iPad 2 Expected to Be Announced March 2

Apple on Wednesday sent the news media an official invitation to an event that is expected to showcase the next iPad.

The e-mail said Apple would be holding an “invitation-only event at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco on March 2.” Although invitations to Apple events are usually cryptic, this announcement was less subtle, as it shows a calendar page peeling back to reveal an iPad.

The iPad 2 is expected to be thinner and lighter than the current model, which weighs 1.5 pounds. People who have seen cases for the new iPad believe it will have a shape similar to the current iPod Touch. The device is also expected to have front- and rear-facing cameras.

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The Future of Smart Mobile Devices

Momentum in the mobile device market has swung in favor of smartphones, led by the allure of Apple’s iPhone and the legion of now-viable competitors it has spawned.

Most mobile owners in the US still have only a feature phone, but eMarketer predicts smartphone ownership will rise from 31% of the mobile population this year to 43% by 2015. Nearly 110 million Americans will have a smartphone by the end of that year.

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How will Verizon's iPhone change the mobile game?

When the iPhone 4 becomes available on the Verizon Wireless network beginning Feb. 10, the desirability of handsets based on Google’s Android operating system will be tested, and Reseach In Motion’s BlackBerry devices are sure to take a hit. However, if it means consumers increase their usage of the mobile Web and applications, it will mean more downloads for content producers and more impressions for advertisers.

“It is a growth opportunity for Apple, giving it access to a major new market opportunity, a whole new set of demographics for the iPhone and the applications on the iOS platform,” said Ross Rubin, executive director of industry analysis and consumer technology at the NPD Group, New York. “That represents more potential advertising revenue and the potential for more app sales.”

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comScore Reports December 2010 U.S. Mobile Subscriber Market Share

comScore, Inc., a leader in measuring the digital world, today released data from the comScore MobiLens service, reporting key trends in the U.S. mobile phone industry during the three month average period ending December 2010. The December report found Samsung to be the top handset manufacturer overall with 24.8 percent market share, while RIM led among smartphone platforms with 31.6 percent market share.

63.2 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the three months ending in December 2010, up 60 percent versus year ago. RIM led the ranking with 31.6 percent market share of smartphones, while Google Android maintained the No. 2 position with 28.7 percent, up 7.3 percentage points versus September. Apple accounted for 25.0 percent of smartphone subscribers (up 0.7 percentage points), followed by Microsoft with 8.4 percent and Palm with 3.7 percent.

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Most purchases, half of transactions to be mobile by 2015: Google

Two-thirds of all purchases and half of transactions will occur on mobile devices by 2015, Google executives said February 4. Consumer coupons will also transition from their current rate of 80% push to 80% opt-in four years from now, said David Shapiro, Google's director of small business marketing.

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Verizon iPhone Sales Topped 500K

Verizon's record sales of the Apple iPhone may have exceeded half a million phones on the first day.

After breaking its previous phone sales record in the first two hours of pre-orders, Verizon continued to take orders for 15 more hours until 8:10 p.m. ET, wrote JPMorgan analyst Phil Cusick in a note Monday. Based on the pace of sales, Cusick estimated that more than 500,000 Verizon iPhones were sold on day one.

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Analyst: Verizon iPhone Demand Could Reach Nearly 25 Million

R.W. Baird & Co. analyst William Power has projected 23.8 million iPhones sold to Verizon subscribers in the first year.

That’s more than a quarter of Verizon’s current subscriber base. But according to Power--who cautions that this is a “directional number” and not a forecast (there are constraints around how many devices Apple can actually ship)–-a recent Baird survey of 1,000 smartphone users supports it. From the survey:

>29 percent of current Verizon feature phone owners said they will “probably” or “definitely” upgrade to the Verizon iPhone in the next three months. The carrier has roughly 64 million postpaid feature phone users, so that’s 19 million potential iPhone upgrades, assuming eligibility.

>25 percent of Verizon’s current smartphone users said they will “probably” or “definitely” switch to the iPhone. That’s 4.8 million additional potential iPhone sales, again assuming eligibility.

