Social Media And Email: The Most Effective Marketing Channels In India [STUDY]

Online Advertisement plays major role in shaping the brand values, revenue as well as profit for companies. Quite convinced with the fact, companies are also spending billions of dollars on the advertisement arm every year and its going to increase further more in coming years. Taking the view of online advertisement spending, a study was conducted which highlights that by the end of 2012 online advertisement spending will reach $40 billion U.S. and is expected to grow to $62 billion by 2016.

Online Advertisement is mainly classified into three formats namely search, banners and video. As the industry is witnessing great shift across the globe and infrastructure is improving, all the three will be responsible for 80% of online advertisement revenue by 2016.

Search based advertising will maintain its legacy as the leader with around 46.9 percent by 2016 followed by banners’ 20.5 percent contribution. However, it is expected to shift down its share by 2.5% in 2016 compare to 2012.

Surprisingly, online advertising through video will emerge as most attractive channel as its spending share will surge year-over-year to reach 15 percent by 2016.

Study reveals that advertising expenditure will increase exponentially year-over-year and is expected to touch $62 billion by 2016 – rise of $22 billion compared to $40 billion in 2012.

Interestingly, Despite of having highest advertisement share, Video format will see sharp decline by 2016. But 2012 is going to be the most effective year for video as it will touch the highest growth ever in the said year. From 42.1% in 2011 to 54.7% in 2012 and then decline towards 18.1% only in 2016 speaks about video format rise and fall in next few years. This will be mainly due to the upcoming U.S.presidential election and Olympic Games 2012.

Though, the contribution of email advertisement channel will be quite low by 2016, but it is expected to be the only channel that will record positive year-on-year growth. In next five years, Email advertisement trend will move up from negative value to 3.8% growth in 2016

Online advertisement is continuously dominating over traditional advertising for last half a decade. It has emerged as one of the cheapest but the most effective modes of advertisements. It is a multi-way process compared to direct marketing which is generally confined into traditional style of promotions. Considering the success achieved by companies from online advertisement, many other old styled marketers are showing their interest in online advertisement and burning fresh blood of cash into it which will be the prime reason behind such astounding growth.

I feel online advertisements help users as well as companies to know the feedback about their products in short span of time. Apparently, advertising on social networking sites has been increased in an enormous rate as social media is a place where an advertiser can make their product available to more than billion of the users in short time period.

Gmail Man Reappears: Microsoft Officially Releases Video Against Google

By

Dharan Shetty

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February 5, 2012

A tug of war has been going on for a week now between Microsoft and Google about the new privacy policy of Google. The new mandatory privacy policy will merge all policies that currently exist across 60 of companies numerous web products/services.

Earlier, Microsoft had published a full page ad promoting its services while showing the drawback in the Google’s new policy saying that the new policy is harder for the users to maintain control of their personal information. But, the the show doesn’t end there as Microsoft is trying to promote its own services by throwing light on Google’s other loop holes too. Now, Microsoft has posted a video on the company’s official YouTube, Twitter and Facebook page captioned as “Gmail Man”. Though, the video was released few months ago but Microsoft has officially put it against Google only now.

The video has a catchy tune to it with a man delivering the mails while going through it. The video depicts that Google goes through all our mails that we send and receive for keywords and hosts the appropriate ad on our page with it. While some of the users are least bothered if Google really does it or not others are really concerned about the company going through their private data just to mint more revenue out of it.

Microsoft is trying to build insecurity in the people’s mind by this video and pull people who are more concerned about their mail privacy, towards its Office 365 service. Google had responded to the Microsoft’s previous newspaper ad earlier this week, will it respond to this video as well??

