BlackBerry!! You Really Need To Look Beyond Corporate Users

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February 4, 2013

Social networking sites which causes more stress

Its quite surprising for us to know what would be the effect of social networking sites on us.

A research study on the usage of social networks conducted showed that Facebook is the most stress inducing site.

The study was conducted among 1,632 American adults about what are the effects of social networks on them.

In the study 20% of the respondents said Facebook was the most stress inducing social networking site. Another 20% of them responded that Facebook was the most negative effect which induced random mood swing.

Social networking sites which have negative effect on your mood:

Facebook – 19.4%
Twitter – 4.7%
LinkedIn – 4.1%
MySpace – 3.6%
YouTube – 2.9%
Instagram – 0.8%
Pinterest – 0.7%
Foursquare – 0.6%
Tumblr – 0.4%
Reddit - 0.3%
None have an effect on my mood – 61.3%
Other – 1.3%

Social networks which cause you the most stress:

Facebook – 18.7%
LinkedIn – 3.4%
Twitter – 3.2%
YouTube – 1.8%
MySpace – 1.1%
Foursquare -0.7%
Tumblr – 0.5%
Reddit - 0.4%
Instagram – 0.3%
Pinterest – 0.1%
None have an effect on my stress – 68.9%
Other – 1%

Social networking sites which have positive effect on your mood:

Facebook – 45.9%
YouTube – 17.5%
LinkedIn – 6.5%
Twitter – 4.0%
Pinterest – 1.7%
Instagram – 1.4%
Reddit - 1.3%
Foursquare – .3%
MySpace – 0 .3%
Tumblr – 0 .1%
None have an effect on my mood – 19.6%
Other – 1.3%

The feel of a day where you check into your social media account more than normal:

Bored – 10.6%
Happy – 9.1 %
Calm – 6.9%
Stressed – 6%
Anxious – 4.7%
Like I’m Missing Out – 3.1%
Relieved – 2.7%
Sad – 0.8%
No Effect – 54.7%
Other – 1.5%.

Motivations to use location-based social networks:

I want friends and family to know where I’ve been – 34.6%
I want to receive offers from retailers – 22.9%
I want to show off where I’ve been – 16.1%
I want to alert people I am close by – 15.1%
I want to earn points and badges – 11.2%

Source of communication which gives you the most satisfaction when communicating with family, friends or colleagues:

Talking on the phone – 59.7%
Video chat – 22.5%
Social Media – 6.6%
SMS – 5.8%
Instant Messaging – 2.4%
IP-messaging (Kik, Whatsapp, etc) – 2.1%
Other – 0.9%

Including freinds in status updates and location check-ins choked few. 45% of respondents don’t like it when they appear in social media updates that others create, and 70% say that’s because they don’t like to broadcast their location.
It’s also said that, sign-in into social accounts more frequently than normal bored most of the respondents (10.6%). On the contrary when respondents sign-in less frequently than normal, most of them felt “like we’re missing out on something”.

Amazon To Potentially Takeover Samsung In Terms Of Android Tablet Shipments

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February 4, 2013

In last quarter, a big shift was seen in tablet segment; Android tablet shipments surpassed Apple’s iPads during the quarter. Apple shipped 22.9 million tablets during Q4 last year, while in comparison, 29.6 million Android tablet were shipped during the same period. However, none of Android vendors could ship even one-third of tablets what Apple sold during the quarter.

Android Tablets have succeeded to the draw attention of significant number of users across the world–thanks to increasing demand of Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab. In smartphone segment, Samsung is unilaterally dominating over other Android partners. But in the tablet segment, it’s facing stiff competition from Amazon’s Kindle Fire.

The U.S. Accounts For 89% of Kindle Fire Sales

However, during the last quarter, Amazon shipped 6 million units of Kindle Fire tablets. In comparison, Samsung shipped 7.9 million tablets–Android and Windows combined. According to a new research report from app analytic company “Localytics“, in the prevalence of Android tablets, the U.S. and Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablets are plying significant role. The firm has reported that 59% of Android tablet usages are being driven by the U.S. As we have already discussed that 33% of Android tablets shipped in the country (the U.S.) were Amazon’s Kindle Fire.

Undoubtedly, Amazon’s kindle Fire is now among the world’s most popular Android tablets. Over the last couple of years, the demand of Android tablets has tremendously surged in emerging markets. Amazon’s first and biggest market is the U.S.; 89% of Kindle Fire tablets exist in America only. Towards the end of 2012, the company started selling out the devices in other markets (outside the U.S.) such as the U.K., around a year after launching its tablet in the U.S.

