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CCS Insight Predicts More Mobile Devices Than People By 2017

CCS Insight’s infographic on the growth of mobile devices.
Click the infographic to see it at full size.

The market analyst firm CCS Insight says:

• More smartphones than non-smartphones were shipped for the first time in the first quarter of 2013.
• 1.86 billion phones will be shipped in 2013, and 53% of them will be smartphones.
• More than 50% of the mobile phones in North America and Western Europe are smartphones; by the end of 2015, this figure should be more than 80%.
• Global shipments of smartphones and tablets will increase 2.5 times between 2012 and 2017, reaching 2.1 billion units.
• By 2017, the number of smartphones and tablets combined will surpass the global population.

Tablet Ownership in America

The Pew Internet and American Life Project reports that 34% of Americans age 18 and over own a tablet computer, such as an iPad, Samsung Galaxy Tab, Google Nexus Tablet or Kindle Fire. They report that this is almost double last year’s tablet ownership rate of 18%.

They report that the people most likely to be tablet owners fall into one or more of these categories:

• Households earning $75,000 or more a year — they made up 56% of the tablet owners.
• Adults in the age range of 35 to 44 years old; they accounted for 49% of the tablet owners.
• College graduates, who made up 49% of the tablet owners.

They noted that there were no statistically significant difference in tablet ownership between men and women, or among different racial and ethnic groups.

The groups that saw the biggest increases in tablet ownership over the past year were:

• Parents with minor children living at home: tablet ownership rose from 26% in April 2012 to 50% in May 2013.
• Adults in households making $75,000 a year or more: tablet ownership rose from 34% in April 2012 to 56% in May 2013.
• College graduates: tablet ownership rose from 28% in April 2012 to 49% in May 2013.

Digitas Says That the LGBT Market Really, Really Love Their Mobile Devices

The brand agency Digitas says that if you’re looking for a demographic that have really embraced their mobile devices, you want to reach the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) demographics. They’ve been using mobile devices twice as long as the general population, and spend twice as long on their mobile devices. Their numbers, based on a study of 1,595 LGBT adults in the U.S., is detailed in the infographic below:

Sony just expertly fired a shot across Microsoft’s bow with this video that explains how you share games or play used ones with the upcoming PlayStation 4. It’s incredibly simple.

The process won’t be as simple with the upcoming Xbox One, which seems to be a big maze of “it depends…”. Microsoft are doing to the Xbox One what Sony did to the PS3 in the beginning: badly hurt a platform with a great reputation through inept moves. Consider these factors:

PlayStation 4	Xbox One
Price: $399	Price: $499
No online check-in required	Console must perform an online check-in every 24 hours in order to play games
No restrictions on sharing disc-based games or using used ones	Restrictions on sharing disc-based games; it’s up to the publisher on whether used games are allowed
I’m thinking about getting one, and I’m a guy who went from the PS2 to the Xbox 360	I’m thinking about not getting one, and I’m a guy who went from the PS2 to the Xbox 360

Watch the video below for their clever demo:

At this moment, the PS4 vs. Xbox One situation is best summarized with this animated GIF:

Found via Dan Ackerman. Click the photo to see the source.

Dan Ackerman tweeted the scene above, with the text “WWDC explained in one photo”. It probably should be “Tech in one photo”. We’ve got a way to go before women are better-represented in our field.

This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.

Apple’s Live Streaming the WWDC Keynote!

It’s that time of year again: Apple’s WWDC — the Worldwide Developer Conference — starts today! It kicks off with the keynote, which takes place at 1:00 p.m. Eastern (10:00 a.m. Pacific) at Moscone Center in San Francisco. Apple will be broadcasting the keynote over the web as well as via a WWDC app for Apple TVs that was pushed out last night.

WWDC Liveblogging

If you want commentary or are in a low-bandwidth situation, the following outlets will be liveblogging the WWDC keynote:

• Ars Technica
• CNET
• Engadget
• TechCrunch
• The Verge

If you’re looking for predictions of what will be announced at WWDC, I’ll direct you to John Gruber over at Daring Fireball’s WWDC 2013 Expectations post. He tends to be more right than wrong about this sort of thing, which is why I like to jokingly call him “Apple’s Freelance PR Guy”.

