Vevo delivered 85m mobile video streams in the US in May 2011

"Music videos service Vevo has released a Mobile Attitudes and Usage research study that examines how people are using its mobile apps – which the company says are the fastest growing segment of its service. One finding is that 79% of Vevo’s mobile users are accessing the apps in the evenings, which Vevo is understandably keen to flag to its advertising partners as a potential shift away from broadcast TV. Vevo’s mobile users are also young: 48% are aged 18-24 according to the company. The apps have been downloaded more than 7.5 million times so far, and in May, Vevo delivered 85 million mobile video streams – up 64% month-on-month. The average user spent 53 minutes using the apps in May, and the bedroom is the most common usage location – which may explain that high stat for evening viewing. 66% of Vevo’s mobile users are male while 34% are female. Vevo is promising apps for more handsets and tablets ‘imminently’, deeper social features and also features using ‘location, presence and mobility’."
Source:  Music Ally, 27th July 2011

Vinyl sales rose 55% in the UK in 2010

"Figures from the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA) show a 55% increase in sales of vinyl LPs, led by the success of Radiohead's King Of Limbs.
Sales of vinyl albums increased to 168,296 units in the first half of 2011, compared with 108,307 in the same period of 2010, despite the fact that consumers pay £16.30 for an average vinyl album compared with £7.82 for CD albums and £6.80 for digital albums.
Leading the charge for first six months of 2011 was King of Limbs which sold 20,771 copies, compared to just 1,446 copies sold by the best-selling title in the same period last year, the vinyl edition of Paul Weller’s Wake Up The Nation.
The other major contributor was April’s Record Store Day, the annual celebration of independent record shops, which features many exclusive vinyl releases."
Source:  Music Week, 27th July 2011

Baidu's Q2 Profits rose 95% Y-o-Y

"Chinese internet company Baidu today announced its unaudited financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2011. Total revenues in Q2 2011 were RMB 3.415 bln (USD 528.4 mln), a 78.4% increase from Q2 2010.
Net income in Q2 2011 was RMB 1.633 bln (USD 252.6 mln), a 95.0% increase from Q2 2010.
Online marketing revenues for Q2 2011 were RMB 3.414 bln (USD 528.3 mln), representing a 78.4% increase from Q2 2010. Baidu had approximately 298,000 active online marketing customers in Q2 2011, representing a 17.3% increase from Q2 2010 and an 8.8% increase from Q1 2011. Revenue per online marketing customer for the second quarter was approximately RMB 11,500 (USD 1,779), a 53.3% increase from Q2 2010 and a 29.2% increase from Q1 2011."
Source:  Marbridge Daily, 25th July 2011

Netflix has 25m subscribers

"Netflix hit 25 million subscribers and broke records for both its revenues and its earnings in the second quarter, but cut its earnings outlook for the next few months since it expects some fallout from its recent price hike.
The company added 1.8 million subscribers in the quarter and posted a net income of $68 million on revenues of $789 million — both records. But the quarter, which ended June 30 and was unaffected by the price increase, was a transitional one for the company. As the company noted in a letter to shareholders: “The streaming-only plan continued to gain in popularity, with nearly 75% of our new subscribers signing up for it. As a result, our average subscription price reverted to a slight quarter-over-quarter decline.”
The company also noted that “With the rapid adoption of streaming, DVD shipments for Netflix have likely peaked.”"
Source:  Mashable, 25th July 2011

35% of American adults have a smartphone

"In its first standalone measure of smartphone ownership, the Pew Internet Project finds that one third of American adults – 35% – own smartphones. The Project’s May survey found that 83% of US adults have a cell phone of some kind, and that 42% of them own a smartphone. That translates into 35% of all adults.
Our definition of a smartphone owner includes anyone who falls into either of the following two categories:
One-third of cell owners (33%) say that their phone is a smartphone.
Two in five cell owners (39%) say that their phone operates on a smartphone platform (these include iPhones and Blackberry devices, as well as phones running the Android, Windows or Palm operating systems).
Several demographic groups have high levels of smartphone adoption, including the financially well-off and well-educated, non-whites, and those under the age of 45."

Source:  Smartphone Adoption and Usage report, from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 11th July 2011

Next Generation Media - July 2011

This is another of my quarterly review presentations, looking back at key events, examples and stats from the world of digital media.

