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Nielsen: Over 50 percent of US mobile users own smartphones, Android and iPhone sitting pretty
Smartphones crossed an important milestone in March, based on Nielsen's estimates. Just over half of cellphone owners in the US -- 50.4 percent, to be exact -- had a smartphone of some kind, making dumbphones the minority for the first time. The smartphone tale of the tape shows that the OS split has largely tapered off since February. Android has only moved slightly and still sits atop the heap, claiming 48.5 percent of users, but Apple hasn't had to worry given that 32 percent of smartphone owners use an iPhone. As is increasingly becoming the familiar story, other platforms trailed well behind: RIM's BlackBerry sat at 11.6 percent, while Windows Mobile, at 4.1 percent, was more popular than its Windows Phone successor's 1.7 percent. Apple can still claim to be the top-selling individual smartphone maker in the country, suggesting Samsung hasn't translated its worldwide lead to the US just yet.
Steam Workshop's Skyrim mods top over 13.6 million downloads, Macho Man is pleased
Between Valentine's Day and now, 11.6 million Skyrim mods were downloaded from Steam, totaling 13.6 million. That's a lot of hanging out with space cores and dragons modeled after Randy Savage.The top mods represented on Steam's Workshop as of this writing aren't adding or subtracting major things from the original game. Many extend the experience in minor ways – bolstered sound offerings, more robust map markers, new spells – while a few add whole new quests. Thankfully, Skyrim's mod community moved away from its obsession with clean faces. At least for today.
Yes, people still read: e-book sales by UK publishers grew 54 percent in 2011
All hail the e-book! Seriously, if it weren't for this marvelous literary development, try saying with a straight face that you wouldn't at least take pause before adding a new title to your collection. Numbers are in from The Publisher's Association -- a group of 120 companies across the trade in the UK -- which reveals that e-book digital sales have increased 54 percent for the year 2011, and of that statistic, 13 percent of revenues came from academic and professional titles. As a sign of changing preferences, the total sales of both e-books and their traditional counterparts fell by two percent during the year -- and let's be honest, it's not hard to see which group fell short. Also reflective of the shift is the fact that average book prices fell by 1.3 percent during the year, which compares favorably to the UK's current inflation rate of 4.47 percent. Those interested in the full story will find the PR after the break.
Gmail Meter brings detailed analytics to your inbox
Just in case a constantly increasing unread messages counter isn't providing enough details about the flow of messages to your inbox, the Official Gmail Blog has pointed out the Gmail Meter tool for detailed monthly activity breakdowns. A Google Apps script developed by Romain Vialard, it can show you stats on volume, daily traffic, traffic pattern, email categories, time before first response, word count and thread lengths; providing an even deeper dive than Google's own Account Activity dashboard. Setting this up on one's account requires setting up a Google docs spreadsheet and then installing the script on it and requesting a report, there's a YouTube video embedded after the break and a tutorial linked below to help you along. On the plus side, now when someone asks "why haven't you responded to my email yet?", you can show them they're still well within the average time before first response window.
What are WoW players searching for on Google?
Google is the world's largest search engine by a massive margin, enjoying a nearly 70% market share. Google processes over a billion searches every day -- searches for everything from the fate of Firefly to where to buy RPG dice to the answer to the Kirk vs. Picard debate. It even handles searches for non-geeky stuff. And of course, some percentage of those billion daily searches are WoW searches. Google has a tremendous amount of data about exactly what WoW players are looking for online -- and if there's one thing I can't get enough of, it's WoW data. With the search data that Google makes available, we can get a unique look into how WoW-related searches have changed over time with the changing popularity of the game and what kinds of topics WoW players are searching for more than others. The Google-eye view is a unique insight into the online interest and discussions of World of Warcraft.
