Thursday 30 January 2014

53% of Facebook's advertising revenue comes from mobile

"Revenue from advertising was $2.34 billion, a 76% increase from the same quarter last year.
Mobile advertising revenue represented approximately 53% of advertising revenue for the fourth quarter of 2013, up
from approximately 23% of advertising revenue in the fourth quarter of 2012.
Payments and other fees revenue was $241 million for the fourth quarter of 2013."
Source:  Q4 2013 Earnings release from Facebook, 29th January 2013
Full details of earnings here

Facebook has 945 million mobile monthly active users

"Revenue for the full year 2013 was $7.87 billion, an increase of 55% year-over-year.
Income from operations for the full year 2013 was $2.80 billion.
Net income for the full year 2013 was $1.50 billion.
Free cash flow for the full year of 2013 was $2.85 billion.
Daily active users (DAUs) were 757 million on average for December 2013, an increase of 22% year-over-year.
Mobile DAUs were 556 million on average for December 2013, an increase of 49% year-over-year.
Monthly active users (MAUs) were 1.23 billion as of December 31, 2013, an increase of 16% year-over-year.
Mobile MAUs were 945 million as of December 31, 2013, an increase of 39% year-over-year."
Source:  Q4 2013 Earnings release from Facebook, 29th January 2013
Full details of earnings here

Tuesday 28 January 2014

WhatsApp has more than 400m monthly active users

"Today, we’re proud to announce that because of you, WhatsApp has reached a milestone that no other mobile messaging service has achieved: 400 million monthly active users, with 100 million active users added in the last four months alone. This isn’t a count of people who just registered for WhatsApp – it’s the number of people who are actively using the service every single month.
When we say that you made this possible, we mean it. WhatsApp has just 50 employees, and most of us are engineers. We’ve arrived at this point without spending a dollar on targeted ads or big marketing campaigns. We’re here because of all the people who share their WhatsApp stories with co-workers, friends, and loved ones – stories we love to hear."

Apple sold 51m iPhones and 26m iPads in Q1 2014

"Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2014 first quarter ended December 28, 2013. The Company posted record quarterly revenue of $57.6 billion and quarterly net profit of $13.1 billion, or $14.50 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $54.5 billion and net profit of $13.1 billion, or $13.81 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 37.9 percent compared to 38.6 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 63 percent of the quarter’s revenue.
The Company sold 51 million iPhones, an all-time quarterly record, compared to 47.8 million in the year-ago quarter. Apple also sold 26 million iPads during the quarter, also an all-time quarterly record, compared to 22.9 million in the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 4.8 million Macs, compared to 4.1 million in the year-ago quarter."

Friday 24 January 2014

Social, Digital & Mobile in APAC


Netflix has over 44 million subscribers

"Online movie and TV streaming service Netflix announced it had over 44 million subscribers worldwide by the end of last year, and revealed on Wednesday that profits had risen more than fivefold.
The company, which delivers DVDs by mail as well as offering movies and TV shows online, had about 33.4 million paying subscribers in the US by the end of the fourth quarter and expects to add 2.25 million more in the current quarter.
Internationally Netflix ended the fourth quarter with more than 9.7 million paid members, adding about 1.7 million over the quarter. It expects to add another 1.6 million in the current quarter. Netflix said this year it planned to "embark on a substantial European expansion".
Profits for the quarter were $48.4m, up from $7.9m a year earlier. Revenue climbed 24% to $1.18bn, above analyst estimates. Shares soared 15% in after-hours trading."

