Nokia shipped 127m phones in Q4 2009, including 13.5m smartphones

"Nokia shipped 126.9 million phones in the quarter at an average price of 63 euros, it said in the statement. The adjusted margin in its main handset division jumped to 15.4 percent, beating Kallasvuo’s target of at least 12.4 percent.
Smartphone revenue rose to 3.9 billion euros, while the average selling price declined to 186 euros from 190 euros in the preceding quarter, Nokia said.
Sales of the N series multimedia phones were 4.6 million in the quarter, while company sold 8.9 million of the E series, business-oriented models that compete with Research In Motion Ltd.’s Blackberry."
Source: Nokia official figures, reported by BusinessWeek 28th January 2010
[General smartphone definition - a phone with an operating system, web access, QWERTY keyboard, messaging capability]

The iPad announcement generated 177,000 tweets in the first hour

"It should come as no surprise that the Twittersphere was (and still is) all a-buzz about the iPad — the build-up to which has been months in the making — but the iPad averaging nearly 3,000 tweets per minute in the first hour is just plain remarkable. We haven’t seen anything like it in recent history. According to Trendrr, tweets did taper off a bit after that first hour, but are still coming at about 75,000 per hour, or 1,000 per minute."
Data from Trendrr, reported by Mashable, 27th January 2010

Piracy has led to a decline in the local music releases in France, Spain and Brazil

"In France, there has been a striking fall in the number of local repertoire albums released in recent years. In the first half of 2009, 107 Frenchrepertoire albums were released, 60 per cent down on the 271 in the same period of 2003. French artist signings have also slumped by 60 per cent, from 91 in the first half of 2002 to 35 in the same period of 2009. Overall investment in marketing and promotion by the French music industry fell nine per cent in the first six months of 2009. It is estimated that 25 per cent of the French internet population currently download music illegally from P2P networks or other sources on a monthly basis (Jupiter Research, 2009).
In Spain, a culture of state-tolerated apathy towards illegal file-sharing has contributed to a dramatic slump in the music market. Spain has the worst online piracy problem of any major market in Europe. Today, P2P usage in Spain, at 32 per cent of internet users, is more than double the European rate of 15 per cent (Jupiter Research, 2009). The Spanish legitimate music market is now only one third of its size in 2001 and fell by around 17 per cent in 2009 alone. Local artist album sales in the Top 50 declined by 65 per cent between 2004 and 2009.
In Brazil, music sales fell by more than 40 per cent between 2005 and 2009, with a disastrous impact on investment in local repertoire. In 2008 there were only 67 full priced local artist album releases by the five biggest music companies in Brazil – just one tenth of the number (625) a decade earlier. This has been particularly damaging in a market where 70 per cent of music consumed is domestic repertoire."
[The report says that these are just illustrative markets, not the only markets where this effect has been seen]
Source: Page 19 of IFPI Digital Music Report 2010

Digital music - 2003 vs 2009

Click to enlarge

Source: Page 6 of IFPI Digital Music Report 2010

Etsy sold $181m worth of goods in 2009

"Total Members: over 3.9 million
Total Sellers: over 250,000
Items Currently Listed: over 5 million
Page Views per month: over 670 million

Total $ sold (Gross Merchandise Sales)
2005 = $166,000
2006 = $3.8 million
2007 = $26 million
2008 = $87.5 million
2009 = $180.6 million"
Source: Etsy press stats, retrieved 28th January 2010

Online book piracy represents roughly 10% of total United States book sales

"Attributor’s FairShare Guardian™ service discovered that over 9 million pirated book copies were downloaded in a recent study of ~1,000 books of various genres.
These free downloads represent potential losses of $2.75-3 billion to the book publishing industry.
Online book piracy represents roughly 10% of total United States book sales.12
On average, nearly 10,000 copies of every book published are downloaded for free, led by titles in the Business and Investing genre, which average over 13,000 free downloads per title.
Titles within the Business and Investing, Professional and Technical and Science categories are potentially losing over $1 million per title to online book piracy."
Source: US Book Anti-Piracy Research Finding, Attributor Corporation, 14th January 2010

The YouTube video David After Dentist has generated nearly $30,000 in payments for the family

"Embedded ads in the YouTube clip have netted his family nearly $30,000"
Source: Time Magazine, 12th November 2009