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDbrX5U75dk

Apple Accounted 75% Of The Profit Share Generated By Top 8 Mobile Majors

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February 4, 2012

Apple reportedly sold 37 million Smartphones in Q4 last year, marked 128% growth compare to same quarter a year ago. Apple ranked third in total mobile handset shipment globally in Q4 last year. Recently, Asymco has calculated the profit and revenue share of top 8 mobile makers and also counted its total shipments in Q4 last year. After calculation, it has found that Apple was the biggest gainer in the Smartphone battle in Q4 last year. Despite of Android popularity, Apple managed to make 75% profit share of combined profit share of top eight companies that includes Nokia, SE, HTC, Samsung, RIM,LG, Motorola and Apple itself. Doing the similar calculation study reveals that Apple contributed 39% of combined smartphone revenue (of top 8 mobile majors) in Q4 of 2011. Samsung – consider Android-based devices only–emerged as the only company that managed to compete with Apple. However, the the efforts didn’t pay well as there was a sharp profit share gap between them in Q4 last year.

Jointly Apple and Samsung accounted 91% of the total profit share and 64% of total revenue share in Q4 last year. Apple dominated the mobile segment in profit as well as revenue in Q4 last year followed by Samsung. The world’s largest handset manufacturer—Nokia—had managed to assert Samsung and Apple in terms of revenue and hold the third notch in total revenue share. Despite of a huge market shares’ loss after three days outage in Oct last year, RIM accounted 3.7% of the total profit share in Q4 and grabbed 3^rd rank.

Apple’s momentum was really significant in the last year. The company had generated 19% more revenue, and also augmented 20% of more profit in Q4 than Q1 in 2011.

The last year was definitely the year for Apple, and the company outstandingly dominated over its rival. However, the proliferation of cheap Android OS had affected the total shipment of Apple’s Smartphone, but company managed its shipment in the holidays’ season. Apple’s iPhone 4S was most preferred Smartphone in the Christmas day alone.

Source: Asymco

Is iOS Less Stable? Apps On iOS Crash More than Android Platform

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February 4, 2012

The proliferation of updates of iOS and Android mobile operating systems are more often. iOS and Android has reportedly surpassed 10 billion apps last year. There has always been an issues of apps crash, now, there’s a big question why apps crash? There might be lots of reason for the apps crash, recently, Crittercism CEO—Andrew Levy—has pointed out some of them. He said that crash may be occurred due to the hardware issues—such as location or GPS services or camera.

In addition to this, the issue might be occurring due to the improper net connection at the certain moment, or disconnection between 3G and Wi-Fi. Sometimes, the language support on certain devices creates the issue, otherwise, shortage of memory for apps’ use can create apps crash climax. It’s often seen that the involvement of the third-party in the apps by developer causes app crash—recently, Apple’s iAds gave problem to some developers due to non-adhere to certain standard. A proper blend of hardware and software is required for non-occurrence of apps crash.

A recent analysis by Crittercism has revealed that there were 23 different iOS and 33 different Android OS on which apps had crashed in between Dec 1-15. Apple’s iOS 5.01 hold first rank with 28.64%, whereas, older versions including iOS 4.2.10 and iOS 4.3.3 were at second and third position with 12.64% and 10.66% respectively in apps crash. iOS 4.1 had also contributed 8.24% of app crash.

Developers always create new updates time-to-time for their apps to fix the bug. Sometimes, it’s due to users’ negligence, the issue remains intense. The developers often test all previous versions of their apps to make sure that it’s properly working on new OS or not. Crittercism analyzed a total more than 214 million apps launched in Nov-Dec 2011. In the first quartile, Android apps crashed 0.15%, while iOS reported 0.51%. In second quartile, Android apps crashed with 0.73% and 1.47% iOS apps crashed–was still higher than Android. In third quartile, Android and iOS apps crashed with 2.97% and 3.66% and respectively. The apps crash also depend on the types of the device use, Crittercism tracked the apps crash on iPad was least with 10.72%, and maximum were on iPhone (74.41%).

