An average iPhone user in the US has 37 apps installed

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Source: Nielsen App Playbook, reported in their blog, 24th March 2010

Smartphone subscriptions in the 5 main European markets grew by 32% in 2009

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"comScore has released a study of the smartphone market in Europe showing that smartphone adoption in the EU5 (U.K., France, Germany, Spain, Italy) has grown 32 percent versus a year ago to 51.6 million subscribers.
The U.K. market strongly leads in growth of smartphone adoption over the past year, growing 70 percent to more than 11 million subscribers. France ranks second in growth with the number of smartphone subscribers up 48 percent to 7 million. Meanwhile, Italy boasts the largest number of smartphone subscribers overall (15 million) but showed the softest growth in this market at 11 percent."
Source: Data from comScore, reported by Cellular News, 31st March 2010

The UK's top online advertisers 2009

The top 10 are:
1 - O2 - £15,189,000
2 - COI - £10,361,000
3 - BT - £9,213,000
4 - British Sky Broadcasting - £8,154,000
5 - Microsoft - £6,961,000
6 - T-Mobile - £6,582,000
7 - Orange - £6,370,000
8 - Virgin Media - £6,364,000
9 - Hutchinson 3G UK - £5,585,000
10 - Moneysupermarket Group - £5,281,000
Source: Table from Marketing Magazine, March 2010, using figures from Nielsen.
(The table shows the top 100)
Full statement on the methodology:
"Nielsen has improved the methodology used to work out the top 100 online advertisers for 2009. The new data is based on a Netview panel. Each panellist is given a meter and every time they view an ad online, it counts as one impression which is projected nationally. Previous surveys used a combination of figures from ABCe and declared information from the sites themselves. This tended to lead to inflated spend data. The new system creates a more robust methodology and removes the inflation factor. However, it means there is as yet limited comparative data with the previous year.
The figures are for display advertising and all figures are estimated costs based on a number of factors including rate card and industry discount factors. Details of the full methodology are available from Nielsen."

Paypal mobile transactions increased nearly six-fold in 2009

"PayPal mobile transactions have increased nearly six-fold, from $25 million in 2008 to $141 million in 2009."
Source: Paypal press release, 16th March 2010

44% of Americans aged 12+ own an MP3 player

"Nearly one in four (24%) Americans has connected an MP3 player to a car stereo to listen to digital music while driving, according to a survey conducted by Edison Research and radio ratings firm Arbitron.
The national survey of 1,753 Americans ages 12 and older found that 44% own an MP3 player, and 54% of these have linked the device to a car stereo."
Source: Research from Arbitron, and Edison Research, reported by DigitalMediaWire, 29th March 2010

US video viewing via TV, internet and mobile, by demographic

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"The typical American continues to increase his/her media time, watching almost 35 hours of TV, 2 hours of timeshifted TV, 22 minutes of online video and 4 minutes of mobile video, while also spending 4 hours on the Internet each week. In addition, Americans now spend 35% more time using the Internet and TV simultaneously than they were a year ago – spending up to 3.5 hours each month surfing the Internet and watching TV at the same time."
Source: Nielsen 3 Screen Report for Q4 2009, released March 2010
(You need to provide your contact details to see the research, but the you get access to the full report with data tables, and previous editions)

Approximately 60% of gamers say they have bought some sort of virtual good within a game

"Free-to-play games, where you can play a game for free but are then encouraged to buy virtual goods such as weapons, have taken off. Even though this business model is like a return to the expensive old days when gamers paid a quarter for minutes of play, hardcore gamers are embracing virtual goods.
About 88 percent of 4,816 gamers surveyed said they had purchased some form of digital content, including music, movies and games. About 60 percent of respondents said they had purchased a virtual good inside a game (where the virtual good was not a full game), according to a new report by market researcher DFC Intelligence and virtual goods platform company Live Gamer.
Many of the virtual goods games fall into the category of MMO Lite, or relatively casual massively multiplayer online games. These games don’t have the high monthly fees of World of Warcraft, which charges $14.95 a month. DFC Intelligence forecasts that the North American and European MMO Lite market will grow from $800 million in 2009 to $3 billion by 2015.
Gamers in both Europe and North America are now comfortable with buying digital content, the report said. Buying virtual characters, weapons, decorations or other items is now common in games ranging from Zynga’s FarmVille on Facebook to Nexon’s Combat Arms. These sorts of online games have hundreds of millions of users around the world."
Source: Research from DFC Intelligence and virtual goods platform company Live Gamer, reported by VentureBeat, 29th March 2010

