Apple has sold more than 2 million iPads in less than 60 days

"Apple® today announced that iPad™ sales have topped two million in less than 60 days since its launch on April 3. Apple began shipping iPad in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK this past weekend. iPad will be available in nine more countries in July and additional countries later this year.
[...]
Developers have created over 5,000 exciting new apps for iPad that take advantage of its Multi-Touch user interface, large screen and high-quality graphics. iPad will run almost all of the more than 200,000 apps on the App Store, including apps already purchased for your iPhone® or iPod touch®. "
Source: Apple press release, 31st May 2010

A YouTube video typically has 50% of its views in the first 6 days, and 75% in the first 20

"A video on YouTube gets 50% of its views in the first 6 days it is on the site, according to data from analytics firm TubeMogul. After 20 days, a YouTube video has had 75% of its total views.
That's a really short life span for YouTube videos, and it's probably getting shorter. In 2008, it took 14 days for a video to get 50% of its views and 44 days to get 75% of its views."
Source: Data from TubeMogul, reported by Business Insider, 27th May 2010

China has 105 million browser game users, including 92 million social game users

"The China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) has released its 2010 China Browser Game Survey Report, showing that as of April 2010, China had 105 mln browser game users, including 92.09 mln social game users, 23.84 mln massively multiplayer online (MMO) browser game users, and 37.91 mln single-player browser game players, with some user overlap between all three categories.
The report said that, at a usage rate of 87.7%, social games possess significant commercial potential due to user tolerance towards advertising. CNNIC reported that 71.3% of social game users are exposed to in-game advertisements, of whom 2.2% said they would purchase goods advertised. The report also showed that social games can help boost stickiness of social networking sites. When asked whether they would leave a social networking site if it lacked games, 27.4% of respondents said "definitely" and 45% said "maybe.""
Source: CNNIC 2010 China Browser Game Survey Report, reported by Marbridge Daily, 27th May 2010

Digital music and video distributor The Orchard reaches more than 1.2 billion mobile customers across Asia

"Today, The Orchard, a global leader in music and video distribution and comprehensive digital strategy, announced that the company is now reaching more than 1.2 billion mobile customers across Asia through distribution partnerships with top mobile operators and licensors in China, Japan, Korea, India, and the Middle East.
In Japan, The Orchard has direct agreements with Music.JP and Music Airport, as well as a partnership with the largest record label Avex, which brings Orchard content to Label Mobile, a mobile-content provider owned by leading Japan record labels. In The Middle East, The Orchard has an agreement with Viva, which provides The Orchard access to top mobile operators like Orange, Vodafone, and Mobinil. In Korea, a deal with NeoWizBugs supplies content to SK Telecom and third-party mobile music sites including Bugs, Melon and Dosirak. A deal with ZTEMT China brings The Orchard's content to China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom subscribers. Finally, through its partner label Saregama, the Orchard also reaches the largest mobile service providers in India, such as Vodafone, Air Tel, Reliance, and BSNL. In total, The Orchard taps over 1.2 billion mobile users in the Asian mobile market."
Source: Press release from The Orchard, 26th May 2010

Wired sold more than 24,000 copies of its iPad app in the first 24 hours

"Wired magazine sold 24,000 copies of its iPad app in the first 24 hours it was available in Apple’s iTunes store, company executives said. The app was released shortly after midnight Tuesday.
It’s difficult to put that number in context, because there aren’t many iPad magazine apps yet, these being the earliest days of the new platform for which publishers have high hopes but little track record to parse."
Source: Wired, 27th May 2010

There are currently 27 million iPhones and 12 million Android phones in use around the world

Click to enlarge

Source: AdMob April 2010 Mobile Metrics Report, 26th May 2010
Notes:
1 - "In the April Mobile Metrics report we take a look at unique Android and iPhone devices in our network. The numbers represent the unique devices that requested at least one ad from the AdMob network in April 2010. Please note these are not market estimates, rather data from our network that could be used to inform relative comparisons between the platforms."
2 - "Keep in mind that these unique device numbers are from the AdMob network only and reflect the adoption of our products and business operations. We don’t know what percentage of the total universe of iPhone and Android devices AdMob reaches. However we believe the data is useful on a relative basis given the large sample size of devices in our network."

