Big Changes in Store for Nokia, Maybe RIM

Over the past few days there have been a flurry of articles and speculation about changes that may be coming to Nokia, as soon as the Mobile World Congress in a week:

• The probable sacking of high level executives
• A potentially broader alliance with Microsoft that would include Windows 7 Nokia smartphones
  

Last year Microsoft and Nokia announced an alliance and now, with both companies struggling in mobile, it appears that alliance will become deeper and more strategic, with the world's largest handset maker adopting Windows for some or all of its new high-end smartphones.

I had anticipated that Nokia would build some Android phones for the US market and possibly Europe. But the Microsoft move is more logical given that Nokia CEO Stephen Elop is a former Microsoft executive himself and given the fact of their existing alliance. 

Microsoft's new OS is nicely designed (except for the home screen in my view) but lacks visbility and momentum. Being on Nokia handsets could bring both almost immediately or very quickly. There's also the risk that such a move would fail to halt Nokia's slide or sufficiently boost Windows. 

Right now the iPhone and Android are absolutely sucking all the consumer attention out of the room for everyone else. It's still possible that Nokia would put out an Android phone or two beside Windows Phones; however Microsoft might try and prevent that as part of any strategic deal between the two. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

One widely discussed scenario is the outright purchase of Nokia by Microsoft. The former is now worth just over $41 billion -- a costly pill to swallow. However the acquisition of Yahoo would have been worth $44 billion. So Microsoft is not above using its balance sheet when absolutely necessary.

Yet an acquisition would probably be unnecessary if a strategic alliance that put Windows on Nokia smartphones advanced penetration for the operating system. 

For its part RIM will also be compelled to do some radical things to reassert itself.

Its new QNX operating system on the Playbook tablet and later BlackBerry handsets will apparently be able to run Android applications helping RIM play catch-up on the apps front. However embracing Android apps will likely mean the end of the company's own BlackBerry App World; why would developers focus on it when Android apps could reach BlackBerry users?

Does the move to embrace Android apps also suggest that RIM will put out an Android handset? Probably not; RIM will likely maintain its proprietary OS in the wake of the QNX and TAT acquisitions. Regardless, RIM may continue to struggle and will probably see tablet sales disappoint vs. the iPad, Samsung,  Xoom and several others as the tablet market becomes increasingly "noisy." 

Google: Click2Call Ads Generating 'Millions of Calls'

Last Thursday was Google's earnings call. The remarkable $8.4 billion dollar quarter was totally overshadowed by the news that CEO Eric Schmidt was being replaced by co-founder Larry Page. I was immediately consumed by that news and its implications for the company.

I'm "circling back" now to revisit the earnings call. There were interesting details revealed in the Q&A about the state of things on the local and mobile fronts for Google. Here are some selected excerpts (emphasis mine).

Product SVP Jonathan Rosenberg:

In Local, over 5 million businesses have claimed their Google place pages. And we recently started testing a new ad product, which we called Boost, and that gives businesses a really easy and fast way to promote themselves online and to connect with the people who are searching for them . . .

I think it's probably easier to talk about initially how tablets and smartphones are similar, right? Both of them are growing at a terrific pace. As is the case of Mobile, what we see on these devices is that search usage on the tablets tends to peak on the weekend and it dips on the weekdays, so it's generally complementary to desktop, which we've talked about before. What does that suggest? Maybe, the people are using them more for personal usage as opposed to business. We do see on tablets the weekend peak is a little bit more pronounced than it is on phones. I think that's probably the case because people pretty much always carry their smartphone during the week. Some of the bigger differences, the tablet users tend to search more for things like news and they tend to do more shopping-related topics when you compare them to smartphone users.

Sales SVP Nikesh Arora:

The other thing we've done in Local is the way I think local is sometimes synonymous with smaller advertisers and smaller territories. And towards that end, we have created the most simplistic set of products around Tags and Boost, which is more amenable to the advertisers. They don't have to do a lot of work. Sometimes they don't even have their own websites. 