Vodafone has 450,000 European subscribers to its music service

"No single kind of digital service is going to save the music business on its own, but every little helps. Doing its bit, Vodafone came to the Midem music-biz event having totted up the number of paying customers it has for unlimited subscription music - the model that offers perhaps the most likely salvation…
The result: 450,000 around Europe. That makes it the continent’s biggest subscription music operator, it claimed (Spotify has just over 250,000, it said during the conference, and is looking to provide its service to mobile carriers). Voda attracted 100,000 music subscribers in December alone, it said at the event in Cannes.
The telco first started offering unlimited, DRM’ed music downloads for £1.99, via subscription-music vendor Omnifone’s MusicStation service, in September 2007, so has been in the game a relatively long time, but it’s recently started concentrating again on a la carte downloads, striking deals with major labels to remove DRM. That allows is to offer a bundle of 10 MP3s a month to consumers - an offering that labels have made standard to many retailers.
Voda’s DRM-free repertoire is only about two million, the music industry has digitised some 11 million tracks, but Voda says will have six million soon. Numbers on Nokia’s Comes With Music service are unavailable."
Source: Figures revealed by Vodafone at MIDEM, reported by PaidContent, 26th January 2010

Apple 'do a bit better than break even' on the iTunes store and the iPhone app store

"Apple is still breaking even on the iTunes Store - and the App Store for that matter - according to recent disclosures by Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer. "Regarding the App Store and the iTunes Store, we're running those a bit over break-even, and that hasn't changed," Oppenheimer stated during a recent quarterly financial call. The break-even status remains despite paid download volumes approaching 2.5 billion songs annually.
The comments support a longstanding Apple model that places hardware above content. At present, iTunes Store downloads are at best a bait for iPods and iPhones, and financially a sideshow."
Source: DigitalMusicNews, 25th January 2010

What American consumers use their phones for

"U.S. consumers are frequently/occasionally doing the following with their phones:
-- 72% are text messaging – up from 65% last year, and increases across all generations
-- 42% are accessing the Internet– up from 36% last year
-- 30% are using mobile online search
-- 27% are downloading apps to their phone
-- 26% are using GPS – up from 9% last year
-- 15% are purchasing products"
Source: State of the Media Democracy US 4th Edition, Deloittes, December 2009

US TV viewing by type of device

"Over the last 6 months, U.S. consumers have watched their favorite TV programs on the following platforms:
-- 77% watched them live on their home television system
-- 30% watched them via their DVR on their home television system
-- 17% watched them via a free online video service (Hulu, TV.com)
-- 18% have watched via the show’s Internet site – up from 13% last year
-- 10% viewed them from a video-sharing site (like YouTube)
-- 3% watched them on a portable MP3 video player
-- 2% watched them on their mobile/smart phone"
Source: State of the Media Democracy US 4th Edition, Deloittes, December 2009

Blur 'probably' made 20 times more from licencing Song 2 than from its record sales

"[Chris Morrison] said that simple use of an artist's music on an advert is less troublesome. Blur made "probably 20 times as much as the record generated" from Song 2 from sync licences. The only one that was turned down came from a manufacturer of stealth fighter jets, apparently."
Source: Blur manager Chris Morrison, speaking at MIDEM, reported by MIDEM Net blog, 25th January 2010

Facebook's mobile users (via the Opera mini browser) grew by 600% in 2009; twitter's by 2800%

"Facebook is now the most-visited social network on the mobile Web, according to Opera’s State of the Mobile Web report. Unique users of Facebook grew more than 600% during 2009, helping the site surpass VKontakte, formerly the most popular social network among Opera Mini users. Twitter saw its usage increase more than any other social network, surging more than 2800% in just one year."
Source: Press Release from mobile web browser company Opera, 26th January 2010
Full report here

Apple sold twice as many iPhones in Q4 2009 as in Q42008

"Apple sold 3.36 million Macintosh® computers during the quarter, representing a 33 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 8.7 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 100 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 21 million iPods during the quarter, representing an eight percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter."
Source: Apple Press Release, 25th January 2010

23% of parents of kids in the UK aged 10 or under said that they allow the child unsupervised internet access