Monday 20 January 2014

There are more than 500 million mobile internet users in China

"China's internet user base reached 618 mln in 2013, up 53.58 mln from the end of 2012, according to the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC). Internet penetration reached 45.8% in 2013, up 3.7 percentage points from the end of 2012.
China had over 500 mln mobile internet users at the end of 2013, up 80.09 mln from the end of 2012. The percentage of internet users accessing the internet through a mobile handset increased to 81.0% during the period, up from 74.5% at the end of 2012. Among 2013 internet users, 69.7% used desktop computers to access the internet, down 0.8 percentage points from the end of 2012. 44.1% of internet users accessed the internet through laptop computers, down 1.8 percentage points from 2012.
Rural residents accounted for 28.6% of China's internet users during the year, or 177 mln people, an increase of approximately 21.01 mln users from the end of 2012. China's village-level internet penetration rate was 27.5% in 2013. The internet penetration rate in Chinese towns was 62.0%.
The percentage of internet users between the ages of 20 and 29 was 31.2%, up 0.9 percentage points from 2012. The percentage of internet users with monthly incomes between RMB 2,001 and RMB 3,000 was 17.8%. The percentage of internet users with monthly incomes between RMB 3,001 and RMB 5,000 was 15.8%. The percentage of internet users with monthly incomes of RMB 500 or less was 20.8%."
Source:  CNNIC, via Marbridge Consulting, 16th hJanuary 2014

95% of the world's ATMs run on Windows XP

"Inside every ATM casing is a computer, and like all such devices, each one runs on an OS. Microsoft’s 12-year-old Windows XP dominates the ATM market, powering more than 95 percent of the world’s machines and a similar percentage in the U.S., according to Robert Johnston, a marketing director at NCR (NCR), the largest ATM supplier in the U.S."
Source:  Bloomberg, 16th January 2014

Uber drivers take an estimated $1 billion a year in bookings

"Today, Valleywag got its hands on leaked screenshots of Uber’s dashboard, along with a series of numbers from two weeks ago that show raw revenue, signups, active clients and ride request/completion ratios.  TechCrunch has verified with a source that this is Uber’s official dashboard.
TechCrunch also contacted Uber, who said that they would ‘take action’ against the leaker. They did not deny the authenticity of the screenshots and numbers.
The numbers span a period of between mid-October and mid-November of 2013 and allow us to form a picture, though incomplete, of Uber’s income and user statistics over the period. According to our calculations based on the information laid out in the dashboard screenshots — and assuming some similarity in numbers for the rest of the year — the car service should be pulling in over $1B a year in gross bookings. At a rough 20% cut, a figure Valleywag notes Kalanick has alluded to, that would place Uber’s slice of the revenue around $213M a year."

Wednesday 15 January 2014

Facebook pages 'Liked' that are most likely to predict high or low IQ


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Source:  Academic research - Private traits and attributes are predictable from digital records of human behavior, by Michal Kosinskia,1, David Stillwella, and Thore Graepelb, approved on 12th February 2013

Weekly social network usage on smartphones by age in developed markets


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Source:  Deloitte's Technology, Media and Telecommunications Predictions 2014, published 14th January 2014

Weekly smartphone messaging usage by age in developed markets


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Source:  Deloitte's Technology, Media and Telecommunications Predictions 2014, published 14th January 2014

Smartphone penetration by age in developed markets



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Source:  Deloitte's Technology, Media and Telecommunications Predictions 2014, published 14th January 2014

The accuracy of predicting various personality aspects based on Facebook 'Likes'


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Source:  Academic research - Private traits and attributes are predictable from digital records of human behavior, by Michal Kosinskia,1, David Stillwella, and Thore Graepelb, approved on 12th February 2013

(For example - you can predict gender with 93% certainty based on which pages have been 'liked')

The number of SMSs sent in the UK fell in 2013 (estimate)

"For many of us it will feel the end of an era: last year for the first time ever the number of text messages sent in the UK fell, with internet messaging services such as WhatsApp and iMessage continuing to overtake the traditional format.
The number of texts sent using the Short Message Service (SMS) dropped from 152 billion in 2012 to 145bn in 2013, according to estimates from Deloitte, whilst the number of messages sent using internet-connected services was thought to have risen from 57bn in 2012 to 160bn in 2013."