Product SVP Jonathan Rosenberg:

[The] Click-to-Call ads are generating millions of calls every month. A lot of advertisers are running these campaigns. I think one you can see if you tried is DirectTV. We did launch a call-only option where the only clickable link in the ad is actually a phone number, which not surprisingly substantially increases the click through rates on mobile devices. And we've extended some of the desktop formats pretty successfully to Mobile. Sitelinks is one. If you try a query on Oakley, you'll see one, if you seller ratings on something like running shoes . . . At the moment, I don't have any specific comments on NFC other than to go back to the statements that I've made in previous calls, which is when people are completing transactions with these devices, it becomes much more trackable and obviously significantly more valuable.

Facebook Pushes Growth on Feature Phones with New App

Facebook is the top free iPhone app of "all time" (so far). The site is also the top site or the number two site in most countries around the world according to Opera's regular reporting. The company has more than 200 million mobile users who are the most active of Facebook's more than 600 million global members. According to the most recently published public numbers from the social network:

• There are more than 200 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices
• People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are twice as active on Facebook than non-mobile users
• There are more than 200 mobile operators in 60 countries working to deploy and promote Facebook mobile products 

Facebook also operates the "0.facebook.com" site to reach users on non-smartphones. But yesterday Facebook announced a new feature-phone app from Snaptu. The idea is to drive global penetration and usage even further, recognizing the strategic importance of mobile to the future of the business.

Smartphones will be in the majority in the "West" across the board at some point in the next five years. But around the world, inexpensive feature phones or not-quite-smartphones will remain dominant for the foreseeable future. This new app will help provide a better user experience than the 0.facebook mobile Web/Wap experience. 

Simultaneously Facebook is reportedly working with mobile-handset manufacturer INQ Mobile Ltd on a couple of Android-based quasi-branded smartphones. Facebook also recently launched Connect and single sign-on for mobile phones. In short the company is trying to penetrate and conquer the entire mobile ecosystem from top to bottom, from apps to hardware. 

What it doesn't (yet) have is mobile advertising. This will come without question. And when it does, Facebook will be largest mobile ads network/platform on the globe. 

Related posts: 

• If Facebook Were an Ad Network, It Would Be the Biggest
• Visa Using Facebook Page As Mobile Landing Page
• Facebook Wants to Be the 'Social Inside' of All Mobile Experiences
• Facebook Launches Connect for the iPhone
• Android-Based 'Facebook Phone' Is By INQ Mobile

Appcelerator 'Tools Up' with Aptana Acquisition

There’s a recombinant quality to the platforms that mobile developers can employ to build new applications and services. A case in point is Appcelerator’s acquisition of Aptana, which represents a definite upgrade by adding an “integrated development environment” (IDE) specifically for Web applications.,

Appcelerator has already lured over 1.5 million developers to use its flagship Titanium “enterprise-grade, cross-platform development solutions” to power more than 10,000 apps – which run “natively” on the most popular smartphones (meaning Apple’s iOS and Android-based devices) and desktop (meaning MacOS, Windows and Android). The acquisition of Aptana anticipates a shift from a three-tiered approach (where apps running on devices interact with apps and data residing “in the cloud”) to a two-tiered approach where apps running in the cloud are delivered “as a service” to mobile subscribers though a browser (most likely conforming to HTML5).

The rest of this post is on the Opus Research blog. 

People Are Scanning but Are They Succeeding?

Scanning and image-based input are great, but we're still in the "1.0" era. Scanning works well only part of the time for me and that's what I hear from others as well. Often the scanner can't get a fix on the code or if it does there may not be any data to provide an answer. Yet lots of people are scanning away, according to data released by Scanbuy.

The underlying scanning technology is open-source and it's getting better. Plus the datasets are improving too. In a couple of years the promise of visual search and barcode scanning will be realized I'm sure. For now it's a mixed experience at best.

In the meantime here are some of the more interesting data from the latest ScanLife Mobile Barcode Trend Report:

Barcode scanning will very soon be a commodity; so features and data will become the critical differentiators among scanning apps.

AdMob Now Seeing 2B Daily Ad Requests

Now that AdMob is part of Google we're not getting the great monthly data and reports that we used to see from the company. But Google has just put out some new data on impression growth. The headline (literally) is that AdMob is seeing 2+ billion ad requests per day (on a global basis).