"A [...] survey of more than 1,000 parents found that almost a quarter (23%) said they had, or would, allow their child of 10 or under to have unsupervised access to the internet on a home computer.
Almost four in 10 (38%) said they had, or would, allow a child aged 10 or under to have their own mobile phone, while one in 10 said they would allow a child under eight to have their own mobile."
Source: BMRB (British Market Research Bureau) poll of 1,163 parents of children aged eight to 14 in England during October, reported by The Daily Telegraph, 16th November 2009

180m playlists have been created on MySpace Music, and nearly 100m on Spotify

"On Saturday, MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta revealed that more than 180 million playlists have been created on MySpace Music. Well, Spotify is hot on its heels: yesterday, its CEO Daniel Ek revealed its own playlist stats, based on just six countries in Europe.
“Right now we’re almost close to 100 million playlists on our users, and 30% of those are albums,” he said. “People do actually listen to albums, and they’re storing them.”
Ek also said that Spotify doesn’t differentiate between its ad-supported and subscription business models – they’re wrapped up together, along with revenue from downloads."
Source: MusicAlly, 25th Jan 2010
Note - In the same article Ek revealed that Spotify has 250,000 paying subscribers

Google's revenues rose 17% Y-o-Y in Q4 2009

"Google saw its revenues increase 17% between October and December, as its advertising earnings rose strongly.
However, its shares fell 5% in after-hours trading, as the results came in at the lower end of market targets.
The US search engine giant enjoyed revenues of $6.67bn (£4bn) during the quarter, up from $5.7bn a year earlier.
Its net profit also shot up to $1.97bn, but a comparison with a year earlier is difficult because of a one-off charge in the last three months of 2008."
Source: BBC News, 21st January 2010

Only 12 'new' artists (without major label support) sold more than 10,000 copies of an album in the US in 2008

"Looking at the 1517 albums that were released in 2008 and sold more than 10,000 units in 2008 we find that only 225 of them were by artists that had surpassed 10,000 for the first time in their career (either by themselves or with another band).
The vast majority of these were released by significant indies (110) or majors (103). Last Friday, I thought that only 14 of those were self released artists or artists on start up labels. Further inspection disqualified two of them. One was a gospel record whose Bishop had exceeded 10,000 in the past under a slightly different name and the other was a Soundscan placeholder for a title distributed by Anderson Wholesale, the distributor for Walmart, that showed the title “TBD.” We had thought it was a Dutch electronic artist called Anderson but alas, nay.
Who were these valiant artists? A quick inspections indicated that beyond Bon Iver, the real indie artist success story of 2008, there were three hip hop artists, one that had financing of $10 a unit in marketing spend to sell under 30,000 units, another associated with the big indie hip hop powerhouse Tech N9ne and the last a gospel hip hop artist. The rest were largely alternative rock artists, two had been contestants in America’s Got Talent or American Idol and a few others were on small labels with big budgets."
Source: Musicial Coaching, 20th January 2010 (which also lists the 12 artists)
Update - 22nd Janaury 2010 - These figures and the conclusions are being disputed on the grounds that:
1 - Tracks are a better measure than albums
2 - Not all tracks or albums are registered with Nielsen Soundscan

Crowdsourcing company CrowdFlower has completed 8m tasks in the past 12 months

"CrowdFlower says it has completed more than 8m tasks in the past year and managed 125,000 workers across labour pools including casual gamers, refugees in Africa and users of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.
The startup has developed an algorithm that it says ensures the quality and reliability of the work done by tens of thousands of individual workers over the web as they earn money cracking large but often basic tasks such as checking the accuracy of directories and whether unlawful copyrighted images are being posted to websites."
Source: Financial Times Technology blog, 20th January 2010

The ten most commonly used passwords

"1. 123456
2. 12345
3. 123456789
4. Password
5. iloveyou
6. princess
7. rockyou [i.e. the name of the site the user is accessing]
8. 1234567
9. 12345678
10. abc123"
Source: Data compiled from 32m passwords leaked from the company RockYou, analysed by Imperva, and reported by The Guardian, 21st January 2010

68 Percent of Saudi girls drop their last name on Facebook

"Dammam, Asharq Al-Awsat - Are you on Facebook under your real name? This is the question that continues to haunt a large number of Saudi Arabian women, despite the fact that internet social networking sites rely primarily on factual personal information. However a recent study carried out in Saudi Arabia shows that 68 percent of Saudi girls prefer to withhold their family name due to the sensitivity of this information, in comparison to just 32 percent of girls who appear on Facebook under their own full names. The study revealed that 16 percent of girls polled were members of Facebook under aliases or false identities. As for the Saudi Arabian boys who use Facebook, the study showed that 60 percent of those questioned were members of Facebook under their own full name, with just 4 percent appearing under an alias or a false name."
Source: Asharq Alawsat, 19th January 2010

