Smartphone ownership around the world

Source:  Pew Research Centre, 22nd February 2016
(So many stats in the full report!)

Instagram has more advertisers than Twitter

"2015 was a big year for Instagram’s advertising business. It rolled out new ad formats that could contain links, expanded the length of its video ads and, most importantly, made it easier for advertisers of any size — and increasingly anywhere — to buy its ads and target those ads.
Seemingly as a result of all those moves, Instagram now claims more than 200,000 active advertisers as of February 2016, the Facebook-owned photo-and-video-sharing service announced on Wednesday. That number may pale in comparison to Instagram’s parent company — Facebook claims more than 2.5 million advertisers — but it trumps Twitter, which had more than 130,000 active advertisers as of the fourth quarter of 2015.
The comparison between Instagram’s and Twitter’s advertiser numbers isn’t an entirely fair one. Twitter has built its advertising business on its own, while Instagram has been able to stand on Facebook’s shoulders. For example, advertisers can buy ads on Instagram using the same self-serve tools from Facebook that they use to buy ads on the larger social network and with the same level of targeting Facebook offers. But still, at the end of the day, more advertisers is more advertisers."

Source;  MarketingLand, 24th February 2016

Smart watch shipments 'have overtaken Swiss watch shipments'

"According to research from Strategy Analytics, global smartwatch shipments reached 8.1 million units in Q4 2015, compared with 7.9 million Swiss Watch shipments. It is the first time ever that smartwatches have outshipped Swiss watches on a global basis.
Cliff Raskind, Director at Strategy Analytics, said, “We estimate global smartwatch shipments reached 8.1 million units in Q4 2015, rising a healthy 316 perc ent from 1.9 million in Q4 2014. Smartwatches are growing rapidly in North America, Western Europe and Asia. Apple Watch captured an impressive 63 per cent share of the global smartwatch market in Q4 2015, followed by Samsung with 16 per cent. Apple and Samsung together account for a commanding 8 in 10 of all smartwatches shipped worldwide.”
Steven Waltzer, Analyst at Strategy Analytics, added, “We estimate global Swiss watch shipments reached 7.9 million units in Q4 2015, falling 5 per cent from 8.3 million in Q4 2014.  Global demand for Swiss watches is slowing down, and major players like Swatch are struggling to find growth.”"

Source;  Advanced Television, 24th February 2016

Flipkart is the first Indian app to hit 50m installs on Android

"Flipkart has become the first Indian app to cross the 50 million installs landmark on Google Android Play Store. This landmark was crossed in the first week of February 2016.
The Flipkart app, which is also among the highest rated Indian shopping app on Google Play, is the first Indian app across all genres including popular ones like communication, social, entertainment, to cross the 50 million install benchmark. Android phones are the most dominant operating system in smartphones with over 85% of the total smartphone base in India."

Source;  Next Big What, 19th February 2016

Over half of UK online sales come through tablets or mobiles

"A major digital tipping point has been reached – with the percentage of UK online retail sales made through mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) exceeding 50% for the first time in Q4 2015/16*.
Smartphones and tablets accounted for 51% of UK online retail sales in Q4, which was a substantial increase on the 45% recorded in Q3 – and up from 40% in Q4 last year.
The percentage split of total UK online sales between the types of channel for Q4 2015/16 was as follows:
Desktop / laptop – 49%
Tablets - 33%
Smartphones - 18%
Visits to retail websites via mobile devices accounted for two-thirds (66%) of traffic in Q4, up from 63% in the previous quarter. This compares with 53% in Q4 last year.
This leap in mobile penetration appears to be being driven by increased confidence in using smartphones for online shopping. Sales growth through these devices rose sharply in 2015, while growth through tablets reached a record low in December 2015."
Source;  IMRG, 24th February 2016

An average of 12,000 new companies were registered each day in China in 2015

"2015 was a big year for startups in China. Everyone knows that. VC money was coming fast and easy – so easy that VCs were literally trying to convince people with jobs at China’s top tech companies to quit and do startups. And until the cracks started showing with the summer stock market crash, China’s economy was growing like a weed, too. It was a good time to found a startup, especially a tech startup. So just how startup crazy did China go?
According to state media, an average of 12,000 new companies were registered each day in China last year. Of course, not all of those were new tech startups, but the tech and internet sectors were among the hottest in a year that saw more than 4 million new companies hit the books in China."

Source:  Tech in Asia, 26th February 2016

The New York Times has 1.4m print and 1.1m digital subscribers

"Thompson also confirmed both print and online subscriber counts at the Times: 1.38 million and nearly 1.1 million, respectively. The latter grew by 53,000 in the fourth quarter of 2015, Thompson told the Social Media Week audience. Also, during that quarter, the paper's print advertising revenue shrank by seven percent, while its digital advertising revenue grew by eight percent—but those percentage numbers may mask a greater gap between print and digital rates."
Source:  ArsTechnica, 25th February 2016

Adobe's Q4 2015 US Digital Video Benchmark Report

ADI Q4 2015 Digital Video Benchmark from Adobe

Kanye West's album The Life of Pablo was illegally downloaded 500,000 times on the first day of release

"Soon after the album was released pirated copies started to populate many torrent and direct download sites, something many people on social media were quick to point out.
TorrentFreak has been keeping a close eye on the popularity of the album on BitTorrent and after the first day an estimated 500,000 people have already grabbed a copy.
The album is currently leading The Pirate Bay’s list of most shared music torrents by a landslide. At the time of writing close to 10,000 people were sharing a copy of the most popular torrent simultaneously, something we haven’t seen with a music release before.
Aside from torrent sites, the album is also being widely distributed on various direct download services and hosting sites, increasing the overall piracy numbers even further."

Source - TorrentFreak, 16th February 2016

Telegram has 100m users; on average 350,000 new users join each day

"Two and a half years ago we launched Telegram. Then you told your friends and co-workers about it. And they told their friends and co-workers. And we started growing.
Now Telegram has more than 100,000,000 monthly active users. 350,000 new users sign up each day. We're delivering 15 billion messages daily.
Thank you for spreading the word, keep it up!"

Source:  Telegram blog, 23rd February 2016

38 million credit cards were linked to Apple Pay in China on the first day

"According to local reports, by 5 p.m., 38 million bank cards had been linked to Apple Pay. The Beijing Morning News said on its Weibo account that within an hour of the service going live at 5 a.m., 10 million people had already linked their bank cards to their accounts."

Source:  Mashable, 19th February 2016

Over $1bn of payments were made on Venmo in January 2016

"For the first time in our history, in the month of January, over $1 billion in payments were made on Venmo. That is over two-and-half times what we saw in January 2015, and more than 10x our volume in January 2014. We thought this was a pretty big milestone, so we wanted to share it with you."
~Source:  Venmo blog, 16th February 2016