Outside the U.S., Samsung Galaxy tablet lineups accounting for 76% of all Android tablet usages, followed by Google Nexus 7 with 15% and Kindle Fire global share with just 9% of usages. At present, Amazon has meager presence outside the U.S., but it’s currently working on its international distribution. Considering other Android tablet vendors in the U.S. like Barnes & Noble, whose Nook tablet has only 10% market tablet market share, which is even less than Amazon’s global tablet market share.

One of the important points, Amazon isn’t offering ‘Google Play’ on its Kindle Fire. Despite, it has succeeded to track users’ attention with its own integrated services. In the contrary, other vendors are leveraging on Google’s strong mobile ecosystem to make stronghold in the market. Amazon is trying to keep more control over its own advertising and services. As the demand of Kindle Fire is rampant, it’s encouraging more number of developers to create apps the Amazon’s tablet.

Overall, Samsung is selling its tablet in a significant number of countries, while Amazon is selling to limited markets. It’s clear that Amazon is ahead of Samsung in the U.S., which is one of the matured markets. Of course, if Amazon goes more number of countries for selling of Android tablets, it could be a lesson for Samsung.

Twitter Is Grabbing TV Viewers: They Are 12x More Likely To Tweet About TV Shows [Report]

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February 4, 2013

People are adopting social media in the pace which is not matchable to any other internet trend. A recent survey by Brandwatch says. Its noticed that Twitter users are accepting this site even when they are watching TV. The survey observes how Twitter is grabbing TV viewers and many key points about ‘dual screen’ behaviors were brought to light. The study examined Twitter conversation during 50 of U.K and the U.S. TV shows.

The study showcased that the viewers were 12x more likely to tweet regarding a TV show and 22x more likely to use the show’s official hashtag when the show was broadcasted, compared to the days it did not air.

Shows which are regularly broadcasted (one like, daily soaps) saw 2x more tweets and 7x more probable to use the hashtag on the day show gets broadcasted, compared to days when it doesn’t broadcasts. On the other side, shows which are telecasted once a week (one such as, BBC question time) see 30x more tweets and average of about 48x more tweets using the official hashtag compared to days it is not telecasted.

It’s observed that TV shows are struggling to get users to use official hashtags when tweeting about their shows, as only 25% of the tweets consists of the show’s official hashtag.

Despite the fact that, programmes of factual/current genre have about 83% of tweets containing official hashtag. And, 35% goes to reality TV shows, 33% and 32% is grabbed by talent shows and daily soaps, entertainment/game shows consist of 23% official hashtag tweets, 16% for sport shows and only 12% for sitcoms.

It’s also noticed that the U.S. audiences are most probable to tweet, about average of 1.5 times to tweet about shows when compared to the U.K. audiences. Nevertheless, 31% of the U.K. audiences are more probable to use official hashtag in their tweets compared to 12% of the U.S. audiences. In addition, two third percent (63%) increase was observed in tweets about the show including the official hashtag at the beginning of the show.

It’s also mentioned that 64% of viewers used the dual screens on bed while, 27% of them used it on sofa and 6% at their work places.

When analyzed few sample of tweets about random selection of shows to understand what users tweet about a show, interesting findings were drawn; 57% of the user’s tweets was prompted by actions/personalities of a specific character and guests. While, 8% of tweets were anticipated of watching a show in the near future and 7% prompted by plot twists and rest of 7% was driven by people directly quoting from the show itself.

Interestingly, on the onset of the show, 8% increase in the proportion of the negative tweets regarding a show was noticed but, it turned out to the positive conversation tweets after an hour the show ends. On the contrary, 12% of total tweets about the show were filled with emotive/emotions tweets and it hikes to 19% on the days of show’s broadcast. But, positive conversation crawls up to an average of 3% compared to emotive/sentiment during broadcast time.

Smartphone Consumers Behavior In 2012: 50% Went Online Multiple Times In A Day

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February 4, 2013

Last year, slew of high-end smartphones were launched by variant vendors across the world. Apparently, 700.1 million smartphones were sold in 2012, up from 490.5 million a year ago. Furthermore, there would be 1.4 billion active smartphones by the end of this year. As number of smartphones are ramping up day-over-day, we have tried to find out worldwide smartphone consumers behavior in 2012. We have considered 11 countries namely USA, UK, UAE, Japan, Italy, Germany, France, China, Brazil, Austria and Australia for our study.

It has been noticed that majority of smartphone users (nearly 50%) accessed internet multiple times in a day. The percentage of such users was quite high in the U.S., U.K.,U.A.E. and Japan. However, the proportion of smartphone users, accessing internet multiple times in a day, dropped in Japan last year, from 68% in 2011. In addition, the proportion of users, those accessed internet 2-3 times in days was also impressive in the last year; 33% of smartphone users in China accessed internet 2-3 times in a day.