Skype has 12% of international calling minutes

"New data released by TeleGeography shows that Skype’s share of international calling minutes has jumped to 12%, a 50% increase on last year’s figure of 8%. ‘The volume of traffic routed via Skype is growing at an astonishing pace’, says Telegeography’s annual report into the world of international telecommunications.
Skype retains its top spot as the ‘largest provider of cross-border communications in the world, by far’ according to the same report. Skype-to-Skype international calling minutes grew by 21 billion in 2009, a phenomenal acceleration of almost 100%. Telegeography strategy VP Stefan Beckert said at a meeting in Honolulu (why can’t we have meetings there?) that ‘he knew Skype hit a tipping point when his grandmother started using it’."
Source: Data from Telegeography, quoted in the Skype blog, 19th January 2010

Video Game Statistics (graphic)

Source: Online Education
Source: The graphic comes from OnlineEducation.net, January 2010

Players of Zynga's social games on Facebook have donated more than $1.5m to Haiti disaster relief in 5 days

"Zynga’s gamers have donated more than $1.5 million in the past five days for Haitian earthquake relief. They did so by making donations directly from within Zynga’s top four games on Facebook.
Zynga, the biggest maker of social games on Facebook, said that some 300,000 Zynga game players from 47 countries have purchased virtual goods inside the games, with all of the proceeds for the specific game item sales going to the U.N.’s World Food Programme. FarmVille users, including me, donated a total of $1 million. Users in FishVille, Mafia Wars, and Zynga Poker were also able to donate money. Donations were also promoted via all of Zynga’s games, which reach 227 million monthly active users."
Source: Venturebeat, 19th January 2010

82% of twitter users have fewer than 100 followers

"82% of Twitter users have less than 100 followers
81% of Twitter users are following less than 100 people
Thursday and Friday are the most active days on Twitter, each accounting for 16% of
total tweets in our study.
10-11 pm is the most active hour on Twitter, accounting for 4.8% of the tweets in an
average day."
Source: Pg 6 of State of the Twittersphere report, Hubspot, January 2010
Note - the report is based on analysis of 6m tweets from 5m twitter accounts.
Note 2 - the report also states that 'the average twitter account has 300 followers, and follows 173 other accounts'. This is clearly an arithmetic mean (naughty of them to use 'average' without explanation), and shows that the mean figures are heavily skewed by celebrity users with over 100,000 at one end.

There are currently 100,000 used video games up for sale on Switchgames.com

"SwitchGames is a game trading site that has ridden the wave of demand for used games. Today, the company says its users are now offering more than 100,000 items for trade on its peer-to-peer game trading community.
The New York company, which was a finalist in the GamesBeat 2009 startup competition, makes it easy to trade games quickly and safely without fear you’ll be ripped off. The company hit its 100,000-item milestone in less than a year, said company founder Jason Crawford.
Overall, used games are a $3 billion business. Much of that is traded through GameStop retail stores. But users don’t get paid very much, while GameStop resells the games for a tidy profit. SwitchGames instead empower users so they can get much better deals."
Source: Venturebeat, 19th January 2010

US gaming retail sales revenues fell 8% Y-o-Y in 2009

"According to leading market research company, The NPD Group, U.S. retail sales of video games, which includes portable and console hardware, software and accessories, generated revenues of close to $19.66 billion, an 8 percent decline over the $21.4 billion generated in 2008.
Retail sales in the PC game software industry also experienced declines, with revenues down 23 percent, generating $538 million in 2009. The total console, portable and PC game software industry generated $10.5 billion, an 11 percent decline vs. the $11.7 billion generated in 2008.
“December sales broke all industry records and underscores the incredible value consumers find in computer and video games even in a down economy,” said Michael D. Gallagher, president and CEO of the Entertainment Software Association, the trade group which represents U.S. computer and video game publishers. “This is a very strong way to transition into 2010. I anticipate these solid sales numbers to continue upward through 2010 with a pipeline full of highly-anticipated titles.”
Aside from portable hardware which experienced a 6 percent increase in revenue in 2009, all video game categories experienced declines, with the largest decline coming from console hardware (-13 percent). Console software and portable software both experienced declines of 10 percent, while video game accessories experienced a 1 percent decline."
Source: Press release from NPD, 14th January 2010