Tuesday 14 January 2014

Growth in mobile app use in 2013 across different categories


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Source:  Data from Flurry, reported in their blog, 13th January 2014

Google bought Nest Labs for $3.2 billion

"Google is buying Nest Labs for $3.2 billion.
Nest Labs makes Internet-connected thermostats and smoke detectors.
It was founded by Tony Fadell, the guy most responsible for the iPod after Steve Jobs.
It's incredible to think that he's going to be working for Google considering Apple and Google are bitter enemies.
Fadell founded Nest two years ago. There were reports that he was looking at raising a fresh round of funding. Looks like he decided to sell instead. Nest had raised $230 million in funding to date. Google Ventures was one of its biggest backers."

Monday is the most popular day of the week to access online porn

"Monday is apparently the most popular day to access porn - that's a trend consistent worldwide from the UK, the US, Germany and France to Brazil and Mexico. Japan bucks the trends though; porn users there prefer to visit the site on a Saturday.
The biggest month for porn search worldwide is January. Japan turns out to be an exception again though, users there tend to search more porn in November while in Mexico it's March."

Monday 13 January 2014

Xiaomi sold 150,000 smartphones on WeChat in less than 10 minutes

"Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi has just sold 150,000 units of its latest flagship device, the Mi-3, in under 10 minutes – using only a chat app: Tencent-owned WeChat.
The company announced that the Mi-3 sold out in 9 minutes 55 seconds on WeChat, via its Sina Weibo official account. This partnership between Xiaomi and WeChat proves that WeChat has much potential to be an e-commerce platform — after all the entire process, from reserving the device to purchasing it, took place within the messaging app."

Tesco sold nearly 400,000 Hudl tablets in the UK in 3 months

"Tesco has revealed that its own-brand Hudl tablet sold nearly 400,000 units in the three months that it was available up to the end of 2013. Upon its launch, the device was dismissed as a cheap alternative to Apple’s well-established market leading iPad, but with the news that over half of Britons now have access to a tablet, it seems the Hudl has been something of a success.
Joining the likes of Amazon and Argos in offering a low-cost, basic Android tablet device, the Hudl went on sale in September for £119."

Samsung's Smart TV platform has over 1 million weekly users in the UK

"Samsung has announced that its UK Smart TV platform has more than 1 million unique weekly users.
The manufacturer had a market share of 50% of Smart TV sales during 2013. Unsurprisingly, it is the headline apps ITV Player, 4OD, Netflix, LoveFilm, Skype and BBC iPlayer that are the most
 popular"
Note - if we assume that there are about 25m homes in the UK and that about 75% have broadband (say 17.5m) then over 5% of UK broadband homes use the Samsung Smart TV platform)
Note 2 - I'm assuming that the '1m user' figure relates to households, not individuals

An estimated 927 people own half of all Bitcoins

"Ownership of Bitcoin appears to be highly lopsided.
This has long been a source of consternation in the Bitcoin community, and people like the FT's Izabella Kaminska have written extensively about the implications of this apparent cartel on prices — basically, they get to dictate them, and the rest of us are just price takers.
Now Finnish entrepreneur Risto Pietilä, an active member of on Bitcointalk.org, has offered an estimate of just how severe this ownership imbalance could be.
He based his calculations on data from Bitcoinrichlist.com, which has trawled through Bitcoin's master ledger — the Blockchain — to offer a rough guide to distribution as well as activity on Bitcoin exchanges.
We ran the calculations by Martti Malmi, one of Bitcoin's earliest developers, and he agreed they were basically sound. "The order of magnitude seems right," he said in an email to BI.
So, as of Dec. 3., using a price of $1,000 (which is basically where we are now), and assuming 12 million Bitcoins in circulation, here's the breakdown: 47 individuals own 28.9% of the approximately 12 million Bitcoins in existence so far. Another 880 own 21.5%, meaning 927 people control half of the entire market cap of the digital currency. Another 10,000 individuals control about a quarter. And the rest of us (around a million of us) get the crumbs (500,000 are out of circulation, whether through government seizure or people losing their passwords)."