Web-accessing on mobile devices has become one of the hottest trends this time, and this is the reason why majority of marketers are currently aggressive to optimize their websites for mobile platforms. Still, considerable number of users in China and France aren’t satisfied with browsing websites on their smartphones. However, the proportion of users, those are satisfied or completely satisfied with browsing websites on smartphones, was eye-catching in the countries such as the U.S., U.K., U.A.E., Japan and Germany in 2012.

Now, smartphone users often make purchases through their mobile devices. We have already discussed mobile shopping during the last holiday season which reached to its all time highest. Besides, online spending in the last holiday season surpassed even $1 billion figure in a single day, thanks to incredible participation of smartphone in purchases. It’s interesting to know, among all mobile payments modes, users still prefer credit/debit card for mobile shopping. More importantly, in 2012, 75% and 72% smartphone users in the U.A.E. and U.K. respectively did mobile shopping via credit/debit card mode of payments. However, mode of payments like PayPal and Direct Debit are also getting momentum in the developed markets such as the U.S.A. and U.K..

Source: Ipsos, Mobile Marketing Association

Mobile Apps Contribute Mere 4% Of e-Commerce Revenue For e-Stores [Report]

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Dazeinfo

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February 4, 2013

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In spite of explosive growth in mobile space, businesses are yet to realize Mobile apps’ contribution in e-Commerce revenue. Still, only 4% of total e-Commerce revenue is being generated by Mobile apps for businesses that own and maintain their e-Stores. Interestingly, all combined mobile channels generated only 5% of total e-commerce revenue through m-commerce in 2012 globally.

According to the latest Global M-Commerce status check Report only 19% of total e-Stores are able to generate 25% of their total e-Commerce via mobile channels. The study was conducted over 600 renowned m-commerce companies in Q3 2012.

The figures are enough to surprise as the penetration of Smartphone is all time high in recent years. Around 1 Billion new Smartphones are expected to be shipped in 2013, which will tally the total number smartphones available in the market around 2 Billion. The commendable growth of 100% in Smartphone adoption will directly influence mobile app market. Apple iOS and Google Android mobile OS are controlling 88.80% of smartphone market together. And, each of it is having close to 800,000 unique apps on respective app stores.

Besides, over all mobile devices have significant influence over global internet traffic. Nearly 10% of global internet traffic is being originated from mobile devices alone. Unfortunately, the current state of Smartphone adoption and in two biggest mobile and Internet markets – India and China – disappoints largely.

Here are few important highlights of the Global M-Commerce Status Check Report:

Around 50% of e-Stores recorded less than 10% of their e-commerce revenue from mobile apps in 2012
e-Stores, generating more than 25% of e-commerce revenue from mobile channels, will grow by another 10% to reach 27.5% market share.
Nearly 15% e-Stores believe that in next 5 years, they will record atleast 50% of their e-Commerce sales coming from m-commerce.
There is a huge gap between successful m-commerce app and long tale of such apps; while the farther ones are downloaded more than 2 Million times, the later ones receives only few thousands of downloads.

The massive adoption of Android has made users more data hungry and this could be easily transformed into the customers. However, the geographically categorized mobile OS market condition is pushing e-Stores to prioritize their app platform based upon their products/services market reach. However, with the emergence of Windows Phone 8 OS and re-birth of Blackberry 10 OS are poised to create a noticeable shift in global m-commerce industry this year.

Nearly 76 Million Facebook Accounts Were Identified As ‘Fake’ In 2012

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Dazeinfo

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February 4, 2013

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Around 56 Million accounts were identified as Duplicate accounts in 2012, according to the filing of financial report with U.S. Securities and Exchange by Facebook. Altogether, company identified nearly 76 Million accounts as ‘Fake’ accounts in the year. Current the online social networking titan claims around 1.06 Billion accounts in existence and, with these new findings around 7% accounts of them are tagged as ‘pseudo’ accounts.

Facebook Fake Accounts’ Parameters

Facebook adopted three parameters to find such fake accounts: duplicate accounts, undesirable accounts and misclassified accounts. While the number of duplicate accounts remained highest with 56 million, undesirable accounts stood close to 9.3 million. However, 14 million accounts fall under the category of misclassified.

Facebook clarifies that people who already have an account are not supposed to own another account legally and, therefore, we regularly trigger the process of identify duplicate accounts in order to keep the network clean and valuable.

