doing something similar. The one thing you hear over and over again if you talk to people in the mobile ad business is that mobile right now "feels" a lot like the web did in 1996. The lesson of media history is that you don't want to be the incumbent, you want to be the challenger. It begs the question, are we on the wrong devices?

One Billion Mobile Cameras Were Shipped In 2012, 80 Percent In Smartphones (ABI Research via TNW)
Over one billion cameras were shipped in smartphones and tablets in 2012, ABI Research reports. In addition, it expects this figure to increase to 2.7 billion by 2018. These projections aren’t very surprising, since almost every smartphone shipped these days has a rear-facing camera. While this is also true of many tablets, smartphones still account for the majority of camera shipments, at 80 percent of the volume. This could also have to do with the fact that many mobile phones feature two cameras rather than one. According to ABI Research, one in three smartphones have a front-facing camera to satisfy customer demand. As cameras are becoming a standard feature on mobile phones, manufacturers are increasingly looking for new selling points. One thing is for sure: ubiquitous mobile cameras are creating new opportunities for developers and startups.

Why Mobile Video Is Set To Explode (BI Intelligence)
Mobile video has historically been held back by a single factor: bandwidth. But 4G LTE is changing that, and mobile video is already more popular on the faster wireless networks. Mobile video is quickly becoming a mass consumer phenomenon, much as digital photos were earlier in the smartphone adoption cycle. Here's why mobile video usage is set to explode:

Significant mobile device growth to come
Increase in 4G LTE accessibility
Mobile video viewing appears to be additive
Device design also helps

A recent BI Intelligence report analyzes the impact of 4G LTE and device design improvements on mobile video growth, examines who watches mobile video and how they watch it, and details the mobile video monetization opportunity.

Where’s The Money For Telcos? (GigaOM)
How are the next few years looking for telcos? Not so hot overall, according to a new forecast from Ovum. However, Ovum also reckons that there’s significant growth to be had in specific sectors. Number one for the operators is mobile broadband. Ovum predicts a very healthy 19.2 percent compound annual growth rate between now and 2016, generating $123 billion in incremental revenue during that period. We already know full well that mobile broadband revenues are in the growth phase. However, this too shall pass, and operators really need to lay the groundwork for the next stage. A stage that should really entail so-called over-the-top services, a strategic opportunity by the telcos to capture market share. But do the telcos really stand a chance in competing with nimbler upstarts such as WhatsApp and giants such as Apple that dominate other parts of the industry? The jury is out. Another interesting growth area, Ovum suggests, is that of telcos’ public cloud services.

Will 2013 Be The Year That HTML5 Takes Over? (CMS Wire)
What does 2013 hold for the future of HTML5? If predictions by industry analysts are correct, mobile will be its calling card. HTML5 phone sales are predicted to surge from 336 million units in 2011 to 1 billion units in 2013, spurred by demand from multiple hardware vendors and software developers looking for a way to develop rich media services across multiple platforms. If this sounds too good to be true, it just may be. It’s not as if HTML5 isn’t real and doesn't have great potential. It’s just that HTML5 isn't without issues. To better understand the usefulness and the issues associated with HTML5, the folks at Mavenlink created an infographic:

html5 infographic