The code send by Android developers which can show up in real-time, while it takes a day or even sometimes a week in the case of iOS developer. That’s why, there is more possibility of Apps crash in the case of iOS, on the contrast, android developer fix the bug frequently. It’s clear that Android has lower app crash rate than iOS, but Crittercism has said that apps crash might increase with Android—since; limited number of devices had ICS till analysis which had expected to increase by the end of this year. Overall, protecting apps from crashes is not only important for apps developers—whole and sole of the apps for running smoothly–but also important for businesses.

source: Forbes

Microsoft Can Launch Skype Mobile Client For Windows Phones In MWC

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February 4, 2012

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Microsoft finally succeeded to acquire Skype in October 2011, despite of this; a proper Skype integration with Windows Phone has not been seen yet. Last month, when Skype Vice President of Products—Rick Osterloh—revealed that Microsoft’s Skype division is working on a Windows Phone product. The announcement of the VP gave a little assuagement to passionate Windows Phone users. But yesterday, The Verge has reported that Microsoft is currently testing a latest version of Skype for its Windows Phone 7, and also, the company is planning to launch the app at the MWC in Barcelona later this month.

After such a long delay, Windows Phone users might have a beam of hope to get their hand on Skype app. Earlier, Microsoft had promised to release full Skype integration for Windows Phones late in 2011. The Verge has stated that the Skype app is not going to offer any big surprise as per design perspective, but it can be expected to be heavily integrated in Windows Phone 8.

Microsoft spent $8.05 billion to acquire Skype last year. Presently, Skype has more than 200 million users and 8.8 millions among them are premium users. The integration of Skype with Windows Phone is going to give a stiff resistance to rivals like Android and iOS. Microsoft wants to bring business users through this integration, and also trying to generate more revenue.

Skype is going to be a great armature for Microsoft in coming days. However, it’s always been a strategy of Microsoft to acquire small companies in order to meet the requirements of new technology and talents. But, Skype will provide technology, talent, premium customers and assistance to generate large revenue to Microsoft—which is more than Microsoft’s expectation.

Anyway, Microsoft Windows unit has poorly performed in Q4 (calendar) last year. The company’s revenue had plunged by 6.1% from $5.6 billion in same quarter a year ago. The decision of Microsoft to release Skype with Windows Phone might helpful for the company to hold its market share.

Raspberry Pi introduces $25 Computer : GPU Performance Better Than Tegra 2,iPhone 4S

By

Lov Mishra

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February 3, 2012

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NR57ELY28s&feature=player_embedded

The cut-throat competition in Electronics market is resulting into the preeminent but budget-friendly innovations. One of such innovative research comes from a UK registered charity foundation,Raspberry Pi,which is successful in designing a PC which costs merely $25-$35 and has the graphics power double to that of iPhone 4S. Thus the engineers from Raspberry Pi are confident that their mini computer is capable of playing various 3D games with its much better GPU. One of the employee from Raspberry Pi claims that the graphics processing power of their computer is much better than Nvidia Tegra2 and Power SGX 543MP2,which is a great achievement for such a low price. The performance of $25 PC is double to that of Power VR SGH535 GPU and can decode videos up to 1080p with the help of its built-in video hardware acceleration.

Raspberry Pi stated,” We’ve had enormous interest, support and help from the educational community, and we’ve been delighted and a little humbled by the number of enquiries from agencies and people far away from our original targets for the device. Developing countries are interested in the Raspberry Pi as productivity devices in areas that simply can’t afford the power and hardware needed to run a traditional desktop PC; hospitals and museums have contacted us to find out about using the Raspberry Pi to drive display devices. Parents of severely disabled kids have talked to us about monitoring and accessibility applications; and there seem to be a million and one people out there with hot soldering irons who want to make a robot.”

The CPU embedded in it is a Single Core 700MHz ARM11 processor. The processor may seem to be inferior but it should be sufficient for various average processing tasks. The computer is meant for programmers who intend to develop codes,3D games in small scale and doesn’t fave sufficient funds to do so. The computer also features XMBC port named Raspbmc through which one will be able to turn PC into media player. The computer has HDMI and Digital out ports also,and can decode Blu-Ray quality Full HD movies also that too at 30fps. Below given video demonstrates the video capability of the computer.