Have a look:

Next Generation Media Quarterly July 2011

View more presentations from Dan Calladine

Kickstarter has funded 10,000 projects

"On July 6th, a project called Citizen is releasing a 7” record! from a band in Toledo, Ohio, was funded by 28 backers, becoming the 10,000th successfully funded project in Kickstarter history.
Ten thousand successful projects is a big milestone. Watching projects from every corner of the creative spectrum come to life has been a wonderful thing, and to see what they've accomplished in aggregate is remarkable. Congrats to Citizen and the 9,999 other projects that made their accomplishment possible!
To celebrate, let's take a look at a few other milestones that Kickstarter has reached since our two-year anniversary post in April.
Project Statistics (current as of 7/17/2011)
Launched Projects: 26,620
Successful Projects: 10,388
Unsuccessful Projects: 13,113
Live Projects: 3,119
Success Rate: 44%"

Source:  Kickstarter blog, 19th July 2011

Note - see the full blog post for a breakdown by month, by category etc

Apple sold 20m iPhones and 9m iPads in the quarter to 25th June 2011

"Apple® today announced financial results for its fiscal 2011 third quarter ended June 25, 2011. The Company posted record quarterly revenue of $28.57 billion and record quarterly net profit of $7.31 billion, or $7.79 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $15.70 billion and net quarterly profit of $3.25 billion, or $3.51 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 41.7 percent compared to 39.1 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 62 percent of the quarter’s revenue.
The Company sold 20.34 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 142 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 9.25 million iPads during the quarter, a 183 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 3.95 million Macs during the quarter, a 14 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 7.54 million iPods, a 20 percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter."

Source:  Press release from Apple, 19th July 2011

More mobile ads are served onto Apple devices in Europe than those of any other manufacturer

"InMobi, the world’s largest independent mobile ad network, today released its monthly Mobile Insights Report: Europe Edition Q2 2011. This comprehensive report provides insights from InMobi’s network, which served over 104.9 billion mobile advertising impressions across the globe in Q2 2011, including 10.8 billion in Europe.
The report shows continued growth of impressions on Apple devices. During Q2 2011, over 2 billion ad impressions were served on Apple devices in Europe, propelling Apple past Nokia for the first time. Over the same period, Nokia devices dropped by 0.9 share points and now represent 18.7% of ads in the region. One of every five ads across Europe is now on Apple manufactured devices."

Source:  Press release from InMobi, 19th July 2011

Justin Bieber's scent Someday generated $3m in sales in one store in just 3 weeks

"What does success smell like?  Justin Bieber's Someday for women, of course.
The teen pop star's scent has raked in $3 million in sales at Macy's Herald Square in just three weeks following his frenzied appearance in New York City.
If teens and fans keep buying, the fragrance is projected to be the best seller of 2011."

Source:  New York Daily News, 15th July 2011

A new record for the number of tweets per second was set at the Women's World Cup Final

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Source:  Tweet from Twitter's official account, 17th July 2011

Nearly half of consumers in Asia Pacific intend to buy a smartphone in 2011

"Penetration of smartphones stands at more than 40 percent in Western Europe and 38 percent in the U.S. as consumers snap up the latest models and download apps. While fewer than 20 percent of Asia Pacific mobile users currently have smartphones, interest in upgrading is high: nearly half of consumers intend on buying a smartphone in 2011, according to Nielsen research.
In our recent brand surveys, iPhone was second amongst all handset brands in Vietnam in terms of top-of-mind recall, while in Indonesia BlackBerry was in fourth place, ahead of many longer established handset brands. Mind share will likely play a key role in determining which brands will do well in the region, and the iPhone and BlackBerry have much higher mind share relative to their current market positions. For example, in Malaysia, Apple and BlackBerry only have 3 percent and 1 percent share of the smartphone market respectively. But 17 percent and 11 percent of smartphone users would choose Apple and BlackBerry, respectively, as a first choice for their next phone."

Source:  Blog post by Nielsen, 12th July 2011

Over 10m people joined Google+ in just over 2 weeks

"However, the growth on Google+ has been great--and I’m excited to release some new metrics for you today
Over 10M people have joined Google+
Great achievement for the team
There’s also a ton of activity
We are seeing over 1 billion items shared and received in a single day
Our +1 button is already all over the web
It’s being served 2.3 billion times a day"
Source:  Larry Page, writing on his Google+ page, 14th July 2011
Note - The field trial of Google+ started on 29th June 2011

Scottish microbrewer BrewDog raised over £500,000 in 2 days in an online share issue

"BrewDog, the Scottish microbrewer and pub operator, has raised over £500,000 via a share issue in two days as it looks to raise £2.2m to finance a new eco-brewery and open more bars across the country.
The company, which launched in 2007, has branded the latest investment opportunity Equity for Punks and will again offer members of the public the chance to buy shares in the company online — BrewDog has made 90,000 shares available to buy in £95 packages.
BrewDog raised £750,000 in five months through a similar investment project in 2009, although this fell far short of its target of £2.3m."
Source:  The Publican's Morning Advertiser, 18th July 2011
Note - See more about how to invest here

There are more than one million registered applications on Twitter

"Application developers play a fundamental role in helping people get the best out of Twitter. As an ecosystem, we’ve just crossed one million registered applications, built by more than 750,000 developers around the world. This is up from 150,000 apps just a year ago.  A new app is registered every 1.5 seconds, fueling a spike in ecosystem growth in the areas of analytics, curation and publisher tools.
Investors and businesses are taking note. Since December 2010, more than $500 million has been invested in ecosystem companies, and more than a billion dollars has been paid out in acquisitions. This level of investment is indicative of the opportunity for developers and entrepreneurs to build successful businesses as part of the Twitter platform."
Source:  Blog post from Twitter, 11th July 2011

Pandora has 100m registered users

"Pandora, the popular internet radio service, today announced 100 million registered users and 36 million monthly active users. More than 100 million people have registered to listen to Pandora's free personalized radio service across hundreds of consumer electronic devices including computers, smart phones, TVs, set-top boxes, alarm clocks, tablets and car dashboards. On a monthly basis, 36 million listeners access Pandora across these multiple platforms as Pandora continues to increase its share of the radio listening market.
During the Company's first Analyst Day, Pandora's CEO and President Joe Kennedy noted that Pandora is redefining radio, where 80 percent of all music listening occurs. Pandora ended 2010 with 2.3 percent market share of all radio listening in the United States. Six months later, Pandora has increased its market share to 3.6 percent of all radio listening in the United States."

Source:  Press release from Pandora, 12t July 2011

Adele's album 21 is the all-time best selling digital album in the US

"Adele's second album '21' has become the biggest selling digital album of all time in the US.
The album, which is also set to return to the top of the UK album chart on Sunday (July 17), has now outsold Eminem's 'Recovery', which had previously held the record. According to US Today, '21' has now sold 1.017 million copies, compared to Eminem's 1.005 million.
Digital sales have counted for almost half of '21''s sales in the US, with a total of 2.6 million copies shifted in total."
Source:  NME, 14th July 2011

The most popular countries and cities for Google+ Users

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Source:  Data from FindPeoplePlus, retrieved 13th July 2011
Note 1 - based on analysis of nearly 950,000 users.
Note 2 - This will change substantially as the service grows, but it's a nice snapshot for the first two weeks of Google+

A third of American iPhone owners think their phone uses 4G

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"Maybe the “4” in the iPhone 4 name gives iPhone owners (34%) the false impression that they already own a 4G phone but the fact is Apple doesn’t offer a 4G phone at the moment. Coincidentally, a suspiciously large percentage of Android and BlackBerry owners may be suffering from the same delusion. BlackBerry owners (24%) are almost as confused as iPhone owners since RIM doesn’t currently offer a 4G phone. At least some Android owners could be answering correctly as Android 4G phones like the HTC Evo 4G or Samsung Infuse 4G have been available for some time. If nothing else this large number of “misinformed” phone owners serves to emphasize the fact that consumers are quite confused about 4G."

Source:  Data from Restivo, reported on their blog, 5th July 2011

Methodology:  "The Retrevo Gadgetology Report is an ongoing study of people and electronics from the consumer electronics shopping and review site Retrevo.com. The data for this report came from a study of online individuals conducted exclusively for Retrevo in June of 2011, by an independent panel. The sample size was over 1,000 distributed across gender, age, income and location in the United States. Most responses have a confidence interval of 4% at a 95% confidence level."