On the other hand, being as the biggest internet users’ community, Facebook is the prime target for spammers who open an account only for unsolicited promotion and run marketing campaigns. Accounts like these are really annoying to legitimate account holders and want to stay away from bombarding of unwelcome messages.

Interestingly, Facebook found there are many users, who have created an account – intentionally or unintentionally – of their pets, properties or non-human objects. Ideally these objects should join the network as Page or Group; And, therefore Facebook initiated the action to distinguish their presence from ‘users’ accounts.

Majority of these accounts are originated from developing countries like Indonesia or Turkey – slowly being the hub of social media marketing. However to keep the network worthy for people, Facebook has a dedicated team to monitor activities of accounts and fish-out suspicious accounts only to act upon that.

The tough stand of Facebook, against pseudo accounts, has significantly controlled the number of duplicate accounts compare to first half of 2012. However, the numbers of misclassified and undesirable accounts got doubled in spite of all efforts.

Does Blackberry Need To Catch Up Android Or iOS ?

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February 2, 2013

On January 30 this year, BlackBerry unveiled its two smartphones–BlackBerry Z10 and BlackBerry Q10. We have already discussed how these devices could be one of the biggest gifts for corporate users from the company this year. Last week, BlackBerry’s CEO–Thorsten Heins– said that the company was considering to sell off its hardware division in order to save itself from complete ruin if BlackBerry 10 wouldn’t succeed to prove itself.

Does BlackBerry’s hardware division appeal to manufacturers? It’s true that the company has attractive portfolio of patents, which would be remunerative for turning it all around. Outside the U.S., BlackBerry still has lackluster presence. However, BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) has big impact on Europe and Middle East markets. But after three days of BlackBerry’s service outage in 2011, users’ perception with the service diluted, and most of them already started looking for alternative.

Licensing Of BlackBerry 10 Would Weaken The Position

There’s also a discussion about the BlackBerry OS licensing to OEMs. To be honest, you should ask manufactures whether they are willing to work on BlackBerry or not. Definitely, they will prefer to work on the fastest growing platform on earth like Android. And also, some of the OSes are open source, which are available free-of-cost or having nominal fee to build something. In simple words, OEMs won’t prefer to jump on sinking ship. iOS is expected to remain proprietary forever, but Android is still free for everyone. At present, Microsoft also licenses its Windows Phone to manufacturers like Nokia, Samsung and others. Besides, Windows Phone platform seems more attractive than BlackBerry for hardware vendors.

Actually, manufacturers don’t have the confidence to work with BlackBerry 10. However, licensing of Blackberry 10 could weaken Blackberry’s position in terms of control. Blackberry hadn’t released any innovative device until January 30 this year, and its existing devices with 640 x 480 screen resolution, 5 MP camera and physical keyword were behind the curve. Now, the scenario of mobile segment almost changed; Android and iOS came to leading position.

BlackBerry Z10 is really an outstanding device, and it would be the company’s last and biggest bet on the corporate users. This time, the Canadian handset maker wants to keep its hardware division with it. BlackBerry’s stock rose 10% in anticipation of BlackBerry’s launch, which pushed its capitalization to about $9 billion. But momentum in stock quickly lost its shine, it reached to $6.8 billion in market capital as of yesterday’s stock market ending.

BlackBerry Needs Proper Marketing

To make an impact on people, BlackBerry would have to start an impressive advertising campaign for its BlackBerry 10 devices. The company will have to show off why BlackBerry 10 smartphones are better than other existing mobile handsets. More importantly, the advertising campaign could appease BlackBerry enthusiasts to keep believe on their devices. Besides, it could pick up a significant number of users, those are likely to buy iOS or Android in near future.

Apparently, the company has shown a little improvement in its capital since the announcement of BlackBerry 10 OS. An increase in BlackBerry’s capital is great hearsay, but the company should understand that it’s still in deep water financially. As of last week end, the company was considering about lots of unusual things like selling off different divisions one-by-one. Of course, BlackBerry devices without BBM is a piece of nothing, and vice-versa is also true. BlackBerry’s all divisions are interrelated to each other, none of them would survive independently.

Undoubtedly, BlackBerry 10 smartphones–Z10 and Q10—have been designed for the business purpose. We can’t deny with the fact that mobile technology is very dynamic in nature —- no one can predict what would be introduced tomorrow. This is the reason why BlackBerry 10 siblings became obsolete very quickly. Now, Android and iOS have become most preferred platforms, and Blackberry and Microsoft are struggling to be third biggest platform.