iPlayer daily requests by device


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(Figures up the side are millions of requests for each day)
Source:  Blog post by Dan Taylor, Head of BBC iPlayer, 7th January 2014

The final episode of Sherlock series 3 generated over 375,000 Tweets

19 of the 20 Premier League clubs use Prozone

"Today, 19 of the 20 Premier League teams use Prozone. Each has its own team of performance analysts and data scientists looking for the indicators that quantify player performance, the events that determine matches and trends that characterise seasons. They are scientists dissecting the world's most popular game, looking at data from Prozone and other sources to understand what dictates the difference between winning and losing. In the environment of the multimillion-pound Premier League, clubs don't just want a competitive advantage, they need it."

Friday 10 January 2014

Global Digital & Mobile Stats Presentation


Pizza Hut sold more than $1 million worth of pizzas on Xbox 360 in 4 months

"Expect more pizza ordering options on your video game consoles, based on the success of Pizza Hut's Xbox 360 app that launched last year. Within the first four months of the Pizza Hut app's existence, it did more than $1 million in business through Xbox Live, the company said.
"It's been a source of unbelievable growth for us," said Doug Terfehr, director of public relations for Pizza Hut, in an interview with Polygon. "Just the explosion of people who wanted to download it, experiment with it, play with it with Kinect. As soon as we did one, everyone was contacting us to do the next [one]."
Pizza Hut reps wouldn't say when it would pursue another game console app on, say, Xbox One or any of the PlayStation or Nintendo platforms, saying, "Conversations continue to be ongoing with us. Wherever you are, we want to be.""

Nearly 20% of non-food items were bought online in the UK in December 2013

"A record amount of online shopping was done in December 2013, says the British Retail Consortium (BRC).
Close to one in five non-food items was bought online last month, according to the BRC survey.
There was also a 19.2% growth in internet purchases from a year earlier, the fastest increase in four years.
However, UK retail sales in total rose by just 0.4% on a like-for-like basis. The BRC said the figures represented a "respectable overall result".
Retail sales growth is being driven by the click of a mouse, rather than the ring of the tills”
Online trading in general represented 18.6% of total non-food sales for the final month of 2013, an increase from 16.5% a year earlier.
The BRC's director general, Helen Dickinson, said retailers had invested in their websites and improved delivery times, and added that the surge in the popularity and use of smartphones and tablets had also contributed to the rise in online retailing.
She also highlighted multichannel offerings by some retailers as one of the key factors over Christmas."

The first episode of Sherlock series 3 was seen by 3.5 million people on iPlayer

"A quarter of television viewers are now watching their favourite dramas on catch-up services, it has emerged, as Sherlock becomes the most-watched programme after initial broadcast ever.
The television show gained an extra 3.5 million viewers from recordings and on the BBC’s iPlayer, beating Downton Abbey to become the highest catch-up audience in history.
The New Years’ Day episode, which revealed how Sherlock faked his own death, has now received a total of 13 million viewers, once the newly announced consolidated figures have been taken into account.
The record had previously been held by the 2011 Downton Abbey Christmas special, which saw character Matthew Crawley propose to Lady Mary and received 3.15million views after its initial broadcast on ITV.
A breakdown of the top ten shows to be watched by audiences from recordings or on digital catch-up services suggests around a quarter of viewers now prefer to take advantage of the service."