Grand total: 23.8 million potential Verizon iPhone sales–from the carrier’s installed base alone. Add to that the 5.6 percent of current AT&T iPhone users who told Baird they planned to switch to Verizon and that number rises to nearly 25 million.

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Mobile Becomes Marketing Discipline For Ad Strategies

This year, mobile becomes a marketing discipline or practice in overall ad strategies, rather than an application in a campaign or on a handset or tablet, according to the white paper "Upward Mobility: Developing an Effective Mobile Shopper Marketing Strategy" that Augme will release this week.

Sitting on the front line in campaign planning sessions with consumer product goods companies like Johnson & Johnson in 2010 reveals that many strategies were based on applications or QR codes for specific products, according to David Apple, CMO of Augme. That changes this year, he says, as more consumers use mobile devices to advance consumption, knowledge and capabilities about products and services with or without assistance from the brand.

The U.S. remains far behind other countries around the world when it comes to integrating mobile tools for data transfer and m-commerce. Marketers, however, will be forced to look at mobile devices as an agnostic tool -- a connection to a campaign rather than an application, as slightly more than half -- 51% -- of the U.S. population will have a smartphone by the end of 2011, estimates Augme, citing Nielsen statistics.

Market research firm IHS iSuppli estimates global smartphone unit shipments will rise from 288 million in 2010 to 651 million in 2014.

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Verizon iPhone Commercial

Apple to start Verizon iPhone sales February 9

Apple Inc said on Wednesday that it would kick off online sales of the Verizon Wireless iPhone on February 9, a day before the device hits its store shelves.

Electronics retailer Best Buy Co Inc also said on Wednesday that it, too, would distribute the new version of iPhone 4 in its stores starting on February 10, the device's official launch day. It already sells earlier iPhone models.

Verizon Wireless will start online sales of a limited number of iPhones to its existing mobile customers starting at 3 a.m. ET February 3 for delivery on or before February 10.

Apple said people ordering the phone on February 9 can have it delivered or reserve it for an in-store pickup February 10, when both companies plan to start offering the phone in their stores at 7 a.m. local time.

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Nielsen: Among Mobile Phone Users, Hispanics, Asians are Most-Likely Smartphone Owners in the U.S.

Nielsen has reported that as of December 2010, nearly a third (31 percent) of all mobile consumers in the United States owned smartphones, cellphones with app-based, web-enabled operating systems. Smartphone penetration is even higher among mobile users who are part of ethnic and racial minorities in the U.S. – namely Asian/Pacific Islanders (45 percent), Hispanics (45 percent) and African-Americans (33 percent). These populations also tend to skew younger. Only 27 percent of White mobile users reported owning a smartphone.

They also shared some additional insight into ongoing smartphone competition. In the U.S., there is a three-way tie between Blackberry RIM, Apple’s IOS and Android OS.

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Vast Majority of Marketers Will Utilize Mobile Marketing and Increase Spending on Mobile Platforms in 2011

The vast majority of client-side marketers – 88 percent – say they will utilize mobile marketing in 2011. Seventy-five percent plan to increase their spending on mobile marketing initiatives by an average of 59 percent versus 2010, according to a new survey from the ANA (Association of National Advertisers) in partnership with the MMA (Mobile Marketing Association).

Survey findings showed that in 2010, 62 percent of marketers used some form of mobile marketing for their brands. An additional 26 percent reported their intention to begin doing so this year, elevating the expected 2011 utilization rate to the near-universal 88 percent level.


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Consumers Eager for Mobile Shopping Adoption

According to research from Yahoo! and Nielsen, US mobile internet users expect shopping-related activities in some categories to be more popular on mobile than they currently are on PCs.

Only about a fifth of respondents used their mobile phone to shop for and research entertainment, dining, digital content for the mobile phone and financial services activities, for example, and PC use was higher in every category. But even more respondents were interested in turning this ecommerce into m-commerce within the next year.



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