Doctor who was the BBC Worldwide's best selling TV programme in 2010

"The top five individual TV series sold internationally by BBC Worldwide in the year to the end of March were Doctor Who series five, the debut series of Sherlock, the 15th and 16th series of Top Gear, and Human Planet.
The Doctor Who franchise made the biggest value leap last year with revenue climbing 49%, thanks to significant growth in the US. BBC Worldwide has seen a 45% increase in DVD and download-to-own sales, with Doctor Who the third-biggest seller in the US iTunes chart behind Mad Men and Glee.
Sales also increased in Europe, moving the revenue mix to 50% from outside the UK. In the previous year 70% of revenues had come from sales of Doctor Who DVDs and merchandise in its home market.
Overall the top TV brands by revenue – when sales of all series and programme titles are combined, not just for a single series – were Top Gear, Doctor Who and Waking the Dead.
BBC Worldwide's Facebook pages for Top Gear and The Stig now have more than 11 million fans, and around 25% of traffic to topgear.com now comes via Facebook."

Source:  The Guardian, 12th July 2011

Wealthy Americans still look for bargains online

"The nation's most affluent consumers are shopping online more often than other consumers, but that doesn't mean they're heading to sites that appeal to only the wealthy.
According to Unity Marketing's most recent survey of ultra-affluent consumers (those making more than $250,000 in annual income -- the wealthiest 2% of Americans), Amazon.com is the top shopping destination for about 45% of the demographic. That is more than two to three times greater than the next-most-popular Web site, Unity Marketing's President Pam Danziger tells Marketing Daily.
"[Amazon.com] has been a cornerstone of Internet shopping since e-commerce first began and has consistently adapted to the needs of its customers in order to build a loyal following," Danziger says. "For the most discerning affluent shoppers, Amazon offers outstanding levels of customer service along with an expansive product selection."
Yet the nation's wealthiest consumers are also looking for bargains online. Fourteen percent of shoppers went to eBay, 10% used Groupon and 8% hit Craigslist.com. Wealthy shoppers are also heading to flash-sale sites such as Shopittome.com, Gilt.com, Hautelook.com and Amazon's entry into the category, MyHabit.com."
Source:  MediaPost, 7th July 2011

80% of branded mobile apps have been downloaded less than 1,000 times

"A new report from Deloitte has confirmed what many app developers know already: the majority of mobile apps commissioned by brands are failing to take smartphones by storm.
The report was based on analysis of apps published on iPhone, Android and BlackBerry by big healthcare and consumer brands. Deloitte says that less than 1% of these apps have been downloaded more than one million times, and that only 20% had been downloaded enough to be considered for its survey.
Or, to put that latter stat another way: 80% of branded apps analysed by Deloitte had been downloaded less than 1,000 times. This, despite the fact that every month, the three stores in the study generate 1.6bn downloads – 1bn for Apple's App Store, 500m for Google's Android Market and 90m for Research In Motion's BlackBerry App World.
"Brands view apps as a golden opportunity to communicate directly with consumers and in a more meaningful, long term manner," says Howard Davies, media partner at Deloitte. "When brands get it right, the returns can be huge." The problem appears to be that most are getting it wrong.
It is easy to forget that one of the first big hits on the App Store – fuelled by word of mouth – was a branded app: Carling's iPint, which racked up several million downloads in the first few months after Apple's store launched. There have been other brand-app success stories too, like the Barclaycard-branded Waterslide Extreme iPhone game, which had been downloaded more than 12.5 million times at the last count."
Source:  Data from Deloitte, reported in The Guardian, 11th July 2011

How affluent Europeans use their mobile phones

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Source:  Press release from Synovate for the 2011 EMS Survey, 14th March 2011

Note on methodology & sample - "EMS 2011 represents the highest-earning 13% of the population in 20 markets across Western and Central Europe. Refinements to the design of this, the 16th release of EMS, include consumption of media brands via mobile applications and mobile websites. This is the first year that an EMEA-wide set of data, combining results from Europe, the Middle East and Africa, has enabled at-a-glance comparisons between markets as diverse as the Czech Republic and Cameroon, mirroring the multi-region planning priorities of many advertisers. From next year, we’ll be including Turkey too."