90% of paid console game purchases in the US in Q4 2009 were in physical formats

"According to Games Acquisition Monitor, a quarterly report from leading market research company The NPD Group, 90 percent of all paid console video game acquisitions in the third quarter (Q3) of 2009 (July-September) were in the physical format, while 79 percent of games acquired for all other platforms which include portable, PC/MAC, mobile and smartphones, were in the physical format*.
Dual format (digital and physical) video game purchasers distinguish themselves from purely digital purchasers in that they are notably younger, since 70 percent of dual format buyers are under the age of 35 as compared to 46 percent for digital only purchasers. Dual format purchasers represent just 19 percent of all buyers but provide 40 percent of dollar volume.
Piracy, defined for this report as downloading files through Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks, is small relative to the music industry. However, 4 percent of gamers, representing just over 6 million consumers, indicated that they downloaded files from P2P networks, with 72 percent of pirated downloads occurring for PC/Mac."
Source: Press release from NPD, 12th January 2010

The average age for US kids to first acquire digital content is 7

"Forty-one percent of kids who own some form of digital content said music was the first type of content they downloaded, with 38 percent saying it was game downloads. The average age at which kids make their first digital acquisition is 7 years old. Girls in particular turn to single song downloads when they first foray into music, and their predisposition for music also makes them slightly more likely than boys to first get ringtones.
"Forty-three percent of digital downloaders were six years old or younger when they acquired their first digital content," said Anita Frazier, industry analyst, The NPD Group. "Since parents are the first touch point for children this age, it is important for companies to develop marketing strategies that reach parents as well as kids.""
Source: Press release from NPD, 5th January 2010

79% of US kids aged 2-14 acquired some sort of entertainment content in 2009

"According to Kids and Entertainment Content, the most recent report from leading market research company, The NPD Group, 79 percent of kids age 2-14 have acquired some form of physical or digital content in the past year, with 31 percent acquiring both physical and digital content.
According to the report, digital content seems to be an additional source kids turn to when they want to supplement their physical collections, which is supported by that fact that less than 1 percent of kids only acquired digital content.
In terms of money spent on this content by kids, $0.85 of every content dollar spent went to physical items, while $0.15 went to digital.
Video rental services and online music services were the top content-based household services or subscriptions used by kids ages 2-14 in the past year, with 19 percent of kids using an in-store video rental service, 12 percent using an online video rental service, and 14 percent using an online music service. Paid subscriptions to online video game rental services and paid subscriptions to online gaming Web sites ranked among the lowest."
Source: Press release from NPD, 5th January 2010

One in eight iPlayer views comes from a games console

"The availability of the BBC iPlayer on the Nintendo Wii and Sony PS3 games consoles have helped deliver a record 100 million requests to the catch-up TV service. A significant increase was recorded in the last two weeks of December, requests from the PlayStation 3 increased by two percentage points to make up 8% of all TV requests in December, and in the first full month since its November relaunch the Wii added another 3%.
Since November 2009 the two devices have seen a 74% increase in iPlayer usage leading to one in eight requests to come from a games console. The growth is logical given that the devices allow viewers to watch iPlayer content directly on their TV sets rather than a PC. Over 20 devices are now capable of delivering iPlayer content."
Source: BBC iStat, reported by Broadband TV News, 15th January 2010

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has generated more than $1bn in sales in two months

"Activision Blizzard, Inc. (Nasdaq: ATVI) announced today that Infinity Ward's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 continues to set sell-through records crossing the $1 billion mark in retail sales worldwide since its launch in November, according to internal Activision estimates.
In its first five days alone, the game sold an estimated $550 million worldwide, outpacing five-day worldwide theatrical box office gross figures for such films as Avatar, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and The Dark Night, according to internal Activision estimates and boxofficemojo.com.
"Call of Duty:Modern Warfare 2 has exceeded our expectations and shattered theatrical box office and video game records," said Robert Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard. "There are only a handful of entertainment properties that have ever reached the $1 billion mark, which illustrates the power of the Call of Duty franchise and mass appeal of this game.""
Source: Activision press release, 13th January 2010