Thursday 9 January 2014

Amazon customers ordered 36.5 million items on Cyber Monday 2013

"Amazon today announced a record-setting holiday season for Amazon Prime, the annual membership program offering unlimited Free Two-Day Shipping on millions of items. More than one million customers around the world became new Prime members in the third week of December. On Amazon’s peak shipping day, more Prime items were shipped worldwide than ever before. The entire 2013 holiday season was the best ever for Amazon, with more than 36.8 million items ordered worldwide on Cyber Monday, which is a record-breaking 426 items per second, and millions of customers unwrapped Kindle e-readers and Kindle Fire tablets this holiday season.
“Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims: Time-Travel Adventures with Exceptional Americans”
“Amazon Prime membership continues to grow, and we now have tens of millions of members worldwide. They benefit from all-you-can-eat free two-day shipping on millions of eligible items and our members have a voracious appetite,” said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com. “We are extremely grateful to our customers around the world and wish everyone the very best for the coming year."

Kindle and Amazon Digital Media Facts:
Cyber Monday holiday shopping weekend was the best ever for Kindle Fire tablets and Kindle e-readers.
With thousands of Tech Advisors on call Christmas Day, Amazon beat its goal for the Mayday button response time—the average response time was just 9 seconds.
Amazon’s digital media selection grew to more than 27 million movies, TV shows, songs, magazines, books, audiobooks, and popular apps and games in 2013.
Prime Instant Video selection increased from 33,000 to more than 40,000 movies and TV episodes in 2013. Amazon Instant Video now includes more than 150,000 movies and TV episodes.
Prime Instant Video is the exclusive online-only subscription home for hundreds of TV seasons including PBS series “Downton Abbey” and “Mr. Selfridge,” the CBS summer blockbuster series “Under the Dome” and other hit TV shows including “Justified,” “Falling Skies,” “Grimm,” “Vikings,” “Workaholics,” “Suits” and “Covert Affairs.” Prime Instant Video also offers an exclusive collection of kids shows from Nickelodeon and Nick Jr. that customers won’t find on any other online-only subscription service, including favorites like “SpongeBob SquarePants,” “Dora the Explorer,” “Team Umizoomi,” “Blue’s Clues,” and “The Bubble Guppies.”
Amazon’s first original series “Alpha House” and “Betas” can also be found exclusively on Prime Instant Video.
Selection in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library in 2013 grew from 250,000 books to more than 475,000 books—books that Kindle owners with a Prime membership can borrow for free with no due dates.
More than 200,000 exclusive books were added to the Kindle store in 2013.
The most gifted Kindle book during the holiday season was “Sycamore Row” by John Grisham.
150 Kindle Direct Publishing authors each sold more than 100,000 copies of their books in 2013. Top sellers this year include “Hopeless” by Colleen Hoover and “Wait for Me” by Elisabeth Naughton.
The best-selling Kindle Direct Publishing author during the holiday season was H.M. Ward.
Kindle Direct Publishing authors sold hundreds of thousands of books in November through the new Kindle Countdown Deals.
Amazon Appstore selection worldwide more than doubled in 2013 – there are now more than 100,000 apps and games in the Amazon Appstore and on Kindle Fire devices.

Holiday Fun Facts:
Shipping:
Amazon shipped to 185 countries this holiday.
The last Prime One-Day Shipping order that was delivered in time for Christmas was placed on Dec. 23 at 10:22 p.m. PST and shipped to Carlsbad, California. The item was a Beautyrest Cotton Top Mattress Pad.
The last Local Express Delivery order that was delivered in time for Christmas went to Everett, Washington. It was a Plantronics Audio 655 USB Multimedia Headset in Frustration Free Packaging ordered at 12:26 p.m. PST on Christmas Eve and delivered at 3:56 p.m. PST that same day.
Amazon.com shipped enough items with Prime this holiday to deliver at least one gift to every household in America.
Prime was so popular this holiday, that Amazon limited new Prime membership signups during peak periods to ensure service to current members was not impacted by the surge in new membership.
Customer Purchases:
On Cyber Monday, customers ordered more than 36.8 million items worldwide, which is a record-breaking 426 items per second.
More than half of Amazon customers shopped using a mobile device this holiday."
[continues]
Source:  Press release from Amazon, 26th December 2013

