The top 10 places on Foursquare in the US

Based on the number of checkins, week ending 28th November 2010 (Includes Black Friday)

Click to enlarge

Source:  AdAge, 29th November 2010.  Updated stats here.

Samsung has sold 600,000 Galaxy Tabs

"According to a report from Korean newspaper The Korean Herald, Samsung has confirmed global sales numbers for its virgin tablet offering. In its first month of availability, the Android-powered Samsung Galaxy Tab has sold 600,000 units — likely making it the most popular Android tablet in the world. Samsung is reportedly pleased with the Galaxy Tab’s performance in its premier month, saying demand outpaced supply in most markets."
Source:  BGR, 22nd November 2010

China has 39m 3G subscribers

"China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) yesterday revealed that as of the end of October, China had reached 38.64 mln 3G mobile subscribers."

Source:  Beijing Times, reported by Marbridge Daily, 26th November 2010

The mobile game Angry Birds has been downloaded 36m times

"With more than 36m downloads under its wing, Angry Birds has quickly become a mobile gaming phenomenon.
And now the popular puzzler is set to move into the living room, with versions for the Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii scheduled for a 2011 release.
In less than a year, Angry Birds has captured the imagination of millions of smartphone owners. Its simple premise, where birds are catapulted into different structures hiding egg-stealing pigs, brought more than 2m downloads in the first weekend alone."

Source:  The Guardian, 24th November 2010

China has 842m mobile phone subscribers and 300m fixed line phone subscribers

"Total telephone subscribers saw a net increase of 7.56 mln in October, with mobile subscribers growing by 8.74 mln to 842.04 mln, and fixed-line subscribers dropping by 1.18 mln to 300.09 mln. Broken down by traditional fixed-line and PHS, the PHS subscriber base declined by 1.17 mln subs to 31.65 mln, while traditional (i.e. non-PHS) fixed-line subscribers decreased by 20,000 to 268.44 mln.
A total of 67.38 bln SMS messages were sent during the month of October, bringing the total for the first 10 months of 2010 to 685.27 bln, a 6.8% increase over the figure during the same period of 2009."
Source:  China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) figures for ~October 2010, reported by Marbridge Daily, 24th November 2010

Roughly one UK home in three has a Nintendo Wii

"Nintendo has been boasting about how many people own a Wii console in the UK, based on data gathered by Chart Track.
EuroGamer reports that the Chart Track figures indicate that since its launch, 8.3 million Wii consoles have been sold in the UK. With the total number of UK households put at 24.9 million by the ONS, that works out at bang on a third of the population."
Source:  Tech Watch, 4th October 2010

Spotify UK makes 60% of its revenues from subscriptions

"Here are highlights of the 2009 financial accounts for Spotify Limited, its UK-headquartered arm that is really the guts of the operations:
- The operating loss was £16.4 million for 2009 as a whole
- Net loss after taxation was £16.66 million
- Revenues for 2009 were £11.32 million
- Cost of sales was £18.82 million
- Distribution was £608,711
- Administrative expenses were £8.29 million
Spotify’s revenue by category was:
- £4.51 million from sales of advertisements in 2009, just under 40% of revenue
- £6.81 million from subscriptions, just over 60% of revenue
- At the end of 2009 it had 23 employees
- Staff costs were £1.17 million"
Source:  Techcrunch Europe, 22nd November 2010

In 2009 more virtual roses were sold in the UK by Flirtomatic than real roses by Interflora

"The currency has quickly found favour among the growing and increasingly engaged online gaming community – and not just inside Facebook, the world's most popular social network. Flirtomatic, a social network with 1.8 million users in the UK, sold more virtual roses last year than Interflora sold real roses. Earlier this month, more than 100,000 Flirtomatic citizens "attended" its virtual firework display – online."
Source:  The Guardian, 19th November 2010
Via Interesting Snippets

There are 506m mobile subscriptions in Africa

"The number of active mobile subscriptions in Africa crossed the half-a-billion mark in the third quarter of this year, to reach 506 million at end-September, according to research by UK-based Informa Telecoms & Media.
The report, published on the researcher’s website said at the end of the third quarter of this year, Africa accounted for 10% of the world’s mobile subscriptions and was one of the world’s fastest-growing regions – with the subscription numbers increasing 18% over the year to September."
Source:  Data from Informa Telecoms & Media, reported by PeaceFM Online, 14th November 2010
[Note - the story is not easily accessible on the Informa website]

Call of Duty: Black Ops generated $650m in revenues in the first 5 days

"Activision announced today that the latest release in the venerable franchise tallied over $650 million in worldwide revenue, according to internal figures, easily besting the previous record set by predecessor Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 of $550 million.
Activision CEO Bobby Kotick said that with the new mark, "Call of Duty has become the first entertainment property in history to set five-day launch records for two consecutive years across all forms of entertainment."
The feat, Activision claimed in its statement, bested any release in "theatrical box office, book, and video game sales." But that comparison might be unfair. The average hardcover book usually launches for around $25 or $30, while the average movie ticket costs about $10. Call of Duty: Black Ops on the Nintendo DS retails for $30, but PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game cost at least $60. It's a sizable difference.
When it comes to online play, Call of Duty: Black Ops performed just as well. According to statistics Microsoft furnished to Activision, over 2.6 million people played the title on Xbox Live on launch day. All told, over 5.9 million hours were logged on Xbox Live on the first day the game was available. Last year, Modern Warfare 2 was played for 5.2 million hours on launch day."

Source:  CNET News, 18th November 2010

3m apps are downloaded from Nokia's Ovi store per day

"Nokia today announced that its Ovi Store has reached 3 million downloads per day, a milestone spurred by overall global demand and a recent update that gives users of Nokia's new Symbian smartphone family a friendlier look and feel as well as more popular apps and games. The company is also gaining significant software developer momentum with more than 400 000 new developers joining Forum Nokia in the past 12 months, and 92 surpassing the million download milestone for their apps."
Source:  Press release from Nokia, 18th November 2010

Expandable ads are more effective than non-expandable ones

"For years, we’ve had great metrics – 6% avg. interaction rates, 15+ second avg. brand time, 2% click-through rate – but we haven’t always known what that means. Do these active users take action down the funnel? Does it really matter if the ad expands if we can’t tell what happens after they engage? A new PointRoll/Compete Research study has answered that question. And the answer is clear.
“We looked at how rich media display ads perform across various brand and response metrics and verticals and found statistical validation that expandables outperform non-expandables in every category we measured, including brand engagement, site visitations and search,” said Stephen DiMarco, Chief Marketing Officer of Compete.
The numbers look like this:
View-through reporting: Expandables outperformed non-expandables by an average of 64% and by as much as 108%.
Driving key purchase indicators (KPIs): Expandables outperformed non-expandable by an average 43% and by as much as 115%.
Driving brand search: Expandables outperformed non-expandables by an average of 39% and by as much as 155%.
Driving third party research site visitation: Expandables outperformed non-expandables by an average of 49% and by as much as 180%."
Source:  Research by PointRoll/Compete, reported in the PointRoll blog, 10th November 2010