320m people in China listened to music online in 2009

"Total online music users nationwide reached 320 mln in 2009, up 28.8% YoY and adding 71.74 mln new users. Mobile music users grew by over 60 mln to reach 470 mln total in 2009, up 15% YoY.
China's total internet music market revenues (including both online and mobile) reached RMB 2.01 bln in 2009 (including music content and service provider revenues, but not telecom operator revenues).
China's mobile music market revenues (also excluding telecom operator revenues) in 2009 reached RMB 1.84 bln [approx $270m] accounting for 91.5% of the total internet music market. Revenues from online music reached RMB 170 mln, accounting for 8.5% of total revenues.
In terms of businesses models, advertising accounted for 88.3% of online music providers' revenues, while fee-based models remained in the exploratory stage. Mobile music relied mainly on telecom operator platforms to charge users, so that telecom operators received the lion's share of profits in the mobile music supply chain, while wireless value-added service providers and content providers received a limited share."
Source: China Internet Music Market 2009 Report, by the Chinese Ministry of Culture reported by Marbridge Daily, 25th May 2010

The majority of UK consumers are still very attached to physical media formats

"The survey undertaken by HP illustrates that when it comes to the progression from physical to digital ownership of media, the UK population are far from being ‘Space Age’. The survey included 1,000 British consumers between the ages of 16 – 100 demonstrated that music fans are still strongly attached to physical media formats such as CDs and DVDs. Apparently little attachment is given to the monetary or emotional value of their digital content.
Some interesting statistics from the survey include: While 86% of the population access some form of digital media, 68% still prefer photographs to be physical rather than digital, 64% for music, 75% for films and a massive 95% for books. While the 16-24 and 25-34 age groups are the most enthusiastic when it comes to digital media, many of them (39%) are still purchasing CDs and DVDs alongside digital formats.
Most importantly, 73% of the people surveyed stated “they can never see a time when they would move to a 100% subscription model for their music and films”. So what does this signify for the likes of Spotify and we7.com in the UK? We should be clear that the survey was only of the UK population. Yet, as it was a company such as HP, which has no vested interest in music or films, one has to be confident its survey is probably one of the most unbiased in terms of questions and weightings given to answers."
Source: Evolution of Digital Media survey for HP, conducted by Opinion Matters, reported in The Music Void, 18th May 2010
For a full copy of the survey please contact: psguk@edelman.com

Google gives AdSense content partners 68% of ad revenue; AdSense search partners get 51%

"AdSense for content publishers, who make up the vast majority of our AdSense publishers, earn a 68% revenue share worldwide. This means we pay 68% of the revenue that we collect from advertisers for AdSense for content ads that appear on your sites. The remaining portion that we keep reflects Google's costs for our continued investment in AdSense — including the development of new technologies, products and features that help maximize the earnings you generate from these ads. It also reflects the costs we incur in building products and features that enable our AdWords advertisers to serve ads on our AdSense partner sites. Since launching AdSense for content in 2003, this revenue share has never changed.
We pay our AdSense for search partners a 51% revenue share, worldwide, for the search ads that appear through their implementations. As with AdSense for content, the proportion of revenue that we keep reflects our costs, including the significant expense, research and development involved in building and enhancing our core search and AdWords technologies. The AdSense for search revenue share has remained the same since 2005, when we increased it."
Source: Google AdSense blog, 24th May 2010

Apple has over a quarter of the US music market

"Apple's iTunes store, which emerged in 2008 as the top U.S. music account for the first time, widened its lead last year over former market leader Walmart.
According to my analysis of 2009 sales and market share, the top 20 U.S. music accounts accounted for 85% of the total account base. That's down from 88% in 2008 and runs counter to an almost decade-long consolidation trend under which the top 20 accounts continued to capture an ever larger share of the total market.
That was due to declining market share among the brick-and-mortar accounts in the top 20. The top 20 merchants selling CDs and other physical formats comprised 49.3% of the account base in 2009, plunging from 57.5% in 2008.
Meanwhile, digital accounts in the top 20 made up a combined 35.5% of the total account base, up from 31.6% in 2008. That gain of nearly four percentage points came despite a decline in the combined share of mobile service providers, once touted as the recording industry's next big thing. Collectively, Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, AT&T and mobile content provider Zed accounted for 4.9% of the market, down from 6.6% in 2008. That was probably due to the declining number of ringtone downloads, as well as declining ringtone prices.
But iTunes more than offset the mobile decline, growing its share of the U.S. account base to 26.7%, up from 21.4% in 2008 and more than double the 12.7% share the company had in 2007. Last year's share gain was helped by Apple's embrace of variable pricing on digital tracks. But it remains to be seen if iTunes can continue to expand its market share this year, given that year-to-date digital track sales in the United States are down almost 1% from the same period last year, according to Nielsen SoundScan."
Source: Billboard, 22nd May 2010