The Flood In Thailand Might Jeopardize I.T. Growth In 2012 [Study]

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February 3, 2012

The graphs of IT industries are steadily increasing due to the large demand of the computing hardware and enterprise software in the market. Presently, Computing Hardware, enterprise software, IT services and the telecommunication equipment are the stronghold of the IT sector. Recently, a research analysis firm–Gartner–said that the growth rate of IT sector might to be decreased in 2012 compare to its previous expected valuation due to the flood in Thailand.

According to a Gartner’s new study, IT sector would contribute $3.8 trillion revenue worldwide in 2012, mount up by 3.7% from 2011 and 6.9% from 2010. Previously, the firm had predicted 4.6% growth in revenue by the end of 2012, which is slightly greater than the present prediction.

The research vice president at the Gartner—Richard Gordon—said; “Faltering global economic growth, the eurozone crisis and the impact of Thailand’s floods on hard-disk drive (HDD) production have all taken their toll on the outlook for IT spending. Thailand has been a major hub for hard-drive manufacturing, both for finished goods and components. We estimate the supply of hard drives will be reduced by as much as 25 percent (and possibly more) during the next six to nine months. Rebuilding the destroyed manufacturing facilities will also take time and the effects of this will continue to ripple throughout 2012 and very likely into 2013.”

The flood had swathed one-third portion of the country which in not good hearsay for the businesses worldwide. HDD supply chain and PC OEMs were highly affected by the flood in Thailand last year.

The HDD supply constraint will definitely impact on the HDD and PC shipment in the first half of the year 2012. Despite of this tragedy, the telecom equipment is expected to have the strongest growth of 6.9% in 2012, followed by the enterprise software market having 6.4% growth. Recently an analyst said that the PC shipment of Microsoft had declined in Q4 last year due to flood in Thailand. The flood caused drop in Microsoft’s Windows segment’s revenue by 6.1% to $4.74 billion in Q4 last year from $5.06 billion in the same quarter a year ago.

Gingerbread Captures 58.6%, ICS Just 1% of Total Android Market Share: Google

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February 3, 2012

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Google’s innovative mobile Operating Syastem “Android” dominated in Q3 and Q4 last year. However, in last holiday season, Apple’s iOS operating system made its influence little greater in the market compared to Q3 due to its revolutionary iPhone 4S. As data released on Android developer site, Gingerbread were running on 58.6% of all Android devices in last 14 days prior to end of Feb 1 worldwide, followed by Android 2.2 (Froyo) —succeeded to occupy 27.8% of the total Android market share. Android 2.1 (Éclair) had only 7.6% share in the last 14 days. While Android Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) had succeeded to dominate 1% of the total Android market share.

Honeycomb’s various updates, running on the different Android based Tablets were able to nab only 3.4% share. Gingerbread’s growth is highly incredible and consider as most successful Android version ever.

In December 2011, Android Gingerbread (Android 2.3) occupied 50.51% market share followed by Froyo with 35.3% of the Android market share. Éclair grabbed 9.6% of the total handset. On comparing both results, Gingerbread is getting stronger, up by 8.5%, while Éclair’s share has dropped by 2%.

The grasp of Android over the Tablet sector has always been poor, but it has increased by 1% from 2.4% in Q4 last year. Android Ice cream Sandwich is compatible for both Tablet and Smartphone. A sequence of ICS’s lineup is coming this year and Android is going to explode the mobile market.

Recently, a research analysis firm had stated that Android made its supremacy in the mobile OS with 47% market share followed by Apple’s iOS 43% in Oct/Nov 2011. The market share of Android had declined by 13%, while Apple’s iOS market share increased by 17% in Q4 compare to Q3, last year.