En Masse Entertainment wraps up TERA closed beta weekends
The fifth and final TERA closed beta weekend went out with a bang last weekend, heralding the beginning of the final steps toward the game's May launch. But before En Masse Entertainment opens the floodgates of open beta testing, it has decided to release some interesting details and statistics regarding the closed beta test weekends. For instance, over the course of the closed beta weekends, players formed 90,000 parties and over 3,600 guilds in order to hunt down and destroy over 7.6 billion monsters. In the process, they earned a total of over 14.5 billion gold, collected 20 million items, and bit the dust almost 2 million times. Castanics reigned surpreme as the most commonly chosen race (with Humans and High Elves not far behind), while the most popular class was the Warrior, followed closely by Sorcerer and Slayer. Of course, players can expect to blow these numbers out of the water when open beta begins on April 19th. [Source: En Masse Entertainment press release]
ICS reaches 2.9 percent of active Android devices, 63.7 percent still on Gingerbread
As we check back in on Android's Platform Versions dashboard for the first time since January, we can finally see notable growth in the percentage of devices running some flavor of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, up for 0.6 percent then to 2.9 percent. That's likely fueled by the release of updates for the Samsung Galaxy S II and HTC Sensation family of devices, and is a sharp uptick from last month when it registered on 1.6 percent. Gingerbread (2.3) still reigns supreme, running 63.7 percent of the Android hardware that accessed the Play market in the last two weeks, but its growth seems to finally be slowing. Last year at this time that position was filled by Android 2.2, with 2.3 on just one percent of the hardware and Android 3.0 barely registering at all, a point which highlights the long cycle of upgrades. Call it fragmentation or flexibility, app developers can use these stats to plan their releases going forward, although it may be a little while still before the majority of the crowd can access any Ice Cream Sandwich-specific features.
30 million NFC-equipped phones shipped in 2011, could reach 700 million by 2016
Those working on life-changing uses for NFC in phones will now find it even harder to explain why life still hasn't changed. According to Berg Insight, annual global sales of NFC-equipped handsets increased ten-fold to reach 30 million units in 2011 and are forecast to grow to 700 million units by 2016. The analysts attribute this rise to general smartphone adoption rather than to demand for NFC as such, which makes sense from where we're sitting. Aside from a few proximity-based apps, Google Wallet and some other handbag-spurning payment schemes, there's still no overwhelming reason to gear up. GPS and WLAN, on the other hand, remain must-haves, and the PR below looks at their prevalence too.
Mobile Miscellany: week of March 19th, 2012
Not all mobile news is destined for the front page, but if you're like us and really want to know what's going on, then you've come to the right place. This past week, we've spotted the Lumia 610 in two new colors, and the open source community received new goodies from the likes of HTC, Qualcomm and Samsung. These stories and more await after the break. So buy the ticket and take the ride as we explore the "best of the rest" for this week of March 19th, 2012.
Digital gaming soars nine percent, still knows nothing of rarity value
It's already chewed up some big names on the retail scene, but the game-downloading trend shows no sign of being sated. Fresh figures from market research firm NPD show that American digital game sales (including rentals and DLC) amounted to $2.04 billion in the fourth quarter of 2011, which represents a nine percent year-on-year hike at a time when physical game transactions fell three percent. Things are going the same way across the Atlantic, with the UK, France and Germany adding a further $1.29 billion to the burgeoning click-to-buy market. Industry types will surely welcome the news, since digital titles rake in higher margins (hello, PS Store) and reduce the trade in used discs, but what about those of us who'll one day want to swap our dusty copy of Fight Night Round Four for something more subtle?
IDC: Android tablets will overtake iPad by 2015, despite everything
They're not center-stage right now, but Android tablets are still predicted to overtake the iPad within the next three years, according to IDC. The forecasters noted that Apple's worldwide share of the tablet market is shrinking with each new lower-priced Android competitor. Even as iPad sales continued to grow in 2011, surging 50 percent between Q3 and Q4, its market share fell during the same period, from 61.5 to 54.7 percent. That gives the iOS slate a weaker lead going into 2012 than suggested by earlier figures. Of course, the iPad remains an individual starlet in front of a troupe of Google dancers, so Apple's position as the upper-most vendor isn't under threat. In fact, IDC predicts it will remain the market leader in terms of revenue beyond 2016, which ought to put some fire in Amazon's belly.