Here's more: 

• Ad requests have grown 4X in the past 12 months
• More than 100 million unique Android and iOS devices requested an ad each month, nearly doubling over the last six months.
• Nine countries in the AdMob network generated more than a billion monthly ad requests in December 2010, up from just one country a year ago.
• The strongest regional growth in monthly ad requests over the past year has come from Asia (564%), Western Europe (471%) and Oceania (363%)

Google previously said that it had a $1 billion mobile advertising run rate. I did a quick analysis of how that billion might break down, assuming that mobile ad revenues were distributed along the same lines as paid-search revenue generally speaking.

IDC's revised US mobile ad numbers show Google as totally dominant over the rest of the field in terms of market share.

• Google: 59%
• Apple: 8.4%
• Millennial: 6.8%
• Yahoo: 5.6% 
• Microsoft: 4.3%
• Other: 15.9%

These figures below include search, which is 56% of mobile ad revenue in the US according to the firm. Almost none of the competing mobile ad networks and platforms have search ad revenue, which is why it's so lopsided in Google's favor. Just looking at display the IDC numbers look somewhat more balanced:

• Google: 19%
• Apple: 18.8%
• Millennial: 15.4%
• Yahoo: 10.1%
• Jumptap: 8.4%
• Microsoft: 7.8% 
• Others (including AOL, Nokia): 20.5%

Will a Smartphone Security Disaster Hit Android in 2011?

A number of security firms and commentators have sounded the alarm about smartphones being the next target of "cyber criminals" and malicious hackers. Most recently, earlier this week, mobile security firm Lookout warned of a new sophisticated Android "Trojan" (malware) in China called Geinimi. According to the firm:

[T]his Trojan can compromise a significant amount of personal data on a user’s phone and send it to remote servers. The most sophisticated Android malware we’ve seen to date, Geinimi is also the first Android malware in the wild that displays botnet-like capabilities. Once the malware is installed on a user’s phone, it has the potential to receive commands from a remote server that allow the owner of that server to control the phone.

Geinimi is effectively being “grafted” onto repackaged versions of legitimate applications, primarily games, and distributed in third-party Chinese Android app markets. The affected applications request extensive permissions over and above the set that is requested by their legitimate original versions. Though the intent of this Trojan  isn’t entirely clear, the possibilities for intent range from a malicious ad-network to an attempt to create an Android botnet.

Part of this warning is of course self-serving but there's a real threat here too. Not being a security expert it's not clear to me whether the iPhone or other smartphone platforms are any more secure. But Android seems particularly vulnerable, as an "open" platform and as arguably the fastest growing smartphone OS. That combination makes it a target. 

If 2011 is the "year of the smartphone" then it will also be a year in which various miscreants try to break in, disrupt and cause general mayhem. Given the rapid adoption of mobile banking and financial services on smartphones, they become a very attractive target for those would would steal financial data as well.

One of the things that has lead to the resurgence of interest in Mac computers (vs. PCs) is the general perception and reality that there are fewer viruses and general security threats. Partly that's because of Apple's historically smaller share in the personal computer market. But there's also some legitimacy to the claim that the OS/platform is more secure. 

My question is: will the same dynamic play out in mobile? Will a major Android security threat (such as Lookout describes in China) or actual incident next year cause people to question whether Android is the right handset for them? 

Google, carriers and other third parties will need to preemptively address the security question or there could be a major PR disaster if hackers manage to break into Android and steal data or manipulate the OS in some unsavory way otherwise. 

Story of the Day: The Explosion of Cheap (Android) Smartphones

A story getting a lot of comments and play this morning is last week's Fortune article: 2011 will be the year Android explodes. The story is about how cheaper chips will likely bring down prices of smartphones to under $100 and Android handsets in particular. The story, using analyst and OEM estimates, argues that Android growth next year will be explosive. 

If the prices do in fact come down to $100 or less -- or handsets are fully subsidized by carriers -- we will see huge growth as the article suggests. Unless AT&T and (soon) Verizon are willing to be extremely generous with their subsidies, the iPhone will not be able to compete for the low-end of the market with Android -- although today you can get a refurbished iPhone 4 from AT&T for $99 and 3GS models for as little as $44. 