Google's market capitalisation has risen by $16bn since the launch of Google+

"How much is social worth to Google? Investors added $20 billion to Google’s market cap the first week after the launch of Google+ on June 28. A Morgan Stanley downgrade on Friday, brought the total down to $15.8 billion because of doubts whether Google will indeed be able to capitalize on new products such as Google+. But somewhere in between there, give or take a few billion, is how much more the market thinks Google is worth than before the launch of Google+.
On June 27 (the day before the announcement), the stock closed at $482.80. It rose to a high of $546.60 on July 7, for a $20.6 billion gain to its market cap (with 322.25 million shares outstanding). Then the stock dropped to $532 at Friday’s close.
Of course there are other factors at play here (the health of Google’s core search business, the overall market, etc.). In the past week, however, the most important new event for Google was it’s latest foray into social. And even though Google+ is still in a limited beta, the market is already rewarding the serious focus on social that it represents."
Source:  Techcrunch, 10th July 2011

Over 85% of the people using Google+ are male

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Source:  SocialStatistics.com, using data from Google+ profiles, retrieved 11th July 2011
Note - this is based on a sample of nearly 18,000 users, not the full universe of Google+ users

StumbleUpon drives more web traffic to other sites in the US than any other social media site

"For months, Facebook has been the biggest social media site that drives web traffic in the United States. Those days are over– for the moment, at least.
Web discovery engine StumbleUpon is now the biggest traffic driver among social media websites in the US, according to global web analytics service StatCounter. The company unseated Facebook at the top during June 2011, according to the latest StatCounter social media data. StatCounter tracks hits to over 3 million websites, and its social media data is gathered by analyzing every hit referred by a social media site."
Source:  GigaOm, 5th July 2011

15 billion apps have been downloaded from the iTunes app store

"Apple® today announced that over 15 billion apps have been downloaded from its revolutionary App Store™ by the more than 200 million iPhone®, iPad® and iPod touch® users worldwide. The App Store offers more than 425,000 apps and developers have created an incredible array of over 100,000 native iPad apps.
“In just three years, the revolutionary App Store has grown to become the most exciting and successful software marketplace the world has ever seen,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “Thank you to all of our amazing developers who have filled it with over 425,000 of the coolest apps and to our over 200 million iOS users for surpassing 15 billion downloads.”"

Source:  Press release from Apple, 7th July 2011

80% of paid Android apps have been downloaded less than 100 times

"96 applications have been downloaded more than 5 million times in the Google Android Market. Google Maps is the only application with more than 50 million downloads in the Google Android Market, making it the all-time most popular application in this store.
20% of all free applications and 80% of all paid applications have been downloaded less than 100 times in the Google Android Market worldwide to date."

Source:  Distimo, 26th May 2011

40% of American - & 25% of British - mobile web users use mobile banking services

"Young owners of smartphones in Britain and the United States are increasingly managing their finances via their phones, checking account balances and viewing transactions, new research shows.
Consumer research by mobile web and application specialists Antenna said 40 percent of those who accessed the Internet via mobile phones or tablet computers in the U.S. were using mobile banking services.
That compared with 25 percent in Britain.
The United States was also ahead in terms of how many users were accessing banking sites via a specific mobile application created by the bank, as opposed to reaching a mobile site via a browser on the Internet.
Antenna Chief Executive Jim Hemmer told Reuters that consumers, particularly younger ones, had little loyalty for which bank they used and therefore the banks could attract more customers if they improved their offerings."
Source:  Research by Antenna, reported by Reuters, 29th June 2011

There are more than 500,000 businesses using Foursquare

"Two weeks ago, we passed a pretty big milestone on foursquare, with over 10,000,000 people in the foursquare community. Last week, we hit another one that excites us just as much: we now have over half a million merchants on foursquare."