20 million people watched the Indian Premier League on YouTube

"The IPL Channel launched in March and broadcast up to two live Twenty20 cricket games every day.
Now that the event has drawn to a close, YouTube have released a report which details the key insights and metrics.
The IPL YouTube Channel in numbers...
200 countries and territories covered
57,000 commercial hours
3,200,000 minutes of branding achieved through thumbnails
20,000,000 unique views (112 days of commercial video were consumed by these 20 million viewers)
54,000,000 channel views
560,000,000 cumulative minutes of exposure to display ads on the live channel"
Source: Google Barometer blog post, 18th May 2010

Google is activating over 100,000 Android phones a day, up from 30,000 a year ago

"Today at Google I/O Vic Gundotra made a big revelation. Last year, Google was activating 30,000 Android phones a day. The past February, that number jumped to 60,000. Today, Google is now activating over 100,000 Android phones a day.
Android was the second best-selling smartphone this quarter, Gundotra says. They are only behind RIM — and yes, ahead of that other rival. Gundotra also pointed out the stat from AdMob that Android was first in terms of web and app usage among smartphones.
And that’s not all. Gundotra also announced that there were now over 50,000 apps available for the platform. And there are some 180,000 developers working on the platform."
Source: Vic Gundotra of Google, reported by Techcrunch, 20th May 2010

Smartphone operating systems global share of sales Q1 2010

Click to enlarge

Source: Press release from Gartner, 19th May 2010

Smartphone sales rose 49% Y-o-Y in Q1 2010

"Worldwide mobile phone sales to end users totalled 314.7 million units in the first quarter of 2010, a 17 per cent increase from the same period in 2009, according to Gartner, Inc. Smartphone sales to end users reached 54.3 million units, an increase of 48.7 per cent from the first quarter of 2009. Among the most successful vendors were those that controlled an integrated set of operating system (OS), hardware and services.
"In the first quarter of 2010, smartphone sales to end users saw their strongest year-on-year increase since 2006," said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner. “This quarter saw RIM, a pure smartphone player, make its debut in the top five mobile devices manufacturers, and saw Apple increase its market share by 1.2 percentage points. Android’s momentum continued into the first quarter of 2010, particularly in North America, where sales of Android-based phones increased 707 per cent year-on-year."
Source: Press release from Gartner, 19th May 2010

Shazam has 75m users

"Shazam®, the world's leading mobile discovery provider, today revealed that it has grown from 50 million to 75 million users in the last six months and has identified more than one billion songs."
Source: Shazam press release, 18th May 2010

The average UK web users spends 22 hours a month online

"British web users are spending 65% more time online than three years ago, according to a survey of net habits.
The average surfer spends 22 hours and 15 minutes on the net each month, according to the UK Online Measurement company (UKOM).
The lion's share of that time is spent on social networks or blogs, which accounts for nearly a quarter of users' time online.
Instant messaging (IM) has been one of the victims of social network growth.
Three years ago 14% of online time was spent using IM but that has fallen to just 5%.
But e-mail, also predicted to suffer as more people used Facebook and its rivals, is still healthy and accounts for 7.2% of time compared to 6.5% of time three years ago."