Nielsen has long predicted that 2011 (now Q4) will be the year that smartphones cross the 50% threshold in the US. Morgan Stanley famously predicted earlier this year that 2014 would see mobile Internet access surpass PC access.

If nothing else this blog is dedicated to the idea that there are radical implications flowing from these developments and we've been discussing and speculating about many of them for that past few years. We also argued that Nokia, the dominant handset maker in the developing world, had much more to fear from Android than from Apple's iPhone:

Apple can't and won't offer low cost handsets to the market in these places; it's the premium brand and wants to ensure a uniform experience. Eventually we might see a single lower-cost handset from Apple (something like the iPhone Nano perhaps). But that won't be coming very soon, if ever. 

Google by contrast doesn't have any of those same brand-related concerns. If there are lousy Android handsets in the market it doesn't really diminish Android the OS as a whole. There's room for much more experimentation on Android.

Apple has charmed and captured the "high end" of the market. Google and its OEMs are competing there but can also compete at the lower end with lower price points. That's the area where Nokia is dominant. But for how much longer? 

Nokia may wind up adopting Android itself, but that remains to be seen. 

Android is the "Windows of the mobile world." Apple is, well, the Apple: a premium brand that seeks to maintain higher price points and margins accordingly. Just as there are lots of generic and "crappy" PCs we're going to see plenty of crappy low-end Android handsets. The image above is of the Samsung Intercept, one of these lesser Android devices. But to someone coming off a flip phone it's a revelation. 

If these low-cost Android handsets flood the market and become widely available, we'll see people trying to pair the best of lower-end Android handsets with the cheapest plans (i.e., Boost, Virgin). The only way for carriers to maintain the prices of their plans will be to limit the availability of the best handsets to their post-paid subscribers. Lesser phones on slower networks will be available to pre-paid subscribers. 

Regardless, there's enormous room for growth in the US market from non-smartphone users. If we accept the Nielsen figure that 28% of US mobile phone subscribers have smartphones that means (of course) that 72% do not. Cheap smartphones paired with cheap data plans will drive a huge number of that 72% into the smartphone -- and mostly Android -- camp over the next two years. 

One can never overestimate the impact of price on markets and consumer behavior. 

Financial Analyst: Google Mobile Ads May be $3.5B in 2012

Citigroup financial analyst Mark Mahaney almost exactly nailed the amount of search revenue Google was generating from mobile devices (about $500 million) in 2010. He's now projecting Google could see $2 billion in 2011 and potentially "over $3.5 billion" gross mobile ad revenues in 2012.

I think those estimates are reasonable given Google's assets and its already dominant position in mobile search and display -- especially mobile search. Google is on track to do about $30 billion in gross revenues this year. About 48% of that is US-generated.

IDC has Google controlling almost 60% of US mobile ad revenues between search and display, while all others combined own 41%. 

Bing iPhone App Offers Great 'All-in-One' Utility

Yesterday Microsoft held a Bing Search Summit in San Francisco. A whole boatload of upgrades were delivered including for the Bing iPhone and Android apps. Where Google has several apps or sites, Bing is trying to do a ton of stuff with its single app. Overall it's a terrific all-in-one app. They've really done a nice job and created a truly viable alternative to Google. The only thing not present is turn-by-turn navigation.

Here's the laundry list of upgrades and new features in the iPhone release: 

• Auto suggest: Bing intelligently narrows and refines restaurant and movie searches by suggesting query strings to help people plan the perfect night out.
• Bing Vision: Bring an object into the [camera] viewfinder, hold it still and Bing will detect text and present a highlighter tool to select words for a search. If the object has a barcode, Bing will instantly return product results. Search for a nearby business listing by pointing your camera at a landmark.
• Check-in: Share your current location with friends and family via Facebook, foursquare or Windows Live Activity Stream.
• iPhone Apps: Surfaces iPhone apps in search results, when relevant.
• Plans: From the Bing homepage or a local search result, people can plan a night out and share the plan with friends via Facebook, who can comment or join the plan.
• Opentable and Grubhub integration: With the integration of Opentable and Grubhub into Bing for Mobile, once you find your restaurant of choice, you can reserve a table on OpenTable or order takeout from Grubhub without leaving the Bing app.
• Real-Time Transit Predictions: Real-time updates for Boston, San Francisco and Seattle allow commuters to see if transit options are on schedule, early or delayed, with predictions for arrival times.
• Reminders: Create a “to-do” list and set reminders to receive alerts when near a specific location.
• Enhanced StreetSide: Helps people orient themselves in unfamiliar places by stitching together and panning across street-level imagery of businesses, addresses or landmarks.