Nearly a third of British children aged 6-14 admit to watching illegal TV streams or downloads

"Nearly a third of children aged six to 14 admit regularly watching programmes illegally, either by streaming them to a television or downloading them, a study published yesterday found.
[...]
Sixteen per cent of the 4,347 children surveyed also said they download pirated films before they are released.
“We were incredibly surprised by how young these children are — for six-year-olds to be downloading is astonishing,” said Justin Pearse, editor of in New Media Age magazine, which commissioned the study."
Source: Research commissioned by New Media Age, reported by the Daily Telegraph, 15th January 2010

Stats on the Apple iPhone App Store

Click to enlarge

Source: GigaOM, 12th January 2010, using data from Apple, Flurry & Admob
Explanatory text:
"Thanks to everyone for weighing in about the infographic. The data used was given to us on an exclusive basis from analytics firm Flurry. Indeed, three-quarters of the apps in the App Store are “paid apps,” which was used to calculate the average app price and the subsequent revenue figures in the previous version. However, only one-quarter of the apps actually downloaded are “paid apps,” so the average price per transaction (paid + free downloads) is actually much lower than the average app price in the store. The graphic has been updated to reflect this price. Also, some of the averages in the Flurry data were calculated using projected user numbers from the first quarter 2010; that has been corrected to reflect only data up to the end of the year.
For clarification purposes, here is the math:
According to Flurry, Average listed price of a paid app: $3.63
74% of apps listed in the app store are paid. Average listed price of an app (including free): 3.63 x .74 = 2.70 (with rounding)
Only 1/4 of downloaded apps are paid. Average price paid for an app (including free): 3.63 X .25 = .91
While we make every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information contained in our posts, sometimes errors make their way onto our site, and this was one of them. We deeply regret any confusion this may have caused. Please accept our apologies."

The number of mobile app downloads to iPod Touches overtook the number to iPhones on Christmas Day 2009

"Flurry evaluated download growth driven by Christmas across the leading Apple and Android devices, as well as their respective app stores, pulling a sample that represents approximately 10% of all download volume in the App Store and Android Market.
[...]
App downloads on iPod Touch soared past iPhone for the first time, eclipsing iPhone downloads by 172%.
iPod Touch 3G downloads increased by more than 900% on Christmas Day, compared to the average of all previous Fridays in December.
Total iPod Touch downloads (all generations) jumped by over 1000% on Christmas Day, indicating that in addition to new iPod Touch 3Gs coming into the market, iTunes gift card giving may have driven downloads to older generation iPod Touch devices."
Source: Flurry blog, 28th December 2009

In H1 2009 22.7% of US households had a mobile phone but no landline

"In the first 6 months of 2009, more than one of every five households (22.7%) did not have a landline telephone but did have at least one wireless telephone. Approximately 21.1% of all adults--approximately 48 million adults--lived in households with only wireless telephones; 21.3% of all children--nearly 16 million children--lived in households with only wireless telephones.
The percentage of households that are wireless-only has been steadily increasing. The 2.5-percentage-point increase from the last 6 months of 2008 through the first 6 months of 2009 is nearly equivalent to the 2.7-percentage-point increase observed from the first 6 months of 2008 through the last 6 months of 2008. The percentage of households that are wireless-only increased by approximately 5 percentage points in just 12 months, from 17.5% in the first 6 months of 2008 to 22.7% in the first 6 months of 2009."
Source: Preliminary results from the January-June 2009 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), 16th December 2009
Earlier - The figure was reported as 18% for the same period in 2008

The Red Cross raised over $1 million for Haiti disaster relief through text messages in less than 24 hours

[Update - 15th January - It's now over $5m via SMS]
[Update - 15th January - now over $10m]
"We’ve just confirmed that the Red Cross has already raised more than $800,000 [later updated to more than $1m) for Haiti through their $10 text message donation initiative (text “Haiti” to 90999), which is backed by the United States State Department."
Source: Mashable, 13th January 2010, with the million landmark confirmed in this tweet by Katie J Stanton, also on on 13th January 2010