The major rival of Android is Apple—which has outstandingly performed in the last Christmas holiday, while other rivals like BlackBerry and Windows Phone is struggling in the market. However, it might be good indication for the company, there’s over more than 500,000 Android devices are activating every day.

The Who, Why and How: Twitter Facts, Figures And Statistics [Infographic]

By

Keerthana

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February 3, 2012

Social media is spreading knowledge globally at the speed of a “Tweet” and provides us all with tools that can enable us to follow our dreams, if only we can capture and heighten that curiosity for knowledge that drives humans to succeed. If you are curious then, social media and the web allows you to tap into global communities of interest and adventure points that can facilitate and enhance your skills, interests and passions.

Facebook and Twitter allow you to connect with your tribe, whether that is in New York, London or Lombok, that can provide stimulation and synergy that will surprise you with its breadth and reach and provide neuron muscle and connect you with your passionate energy that you may not have known you had.

Twitter was launched in 2006; it has tremendous growth around the world. Both private internet users and public corporations have embraced the micro blogging site to share news, photos, links and more. Slow evolution of Twitter frustrates few but its simplicity and immediacy as an open texting service on steroids continue to keep it top of mind in popular digital culture.The real point of interest to watch with Twitter in 2012 will be to see if it rolls out a self-serving ad platform that monetizes its network or whether it will work out another way make its 200 million plus users a revenue machine rather than a money pit!

We explore who uses Twitter and how they use it in the Infographic below.

Source: Buysellads

RIM Is Trying To Woo Android Developers By Offering Free PlayBook Tablets

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February 3, 2012

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Last month at CES, Research in Motion announced to launch the next major iteration of the Blackberry PlayBook OS, version 2.0. The anticipated update will allow PlayBook users to use Android apps that have been compiled for RIM’s platform, but getting developers on board is still a big issues for the company. Now, RIM has endeavored to get attention of the Android developers by offering free Blackberry PlayBook Tablet. The company is offering a free 16 GB PlayBook Tablet to those Android developers who repackage their apps for PlayBook platform. RIM’s VP of developer—Alec Saunders—mentioned the program in a twitter message on Thursday.

The RIM’s Developers’ blog site stated, “Further details about the promotion will be posted on our developer site as soon as possible, but the plan is to provide one free 16GB BlackBerry PlayBook to every registered BlackBerry App World vendor who converts their Android app for use on the BlackBerry PlayBook.”

The offer is not going to give much time for Android developers; they will have to optimize their Android apps for the PlayBook and then, they will have to submit in the Blackberry World Store by February 13 in order to get a free 16 GB PlayBook Tablet.

RIM has an app playing engine that allows programs designed for Android to run on its QNX-based Playbook. The video demonstrates how Android Apps can be repackaged for PlayBook platform:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62tkj53G7kU

The company has stated that the Android apps should be ported and submitted prior to the deadlines and also applications need to meet the BalckBerry App World vendor guidelines to be eligible for the offer .

In Q4 last year, RIM had decided to reduce the price of its Playbook in order to contend their strong rivals like Apple’s iPad and Amazon’s kindle Fire. However, after price-cut the company had managed to do fair sale of its PlayBook Tablets last year. The company had also announced to offer “buy-two- get-one free deal” on their Tablets through the network of their authorized reseller in the last couple of months of 2011. In addition to these, RIM was offering a free 16 GB Blackberry Playbook Tablet for the company for installing BES v5.0 until the 31^st of December 2011. Definitely, it’s the company’s strategy to woo the Android developers in this time to get developers on its board.

Website Security Insurer Verisign Itself Was Hacked Multiple Times In 2010

By

Keerthana

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February 3, 2012

VeriSign- the company behind the root DNS servers that provide the foundation for the Web and formerly the largest encryption certificate authority, which is ultimately responsible for the integrity of Web addresses ending in .com, .net and .gov – has revealed that it was repeatedly hacked in 2010. Details are spare thus far, but the revelation calls into question the security of the internet itself.