The "plans" feature is novel and uses Facebook to communicate suggestions to friends and family. The Check-in feature enables a Facebook or Foursquare check-in or both simultaneously.

Bing Vision is the equivalent of Google Goggles or Google Shopper with visual product search. Bing already had a barcode scanning capability and this is an enhancement with OCR built in. In my informal side-by-side testing of Bing Vision against Google Shopper's similar capability Google shopper performed slightly better and recognized more products more quickly. 

Street Side is both "cool" and useful and is similar to Google's Street View. There are some things that one can do with Street Side that can't be done with Street View, but the offerings are similar. In Bing, Street Side is accessible from local business profile pages. Bing is also completely voice-enabled (powered by Tellme).

Microsoft is making the HTML5 mobile site more and more app-like and over time will likely concentrate on improving that experience rather than building separate apps for multiple platforms. 

The challenge for Microsoft is making users aware of all these capabilities and their benefits. The company needs to focus on one or two "wow" or differentiated features to motivate downloads -- the iPhone app is actually pretty popular -- and then let consumer discover all the other stuff they can do with the app on their own. 

The Nexus S Goes on Sale

The Android 2.3 Nexus S (T-Mobile in the US) is going on sale today for $199 with a contract and $529 without. The phone is NFC-enabled, which isn't meaningful to anyone right now because there's no NFC infrastructure for users to tap into. But it will be a feature of Android going forward. It also suggests Google's future intentions with regard to ads and payments on mobile devices. 

Overall the handset is the best and most elegant and fully realized of the Android devices on the market (until the next one comes out next month). My HTC EVO is a "tank" by comparison. (I could put it in a sock and kill someone with it.) I'm not a fan of the "green" Samsung display however. I've been using it for the past week and really like the device. There's not much to criticize. I would buy one in a heartbeat if I didn't already have my EVO.

I haven't noticed many significant differences, beyond NFC inclusion, between Froyo and Gingerbread. It is however less "substantial" than its N1 predecessor and feels more like a "generic" Android device than a uniquely Google device (in the way the N1 felt different). 

The differences between the iPhone and Nexus S are fewer than earlier and other Android devices -- the keyboard still under-performs (Swiftkey is still a must). But it's a pretty compelling handset overall. And for those who are heavy users of Google services, it's arguably better bet than the iPhone. 

The two big differentiators for Android (vs the iPhone) are Navigation and Voice Actions. The iPhone has voice search and various alternative navigation apps and tools. But the integration of Google's services with Navigation is pretty compelling (never mind that directions are poor sometimes). 

Nexus S the New Android "It Phone"

This morning Google announced the new Nexus S (built by Samsung but branded Google). Eric Schmidt showed it off at the recent Web 2.0 event in San Francisco.

It's the new Android "it phone" and is the first to feature the new version of the OS: Gingerbread (2.3). The phone is intended to offer "the pure Google experience" on a phone. According to Google:

Gingerbread is the fastest version of Android yet, and it delivers a number of improvements, such as user interface refinements, NFC support, a new keyboard and text selection tool, Internet (VoIP/SIP) calling, improved copy/paste functionality and gyroscope sensor support.

The Nexus S will be available (unlocked) from retailer Best Buy next week in the US and in the UK after 12/20 from Carphone Warehouse. Take a look at the site and how Apple-influenced the look and feel are (at least in the "features" area).

Here are the Nexus S specs from Samsung. Most noteworthy perhaps is the inclusion of NFC, which makes it mobile-payments ready. 

Google doesn't really have its own play in mobile payments and I would expect the company to make a fairly significant acquisition in the near term accordingly. But that's a matter for another day.

This phone looks pretty "sexy." The question is how much will it cost? 