Time Spent Online
Social networks/blogs - 22.7%
E-mail - 7.2%
Games - 6.9%
Instant Messaging - 4.9%
Classified/Auctions - 4.7%
Portals - 4%
Search - 4%
Software info/products - 3.4%
News - 2.8%
Adult - 2.7%
Source: UKOM data, reported by BBC News, 19th May 2010

PVRs have no effect on US household purchase habits

"No matter how the researchers looked at it, DVRs did not affect what people bought. This conclusion astonished the researchers.
“Our initial goal was to simply measure how bad DVRs were for advertisers,” Mela says. “We tried a vast array of methodological approaches to find a DVR effect. And we just couldn’t.”
Mela offers these factors to account for the lack of a TiVo effect:
- To fast-forward a commercial, users must record a show to watch later. But TiVo households still watch the huge majority (95 percent) of their TV live, meaning few commercials can be skipped.
- Households without a TiVo can still avoid commercials. They can take a kitchen break, flip to a different channel, or find other ways to divert attention during commercials. This means the DVR might not increase ad avoidance as much as feared.
- Even though consumers fast-forwarded through about 70 percent of commercials in shows they recorded, they don't actually "skip" them. By concentrating on the screen to know when to press play and resume their show, those who forward are often exposed to the advertising they supposedly "skip." "
Source: Professor Carl L. Mela of Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, reported by Physorg,com, 3rd May 2010
Methodology: In partnership with Information Resources Inc. (IRI) and TiVo, Mela and colleagues from The University of Chicago and Tilburg University conducted a multimillion-dollar, three-year field study in which some households were given a DVR and their shopping behavior was compared to those without one. The authors tracked purchases of new products, advertised products and store brands across 50 categories as well as the viewing behavior of those with the DVRs.

Vodafone generate one third of their revenues from non-voice activities

""We now generate 33 percent of service revenue from products other than mobile voice reflecting the shift of Vodafone to a total communications provider.
"In particular, mobile data and fixed broadband services continue to grow while we increased the contribution being made by our operations in emerging economies, primarily by gaining market share.""
Source: Vodafone chief executive Vittorio Colao, reported by AFP, 18th May 2010

Approximately 4,000 iPhones are sold each day in Korea

"At last, half a million Apple iPhones have sold in Korea by the end of this month. The phones were an instant hit as soon as they belatedly hit the Korean market on Nov. 28, 2009 and sales remain at some 4,000 a day. The phones sold over 500,000 in only seven countries including the US, Germany, France and Japan. Apple is reportedly surprised at how fast the iPhone is selling in Korea.
People believes iPhone sales will slow down with the launch of new smartphones like Samsung’s Android Phone but still expects the total number sold to reach 1 million this year. Because many people are waiting for new iPhone 4G device in June.
Ironically Safari users in Korea were increased about 10 times compared with 6 month before. The most Korean online news service, Media Daum reported web browser share: IE6 57.1%(-7.8%), IE8 21.2%(+12.9%), IE7 16.8%(-3.01%), Safari 2.54%(+2.15%), Mozilla Firefox 1.2%(+0.01%) and Google Chrome 0.96%(+0.34%). The number of Safari users caught up with Firefox’s and it became #2 web browser in Korea."
Source: KoreaCrunch blog, 29th March 2010

98,000 albums were released in the US in 2009; only 2.1% sold more than 5,000 copies

"A total of 98,000 albums were released in 2009, and just a handful crossed the million-mark. Perhaps more sobering, just 2.1 percent managed to cross the 5,000-mark, a group that made up 91 percent of total sales. Suddenly, fresh artists are staring at a near-zero chance of selling even modest amounts, part of a continued drizzle on DIY optimism."
Source: Data released by Nielsen Soundscan at the NARM 2010 conference, May 2010, reported by DigitalMusicNews 17th May 2010
Earlier - 105,000 released in 2008; only 6,000 sold more than 1,000 copies (which is consistent with the 2009 figure, but also frustratingly different...)

YouTube gets more than 2 billion video views a day

"Five years ago, after months of late nights, testing and preparation, YouTube’s founders launched the first beta version of YouTube.com in May, with a simple mission: give anyone a place to easily upload their videos and share them with the world. Whether you were an aspiring filmmaker, a politician, a proud parent, or someone who just wanted to connect with something bigger, YouTube became the place where you could broadcast yourself.
Over time, these aspirations have created a vibrant and inspiring community that helped transform a murmur of interest into something far greater than any of us ever could have imagined. Today, thanks to you, our site has crossed another milestone: YouTube exceeds over two billion views a day. That’s nearly double the prime-time audience of all three major U.S. television networks combined."
Source: YouTube blog, 16th May 2010

63% of American adults living in shared accommodation have no landline

"More than three in five adults living only with unrelated adult roommates (62.9%) were in households with only wireless telephones. This is the highest prevalence rate among the population subgroups examined.
More than two in five adults renting their home (43.1%) had only wireless telephones. Adults renting their home were more likely than adults owning their home (14.0%) to be living in households with only wireless telephones.
Nearly half of adults aged 25-29 years (48.6%) lived in households with only wireless telephones. More than one-third of adults aged 18-24 or 30-34 (37.8% and 37.2%, respectively) lived in households with only wireless telephones.
As age increased from 35 years, the percentage of adults living in households with only wireless telephones decreased: 23.9% for adults aged 35-44; 14.9% for adults aged 45-64; and 5.2% for adults aged 65 and over. However, as shown in Table 2 and Figure 2, the percentage of wireless-only adults within each age group has increased over time.
Men (24.5%) were more likely than women (21.3%) to be living in households with only wireless telephones.
Adults living in poverty (36.3%) and adults living near poverty (29.0%) were more likely than higher income adults (19.6%) to be living in households with only wireless telephones.
Adults living in the Midwest (25.6%), South (25.4%), and West (22.2%) were more likely than adults living in the Northeast (15.1%) to be living in households with only wireless telephones.
Hispanic adults (30.4%) were more likely than non-Hispanic white adults (21.0%) or non-Hispanic black adults (25.0%) to be living in households with only wireless telephones."
Source: Wireless Substitution: Early Release of Estimates From the National Health Interview Survey, July-December 2009, by Stephen J. Blumberg, Ph.D., and Julian V. Luke, Division of Health Interview Statistics, National Center for Health Statistics, May 2010

24% of UK radio listening is through digital platforms

"Share of radio listening via a digital platform has increased by 19% year on year to 24% (cf. 20.1% in Q1, 2009). DAB radio continues to be the most popular device when it comes to listening to digital radio, however listening via DTV (digital television) and Internet have both increased substantially year on year.
- DAB listening share is 15.1% (12.7% in Q1, 2009 – up 20%)
- DTV listening share is 4% (3.4% in Q1, 2009 – up 19%)
- Internet listening share is 2.9% (2.2% in Q1, 2009 – up 29%)
Digital listening: Listening to radio via a digital platform in terms of weekly reach has also increased year on year by 15%, with 19.7 million people now tuning in to radio via a digitally enabled set each week (up from 17.2 million in Q1, 2009). This is also reflected in the digital listening hours for Q1, 2010 which now total 243 million hours per week, up 18% from 206 million hours in Q1, 2009.
DAB ownership: RAJAR’s latest research shows that DAB set ownership has increased by 9% year on year, with over one third of the population or 17.7 million adults (aged 15+) in Q1, 2010 now claiming to live in a household which has a DAB receiver. (cf. 16.3 million in Q1, 2009).
* This weekly reach figure is the number of people (adults 15+) in the UK who listened to a radio station for at least five minutes in the course of an average week during the quarter.
Radio listening via mobile phone: Radio listening via mobile phone remains steady with 12.6% of adults aged 15+ in Q1, 2010 claiming to have listened to radio via their mobile phone. In the 15-24-year demographic 30.4% claim they have listened to the radio in this way; and 14% say they listen at least once a week, while 2.6% say they listen every day. In the 25+ demographic 9.2% of adults now claim to listen to the radio via their mobile phone.
(Please note: In Q1, 2010 RAJAR introduced a number of changes to the self-completion questionnaire which impacted on questions regarding mobile phone listening: therefore caution should be used when comparing Q1, 2010 with similar data from previous quarters.)"
Source: Press release from RAJAR, 13th May 2010

US online ad spend rose 7.5% Y-o-Y in Q1 2010

"Internet advertising revenues in the U.S. hit $5.9 billion for the first quarter of 2010, representing a 7.5 percent increase over the same period in 2009, according to the numbers released today by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). This marks the highest first-quarter revenue level ever for the industry."
Source: Press release from the IAB, 13th May 2010

Foursquare has had over 40m checkins

"Location-based social network Foursquare counted its 40 millionth checkin a “couple days ago,” according to a tweet from one of its developers.
The number shows that Foursquare’s growth rate is accelerating: Five weeks ago, the company announced that the total number of checkins had reached 22 million. In short: Foursquare appears to have doubled its checkin rate in just over a month."
Source: Mashable, 10th May 2010
Original tweet announcing 40m checkins
Earlier - 15.5m reported on 11th March

Asian online marketplace Alibaba has more than 50m registered users

"During the first quarter, we made steady progress in all fronts. We added 2.5 million registered users, more than 458,000 storefronts and more than 43,400 paying members. This represents a key milestone as Alibaba.com surpasses 50 million registered users with 7.3 million storefronts and 658,701 paying members worldwide. We are particularly encouraged by the strong performance across revenue and net profit in the quarter. The quarterly revenue growth continued to accelerate and increased 49.3% year-over-year in the first quarter of 2010, compared with the 35.8% year-on-year growth in the fourth quarter of 2009. Despite generally weaker seasonality in the first quarter of the year, we maintained decent growth in recurring free cash flow and deferred revenue. Deferred revenue grew 43.6% year-on-year to reach RMB3.6 billion. These achievements showcased the strong execution by our team and confirmed Alibaba.com’s value to our small business customers."
Source: Company announcement of unaudited results, 13th May 2010
Background info on Alibaba here

IMDB's daily traffic from Facebook has doubled since integrating the 'Like' button

"More than 100,000 sites have already integrated social plugins. Across various industries, people have shown that they want to interact and share and see what their friends recommend. We are excited to report some early results that website developers have shared with us:
News: News sites have implemented social plugins to help surface individualized content for readers, and in the process seen significant increases in daily referral traffic from Facebook. For instance, Facebook referral traffic increased by 250% for ABC News and 80% for The Globe and Mail, Canada's largest-circulation national newspaper. The Globe and Mail has also found that people who have liked their Facebook Page are more engaged on their site — and comment, share, and read more.
Movies & Video: IMDb.com has seen daily referral traffic from Facebook double, and its users have generated more than 350,000 likes. Dailymotion, one of the top 50 most-trafficked websites in the world, has seen users click the Like button tens of thousands of times per day on their site. As an example, more than 250,000 users have engaged with one of the most popular videos on Dailymotion, PIXELS by Patrick Jean, and a quarter of its views are from Facebook users.
Sports: NHL.com, the official website of the National Hockey League, has seen an 80% increase in referral traffic from Facebook, as people interact with articles, scores and videos.
Publishing: Scribd, a site that helps authors publish their writing, has seen their referral traffic from Facebook double as authors gain followers among groups of Facebook friends."
Source: Facebook Developers blog, 11th May 2010

Chinese internet and mobile company QQ saw total revenues increase by 68% Y-o-Y in Q1 2010

"Highlights of the first quarter of 2010:
- Total revenues were RMB4,226.1 million (USD619.1 million1), an increase of 14.6% over the fourth quarter of 2009 (“QoQ”) or an increase of 68.7% over the first quarter of 2009 (“YoY”)
- Revenues from Internet value-added services (“IVAS”) were RMB3,387.4 million (USD496.2 million), an increase of 19.0% QoQ or an increase of 77.9% YoY
- Revenues from mobile & telecommunications value-added services (“MVAS”) were RMB618.2 million (USD90.6 million), an increase of 12.4% QoQ or an increase of 40.7% YoY
- Revenues from online advertising were RMB204.3 million (USD29.9 million), a decrease of 26.8% QoQ or an increase of 39.4% YoY
- Gross profit was RMB2,897.7 million (USD424.5 million), an increase of 13.9% QoQ or an increase of 68.6% YoY. Gross margin decreased to 68.6% from 69.0% last quarter
- Operating profit was RMB2,148.4 million (USD314.7 million), an increase of 20.9% QoQ or an increase of 84.5% YoY. Operating margin increased to 50.8% from 48.2% last quarter
- Profit for the period was RMB1,802.4 million (USD264.0 million), an increase of 17.6% QoQ or an increase of 71.1% YoY. Net margin increased to 42.7% from 41.6% last quarter
- Profit attributable to equity holders of the Company was RMB1,783.2 million (USD261.2 million), an increase of 18.3% QoQ or an increase of 72.2% YoY
- Key platform statistics:
- Active Instant Messaging (“IM”) user accounts increased 8.7% QoQ to 568.6 million
- Peak simultaneous online user accounts for IM services increased 13.2% QoQ to 105.3 million
- Active user accounts of Qzone increased 10.4% QoQ to 428.0 million
- Peak simultaneous online user accounts of QQ Game portal (for mini casual games only) increased 9.7% QoQ to 6.8 million
- IVAS paying subscriptions increased 16.1% QoQ to 59.9 million
- MVAS paying subscriptions increased 14.8% QoQ to 23.3 million"
Source: Press release from Tencent Holdings Limited, 12th May 2010