BlackBerry is quite good at enterprise segment, but the scenario has changed over the last couple of years. Now, enterprises have started looking at iOS and Windows Phone-based smartphones as substitute of BlackBerry. With the advent of iPhone, the world has been obsessed with touchscreen. In fact, most people don’t require secured enterprise solutions. They won’t like smartphones at the premium cost with limited functionality and Users’ perception has changed with price-efficient Android smartphones.

Mobile Ecosystem

App Store is Apple’s one of the biggest trump card; 40 billion apps have been downloaded from the company’s App Store. Apple App store has now more than 1 million approved apps, in comparison, BlackBerry’s App store doesn’t exist anywhere. On the other side, Google’s Play Store is also growing day-by-day; 1 billion apps are being downloaded every month from Google Play.

At the time, market is flooded with high-end smartphones such as Samsung Galaxy SIII, iPhone 5, HTC One X, Nokia Lumia 920 and more. Indeed, it’s tough for BlackBerry 10-based devices to compete with these existing smartphones. It’s also well-known that every Android iteration comes with new innovation; there is endless opportunity for Android, as it’s an open source in nature. Although Google has only Nexus lineup till date in its hand, but with Motorola Mobility, it could expand its manufacturing boundaries. Google’s Nexus 4 is still selling well, and also, the company is currently working on its X Phone project.

Despite, there’s still opportunity for BlackBerry. The company is expected to ship 20 million BlackBerry 10 smartphones by the end of this year. And of course, it would be one of the biggest achievements for it. BlackBerry 10 devices have potential to attract the attention of corporate users around the world.

Twitter Draws 82% Of Leads, But Facebook Drags More Social B2B Traffic [Report]

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February 2, 2013

While there is much discussion about social media, this report by Optify says that, though social media tracks massive users’ attention towards it, still accounts for only a fraction of traffic and leads only the U.S B2B websites.

Here is a mix of reports speaking about B2B traffic and their interest in investments on their own company websites over social media. And, which is the best and most opted site for small businesses.

Social Media B2B Traffic

The data in this report was collected using Optify’s visitor and lead tracking software and includes only US .com sites with between 100 and 100,000 monthly visits.

Interestingly, social accounts for about 1.9% of the traffic comparatively lesser than organic searches (41%), yet has the potential to grow as the effective and the more important channel in the future.

Astoundingly, email showed high engagement rates with an average of 3.75 pageviews per visit and 2.9% of conversion rate as more number of B2B marketers are leveraging on email for lead nurturing and for lead generation.

Fascinatingly, the report found that the businesses which keenly handle their social media campaigns are said to be have noted with high engagement and conversion rates though the companies able to get these results are low.

The finding says that, Facebook drives the most traffic compared to Twitter and LinkedIn, However Twitter brings up the most leads. LinkedIn and Facebook achieve conversion rates of 0.8% and 0.74% respectively, while Twitter achieves 2.17% conversation rate, which is higher than the average for all channels combined – includes organic and paid search too.

LinkedIn is performs best in terms of page views per visit with 2.48 whereas Facebook accounts for 1.94 followed by Twitter with 1.51.

Social contributes an average of only 5% of all traffic and leads which seems negligible in front of organic search as it accounts for 41% of traffic to B2B sites, of which Google accounts for 90%.

According to another report, nearly 50% of the B2B companies will increase their marketing budgets in this year, where more than half of them say that they would definitely increase their investment in email marketing, social media, online video and search.

But, more than 70% of the B2B companies are most interested to invest on their own business website development this year. 93% of those B2B Magazine polled indicated that they use websites as a marketing channel where social media stands in the second lead with 65%.

Twitter, the most popular social networks with brands is now said to be generating millions of dollars per year in ad revenue.

According to a survey by Wall Street Journal, small businesses are not much interested in Twitter, as only 3% of the respondents identify Twitter as a social media channel with maximum potential.

Whereas 3% of them believed that the Pinterest has more potential and 4% of them believe in Google+ also, either Facebook did well as only 14% of small business companies opted for it, which is lesser than YouTube. If none of these websites are opted by small businesses which is the one they believe in? Its LinkedIn which gained maximum poll by 41% respondents opting for it.

The report says that as there are massive differences between small businesses and major brands in many aspects they cannot operate in the same way in social channels. As there are huge differences between the audiences of social networks, brands have to choose their audiences to help their business to be more productive in these social channels.

You might also feel interested to see: B2B marketers are still preferring LinkedIn, Best days to post in social networks according to the type of industry, social media tools and Free social marketing tools, why brands have to invest in social marketing and social media mobile marketing.

[Breaking] Dell Could Be Acquired By A Private Consortium Firm (In Association With Microsoft) For $24 Billion !

