There are more than a billion mobile subscribers in China

"Total telephone subscribers saw a net increase of 9.91 mln in February to reach 1.291 bln. Mobile subscribers grew by 10.33 mln to 1.007 bln, and fixed-line subscribers dropped by 419,000 to 284.29 mln. Broken down by traditional fixed-line and PHS, the PHS subscriber base declined by 595,000 subcribers to 16.34 mln, while traditional (i.e. non-PHS) fixed-line subscribers increased by 176,000 to 267.95 mln. 7.32 mln new 3G subscribers were added in February to reach a total of 143.92 mln.
A total of 71.03 bln SMS messages were sent during the month of February, bringing the total for the first 2 months of 2012 to 156.59 bln, a 7.6% increase over the figure during the same period of 2011."
Source:  Data from the Chinese Ministry of Industry & Information Technology, reported by Marbridge Daily, 30th March 2012

Blackberry maker RIM lost $125m in Q4 2011

"Blackberry manufacturer Research in Motion (RIM) has reported a quarterly loss, due in part to falling revenues on the back of weak smartphone shipments.
The Canadian company made a net loss for the three months to 3 March of $125m (£78m), compared with a profit of $934m a year earlier.
Revenues fell to $4.2bn from $5.2bn.
The firm also suggested it would refocus on the corporate market rather than on individual consumers.
[...]
Shipments of BlackBerry smartphones in the quarter fell to 11.1 million, down 21% from the previous three-month period.
Shipments of the company's PlayBook tablets hit 500,000, largely due to substantial discounting.
For the full financial year, the company made a net profit of $1.2bn, down from $3.4bn in the previous year."

Source:  BBC News, 30th March 2012

iPad users spend over $70,000 a day on newspaper & magazine content

"iPad users are willing to pay for premium content offered by newspapers and magazines in the Newsstand category. The category launched only six months ago, however more than 70k USD per day is already being made by the top 100 grossing Newsstand applications in the United States."

Source:  Distimo blog, 27th March 2012

62% of iPhone 4S owners use Siri several times a week

"Parks Associates' consumer study of Siri users revealed several interesting pieces of data. Here are some additional points we found intriguing:
Of iPhone 4s users, 62% use Siri for some function at least several times a week, including 35% of respondents who report daily use.  The least used functions are playing a video, scheduling a meeting, or playing music."

Source:  Blog post by Parks Associates, 28th March 2012

Half of American homes own at least one Apple product

"Half of all U.S. households own at least one Apple product, according to CNBC’s All-America Economic survey.
That’s more than 55 million homes with at least one iPhone, iPad, iPod or Mac computer. And one-in-10 homes that aren’t currently in that group plan to join it in the next year.
But Apple doesn’t have to worry about brand saturation any time soon. Americans don’t stop with just one device. Homes that own least one Apple, own an average of three. Overall, the average household has 1.6 Apple devices, with almost one-quarter planning to buy at least one more in the next year."
Source:  CNBC, 28th March 2012

Domino's Pizza generated £1m in sales through its mobile platform in one week

"Domino’s has announced that it took over £1m in sales through its mobile platform in a single week in Q1 2012.
In total e-commerce sales accounted for 50.6% of UK sales in the 13 week period up to March 25 2012, up 44.5% year-on-year to £59.3m.
Mobile payments made up 16.4% of total online sales, a slight increase on reports last month that the pizza company took 13% of digital sales through a tablet or smartphone."

Source:  Econsultancy, 28th March 2012

31% of US online ad impressions aren't seen

"comScore, Inc, a leader in measuring the digital world, today released full study results from its U.S.-based vCE Charter Study involving online advertising campaigns for 12 premium national advertisers. The study found that, in many cases, a large portion of ad impressions are not delivered according to plan, and that the quality of ad delivery can vary greatly based on a variety of factors, including site, placement, creative and targeting strategy. The study evaluated ad delivery based on a several key dimensions, including whether or not the ads were delivered in-view, to the right audience, in the right geography, in brand safe environments and absent of fraud. The complete results are included in a complimentary white paper, which can be downloaded at the following link: http://www.comscore.com/vce-charter-study
[...]
The vCE Charter Study includes a variety of detailed findings that shed light on the current state of online ad delivery and its implications for different participants in the online advertising market. Key findings include:
In-View Rates are Eye-Opening. The study showed that 31% of ads were not in-view, meaning they never had an opportunity to be seen. There was also great variation across sites where the campaigns ran, with in-view rates ranging from 7% to 100% on a given site. This variance illustrates that even for major advertisers making premium buys there is a lot of room for improvement.
Targeting Audiences Beyond Demographics Can be Powerful. Generally, campaigns that had very basic demographic targeting objectives performed well with regard to hitting those targets. For example, those with an objective of reaching people in a particular broad age range did so with 70% of their impressions. Predictably, as additional demographic variables were added to the targeting criteria (e.g. income + gender), accuracy rates of the ad delivery declined. However, the results also showed that 37% of all impressions were delivered to audiences with behavioral profiles that were relevant to the brand (i.e. consumers with demonstrated interests in categories, such as food, auto or sports). One campaign had 67% of its impressions viewed by the target behavioral segment.
The Content in Which An Ad Runs Can Create Problems for Any Brand. Of the campaigns analyzed, 72% had at least some impressions that were delivered adjacent to objectionable content. While this did not translate to a large number of impressions on an absolute basis (141,000 impressions across 980 domains), it is important to note that 92,000 people were exposed to these impressions. This demonstrates that brand safety should be of concern to all advertisers.
Fraud is the Elephant in the Digital Room. Fraud is an undeniably large and growing problem in digital advertising. The results showed that an average of 0.16% of impressions across all campaigns was delivered to non-human agents from the IAB spiders & bots list. Although this percentage might appear negligible, there are two important considerations to keep in mind. Only the most basic forms of inappropriate delivery were addressed in this study. When additional, more sophisticated types of fraud are considered, the problem will only get larger. Like brand safety, fraud should be an important concern for all advertisers.
Digital Ad Economics: The Good Guys Aren't Necessarily Winning. The study showed that there was little to no correlation between CPM and value being delivered to the advertiser. For example, ad placements with strong in-view rates are not getting higher CPMs than placements with low in-view rates. Similarly, ads that are doing well at delivering to a primary demographic target are not receiving more value than those that are not. In other words, neither ad visibility nor the quality of the audience reached is currently reflected in the economics of digital advertising."
Source:  Press release from comScore, 26th March 2012
Note - comScore released similar research earlier in the year.  I'll repeat the note I made at the time:
While this research is valid, it's worth mentioning the different ad trading models.  Most ads are not bought on a 'cost per view' (CPM) model, but are bought on a cost per click (CPC) or cost per action (CPA) basis.  This means that the advertisers for these campaigns don't pay for the ads until there is a click or a specified action - like a sale or a registration - so they are not being charge anything for ads that aren't seen. 
Part of the job of the agency is to ensure that the ads bought on a CPM basis appear in good positions - that is 'in view' making the site push the other ads down to the bottom of the page.  Similarly with ads appearing in unsafe content - part of the job of the agency is to make sure that this does not happen.

