Global Nerdy

The Always Connected: How Smartphones and Social Keep Us Engaged report sponsored by Facebook and written by IDC provides some interesting insights not just into Facebook usage, but smartphone usage in general. Here are some of their observations:

• 79% of the survey respondents check their smartphones within 15 minutes of waking up.
• 62% of the respondents reach for their smartphone immediately after waking up.
• 44% reach for their smartphone immediately and use it as an alarm clock (I myself fall into this category).
• If you consider only the respondents between the ages of 18 and 24, these numbers get about 10% higher:
  • 89% check their smartphones within 15 minutes of waking up.
  • 74% reach for their smartphone immediately after waking up.
  • 54% reach for their smartphone immediately and use it as an alarm clock (I myself fall into this category).

• 79% of the survey respondents keep their smartphone handy for all but two hours of their waking day. The report doesn’t say what happens during those two hours.
• 63% of the respondents keep their smartphone handy for all except one hour of their waking day.
• 25% couldn’t recall any time when their smartphone was not close by.

• “Weekend” usage — if we count Friday, Saturday and Sunday as the weekend — is nearly double weekday usage:
  • Respondents spent 163 minutes communicating and using social media on their smartphones from Friday through Sunday.
  • They spent 87 minutes communicating and using social media on their smartphones from Monday through Thursday.

Whether you’re interested in how people use Facebook or smartphones, you’ll want to check out this report, which you can download for free here.

As if Xbox One’s PR troubles weren’t enough, Don Mattrick, President of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business division, made matters worse in an interview with Spike TV’s Geoff Keighley:

MATTRICK: “Some of the advantages that you get, of having, a box that is designed to use an online state, so, that, uh, to me is the future-proof choice, and I think people, could’ve arguably gone the other way if we didn’t do it and fortunately we have a product for people who aren’t able to get some form of connectivity, it’s called Xbox 360.”

KEIGHLEY: “Right, so stick with 360, that’s your message if you don’t [inaudible] like it?”

MATTRICK: “Well, if you have zero access to the internet, that is an offline device, I mean, seriously, when I read the blogs, and thought about who’s really the most impacted, there was a person who said ‘hey, I’m on a nuclear sub,’ and I don’t even know what it means to be on a nuclear sub but I’ve gotta imagine it’s not easy to get an internet connection.”

KEIGHLEY: “[inaudible] playing call of duty multiplayer”

MATTRICK: “Hey, I can empathize, if I was on a nuclear sub, I’d be disappointed.”

Way to support the troops, Mattrick.

Here’s the video of the interview, which is already well on its way to living on in PR infamy:

People who grew up with an Apple ][ in the 1980s might recognize a game that Mattrick co-wrote (and sold a lot of) at the tender age of 17: Evolution. I loved that game:

If Mattrick’s jab at people who are complaining about the “always connected” requirement gives you deja vu, it’s because it happened on Twitter, with Adam Orth, whose tweets led him to being shamed into leaving Microsoft:

In yesterday’s Apple keynote, one of the demos was for Anki Drive, an AI-driven toy car game:

While impressive, Google’s been hard at work on something even bigger for a while now. Here’s how they should respond:

I found the image here.

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: