Data on people who rely on mobile devices for work

"Social boundaries are being redrawn and polite society is changing yet again. This quarter’s Mobile Workforce Report reveals where the lines are being drawn between life and work – separating personal from business time.
Highlights of this quarter’s study include:
41 percent of mobile workers have a tablet and an additional 34 percent of mobile workers intend to purchase a tablet in the next six months.
87 percent of mobile workers that own tablets use their tablets for at least some work. Among tablet owners, 27 percent have a tablet provided by their workplace and 73 percent have a personally owned tablet.
The average mobile worker works 240 hours a year longer than the workforce in general.
On the road, 68 percent of mobile workers will pay for a faster connection at a hotel even when a free network is also available.
43 percent of mobile workers store their smartphone within arm’s reach when they sleep at night. Those that do this are 60 percent more likely than average to wake during the night to check their smartphone.
Those living in Asia Pacific are the least rested with 55 percent of mobile workers waking at least occasionally to check their smartphone or tablet, and 19 percent wake every night. Europeans are the most rested with only 27 percent waking at least occasionally, and 4 percent waking every night.
29 percent of mobile workers find that their mobile technology usage causes friction in their personal relationships, specifically with their significant other or spouse.
When mobile workers wake up in the morning, 35 percent check email before anything else, including getting dressed or eating breakfast."

Source:  iPass Global Mobile Workforce Report, Q2 2011, May 2011

Note on methodology & definitions:

"This quarter’s iPass Mobile Workforce Report is based on information from more than 3,700 responses to an iPass survey of mobile enterprise employees at over 1,100 enterprises worldwide. The survey was conducted between April 1 and April 15, 2011, and represented employees across multiple age groups and geographies. The survey respondents were asked about their mobile productivity, work habits, and related experiences.

iPass Mobile Employee Definition: Any worker using any mobile device (including laptop, netbook, smartphone, cellphone, or tablet) who accesses networks (other than the corporate LAN or WLAN) for work purposes."

Online ad spend grew by 32% in Romania in 2010

"The online advertising market in Romania reached a value of EUR 20.4 million in 2010, up 32 percent compared to the previous year, according to the latest edition of the Romanian Online Advertising Study (ROADS) conducted by IAB Romania and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Romania.
“The increase of 32 percent of the online advertising market recorded in 2010, certifies the availability of more and more advertisers to invest in this sector, taking the total reported amount over EUR 20 million”, said Cristian Petriceanu, president of IAB Romania."

Source:  Romania Business Insider, 31st May 2011

Online ad spend in the US hit $7.3bn in Q1 2011

"Internet advertising revenues in the U.S. hit $7.3 billion for the first quarter of 2011, representing a 23 percent increase over the same period in 2010, according to figures released today by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). This marks the highest first-quarter revenue level ever for the industry and a significant increase over last year’s first-quarter revenue level, which had been the highest on record to date.
“The consistent and considerable year-over-year growth we’re seeing demonstrates that digital media is an increasingly popular destination for ad dollars, and for good reason,” said Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO of the IAB. “As Americans spend more time online for information and entertainment purposes, digital advertising and marketing has emerged as one of the most effective tools businesses have to attract and retain customers.”
“The year-on-year 23 percent increase in first quarter revenues is not just impressive in its own right, but especially so when you take into account the fact that 2010 was a record-breaking year itself for Internet advertising revenue,” said David Silverman, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. “These numbers indicate that the interactive advertising field hasn’t simply bounced back since the recession; it’s growing with dynamic energy.”"

Source:  Press release from the IAB, 26th May 2011

Mobile payments company Square has shipped approx 500,000 card readers

"Square is a mobile payments startup company that has shipped about 500,000 card readers. Square reported about 1 million transactions in May and the company is processing about $3 million in mobile payments per day."
Source:  Pulse2, 23rd May 2011

48 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute

"Back in November we challenged you to up the volume of videos you uploaded to the site. And boy, did you take the bait. Today, more than 48 hours (two days worth) of video are uploaded to the site every minute, a 37% increase over the last six months and 100% over last year. From videos documenting a baby’s first steps in San Francisco, Calif., to a protest in Syria, to a commencement speech at Yale University, we’re continually impressed and inspired by the quality and breadth (in addition to quantity) of videos that you upload to the site every day. On our end, we're constantly evolving to provide the best video sharing and viewing experience for you from faster processing of uploads to longer video lengths to the launch of self-service live stream capabilities to partners."
Source:  Blog post by YouTube, 25th May 2011