Source:  Blog post by Foursquare, 6th July 2011

Hulu has 875,000 paying subscribers

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"The slope of Hulu Plus’s subscriber ramp is higher than we previously forecasted. We just closed our biggest month in Hulu Plus paid subscriber net additions by a healthy margin; we added more paying subscribers in June than we did in April and May combined. [This] our month-end Hulu Plus paying subscriber numbers since we exited our private beta period in November 2010. In our first 7.5 months, we are fast approaching the 1 million paying subscriber milestone (we already have over a million when including those in a one-week free trial period). We anticipate exceeding 1 million paying subscribers before the end of this summer; previously we had forecasted crossing that threshold around the end of this year. We are extremely encouraged by the ramp of this business
We have always believed that our path towards creating a special company lay in our ability to delight our customers. The key to delighting content owners rests in the economics, and Hulu Plus is already revealing our ability to compensate content owners at the high end of the market for a given body of content. Today, we proudly and profitably pay the content community approximately $8 per subscriber per month for the content offering you see today on Hulu Plus. A portion of the $8 payment to the content community comes from our $7.99 subscription fee; the balance comes from the revenue we generate through advertising. As Hulu Plus increases in scale and scope, we believe significantly more dollars in aggregate will move to the content community than has historically been the case in the industry. These economics are made possible by our ability to thrive on low margins and the unusually effective Hulu advertising service we’ve built and will continue to innovate. A very positive trend for the content community."

Source:  Blog post by Hulu, 6th July 2011

The top 10 markets for mobile barcode use in May 2011

"Top 10 users of mobile barcodes during May/2011
(1) 1. United States
(2) 2. Germany
(4) 3. United Kingdom
(3) 4. Italy
(5) 5. Canada
(6) 6. Netherlands
(7) 7. France
(8) 8. Hong Kong
(9) 9. Spain
(13) 10. Australia
() – Position in April/2011

Top 5 growing countries for May/2011
1. Australia - (74.1% Growth over April/2011)
2. Hong Kong - (43.3%)
3. United States - (39.0%)
4. France - (32.2%)
5. United Kingdom - (31.5%)"
Source:  Data from 3GVision, reported in a press release, 7th June 2011

Note - these reports do not include Japan
"Notes on reporting methodology:
-  These reports are based on the total number of QRcode, Datamatrix and UPC/EAN scans recorded by the i-nigma system during the relevant periods. Because of i‑nigma’s prominence in many markets worldwide, we believe that these numbers are likely to be indicative of global mobile barcode activity
-  The reports do not include activity in Japan, which is known to be well ahead in popularity and usage of mobile barcodes
-  For better representation of global open market trends, the reports specifically exclude the activity of i‑nigma-based solutions that are used by our vertical customers
-  Top 5 growing countries are from the top 20 countries in mobile barcodes usage during May/2011"

Facebook has more than 750m monthly active users

"Mark Zuckerberg confirmed that Facebook had surpassed 750 million monthly active users today at a product launch in Palo Alto.
He said the company had declined to announce it earlier because it’s become focused on other metrics, including how actively users are sharing information.
“Hopefully, we’ll get to a billion at some point,” he said. “I think people generally think that’s going to happen at some point.”
The announcement suggest that Facebook’s growth, at least in terms of raw monthly actives, is continuing at a linear, not exponential, pace. The company has been growing at just under 50 million monthly actives every two months since late 2009. It last said it was at 500 million monthly actives a year ago."
Source:  Inside Facebook, 6th July 2011

Internet Users & time spent by market in Europe, May 2011

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Source:  Press release from comScore Media Metrix, 6th July 2011

British artists accounted for nearly 12% of global music sales in 2010

"British artists accounted for almost 12% of global sales of recorded music during 2010, new BPI figures today revealed, as a new Ipsos MORI poll found that the vast majority (83%) of the public believe that British music’s achievements are something to be proud of.
Commenting on the findings at the BPI's 2011 AGM, held today, Chief Executive Geoff Taylor said, "Britons are rightly proud of the fact that we are global leaders in music - one in five of the Top 50 selling records released around the world last year featured British artists.  As more people consume music online, we have the opportunity to get even stronger - in March this year, UK performers held the top 3 positions in the US Billboard Chart, for the first time in 25 years.
[...]
In the biggest music market of all – America – UK acts accounted for one in 10 (9.8%) of every artist album sold in 2010, rising to one in seven (13.4%) in Canada.
In Europe, the picture remained healthy with British acts bagging around half (48.9%) of artist album sales in the UK.  A sizeable impact on share was also made in the German (17.9%) and French (14.5%) markets.
Britain’s share of sales held steady in Australia, the worlds 7th biggest market, taking one in five (20.2%) artist albums.  UK artists also accounted for a 3.8% share of total Japanese artist album sales – more than a fifth (21.8%) of international sales overall in a market dominated by local ‘J-Pop’ repertoire."