Social gamer demographics for UK, US, France and Germany

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Source: GamesIndustry.com using data from TNS, 2010 - more data on the site

Pre-tax losses for The Times & The Sunday Times hit £87m for the year to June 2009

"Pre-tax losses for the Times and the Sunday Times widened to £87.7m for the year to 28 June 2009, from £50.2m in the previous 12 months.
Statutory accounts filed to Companies House have also revealed that at News Group Newspapers, the News International subsidiary that publishes the Sun and the News of the World, profits fell to £40.3m, down from £44.7m, during the 12-month period.
Turnover at Times Newspapers, the News International subsidiary that publishes the Times and Sunday Times, was down 13.4% year on year to £385.5m. News Group Newspapers' turnover was down 1.4% year on year to £617.9m.
The company blamed the widening losses at Times Newspapers on declining advertising revenues and said its directors expected the general level of activity to continue "for the foreseeable future"."
Source: The Guardian, 23rd March 2010

US newspaper ad revenues (print & online) fell by 27% in 2009

"Combined print and online advertising revenue fell 27.2 percent in 2009 to 27.56 billion dollars from 37.84 billion dollars the previous year, according to NAA figures released on Wednesday.
Print advertising revenue dropped 28.6 percent in 2009 to 24.82 billion dollars while online advertising revenue declined by 11.8 percent to 2.74 billion dollars, the NAA said.
Classified advertising revenue was particularly hard hit, falling by 38.1 percent last year to 6.17 billion dollars.
Free online sites such as Craigslist have devastated classified advertising since the ads reached a peak of 19.6 billion dollars in 2000, the year print advertising revenue also hit an all-time high of 48.67 billion dollars."
Source: Newspaper Association of America, reported by AFP, 25th March 2010

Lady Gaga's online videos have generated more than 1 billion views in aggregate

"Lady Gaga is the most-watched franchise in history with Poker Face, Bad Romance, and Just Dance. She's also the first and only franchise from any category to surpass 1 billion views. Vampire romance Twilight isn't far behind, with New Moon and Twilight sinking their teeth into a combined 980 million views. Soulja Boy comes in third, with 860 million views, helped by the boost from Crank Dat's 720+ million views. Beyonce and Michael Jackson follow with 740 and 730 million views, respectively."
Source: Research from Visible Measures, reported in their blog, 23rd March 2010

US iPhone game sales are estimated to exceed PSP game sales

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"NPD Group shows that combined U.S. console and portable software revenue was approximately $11 billion and $9.9 billion in 2008 and 2009, respectively. After estimating portable sales, we were able to back into console revenues. We then added our own estimates for iPhone game revenue, detailed later, which total $115 million and $500 million for 2008 and 2009, respectively.
With these figures, our main finding is that iPhone (and iPod touch) is a gaming platform to be reckoned with. Controlling 5% revenue of a $10 billion industry in just a year and a half is significant. From a market share perspective, console games lost ground to portable platforms and iPhone. While the downturn in the economy may have dampened sales of the more expensive console games category, there is no denying that iPhone has generated substantial revenue and entered strongly into a mature industry.
More interesting to us than iPhone's impact on U.S. gaming was its impact on the portable category, which we estimate totaled $2.25 billion and $2.55 billion in 2008 and 2009, respectively. Michael Pachter, managing director at Wedbush Morgan Securities and a prominent video game analyst, suggests "iPod touch is the most dangerous thing that ever happened" to game publishers. As prices come down for the iPod Touch, and games sold through the App Store continue to have lower price points, more of the young gaming generation may switch to Apple devices over Sony PSP and Nintendo DS for gaming. Further, Apple has squarely positioned the iPod Touch as a gaming machine.
From what we calculate, consumers are downloading iPhone games in droves. Comparing iPhone against Sony and Nintendo games sales shows that Apple has taken nearly one fifth of the portable market in 2009, largely at the expense of Sony PSP. With Sony PSP Go, Sony's latest effort to revive its portable sales, having fallen short of expectations, Sony finds itself now challenged by two competitors in this segment."
Source: Blog post by Flurry, 22nd March 2010