Instagram has 4.25m registered users; 10 pictures are posted each second

"Here at TechCrunch Disrupt Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom has just announced a new milestone for photo service Instagram, at 10 user photos posted per second, up from 6 photos per second officially announced couple of months ago.
“We’re like that growth we saw last time was really large, until we saw today,” said Systrom. When asked whether Tumblr founder David Karp had any advice for Kevin, “Kevin seems to be a few steps ahead of me.”
Systrom also revealed that Instagram currently has 4.25 million registered users after only seven months of existence. “It turns out if you make something that people want it spreads really well,” says Systrom. “People wanted to take pictures and have them shared across multiple networks all at once.”"

Source:  TechCrunch, 24th May 2011

Apple Stores generated nearly $10 Billion in revenue in 2010

"Ten years later, there are 324 Apple Stores: 233 in the U.S., and 91 international locations. In terms of foot traffic, Apple saw its billionth retail visitor last month, with 71 million in the last quarter alone, up 51 percent year over year. The increasing number of visitors can be ascribed not only to the popularity of Apple products, but location of stores. In the U.S., the goal has always been to have 85 percent of the population within driving distance of an Apple Store, which has often meaning paying a premium for retail space. Bu it’s been a strategy that’s paid off.
For fiscal year 2010, just under $10 billion in sales came from Apple Stores. Last quarter, revenue from Apple retail was $3.19 billion, up 90 percent year over year. That means Apple Stores accounted for 13 percent of the company’s revenue, an impressive figure that puts them far ahead of competitors like Best Buy when measured by metrics like sales per square foot.
Last quarter, Apple sold 797,000 Macs in Apple Stores, up 32 percent year over year. One of every five Macs sold now comes from an Apple Store, but even more important is who is buying them. Going back at least five years, about half of those buying Macs in Apple Stores are new to the platform."
Source:  Retrospective on 10 years of Apple Stores, GigaOM, 19th May 2011

Amazon is selling more Kindle versions of books in the US than hardback and paperback books combined

"Amazon began selling hardcover and paperback books in July 1995. Twelve years later in November 2007, Amazon introduced the revolutionary Kindle and began selling Kindle books. By July 2010, Kindle book sales had surpassed hardcover book sales, and six months later, Kindle books overtook paperback books to become the most popular format on Amazon.com. Today, less than four years after introducing Kindle books, Amazon.com customers are now purchasing more Kindle books than all print books - hardcover and paperback - combined.
"Customers are now choosing Kindle books more often than print books. We had high hopes that this would happen eventually, but we never imagined it would happen this quickly - we've been selling print books for 15 years and Kindle books for less than four years," said Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO, Amazon.com. "In addition, we're excited by the response to Kindle with Special Offers for only $114, which has quickly become the bestselling member of the Kindle family. We continue to receive positive comments from customers on the low $114 price and the money-saving special offers. We're grateful to our customers for continuing to make Kindle the bestselling e-reader in the world and the Kindle Store the most popular e-bookstore in the world."
Recent milestones for Kindle include:
Since April 1, for every 100 print books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 105 Kindle books. This includes sales of hardcover and paperback books by Amazon where there is no Kindle edition. Free Kindle books are excluded and if included would make the number even higher.
So far in 2011, the tremendous growth of Kindle book sales, combined with the continued growth in Amazon's print book sales, have resulted in the fastest year-over-year growth rate for Amazon's U.S. books business, in both units and dollars, in over 10 years. This includes books in all formats, print and digital. Free books are excluded in the calculation of growth rates.
In the five weeks since its introduction, Kindle with Special Offers for only $114 is already the bestselling member of the Kindle family in the U.S.
Amazon sold more than 3x as many Kindle books so far in 2011 as it did during the same period in 2010.
Less than one year after introducing the UK Kindle Store, Amazon.co.uk is now selling more Kindle books than hardcover books, even as hardcover sales continue to grow. Since April 1, Amazon.co.uk customers are purchasing Kindle books over hardcover books at a rate of more than 2 to 1."