73% of online American adults use social networking sites

"Some 73% of online adults now use a social networking site of some kind.1 Facebook is the dominant social networking platform in the number of users, but a striking number of users are now diversifying onto other platforms. Some 42% of online adults now use multiple social networking sites. In addition, Instagram users are nearly as likely as Facebook users to check in to the site on a daily basis. These are among the key findings on social networking site usage and adoption from a new survey from the Pew Research Center’s Internet Project."
Source:  Pew Internet & American Life Project, 30th December 2013

Reddit had 731m unique visitors and 56bn page views in 2013

"2013 Overall reddit Stats (approximate)
56 billion page views
731 million Unique Visitors
An Average Visit Duration of 15 min 55 sec
40,855,032 posts
404,603,286 comments
3,676,091,578 comment votes
3,037,413,635 link votes
6.7 billion total votes

Top Ten Countries by Unique Visitors (monthly)
1. United States 48,533,932
2. Canada 7,415,650
3. United Kingdom 6,164,527
4. Australia 2,847,846
5. Germany 2,143,252
6. Japan 1,015,365
7. Sweden 988,575
8. Netherlands 940,352
9. France 892,128
10. Brazil 811,757"

Source:  Reddit blog, 31st December 2013
(Lots more stats listed in the blog post)

In 2013 3 million people pledged $480m to Kickstarter Projects


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Source:  Kickstarter's review of 2013, published 8th January 2014
(Lots more stats on their site - click on the link)

Wednesday 8 January 2014

Over $10 Billion was spent in Apple's App Store in 2013

"Apple today announced that customers spent over $10 billion on the App Store in 2013, including over $1 billion in December alone. App Store customers downloaded almost three billion apps in December making it the most successful month in App Store history. Apple’s incredible developers have now earned $15 billion on the App Store.
“We’d like to thank our customers for making 2013 the best year ever for the App Store,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. “The lineup of apps for the holiday season was astonishing and we look forward to seeing what developers create in 2014.”"

Friday 3 January 2014

Daily and Monthly active Facebook users in several European markets

"Germany – 19 million daily active users, 25 million monthly active users (43% of German Internet users are on Facebook, 76% of monthly users return daily), 13 million mobile DAU, 18 million mobile MAU (27% of German mobile phone users)
France – 18 million DAU, 26 million MAU (63% of French Internet users are on Facebook, 69% of monthly users return daily), 11 million mobile DAU, 17 million mobile MAU (33% of French mobile phone users)
Spain – 12 million DAU, 18 million MAU (58% of Spanish Internet users are on Facebook,  67% of monthly users return daily), 8.1 million mobile DAU, 13 million mobile MAU (32% of Spanish mobile phone users)
Italy – 17 million DAU, 23 million MAU (71% of Italian Internet users are on Facebook, 74% of monthly users return daily, ), 10 million mobile DAU, 16 million mobile MAU (32% of Italian mobile phone users)
Sweden – 3.8 million DAU, 4.9 million MAU (57% of Swedish Internet users are on Facebook, 78% of monthly users return daily) , 3 million mobile DAU, 4 million mobile MAU (53% of Swedish mobile phone users)
Turkey – 19 million DAU, 33 million MAU, 9.5 million mobile DAU, 20 million mobile MAU
Israel – 2.7 million DAU, 3.8 million MAU (71% of monthly users return daily), 2 million mobile DAU, 2.9 million mobile MAU"

The new episode of Sherlock had 4.7 million views on Youku in 24 hours

"For millions of fans, the agonizing wait for the return of the hit detective show Sherlock is over. The BBC broadcast the first episode of the third season at 9pm (GMT) on Jan. 1. A few hours later, Sherlock hit the Chinese internet via Youku, China’s biggest online streaming site. In less than 24 hours, it’s gotten 4.72 million views"
Note:  It seems that this is a legal upload, not piracy