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Dazeinfo

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February 1, 2013

Dell could be acquired for $24.4 Billion; Computer giant Dell Inc is almost done with a deal to sell itself to a Private Consortium Firm for nearly $24 Billion. According to a latest report from Reuters, the Private Consortium Firm will be headed by Michael Dell, founder of Dell Inc, besides private equity firm Silver Lake and Microsoft.

Reportedly, the new firm is at the final stage of negotiation, expected to close at $13 to $14 per share to acquire Dell Inc – world’s third largest computer manufacturing firm. While Michael Dell is expected to hold majority of shares, Microsoft and Silver Lake would also have their control over Dell as minority investors, sources said.

Interestingly, the whole setup is apparently been triggered by Barclays Bank – one of the current investors in dell Inc as the bank is also advising Silver Lake for the possible buyout. The investment group has already secured $15 billion of debt financing to take over Dell Inc from existing investment banks – Barclays, Credit Suisse, Bank of America and RBC.

The deal is expected to conclude by weekends, according to sources. However, there are possibilities to stretch the negotiation little longer making the conclusion delayed for another few days.

As per the new arrangement, Michael Dell will serve his 16% shares in Dell Inc against the majority control in new consortium, according to Reuters who cited the source from people familiar with the complete development.

The whole exercise seems to be a part of Dell’s strategy to give it a face lift in market and to present itself as one-stop shop for all IT related needs, something Michael Dell is trying to do for long.

Since Michael Dell would hold the majority stake in new consortium, Dell Inc has formed a committee of independent directors and hired Evercore Partners Inc to ensure the best deal for the company and not benefiting only Michael Dell.

If the acquisition concludes on positive note, surely it’s going to be a path-breaking development in PC market, something which HP and Lenovo may not like much.

1.4 Billion Active Smartphones By 2013E: Windows Phone Jinx To Continue [Report]

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February 1, 2013

At present, there’re two-horse race in smartphone segment; Samsung and Apple are unilaterally dominating over other smartphone vendors. But the climax is expected to change by the end of this year. As per ABI Research’s latest projection, there would be 1.4 billion and 268 million active smartphones and Tablets respectively by the end of this year. As usual, Android will lead the smartphone segment this year, while iOS will dominate tablet segment. Despite, Microsoft and BlackBerry will remain in the smartphones’ battlefield. However, both of them would have meager market share, but they will succeed to draw developers’ attention by the end of 2013.

It should be understood that ABI Research has focused on number of active devices, rather than total number of devices which are going to be shipped this year. However, Microsoft and BlackBerry wouldn’t do any such wonder this year, but they have potential to provide stiff competition to their contenders.

The firm has predicted that there would be 45 million Windows Phone and 20 million BlackBerry 10 active smartphones by the end of this year. In addition, Windows Phone is expected to account for 3.2% of active smartphones’ market share, while BlackBerry 10 would have 1.4% share. In comparison, there would be 798 million Android and 294 million iOS active smartphones by the end of this year. Android is estimated to account for 57% of overall active smartphones’ market share, while iOS would be having 21% market share.

More importantly, Android and iOS have strong app ecosystem, which is sufficient to draw developers interest. It’s true that the strong app ecosystem has always been one of the major driving forces to entice significant number of consumers towards the particular platform. On the other side, lackluster sales of Microsoft and BlackBerry’s devices are one of the key concerns for them. Really, the sales of their devices are still disappointing to developers. In other words, poor initial sales of Windows Phone and BlackBerry devices are currently creating roadblocks for these companies. But with Windows Phone 8 and BlackBerry 10, Microsoft and BlackBerry respectively could turnaround their mobile businesses.

Nevertheless, based on the current shipment forecast, it’s tough to predict whether BlackBerry or Windows Phone would reach the double digits market share over next couple of years. As the market share of iPad dropped to 43.60% in Q4 2012, it’s also tough to believe that 62 percent of active tablets will be powered Apple’s iOS by the end of this year. Apple might face challenge to sustain its position in the market as a leading brand. In addition, smartphones in usages are expected to show off 44% Y/Y growth this year, while tablet would record 125% Y/Y growth.

Best Twitter Tools To Enhance Your Brand Engagement With Millions Of Microblogging Users

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Guest Author

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February 1, 2013

With upwards of 200 million monthly active users, Twitter has consistently maintained its place as one of the top social networks on the planet. It’s no surprise; therefore, that businesses and brands have been keen to take advantage of the opportunities it offers. With nearly half a billion users and being as the fastest growing social network of 2012 – beating Facebook and Google+, Twitter has earned desired respect and value among business users.