Nielsen report finds 56 percent of US households have a modern game console, total gaming time up seven percent
Nielsen is out with its annual survey of video game use in the US today, and it's found that gaming continues to be on the rise across the board. That includes a seven percent increase in total gaming time compared to the previous year (apparently due largely to increases in mobile and tablet gaming), and an increase in modern console ownership from 50 percent of households to 56 percent; that includes so-called 7th generation consoles like the Wii, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. It also found the number of cross-platform gamers be on the upswing, with 24 percent responding that they play on two or more of a console, PC, tablet or mobile device (compared to 17 percent previously). Looking at mobile gaming, specifically, Nieslen found that while iOS gaming tended to be distributed fairly evenly across all age groups, Android gaming proved to be far more popular among those aged 25-34 than any other group. A few other tidbits: 65 percent of consoles are located in the living room, online shopping for games is up while other channels continue to decline, and streaming video continues to be a growing secondary use for game consoles (particularly on the Wii, where it accounts for 33 percent of console usage, compared to roughly 15 percent on both the Xbox 360 and PS3).
China claims one billion mobile phone users, India shrugs
China claimed 900 million mobile users last April, but back then it still seemed possible that India might reach the billion user milestone first. China was ahead in absolute terms, while India's user base was growing faster. According to the latest figures from its government, however, China is ready to stake its claim. It had 997 million phone owners by late February, with growth of around three million per week, which means it should have tipped the scales in the last few days. Of course, it's not really about who gets there first: The salient fact is that millions more humans can now ring each other up, just, you know, to chat.
Champions Online rolling out Role and Stat changes
Like many MMOs, Champions Online is at its heart a game of numbers. Your character type focuses on certain stats, and you want to make those stats go higher. But sometimes the way those stats work together is a bit less than intuitive in the live game, hence some recent changes to Super Stats and regular stats on the test servers. The biggest change assigns one primary and two secondary, rather than two Super Stats, to players, which alleviates the current problems with Super Stats (certain pairs of Super Stats work poorly together and are poorly represented in itemization). Individual stats have also seen some tweaks: Strength is no longer hard-capped for melee damage, Presence has had its threat component removed and a soft-cap introduced, Ego is now solely a ranged stat, and Dexterity has seen improvements to its critical benefits. Roles are also being balanced differently, giving more consistent stat benefits that are more in line with what players in a given role will actually need to do. It's a pretty sweeping set of changes, but the end goal is to give Champions Online players a more straightforward numbers game to play.
Nintendo 3DS hits 5 million units faster than DS, the world goes 'huh?'
While it had a rocky moment in the middle, some heavy price-cutting and top-drawer games helped the system sell five million within a year in its native homeland. According to Nintendo, these are legitimate sell-through figures and as predicted, make the 3D-capable console Nintendo's fastest selling console to date. You can take a look at some (translated) self-congratulatory backslapping from Nintendo below.
Online gaming linked with marital dissatisfaction
Good news, gamers! You can now blame another dysfunction (if you have it, and I'm sure you don't) on the games you play! It's not enough that those nasty ol' video games are making you violent and antisocial -- a new survey put out by Brigham Young University is linking online gaming with a decrease in marital satisfaction. The survey states that "gaming widows," whose spouses neglect them to focus on gaming, are dissatisfied with the states of their marriage. How that differs from corporate widows, football widows, or any other neglected spouse without a catchy title isn't really specified. Another conclusion pointed out by the survey is that when spouses play together, the marriage tends to be in pretty good shape. Who'd have ever thought that spending time bonding over a shared interest would be healthy for a relationship? While we're all in agreement that your level 80 Paladin probably doesn't deserve as much of your love and affection as your spouse, if you hadn't figured that out on your own, gaming probably isn't the root of your problems. Just a thought.