Galaxy Tab's Million Unit Sales Suggest Popularity of Smaller Form Factor

The iPad is a great device but for true "mobility" it's arguably too large. The smartphone, for others, is too small for many tasks such as watching video, reading news or ebooks -- especially after doing these things on an iPad. What's the solution? The "Goldilocks" form factor, which provides usability and mobility, may well be the 7-inch tablet.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs attacked the 7" as too small and too big simultaneously. Conceptually he may be right but the apparent popularity of the Galaxy Tab suggests there are a lot of people looking for a larger screen (vs. a smartphone) in a more mobile unit. Tech publication eWeek reported that maker Samsung said that a million units have been sold since the recent launch of the Tab. 

My brief experience with the Galaxy Tab in a store in London revealed to me that it offers much weaker user experience than the iPad. Not all agree however. But my belief is that the smaller form factor is driving sales, rather than the particulars of this device. The user experience, like Android more generally, is "good enough" but the smaller form factor is attractive to many people.

The RIM/BlackBerry Playbook is also 7 inches. The Playbook isn't out yet but it promises to be a credible competitor in the tablet market. There are many other 7-inch tablets coming as well. Acer, in particular, is launching 5 inch, 7 inch and 10 inch models.

The 5-inch Dell Streak, a non-phone connected device, is unlikely to succeed because it's expensive and not sufficiently differentiated from a smartphone. Indeed, five inches is probably too small for a tablet, unless it's also a phone, and anything larger than the iPad is too large. The dual-screen version of tablet-textbook Kno, for example, is likely to fail because it's too large and cumbersome.

My guess, however, is that the 7-inch form factor will take hold. So we'll have a range of smartphone sizes, topping out at about 5 inches, and two viable tablets sizes: 7 inches and roughly 10 inches. Apple will then be forced to confront whether it wants to build an "iPad Nano" or cede the market to others. 

In Mobile "Risk" Apple Owns Europe, America and OZ, Symbian Controls Asia and Developing World

Royal Pingdom put out one of its frequent Statcounter-based data reports that shows a fascinating geographic breakdown of mobile Web traffic by operating system (not handset units sold). Here's what the analysis finds: 

• The two dominant mobile Web platforms are are Apple and Symbian. Apple dominates in North America, Europe and Australia
• Nokia controls Asia, Africa and South America. Symbian is weakest in North America
• Android's strongest markets are South Korea, Austria, Denmark, Taiwan, Slovenia and the US. But the OS doesn't dominate in any single country except South Korea. 
• RIM is the dominant mobile Web platform in the Dominican Republic. BlackBerry also drives a considerable share of mobile Web traffic in Guatemala, the UK, Colombia and El Salvador.

Again this is share of Web traffic seen by the mobile OS -- not units sold.

Europe Invests in Symbian to Counter iOS, Android

Almost all the major smartphone operating systems are from North America and the US in particular. Aside from RIM, iOS, Android, Windows and WebOS are all "American" platforms. The Europeans, always paranoid and mindful of having their own hedge against American technological hegemony, invested (€22 million) in Symbian (the "European OS") as an alternative: 

Under an initiative sponsored by the European Commission (EC), the Symbian platform was this week endorsed by the Artemis Joint Technology Initiative and specifically identified as a unique technology that is a vital focus for European-centric mobile software development.

As a result, the EC has granted €11 million towards the funding of the development projects proposed by the consortium. With matched funding (i.e. funding provided by companies in the consortium), this means a total of €22 million is being invested in the development of next generation technologies for the Symbian platform.

The group behind the investment "is made up of 24 organizations from 8 European countries." The Europeans were considering development of a common platform or OS as a counterweight to North American smartphone dominance. It appears this is the fruit of that conversation although the investment doesn't preclude a "from the ground up" effort in parallel.

They could potentially also customize Android and create a pan-EU version of it for carriers/OEMs operating on the Continent. 

With the Symbian investment they may be throwing their money away. It appears they're hoping to develop on an OS that isn't able to compete with iOS or Android in its current form. The response might be that a next-generation Symbian could be developed and give the Americans a run for their money. Though I'm not a developer or software engineer, I think that aspiration is very unlikely to come to fruition.

Nokia itself is apparently walking away from Symbian because it recognizes the OS's competitive limitations. Starting from scratch it seems to me would have been a better bet for Europe.