Best Twitter Tools

Twitter has been understandably eager to capitalize on this corporate interest and last year began rolling out a raft of certified products and tools to help the companies to get the most out of this microblogging platform.

Its initial partners included the likes of Dataminr and Gnip, and these tools offered brands the opportunities to engage with their audience at large, analyse data into activity among prospects and make masses of public tweets available for analytics.

There’s also a range of third-party Twitter tools on offer that make it easy to manage almost every aspect of using microblogging network as a marketing tool and we’ve rounded up some of our favorites in each category to help you start using the platform like a pro.

Search Function

Let’s start with the basics. Twitter’s search function is invaluable when it comes to monitoring activity among your target demographic. By simply using the @mention feature, you can see what people are saying about you and develop strategies off the back of this. Similarly, this can be of great use when making your initial inroads into using the platform as a customer service tool.

Buffer

Keeping tweets timely and relevant is a constant challenge, especially for those with limited time or resources to devote to social media. Fortunately, Buffer comes to the rescue in this regard – letting you drop tweets into a custom queue and specify when to release them.

With Buffer, you can manage many accounts and create custom schedules on a range of social channels, including Facebook and LinkedIn. Its analytics feature can also be used to optimize your posting protocols.

Twitter Counter

Twitter Counter is a must-have for the number crunchers among you. This useful tool tracks more than 80 million users and is indispensable when it comes to trawling through data.

While several of its functions are available for free – users can opt to splash out on upgrading to unlock even more. Recent statistics can also be highlighted on sites, blogs and profiles via its range of widgets and plug-ins.

Brand Watch

While the search function is a good starting point, when really getting to grips with monitoring Twitter, you’ll want to break out the big guns.

Brand Watch lets you go 1984 on the Twitter front, putting a vast variety of data at your fingertips. Power users will be enamoured with the ability to monitor the Twitter-sphere and beyond for chattering about their brand, sector and competitors.

dlvr.it

Sharing content across all your social media properties can be a real timesink, so automating the process will be a boon to those feeling bogged down. Once you’ve signed up to dlvr.it, you can link the release of your content and ensure you saturate your target demographic with coverage.

A Workman is Only as Good as Their Tools?

Despite the above adage, simply utilizing Twitter Tools is no guarantee that you’ll find social media success. Social marketing is a deceptively time and resource-intensive activity and one that requires an overarching strategy. Therefore, you can keep updating your list by simply searching Best Twitter Tools using the hashtag #TwitterTools which would keep you always stay ahead of your competitors.

But by having this in place, devoting the proper acumen and taking a consistent approach to activity on Twitter, you’ll be head and shoulders above those who are still taking tentative treads into the channel.

This article was brought to you by Gerald Heneghan on behalf of social media agency Custard, check out our range of tailored PR services on our website.

Image Source: PC World

Paid Sections Of Social Media Advertising Are All Set To Fire In 2013 [Report]

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February 1, 2013

Despite the predictions that the internet marketing gets declined in coming days, report by Nielsen re-insures its growth with more brands adopting paid social media advertising than ever before – a number set to increase still in 2013.

According to the report, marketers in U.S. are now adjusting their campaigns to keep pace with the 121 billion minutes which they spend on social media each month.

Social Media Advertising: Current Notion

Interestingly, 89% of the advertisers surveyed said that they use free social media advertising tools such as pages, posts, likes, tweets and pins. While, 75% said they are currently investing on paid-for options – sponsored content, brand graphs and strategies to drive likes and, about 64% said they plan to spend more on social media advertising in the future.

Budgets are predicted that 41% of advertisers would be dedicating 10% of their advertisement budget to paid social media advertising. And, 15% of them would dedicate up to 20% of the budget and 11% of them are planning to increase their budget more than 21%+ in coming days. In 2012, 70% of the respondents said that they dedicated 10% of their budget to paid social media advertising and 13% of them dedicated 21%+ of their budget.

The social media advertising is often viewed as “integrated tactic” – 66% of advertisers use paid for social media advertising together with other online advertising. 51% of them are running it in conjunction with offline strategies.

The online tactics which are used in conjunction with paid social media advertising efforts are said to be, online display (83%), online video (46%), and mobile (40%). While offline strategies include, print (52%), followed by TV (37%).

The prime purpose of their paid social media advertising was branding-related (45%) which includes — raising awareness and influencing brand opinions. Also, the advertisers said 16% was primarily direct-response related, such as driving product trials or site visits.

Advertisers and agencies thought “brand lift” (52% and 35%, respectively) and “sales generated” (49% and 46%) were the best metrics to measure paid social media advertising ROI. while, 52% opted for “brand lift” and “shares/reposts” (38%) were opted by media sellers. The study insists that media sellers have better opportunity to detain brand dollars by offering relevant brand lift metrics.