Only 14% of US TV viewers change channel during the commercial break

"TV advertising and program promotions reach 85% of adults daily; viewers typically see 26 advertising or promotional breaks daily, at an average length of 2 minutes and 46 seconds per break;
The frequency of channel-changing and /or changing rooms is very similar in the few minutes before a commercial break, during the commercial break and in the few minutes after the commercial break:
According to the study, 11% of viewers change channels during the four minutes of TV programming before the commercial break; only 14% change channels during commercials; and 13% change channels in the four-minute period after programming returns. In other words, 86% of viewers remain with live TV during commercials -- a finding consistent with previously disclosed Nielsen data;
A similar pattern emerges with room changes: 19% change rooms in the four minutes before a commercial break; 20% during; and 21% in the four minutes after programming returns.
Similarly, viewers do not increase or adjust their “multi-tasking” habits during commercial breaks:
Fully 55% of viewers were found to be engaged solely with media – led largely by live TV viewing – during the two minutes of TV programming prior to commercial breaks, with the number actually growing to 56% following onset of a commercial;
Multi-tasking was found to accompany about 45% of all media use. Concurrent activities are led by “care of another,” at 12% in the two minutes prior to and during commercial breaks; and “meal preparation,” at 8% in both cases. Some of these activities do not necessarily preclude simultaneous attention being paid to media."
Source: The Video Consumer Mapping (VCM) study sponsored by the Council for Research Excellence (CRE), reported in a press release from CRE, 10th May 2010
Methodology: "The VCM study, conducted throughout 2008 by researchers from Ball State University and Sequent Partners, was a groundbreaking event in video-audience research. The $3.5 million project was the first ever to involve the in-person, computer-assisted observation of the media consumption habits of 376 adults. All told, the VCM study -- the largest and most extensive observational study of media usage ever conducted -- generated data covering more than three-quarters of a million minutes or a total of 752 observed days."

The Android mobile operating system is now the second biggest in the US, by sales

"The Android operating system (OS) continued to shake up the U.S. mobile phone market in the first quarter (Q1) of 2010, moving past Apple to take the number-two position among smartphone operating systems, according to The NPD Group, a leading market research company. NPD’s wireless market research reveals that based on unit sales to consumers last quarter the Android operating system moved into second position at 28 percent behind RIM’s OS (36 percent) and ahead of Apple’s OS (21 percent).
“As in the past, carrier distribution and promotion have played a crucial role in determining smartphone market share,” said Ross Rubin, executive director of industry analysis for NPD. “In order to compete with the iPhone, Verizon Wireless has expanded its buy-one-get-one offer beyond RIM devices to now include all of their smartphones.”
Strong sales of the Droid, Droid Eris, and Blackberry Curve via these promotions helped keep Verizon Wireless’s smartphone sales on par with AT&T in Q1. According to NPD’s Mobile Phone Track, smartphone sales at AT&T comprised nearly a third of the entire smartphone market (32 percent), followed by Verizon Wireless (30 percent), T-Mobile (17 percent) and Sprint (15 percent)."
Source: Press release from NPD Group, 10th May, 2010