The company’s domain-name system processes as many as 50 billion queries daily. Stealing information from it could let hackers direct people to fake sites and intercept emails from federal employees or corporate executives, though classified government data moves through more secure channels.

Stewart Baker, former assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security said: ”Oh my god, that could allow people to imitate almost any company on the Net.”

The VeriSign attacks were revealed in a quarterly U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filling in October that followed new guidelines on reporting security breaches to investors. It was the most striking disclosure to emerge in a review of more than 2,000 documents mentioning breach risks since the SEC guidance was published. The breach occurred sometime last year but has only been made publicly on reporting security breaches to investors.

IT staffs at VeriSign allegedly discovered the compromise in 2010, but hidden the incident from upper management until sometime in 2011. VeriSign itself may not be at fault for the initial delay in the disclosure, but it appears that a significant amount of time has passed since VeriSign executives learned of the breach, and yet the company still tried to sneak the information covertly in an SEC filing.

Until August 2010, VeriSign was one of the largest providers of Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates – use to encrypt data to travel from website to server in secured mode, that begins with “https” – which was getting used by many internet properties including most financial sites and some email and other communications portals. The certificate authority business of VeriSign was acquired by Symantec in 2010; so depending on the timing of the attacks it seems feasible that the certificate encryption keys could have been exposed.

Symantec declined to comment directly on news of the VeriSign breach, but a spokesperson did assert, “The Trust Services (SSL), User Authentication and other production systems acquired by Symantec were not compromised by the corporate network security breach mentioned in the VeriSign, Inc. quarterly filing.”

VeriSign which is now owned by Symantec Inc, posted a message on its site that states the company is changing its name again in April 2012.

“In April 2012, all VeriSign seals will automatically update to the Norton Secured Seal, combining the power of the VeriSign checkmate with the value of the Norton name. The combination of these leading companies will help assure your customers that your website is safe from search to browse to buy and sign-in.”

VeriSign declined multiple interview requests, and senior employees said privately that they had not been given any more details than were in the filing. One said it was impossible to tell if the breach was the result of a concerted effort by a national power, though that was a possibility.

No network is impervious, and a company as high-profile as VeriSign is a prime target. The key is that organizations need to do more to foster an environment where honesty and disclosure are valued. If the fear of negative consequences is greater than the incentive for quick disclosure and response, you end up with a situation where IT staff would rather hide evidence of a breach.

“The World’s Most Curious Bottle” App Guides You To Eat While Drinking [VIDEO]

By

Dharan Shetty

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February 3, 2012

Encoding and decoding of data has been done from years, before it was used to protect data from being misused by others but now it is also used to store data in form of a bar code or a design such as a QR code. These codes can be decoded using a mobile reader app built specially for it and the data can be extracted from it.

QR code comes from Japan and is short for quick response code and can be decoded on your Smartphone with an app known as QR code reader. Many companies have been using this code to improvise their business strategy. Tesco, a supermarket in South Korea is using this code and has started an unique shopping concept in railway stations and bus stands. Now a New Zealand based Winery Company –Brancott Estate- has come up with an innovative idea to attract its customers and also surprise them with their one of the kind app.

Brancott Estate has created an app called “The World’s Most Curious Bottle” which is available in the Android and iOS market for free; it offers suggestions as to which food would go well with the wine, an augmented reality view is also shown and would also give the details of aroma and info about the climate in which the grapes were grown for 14 of their wines.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSmBmos6TVo

This app would prove to be useful for people who are not that acquainted with wine and its details. It proves to be a very good promotion technique by the company and might attract more crowd towards the company.

It’s surprising that even after a decade from its inception, QR codes have still not caught on. With companies like Jess3 trying to make the QR codes more attractive and the marketing promotion done by TESCO, QR codes will show the advantages it holds and that will make it a popular form of data encryption in the coming years.

Mozilla Firefox 10 Is Now Live: What’s Packed Inside The Box ?

By

Keerthana

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February 3, 2012