Source:  Press release from the BPI, 6th July 2011

High frequency hearing loss among American teenagers doubled between 1985 and 2008

"The always-on, always-cranked lifestyle has obvious consequences, but is it really this bad? According to recent research published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, hearing loss has essentially doubled since 1985. The results, officially released a few months ago, unsurprisingly peg MP3 players and smartphones as a major culprit.    
And the numbers are hard to look at. "High frequency hearing loss (HFHL) doubled over the 24-year period from 10.1 percent in 1985 to 19.2 percent in 2008," researching PhDs Abbey L. Berg and Yula C. Serpanos relayed after combing through decades of data.  But once data is analyzed through 2011, noticeable hearing loss among teenagers may have pushed past the 20-mark."

Source:  Data from the Journal of Adolescent Health, reported by DigitalMusicNews, 5th July 2011

Zynga has 232m monthly active users

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Source:  SEC filing by Zynga, 1st July 2011

Samsung has sold 3m Galaxy S II handsets since late April

"Samsung, the South Korean electronics giant, is about to be crowned the new leader in the mobile phone world after selling more than 3m units of its Galaxy S II smartphone since its debut in late April, and around 19m smartphones in all during the past quarter.
Analysts think that the Android-based Galaxy S II could be the company's best-selling model ever, with sales potentially hitting 20m units. Overall, the company could have captured 17% of the world smartphone in the past three months."

Source:  The Guardian, 5th July 2011

Chrome now has over 20% share

Click to enlarge (Chrome is shown in Green, IE in Blue)

Source:  StatCounter, retrieved 5th July 2011

HTC's sales nearly doubled Y-o-Y in June 2011

"Taiwan smartphone maker HTC Corp's consolidated sales for June were T$45.05 billion ($1.55 billion), up 87.8 percent from the same month a year earlier.
The monthly sales compared with T$23.991 billion a year ago and T$40.621 billion in the previous month.
The year-on-year growth rate of sales in June slowed from May's 116 percent. In January 2011, sales had grown 213 percent year on year."

Source:  Reuters, 3rd July 2011

Apple devices account for 20% of mobile ad impressions in Europe (estimate)

"The pull of Apple in mobile is undeniable, with the brand regularly leading brand surveys and the term fanboy all but synonymous with its products. Today, some stats out from the mobile advertising network InMobi shows just how much the company’s products get used for advanced mobile data services compared to other devices. On the strength of just three products—the iPhone, iPod and iPad—Apple ranks as the most popular maker on the company’s mobile ad network in Europe, beating out companies that in unit terms have much bigger market shares, like Nokia and Samsung.
The data, compiled in the month of May, charts ad impressions on the InMobi ad network, which says that it serves 35.7 billion monthly mobile advertising impressions worldwide, with 3.8 billion of those in Europe.
InMobi notes that a lot of the growth for Apple, which now has a 19.5 percent share of the market (a rise of 6.3 percent over the past three months), was led by ad impressions on the iPad. The tablet had 80 million impressions during the month in the region, making it the sixth most-popular mobile device in Europe.
Android’s share has gone down by 6.1 percent in the past three months, although it still remains the biggest mobile platform in terms of ad requests—that is, taking all Android handset makers’ impressions collectively. And iPhone still remains the single most popular device."

Source:  Data from mobile network InMobi, reported by PaidContent, 4th July 2011

More than half of new handsets bought in the US are smartphones

"Smartphones continue to grow in popularity. According to Nielsen’s May survey of mobile consumers in the U.S., 38 percent now own smartphones. And 55 percent of those who purchased a new handset in the past three months reported buying a smartphone instead of a feature phone, up from 34 percent just a year ago.
Android continues to be the most popular smartphone operating system, with 38 percent of smartphone consumers owning Android devices. However, while Android also leads among those who recently purchased a new smartphone, it is the Apple iPhone that has shown the most growth in recent months."