75% of re-tweets happen within 1 hour of the original tweet

"There is something special about the time of day that a tweet is published. It is not that tweets happen to spread more quickly at certain hours but rather that 75% of all re-tweets happen within in the hour of the tweet. This means that you need to be cognizant of when your followers are online and viewing their own twitter accounts the most. Do you know when your followers are online the most? You can tell by examining their post frequencies."
Source: Research from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, reported by Going Social New, 10th May 2010
See the full research, based on analysis of 41m twitter accounts, and with lots more findings here (10 page pdf)

iPad Demographics

"As expected within the classic early-adopter profile, we identified a male skew in the 35-44 age group among these early users. In fact, among all users, men outnumber women 2:1. Given the economy, people with higher earning power were probably the first to buy the iPad. The first Yahoo! iPad users were 94% more likely to be affluent consumers with solid wealth and strong incomes than typical U.S. Yahoo! users."
Source: Yahoo Mobile Blog, 6th May 2010

"I Gotta Feeling" by the Black Eyed Peas is the best selling digital song of all time

"Hip-hop group Black Eyed Peas song I Gotta Feeling is the best-selling digital song of all time, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
The track spent 14 weeks at the top of the US music chart and sold 5.56 million digital downloads.
The song beat Flo Rida's Low, which had previously held the record having sold 5.53 million since March 2008."
Source: Nielsen Soundscan, reported by BBC News, 5th May 2010

28% of Europeans who gave money to the Haiti disaster appeal gave through mobile phones

"Following the Haitian Earthquake, it was widely reported that Mobile had played an important role in raising the required money for the relief efforts. This MMA study puts some solid numbers behind these reports, showing that in Europe that 21.4% of donors made their pledges via SMS and 7% by visiting a charitable website from their mobile device.
This means that a total of 28.4% of those who gave money to the Haitian appeal did so via their mobile device, which shows how important a medium mobile has become in order to allow people to help victims and charities.
The figures vary slightly from country to country, with French people emerging as the most likely to use their mobile device for charitable donations with 30% of all donors choosing to do so via SMS. Germany came second with 26% of all donors using SMS as their medium of choice to donate to the appeal. "
Source: Data from MMA, reported by Mobi AD News, 3rd May 2010

The demographics of twitter users in the US

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Source: Twitter Usage in America: 2010, Edison Research, 29th April 2010

94% of UK households have digital TV; 44% have digital TV recorders

"93.9% of households now had digital television - which meant viewers had a greater choice of channels - and almost half (44%) now had digital TV recorders."
Source: the Broadcasters' Audience Research Board (Barb), reported by BBC News, 4th May 2010

British TV viewers watch an average of 4 hours 18 minutes a day

"TV viewers in the UK are watching more than four hours of programmes every day, the Broadcasters' Audience Research Board (Barb) has said.
It said figures from January to March 2010 showed people watched, on average, four hours and 18 minutes daily, up from three hours, 56 minutes in 2009.
Two-thirds of those hours were spent watching commercial channels, it said.
Commercial TV marketing body Thinkbox said the rise was partly down to cash-strapped Britons staying at home."
Source: the Broadcasters' Audience Research Board (Barb), reported by BBC News, 4th May 2010

Blackberry is the joint 4th largest mobile phone manufacterer in the world

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"Smartphones drove a rebound in the overall mobile handset market in the first quarter of 2010, as BlackBerry maker Research In Motion broke into the top five of cell phone makers for the first time.
The worldwide mobile phone market grew 21.7 percent in the first quarter of 2010, compared to a decline of 16.6 percent during the first quarter of 2009 when the global economy was in recession, according to market research firm IDC. Growth was fueled mainly by the economic recovery and sales of smartphones, IDC said. In total, cell phone makers shipped 294.9 million units in the first quarter of 2010 compared to 242.4 million units in the first quarter of 2009."
Source: Data from IDC, reported by CNET, 30th April 2010

It took 28 days to sell the first million iPads

"Apple® today announced that it sold its one millionth iPad™ on Friday, just 28 days after its introduction on April 3. iPad users have already downloaded over 12 million apps from the App Store and over 1.5 million ebooks from the new iBookstore.
“One million iPads in 28 days—that’s less than half of the 74 days it took to achieve this milestone with iPhone,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Demand continues to exceed supply and we’re working hard to get this magical product into the hands of even more customers.”
Source: Apple press release, 3rd May 2010