Past WWDC Keynotes

For those of you who want to check out some WWDC keynote history, this is for you. Here’s the keynote from WWDC 2005, which introduced the switch to Intel processors:

…the original iPhone announcement in 2007…

…the iPhone 3G and App Store announcement in 2008…

…the iPhone 3GS and Snow Leopard announcements in 2009…

…the iPhone 4 and iOS 4 in 2010…

…iOS 5 and Lion in 2011…

…and last year, there was iOS 6 and Mountain Lion:

SYOD Happens

At my consultancy, CTS, we sometimes use the term “SYOD” — short for “Smuggle Your Own Device” — to refer to situations where people bring in their smartphones and tablets to access corporate resources at work without their IT department’s knowledge or approval.

SYOD happens often enough that CTOs and CIOs should take notice. According to the results of IT-and-telecom analyst firm Ovum’s 2013 BYOX (Bring Your Own Anything) Employee Study:

• Nearly 70% of employees who own a smartphone or tablet use it to access corporate data.
• Of those employees:
  • A little more than 15% access that data without the IT department’s knowledge.
  • Almost 21% access that data in defiance of an anti-BYOD policy.

The study makes use of the responses of 4,371 people coming from 19 countries and working in a “wide range of verticals and job roles” at organizations with over 50 employees.

Ovum’s recommendation (as well as mine) is to respond and adapt to this new behaviour. Ovum Analyst Richard Absalom is right when he says:

“Trying to stand in the path of consumerized mobility is likely to be a damaging and futile exercise. We believe businesses are better served by exploiting this behaviour to increase employee engagement and productivity, and promote the benefits of enterprise mobility.“

Nearly Two-Thirds of Companies Lack a BYOD Policy, Say Cisco and BT

Click to see the graph at full size.

ZDNet reports that over the next few weeks, Cisco and BT will share the results of their survey of 2,200 office workers from 13 countries and 9 business verticals. Some interesting numbers from this survey include:

• Only 36% of companies have a BYOD policy in place, with 43% planning to have one sometime in the next two years.
• One-third of companies have already experienced a security breach resulting from an SYOD device.
• 49% of organizations have not adopted BYOD because of security concerns.
• 82% of businesses with BYOD policies say they have dealt with security risks arising from personal devices being used for work.
• 84% of IT managers say that having a BYOD policy could offer “a competitive advantage in the marketplace”.

Click to see the graph at full size.

Click to see the photo at full size.

Yes, I’ve seen and heard about successful agile projects, but the ones that friends and colleagues have told me about lately have ended up like the photo above.

comScore’s Smartphone Market Numbers for the End of April 2013

comScore have published their numbers on smartphone market share for the end of April 2013, but for some reason, they decided to publish only tables and not graphs. I’ve always been of the mind that nothing helps you get a better handle on numbers like some pictures, so I picked up comScore’s slack and made my own.

First, the graph of smartphone platform market share:

It clearly shows the Apple/Google duopoly still going strong, as well as the BlackBerry/Windows Phone struggle for distant third place. comScore’s numbers indicate that BlackBerry is currently winning that struggle, which is at odds with IDC’s recent report that Windows Phone is overtaking BlackBerry.

For those of you who like diving into the details, here are the numbers behind the graph:

Platform	Share of smartphone subscribers End of Jan 2013	Share of smartphone subscribers End of Apr 2013	Change
Google	52.3%	52.0%	-0.3%
Apple	37.8%	39.2%	+1.4%
BlackBerry	5.9%	5.1%	-0.8%
Microsoft	3.1%	3.0%	-0.1%
Symbian	0.5%	0.5%	0.0%

 
Here’s my other graph, showing smartphone OEM market share:

Apple and Samsung are the biggest OEM players, with HTC, Motorola and LG in a three-way tie for third place. Once again for the completists, here are the numbers behind the graph:

OEM	Share of smartphone subscribers End of Jan 2013	Share of smartphone subscribers End of Apr 2013	Change
Apple	37.8%	39.2%	+1.4%
Samsung	21.4%	22.0%	+0.6%
HTC	9.7%	8.9%	-0.8%
Motorola	8.6%	8.3%	-0.3%
LG	7.0%	6.7%	-0.3%

Pew Internet: 56% of American Adults Own Smartphones

The Pew Internet and American Life Project have been tracking smartphone adoption for some time, and they report that the majority of Americans now own a smartphone of some kind, with 56% of U.S. adults owning one as of May 2013. At the same time, the numbers of U.S. adults who own non-smartphone cellular phones and who don’t own a cellular phone at all have been steadily dropping:

The folks at Pew have sliced and diced their numbers in numerous ways — be sure to check out their article for the full details.