Online advertising has a greater impact on sales for users over 40

"Major Findings:
By combining a controlled experiment with panel data on purchases, we find statistically and economically significant impacts of advertising on sales.
We estimate the total effect on revenues to be more than eleven times the retailer’s expenditure on advertising during the study. 93% of the effect was on offline (in store) sales.
Persistence: The effects of the campaigns were persistent over time, meaning that the sales impact could be tracked for a period of time after the campaign ended.
Demographics: there was no significant correlation or differences w/r/t location (by state) or gender.
But there was a significant difference w/r/t to age: customers over the age of 40 were significantly more responsive to the ads in terms of sales. The largest effect came from senior citizens (65+).
Clicks versus non-Clicks: Though clicks are a standard measure of performance in online-advertising, we find that online advertising has substantial effects on those who merely view but do not click the ads.
We find that 78% of the effect in sales comes from those who view ads but do not click them, while only 22% can be attributed to those who click."
Source: Statement by Yahoo Labs in explanation of commissioned research, to All Things Digital, 12th January 2010

Music streaming service Pandora is now profitable

"“We became profitable for the fourth quarter of 2009, and now we’re shooting for profits for the entire 2010 [period],” Pandora’s chief technology officer, Tom Conrad, told me. The 10-year-old company plans to reach that goal by embedding itself in all sorts of consumer electronics devices that feature an Internet connection. For now Pandora’s ambitions are restricted to within U.S. borders.
In 2009, Pandora’s U.S. audience of registered users reached 43 million and at present nearly 100 different consumer devices other than computers are streaming the service. In December 2009 alone, 3 million new listeners joined Pandora — of which 2.7 million of them activated the service on a device other than a computer, according to the company."
Source: GigaOM, 12th January 2010

Next Generation Media Quarterly - January 2010

Please forgive the momentary change of format.

Here's the second in my quarterly series of presentations showing how the world of media is evolving. I hope that you enjoy reading it, and find it both interesting and useful.

Next Generation Media Quarterly - January 2010

View more documents from Dan Calladine.

Regular visitors to this site may recognise some of the stats!

The first presentation, published in October 2009 is here

The Guardian's mobile app was downloaded nearly 70,000 times in the first month

"The Guardian App has been downloaded from the App Store almost 70,000 times since its launch last month. The app is also now available in most European countries, as well as Australia, Canada and the US, having initially launched in the UK, Ireland and US.
Up to and including Tuesday 12 January 2010, the Guardian App has been downloaded 68,979 times from the App Store. The app launched on Monday 14 December 2009."
Source: The Guardian, 13th January 2010

Ebay sold 1.5 million items through their mobile app over Christmas 2009

"Online retailer eBay saw purchases made from mobile apps soar this holiday season, with three-times as many items purchased via mobile device than a year ago.
Consumers worldwide bought 1.5 million items from eBay using their mobile device during the 2009 holiday season, with luxury items being a consumer favorite, the company said."
Source: Ebay official figures, reported by CNBC, 29th December 2009

Mobile service Foursquare had more than one checkin per second on 9th January 2010

"Yesterday was our Biggest Day Ever™ We've been averaging *more than a checkin per second* over past 24 hrs. This is amazing - thanks all!"
Source: Foursquare twitter account, 10th January 2010

More than 70% of European kids aged 8-14 say that gaming is their main use of the internet

"More than seven in 10 children said their most common use of the Internet was for gaming, while 59 percent said that they used the worldwide web in the course of doing their homework.
The youngsters from Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Poland also expressed a strong sense of social responsibility, with 90 percent saying it was important to look after the planet, and 74 percent saying they recycled regularly.
Traditional values shone through with 70 percent of respondents saying that saving pocket money was important to them and that the people they most admired were their parents."
Source: Survey of 3,020 children in Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Poland, commissioned by Disney, reported by Reuters, 11th January 2010

23% of Britons looked at their computer history to try to see what they had been bought for Christmas

"Almost one in four people will look at the internet history of their partner, to see what Christmas present they might have been bought.
A study of 1,000 Brits found 23 percent would sneak-a-peak at their Christmas gifts online, rather than hunting the house and squeezing wrapped presents.
Nowadays they just load up the internet browser and look in the history folder to see what sites and products have been viewed or purchased.
A further 15 percent of people said they'd accidentally stumbled on what they had been bought by visiting a shopping website on a shared computer and seeing a message like "you recently bought…""
Source: Research commissioned by Webtrends, reported by News Lite, 21st December 2009

Single sales in the UK increased by 33% to 152m in 2009, wiht 98% of sales being digital