In addition, 58% of social media advertisers and 65% of agencies indicated that “clarity around how to measure social media roI” would lead them to increase their use of paid social media advertisements. Whereas, 14% of brands said that “no one” monitored the roI of their paid social media efforts.

Specifically, 52% of advertisers and 66% of agencies said a “clear link between social media advertising and sales” would increase their use of paid social media advertising. Half of advertisers (46%) and agencies (53%) also indicated a “clear link between social media advertising and brand lift.”

About 44% advertisers and 48% agencies said that the availability of “social media benchmarks” would help them to show a way to increase their use of paid social media advertising, as well as provide some context for their social media performance.

The report also sees that, often brand marketers consider paid social media advertising as a branding tool and not treating it as a stand-alone tactic, but being as part of a set of marketing tools to influence brand opinions. Agencies and social media sellers should offer brand-relevant metrics to increase their share of brand advertising dollars in the paid social medium.

Are You Ready For $4,000 Luxury Android Smartphone: Nokia’s Former Luxury Division To Unveil Its Cheapest Phone This Month

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February 1, 2013

Nokia’s CEO has already confirmed that the company doesn’t have any plans to work with Android this time. The company is committed towards the relationship with Microsoft for Windows Phone platform. Besides, it has also announced “Symbian” as a dead mobile OS platform. There was a time, when Nokia was dominantly enjoying the supreme position in mobile handsets’ market, but now, its struggling to standalone the business in the market. Almost a year before, Nokia used to make expensive mobile handsets (luxury phones) under the brand name of Vertu. But the company’s financial conditions jeopardized the plan to continue with its luxury mobile phone division further.

Luxury Android Smartphone To Be Unveiled This Month

In mid of the last year, Nokia finally decided to get rid off from Vertu, and it sold it to an investment firm called EQT. But the question here is: Did these devices (luxury phones) have extraordinary components ? The answer is a cruel “no”. Astoundingly, most of them were obsoleted Series 40 phones (known as dumb phones). But those were extraordinarily crafted with precious gems. Nokia’s luxury phones were simply covered in diamonds, gold and other precious metals. In other words, those devices were basically for wealthy people, those could spend thousands of dollars for luxury products.

However, EQT has always been candid about Android phones; the firm had have strong desire to make smartphone based on Android mobile OS. At present, there’re rumors revealing “Vertu” could unveil its first Android phone this month. But the question is about how much it would cost? Considering the rumors, the device would cost around 3,000 Euros (or over $4,000). To be honest, the cost of the device is too expensive, which can be compared as almost hundreds times costlier than Apple’s iPhone 5. But frankly speaking, for the company, it would be the cheapest one.

In general, the words ‘Android’ and ‘luxury’ are contradictory to each. Tech geeks never use these two words in the single sentence. However, there’s no any authentic photo of luxury Android smartphone available in the market. Thanks to the Japanese website, Blog of Mobile, which has told that the luxury device will be launched in the name of “Vertu Ti”. The phone is expected to feature Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, dual core Snapdragon S4, a battery life of 1,250 mAh, and 800 x 480 pixels display.

The device is also expected to be sold in exclusive high end stores located in shopping malls, where rich people frequently visit. It’s pretty much clear that the device is going to be manufactured for limited number of users. We can’t compare the shipments of luxury Android smartphone (Vertu Ti) with other high-end mobile handsets. However, Vertu might reveal its strong product road map at the global media event on February 12^th this month.

Intel Has Also Plans With Android, But It’s More Focused on Emerging Markets

Intel has already announced that it would showcase Android running devices, with new dual core and dual graphics, at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) from February 25 to 28 this year. At the event, the company will unleash its latest technologies related to the smartphone, and also the list of devices running on the platform. Importantly, Intel AtomTM Z2420 for smartphones has been designed considering emerging markets to the top priority.

However, Intel was little late to the mobile processor market. As revenue of the company is gradually declining quarter-over-quarter, it has started focusing on mobile products. At present, Intel is currently facing a fierce competition from rivals like Qualcomm in mobile segment.

Furthermore, the company is going to unveil its new Atom Processor—Lexington—aimed at smartphones, which are expected to be sold in the developing markets. More importantly, Intel has recently tied-up with Acer in order to expand its business into emerging Asian Pacific markets. At the MWC this year, the company is expected to update its Merrifield processor (coming this year) to investors and partners; the processor is basically being designed for smartphones.

Facebook Q4 2012 Earnings Report: Web Revenue Dominated Over Mobile !!

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February 1, 2013