Source:  Press release from Amazon, 19th May 2011

eBooks are easily outselling hardbacks in the UK

"In the UK, Amazon announced it had sold 242 ebooks for every 100 hardbacks since 1 April 2011. "Amazon.co.uk customers are choosing Kindle books more often than hardcovers at a rate of more than 2 to 1," said Gordon Willoughby, European director at Kindle. "This is truly astonishing when you consider that we've been selling hardcover books from Amazon.co.uk for over 13 years and Kindle books for only nine months."
A spokesman for Amazon.co.uk said the figures included sales of hardback books where no Kindle edition was available, and did not include free Kindle downloads. He said the website was not publishing comparisons between paperback sales and ebook downloads.
The UK figures represent a quicker uptake of Kindle ebooks than Amazon saw in the US, although John Howells, spokesman for Waterstone's, said its own Waterstones.com ebook sales had outstripped hardbacks for "quite a while".
"For every hardback we sell online, we sell four ebooks online," Howells said. "It doesn't really surprise us as we've been quite established as ebook sellers for some two and a half years now.""
Source:  The Guardian, 19th May 2011

Nearly 25% of phones sold in Q1 2011 were smartphones

"Worldwide mobile communication device sales to end users totaled 427.8 million units in the first quarter of 2011, an increase of 19 percent from the first quarter of 2010, according to Gartner, Inc. Smartphones continued to outpace the rest of the market, and a newly competitive mid-tier smartphone market will drive smartphones into mass adoption and accelerate this trend.
“Smartphones accounted for 23.6 percent of overall sales in the first quarter of 2011, an increase of 85 percent year-on-year,” said Roberta Cozza, principal research analyst at Gartner. “This share could have been even higher, but manufacturers announced a number of high-profile devices during the first quarter of 2011 that would not ship until the second quarter of 2011. We believe some consumers delayed their purchases to wait for these models.”
Overall, the earthquake and tsunami in Japan will have a smaller effect on the mobile communication devices market than initially anticipated. There is currently about six to seven weeks worth of inventory of finished products in the channel and about four weeks worth of inventory for components. Gartner estimates that manufacturers' sales into the channel will drop in the second quarter of 2011, while sales through to consumers will be flat."
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"Android and Apple's iOS continued to dominate the smartphone operating system (OS) wars (see Table 2). However, the big news in the first quarter of 2011 was Nokia's strategic alliance with Microsoft on Windows Phone 7, and the retirement of Symbian. “This will precipitate a competitors’ rush to capture Symbian's market share in the midtier,” said Ms. Cozza."

Source:  Press release from Gartner, 19th May 2011

Twitter has more than 300m registered accounts (unofficial estimate)

"Twitter just crossed the 300 million account threshold, according to a Twitter-tracking site called Twopcharts.
Twitter is currently adding 9.1 accounts per second. It will reach 301 million in the three hours after this post goes live.
But don't be fooled! Twitter doesn't actually have anywhere near 300 million real users.
In March, we plowed through the numbers and found that Twitter has less than 21 million "active" users."
Source:  Data from Twopcharts, reported by Business Insider, 18th May 2011
Note - here's a link to the earlier research from Business Insider

An estimated 5% of the American population own a Tablet device

"Of all the wireless devices that have hit the market in the past several years, tablets present the biggest commercial opportunity for media owners, in terms of what consumers are willing to pay for and consume on the devices. But for now, that opportunity is, at best, a mid-to-long-term one. Research from Nielsen—being presented for the first time today at the paidContent Mobile conference—shows that in the U.S. today, more than 95 percent of consumers have yet to buy one.
Despite the huge amount of hype that has surrounded the iPad and the many other tablets hitting the market—they include Android-based devices, the recently-launched Playbook from RIM (NSDQ: RIMM), and the soon-to-come TouchPad from HP —the researches note that as of Q1 2011, only 4.8 percent of the roughly 12,000 U.S. consumers surveyed have bought one. That number is likely even smaller in most other markets, even developed ones. Paul Lee, an director of TMT research with Deloitte in the UK, estimates that in the UK the number of tablet users is 1 out of every 60 people—or 1.7 percent."

Source:  Research from Nielsen and Deloitte (separately), reported by PaidContent, 18th May 2011

Note - Bear in mind that before the iPad almost no one had a Tablet, so since April 3rd 2010 nearly 5% of the US population have one.  This is meant to be a bad performance?  

Look at this chart from The Mobile Internet Report Setup by Morgan Stanley in December 2009 (chart 42) which shows the comparative adoption of technology devices including the iPod, Wii, Blackberry and so on.  All had exposure disproportionate to their sales in the early days, but all were very influential.  

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