"Album sales continued to fall last year, despite being boosted by a growth in digital downloads, figures show.
Statistics released by trade body the BPI showed overall album sales dropped by 3.5% in 2009 to 128.9 million, the fifth year in a row they have fallen.
But the fall was eased by a 56.1% rise in album downloads to 16.1 million, now accounting for one in eight sold.
The news comes days after weekly sales of singles - on CD and download - recorded an all-time high.
An unprecedented 4.22 million singles were sold in the last week of 2009 - more than in any previous week. The sales boom was put down to the use of new MP3 players received as Christmas presents, as music fans downloaded a wide range of tracks, old and new.
Across the entire year, singles sales increased by 32.7% to a record 152 million, with 98% of those being digital downloads."
Source: BPI, reported by BBC News, 7th January 2010

Tesco sold 20,000 basic mobile handsets in 2 weeks in the UK

"In the two weeks leading up to Christmas, Tesco sold over 20,000 [of the "18.99 VX1i Party Phone]"
Source: Mobile Industry Review, 12th January 2010

Sales of vinyl albums grew by 33% in the US in 2009

"LPs, or vinyl albums, gained 33 percent to 2.5 million, the highest level since Nielsen started tracking in the early 90s."
Source: Nielsen Soundscan, reported by DigitalMusicNews, 7th January 2010

1.159 billion tracks were legally downloaded in the US in 2009

"Albums suffered another precipitous drop in 2009, according to the latest US-based data from Nielsen Soundscan. The group reported yearly sales of 373.9 million units, down 12.7 percent from a 2008 total of 428.4 million. The tally includes CDs, digital albums, LPs, and the increasingly-marginalized cassettes.
That represents another tough drop, though the label-partial Nielsen softened the blow by factoring in its usual bag of questionable calculations. That includes 'track equivalent albums,' as well as a separate methodology that counts every discrete transaction - download, ringtone, album sale, whatever - and invariably comes up with a gain.
But a straighter read of digital sales still revealed continued gains. For example, digital album sales gained 16.1 percent to 76.4 million, though the broader album decline negated those improvements. Separately, digital track sales gained 8.3 percent to 1.159 billion units, the second-straight post-billion year for song downloads. Still, the broader feeling is that paid downloads are entering a plateau after an explosive period of early-stage growth."
Source: Nielsen Soundscan, reported by DigitalMusicNews, 7th January 2010

Demographics of American internet users

Click to enlarge

Including: 93% of 18-29s use the internet.

Source: Internet, Broadband and Cell Phone Statistics, Pew Internet, 5th January 2010

Digital downloads account for 40% of US music sales

"U.S. album sales in 2009 declined for the eighth time in nine years, according to Nielsen SoundScan, while online song downloads grew too slowly to close the gap.
The data, released Wednesday, indicate that the recorded-music industry is still struggling to adapt to the digital age, even as SoundScan said digital downloads now account for 40% of music purchases.
Domestic album sales, including digital downloads, fell to 373.9 million units, a decline of 13% from 2008."
Source: Nielsen Soundscan, reported by the Wall Street Journal, 7th January 2010

3G penetration rates by market Q2 2009

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Source: Page 27 of The Mobile Internet Report Setup, Morgan Stanley, December 2009
Their own notes state:
"Note: *Informa reports a slightly lower global 3G subscriptions and penetration level vs. Ovum due to the exclusion of 4G and the use of different sources. 3G includes CDMA 1x EV-DO and Rev. A / B, WCDMA, HSPA; Source: Informa WCIS+, Morgan Stanley Research."

Three billion iPhone apps have been downloaded from the iTunes app store

"Apple® today announced that more than three billion apps have been downloaded from its revolutionary App Store by iPhone® and iPod touch® users worldwide.
“Three billion applications downloaded in less than 18 months—this is like nothing we’ve ever seen before,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “The revolutionary App Store offers iPhone and iPod touch users an experience unlike anything else available on other mobile devices, and we see no signs of the competition catching up anytime soon.”
iPhone and iPod touch customers in 77 countries worldwide can choose from an incredible range of apps in 20 categories, including games, business, news, sports, health, reference and travel."
Source: Apple press release, 5-1-2010
Note - The first billion downloads took nine months, the second took five, the third took just over three (28th September - 5th January)