Source:  Data from Neilsen, reported in Nielsen Wire, 30th June 2011

Ownership of eBook readers doubled in the US in the 6 months to May 2011

"The share of adults in the United States who own an e-book reader doubled to 12% in May, 2011  from 6% in November 2010.  E-readers, such as a Kindle or Nook, are portable devices designed to allow readers to download and read books and periodicals.  This is the first time since the Pew Internet Project began measuring e-reader use in April 2009 that ownership of this device has reached double digits among U.S. adults.
Tablet computers—portable devices similar to e-readers but designed for more interactive web functions—have not seen the same level of growth in recent months.  In May 2011, 8% of adults report owning a tablet computer such as an iPad, Samsung Galaxy or Motorola Xoom.  This is roughly the same percentage of adults who reported owning this kind of device in January 2011 (7%), and represents just a 3 percentage-point increase in ownership since November 2010.  Prior to that, tablet ownership had been climbing relatively quickly."

Source:  Report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 27th June 2011

Chinese mobile microblog Yidong Weibo has 66m registered users

"Hang Guoqiang, head of China Mobile's mobile internet base and general manager of Guangdong Mobile's data division operations center, recently disclosed that as of May 2011, registered users of the operator's Yidong Weibo ("Mobile Microblog," formerly 139 Shuike) microblogging platform reached 65.85 mln, with monthly active users reaching 14.8 mln, and daily postings reaching 2 mln."

Source:  Sohu IT, via Marbridge Daily, 4th July 2011

Top Trending Topics for H1 2011

And, here are the top Trending Topics for the first half of 2011, divided into the two most popular categories:

World events/News
AH1N1 - Swine Flu
Mubarak - former Egyptian President
Easter - Christian holiday
Cairo - capital of Egypt
#prayforjapan - sentiment following the March earthquake and tsunami
Chernobyl - site of nuclear disaster in 1986
Libia/Libya - site of an ongoing civil war
Fukushima - Japanese nuclear power plant
William & Kate - Newly-named Duke and Duchess of Cambridge
Gadafi - Libyan political leader

Pop culture
Rebecca Black - pop singer
Femme Fatale - newly-released Britney Spears album
Charlie Sheen - actor
#tigerblood - hashtag popularized by Charlie Sheen
Nate Dogg - rapper
Anderson Silva - Brazilian mixed martial artist
Tom & Jerry - famous cartoon
Mumford & Sons - British rock band
Bieber alert - referring to artist Justin Bieber
Queen Gaga - referring to artist Lady Gaga
Source:  Twitter blog, 30th June 2011

Twitter users send 200m tweets a day

"Halfway through 2011, users on Twitter are now sending 200 million Tweets per day. For context on the speed of Twitter’s growth, in January of 2009, users sent two million Tweets a day, and one year ago they posted 65 million a day."

Source:  Twitter blog, 30th June 2011

The HBO Go app has been downloaded 3m times

"If you don't believe cord cutting exists and that there isn't any competition between Netflix and cable programmers, then you needn't read on.
If on the other hand, you at least see the potential for Netflix to some day snatch customers away from the cable guys, then take note: this weekend HBO expects to see the 3 millionth download of the HBO Go app, which debuted on May 2, a company spokesman told CNET. There are 28 million HBO subscribers in the United States so the 3 million downloads would indicate that roughly 10 percent of the company's audience has tried out the app.
That's pretty good when you consider not all cable providers offer it (you listening Time Warner Cable?). The 3 million mark could be surpassed today at 9 p.m. during the season premiere of the popular vampire romp "True Blood."
HBO is dangling a carrot for "True Blood" followers to download the app, which enables subscribers of the premium cable network to watch more than 1,400 shows on iPads, iPhones, and Android devices. HBO Go users will get to watch next week's episode directly following the season premiere tonight.
The app, which has been applauded by critics as well as users, saw 1 million downloads in its first week. A big part of the app's success, beyond the slick way it organizes the material and the high quality of the stream, is the vast amount of content available. This isn't Hulu Plus, which skimps on the number of back episodes it offers from popular shows. HBO doubled down on HBO Go and gives a user access to everything in the vault, which conceivably risks sales of DVD box sets."

Source:  Cnet, 26th June 2011