'3' accounts for over 40% of the UK's mobile data traffic

"Over 40% of mobile data being used in the UK runs across Three’s network with nearly all of its new customers signing up to contracts with smartphones, according to the operator’s CEO David Dyson.
Speaking earlier today at the Westminster eForum, he said traffic on Three’s network, one of the few to offer unlimited data packages, doubled in the past 12 months to hit 6m GB a year, with “virtually 100%” of new customers signing up for smartphone contracts."

Source:  NMA, 27th March 2012

30m NFC-enabled phones were sold in 2011

"According to a new research report by Berg Insight, global sales of handsets featuring Near Field Communication (NFC) increased ten-fold in 2011 to 30 million units. Growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 87.8 percent, shipments are forecasted to reach 700 million units in 2016. The global rise in smartphone adoption is also driving higher attach rates for other wireless connectivity technologies in handsets including GPS, Bluetooth and WLAN. These connectivity technologies are already a standard feature on high-end smartphones and most medium- and low-end models. Declining costs will also enable broader integration in the featurephone segment that is rapidly gaining smartphone-like functionality. The attach rate for GPS among GSM/WCDMA/LTE handsets reached 31 percent in 2011 and grew to 38 percent for all air interface standards. Shipments of WLAN-enabled handsets have more or less doubled annually in the past four years and the attach rate increased to 33 percent in 2011."

Source:  Press release from Berg Insight, 26th March 2012

Earlier - 35m NFC-enabled phones were shipped in 2011.  Alternative (& not necessarily contradictory) figures from IMS Research

Chrome was the world's most used browser on March 16th

"It may only have been for a single day, but according to StatCounter Google Chrome finally managed to surpass Internet Explorer to become the world’s most used web browser.
On Sunday, March 16th, Chrome temporarily slid ahead of IE with a share of just over 32%. Weekends have historically seen a downturn in IE usage. As people wind up their work week and spend more time on their home computers, they’re more likely to use an alternative browser. IE still maintains a dominant position in corporate environments, but that too has begun to change.
Over the past year, Chrome has steadily climbed while IE continues to fall. Initially folks thought that Google’s rapid rise was being fueled by Firefox defections, but Mozilla has only seen a drop of about 5% — while IE is down more than 10%. A second chart from StatCounter tells the story: those IE peaks and plateaus are clearly on a downward trend.
It’s important to note that StatCounter doesn’t correct its usage figures to account for one detail that could skew the numbers slightly in Google’s favor. Speculative pre-rendering (which arrived  in the Omnibox in Chrome 17) and Instant Pages support (which appeared in Chrome 13) both cause Chrome to send additional traffic to web servers that may never result in an actual visit from a user."

Source:  Geek.com, 22nd March 2012

Mobile game Cut The Rope has been downloaded more than 100m times

"Global gaming company ZeptoLab today announced the release of its award-winning, physics-based game, Cut the Rope, in the Mac App Store. The game, which has been optimized for MacOS, features stunning high-resolution artwork and innovative game mechanics that have been optimized for computer gameplay.
With more than 100 million downloads, Cut the Rope has seen great success on both mobile phones and tablets. Now, with the MacOS version, players take on the challenge of cutting ropes, popping bubbles, collecting stars and feeding candy to a little green monster named Om Nom on a much bigger screen. The levels on Cut the Rope for MacOS have been specifically tailored for landscape screen orientation, and the game retains its striking, crisp images on monitors up to 2560×1440 resolution."

Source:  Press release from ZeptoLab, 22nd February 2012

People who engage with social media while watching TV watch more live TV as a result

"A new study from iModerate Research Technologies, a leading qualitative research firm, shows the tremendous impact Social TV, the act of connecting with people via social networks while watching television, has on viewing. The hybrid, qualitative-quantitative study with males and females who engage in Social TV at least once a week uncovered that 58% of heavy engagers (more than 10 times a week) watch more live TV because they need to be part of the conversation in real-time. According to the study, Social TV has also made these viewers into more active consumers and influencers. To that end, a third of respondents said their primary reason for engaging in Social TV was either to give feedback to the television network or show support for their television program."

Source:  Press release from iModerate Research Technologies, 26th March 2012