Single-Carrier Availability Continues to Hurt iPhone in US as Anroid Surges

Nielsen put out data showing that Android continues to gain momentum and is the leading OS in terms of recent sales. However, the overall market share breakdown is still RIM, Apple, Android in that order (second slide below). But Android clearly has the momentum. 

Yet as I've said before this is not about Android per se -- consumers are not seeking and buying "Android" phones -- but about the growing ranks of Android-powered smartphones from all the leading US carriers: EVO, Incredible, Droid, Fascinate and so on. By contrast, the iPhone is still only available from AT&T; and that obstacle is preventing more consumers from buying it. 

Android is also benefitting from millions in marketing and advertising being spent by the various OEMs (HTC, Motorola, Samsung) and carriers (Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile) to promote their respective handsets. Were the iPhone universally available from the major US carriers I'm sure we wouldn't be seeing quite the same Android momentum. 

Daring Fireball's John Gruber points out that the relationship between Apple and Android in Europe, where the iPhone is more broadly available, is very different than in the US:

Source: comScore (chart ClickZ)

Survey: Early iPad Buyers Using Devices Almost 20 Hours per Week

NPD conducted a survey of 500 iPad owners and found that 13% had "bought an iPad instead of a PC, while 24% replaced a planned e-reader purchase with an iPad." Early iPad adopters, buying within two months of launch, are far more likely to own other Apple products (Macs, iPhones), which has already been well established by a number of earlier consumer surveys. 

Later buyers (post two months) owned Windows PCs less than the overall population too: "with just 53 percent of iPad owners overall having a Windows desktop compared to 75 percent of total households."

Early adopters reportedly used more of the iPad's features and do more with the device. Here's more from the NPD analyst's blog post: 

Satisfaction and usage:

• Almost 80% of early adopters very satisfied vs. 65% of later adopters
• Early adopters are now using iPads more than 18 hours/week; time is increasing
• The top three activities: web, email, games

Dissatisfactions:

• Lack of USB ports, which 51% of all users cited as top frustration 
• Lack of an easy printing option and mutli-tasking (both addressed in November iOS update)

Favorite features/cabilities:

• Portability of the device
• WiFi connectivity ease/simplicity
• E-book capabilities
• Wide variety of apps

Scanbuy Releases Barcode Report: Droid the Scanning Leader, CA the Top Scanning State

Scanbuy, which offers mobile barcode scanning technology, is trying to mainstream its usage among consumers and brands/advertisers. To that end the company has released its first "ScanLife Mobile Barcode Trend Report." The document charts the growth of mobile barcode scanning and ranks the product categories, handsets and geographies where it's happening.

California leads the US and North America, which leads the rest of the world. Scanbuy says that mobile barcode scanning is happening in 45 countries and on every continent. The company also says that people are transacting on mobile phones after scanning in many cases. 

Motorola Droid is the top scanning handset, followed by the iPhone. Droid over-indexes, according to Scanbuy, because of "pre-loaded barcode scanners on some devices and strong support from carriers like Verizon."

The following table shows the product categories that are most heavily scanned according to Scanbuy. The orange text shows top categories wherein people are buying directly on mobile devices after scanning: 

Finally scanners are 74% male and 26% female, which is especially interesting given the product category list above (assuming that women are more represented in the top two categories).

This is all interesting data and shows how in many instances it's easier for people to scan barcodes than conduct a search for the product in question. It's not mentioned in the report but most of this scanning is probably happening in stores. Previously InsightExpress reported that 82% of mobile phone owners in the US used them (in one way or another) in stores.

Scanning faces a few hurdles right now on its way to the mainstream. Unless apps are pre-installed, there's the need to download -- though some scanning apps (e.g., RedLaser) have been very sucessful. There's also the challenge of differentiating among scanning apps. Then there's the basic functionality. 

In my use of multiple scanning apps in stores I find that at least 50% of the time they don't work. Either they can't fix on the barcode or they don't have the data thereafter. The technology, data and usability will improve over time however. 

Barcodes are also increasingly being used to tie media in the "real world" to promotions of one sort or another. The most recent example is Scanbuy's integration into TV ads from online retailer Bluefly.