Cisco: mobile connections will hit 10 billion by 2016, helped by tablet boom
That Cisco's always been prescient. Three years ago, the networking giant predicted a 66-fold increase in worldwide mobile data traffic -- a surge that was expected to dovetail with the spread of 4G networks. With us so far? Sounds pretty obvious sensible, right? Well, the company's got more wisdom to share from its crystal ball: the outfit's just released its annual mobile data traffic forecast, and the marquee stat is that there will be an estimated 10 billion mobile connections by 2016. And though Cisco expects the bulk of these (8 billion) to take the form of cell phones, it also foresees a rise in tablets: there will be 5 billion of them, the company says, and that's not even counting all those WiFi-only models floating around (Cisco tallies WiFi traffic in a different forecast, released later in the year). If the market does indeed swell to 5 billion cellular-connected tablets, that would represent a 25 percent jump over today's global figure. Moreover, Cisco estimates that by 2016 21 percent of those 5 billion tablet owners will be relying solely on mobile data to get their internet fix. All told, whatever the mix of smartphones and tablets, we're going to be chugging down an insane amount of data: 10.8 exabytes per month, worldwide, or 130 exabytes annually -- a lofty sum that breaks down to 33 billion DVDs, among other cutesy equivalents. One last figure before we sent you off into a statistic-laced coma: 4G will account for only six percent of mobile connections by 2016, but is expected to generate 36 percent of mobile data traffic. We'll let you newly minted LTE adopters chew on your piggy data-hogging habits; the rest of you can find more numbers in the PR after the break.
NPD: Hardware sales hit $144 billion in 2011, PCs lead the moneymaking pack
Canalys recently announced that smartphone shipments surpassed those of PCs for the whole of 2011. Well, NPD's just released its own set of hardware numbers, this time focused on revenue shares, and it appears PCs (that's laptops and desktops for NPD's purposes) are still far and away the biggest moneymakers around, bringing in about 19 percent (or $28 billion) of the reported $144 billion in hardware sales last year. TVs, PCs and gaming hardware each saw a decline in revenue share while smartphone and tablet sales grew -- slates and e-readers experienced a five percent increase, taking up nearly 11 percent of the hardware pie and raking in $15 billion. Unsurprisingly, Apple topped the chart for sales by manufacturer, seeing a 36 percent increase over 2010, while HP, Samsung, Sony and Dell rounded out the top five with varying levels of sales declines. For more number crunching and statistical whatnots, check out the full PR after the break.
Study: 'App Economy' has created 500,000 jobs since 2007
It's no secret that the rise of smartphones, tablets and social networking has fostered an entirely new market for app developers, but a freshly released study has now attempted to quantify this impact, in terms of real jobs. According to TechNet, a bipartisan network of tech execs, the so-called "App Economy" has created an estimated 466,000 jobs since 2007, when the iPhone was first unveiled. The report specifies that this estimate includes all jobs at Facebook-focused companies like Zynga, as well as dev gigs at Amazon, AT&T and Electronic Arts, in addition to the obvious heavyweights, Apple and Google. As far as geography goes, California leads the way as the most app-friendly state, though New York City tops the list of metropolitan areas. It's not an entirely bi-coastal affair, though, with some two-thirds of all app-related jobs located outside of California and New York. TechNet acknowledges that the App Economy "is only four years old and extremely fluid," so it's likely that these numbers will fluctuate in the years to come, though the organization says these numbers underscore a fundamental principle: "Innovation creates jobs, and in this case, lots of them." Read the full report at the source link below.
Virgin Media's Q4 2011 report: Brits love TiVo, Fast Broadband, Vampire Diaries
Virgin Media's school report for both last year and last quarter has been pretty positive for the Branson-Branded service. It pulled down £4 billion ($6.3 billion) in revenue for the year and made its first ever profit with a tidy £76 million ($120 million). In the last quarter alone, it added 273,000 TiVo subscribers, a figure that doubled its overall figure to 435,000. Favorite shows included Coronation Street, which was most caught-up with and The Vampire Diaries, which was the most binge-watched series. It's also clear that us Britons do love some super-fast broadband, 133,000 users plumped for speeds over 30MB in Q4. Flush with cash, it's going to buy back some shares and double consumers broadband speeds as it promised in January -- which we suppose is a fair way to spend your first profit, even if we'd have preferred to go to Disneyland.
