Global mobile advertising revenue is forecast to reach $3.3 billion in 2011, more than double the $1.6 billion generated in 2010, according to Gartner, Inc. Its expected to reach $20.6 billion by 2015, but not all types of mobile advertising will generate the same opportunity. Search and maps will deliver the highest revenue, while video/audio ads will see the fastest growth through 2015.
As the adoption of smartphones and media tablets extends to more consumers, the audience for mobile advertising will increase and become easier to segment and target, driving the growth of mobile advertising spend for brands and advertisers.
North America and Western Europe are the regions where mobile advertising budgets will grow most, representing 28 percent and 25 percent of the global market by 2015 (refer to the table above). However, Asia/Pacific and Japan will remain the leading market throughout the forecast period. Asia/Pacific and Japan is forecast to account for 49.2 percent of mobile advertising in 2011, and 33.6 percent of the global market in 2015.
Samsung will become the world’s leading smartphone vendor this quarter, taking a 15-year crown from Finland’s Nokia according to Investment bank Nomura and to worsen matter, Nokia is expected to lose the number two spot to Apple in the next quarter. Although research firms such as IDC, Canalys and Gartner have forecast falling share for Nokia in the smartphone space over the next few quarters, Nomura’s reported prediction is the most damning for the Finnish company to date.
Despite the negative forecasts, Nokia remains the world’s largest mobile handset manufacturer due to its strong position in basic devices and its wider distribution network in emerging countries but this may change at some point as Nokia is up against so many low end manufacturers from China.
Nokia is hoping things would change with the roll out of Windows Phone platform by end of the year. And frankly I m not sure whether the new product launch will change anything for Nokia as they are way far behind and had lost a great deal of branding over the past years and unlikely customers will jump on a Windows platform Nokia devices. The odds are definitely stacked against them as I could never understand why Nokia had picked up just Windows OS as they should had just picked whichever platform that works and built the best device with great user experience. My prediction by next year around this time, they will realized the mistakes of relying on just one platform and start kicking themselves for not being realistic and pragmatic. By then, its going to be a steep mountain to scale and almost game over for Nokia.
Or I may be entirely wrong on this as Nokia will beat all odds and surpass everybody expectation to continue dominating the mobile devices market. IDC had predicted that Windows platform will be the 2nd most popular smartphone platform in 2015. It expects Microsoft's platform overtaking Symbian, BlackBerry and iOS in the next three years to take a 20.3% share of global smartphone shipments in 2015. Google's Android will remain top dog, with a 38.9% share of global shipments in 2011 rising to 43.8% in 2015.
Apple had just launched iCloud and iOS 5, the latest version of the world’s most advanced mobile operating system, and released a beta version to iOS Developer Program members. The iOS 5 beta release includes over 200 new features that will be available to iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users this fall.
With iOS 5 and iCloud, you just enter your Apple ID and password and iCloud will seamlessly integrate with your apps to automatically and wirelessly keep all of your mail, contacts, calendars, photos, apps, books, music and more, up-to-date across all your devices without having to plug into your PC.
Before going into the details of the new features, lets look at some of the impressive stats that were released :
- 200 million iOS devices shipped out so far;
- 25 million iPad 1 & 2 sold
- 15 billion songs sold on iTunes
- 130 million books downloaded
- 14 billion apps downloaded from App Store
- 425,000 apps available on App Store and 90,000 only for iPad
- 225 million registered credit cards on iTunes
- paid $2.5 billion to developers building on iOS
- 54 million active Macs out there
Here are some of the groundbreaking iOS 5 new features :
Notification Center
This new feature will provide users with an innovative way to easily access all notifications―text messages, missed calls, calendar alerts, app alerts and more, all in one place, from anywhere in iOS 5. When they arrive, notifications appear briefly at the top of the screen without interrupting what you’re doing. With one swipe you can see all your notifications, and a simple tap will take you right to its app for more detail. Notifications also appear on the lock screen, with the ability to be taken to the notifying app with just one swipe.
Newsstand
Newsstand is a beautiful, easy-to-organize bookshelf displaying the covers of all your newspaper and magazine subscriptions in one place. A new section of the App Store™ features just subscription titles, and allows users to quickly find the most popular newspapers and magazines in the world. If subscribed to, new issues appear in the Newsstand and are updated automatically in the background so you always have the latest issue and the most recent cover art.
Safari New features include Safari Reader, which gets all the clutter out of the way and sets the right font size on a web page, so you can easily scroll and read through a story; Reading List, so you can save articles to read later and they automatically show up on all your iOS devices; and Tabbed Browsing, which makes it easy to flip between multiple web pages on iPad.
Twitter integration Big boost for Twitter as the new iOS 5 includes built-in Twitter integration, so you can sign in once and then tweet directly from all your Twitter-enabled apps, including Photos, Camera, Safari, YouTube and Maps with a single tap. New APIs give third party developers the ability to take advantage of the single sign-on capability for their own iOS 5 apps.
iMessage iMessage in iOS 5 brings the functionality of iPhone messaging to all of your iOS devices ie, iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Built right into the Messages app, iMessage allows you to easily send text messages, photos, videos or contact information to a person or a group on other iOS 5 devices over Wi-Fi or 3G. iMessage also features delivery and read receipts, typing indication and secure end-to-end encryption. Clearly a nightmare for the mobile operators as this will surely takes a chunk away of their profitable sms revenue. The Operators had been ripping us off for so many years and its high time for them to re-think their messaging strategy-all you can eat sms??
Camera New features in the Camera and Photos apps give you instant access to the camera right from the lock screen, and you can use the volume-up button to quickly snap a photo. Optional grid lines help line up your shot and a simple tap locks focus and exposure on one subject. The new Photos app lets you crop, rotate, enhance and remove red-eye, and organize your photos into albums right on your device to share them on the go.
PC Free feature With the new PC Free feature, iOS 5 users can activate and set up their iOS device right out of the box with no computer required, and iOS software updates are delivered over the air and installed with just a tap. Wi-Fi Sync in iOS 5 transfers and backs up your content securely over SSL and wirelessly syncs purchased content from your device to your iTunes® library.
The iOS 5 beta software and SDK are available immediately for iOS Developer Program members at developer.apple.com. iOS 5 will be available as a free software update for iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad 2, iPad, iPod touch (fourth generation) and iPod touch (third generation) this fall.
The new iCloud service will be offered for FREE and for those who had paid recently for the MobileMe service will get a refund. MobileMe service will gradually be taken over by iCloud.
Want to watch the whole keynote where these things were announced? Head on over to Apple.
You can also check out the Apple's iOS 5 video below :
Steve Jobs and a team of Apple executives will kick off the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) with a keynote address on Monday, June 6 at 10:00 a.m and will unveil iOS 5 and its new iCloud service at its WWDC show in San Francisco next week according to Apple.
At the keynote, Apple will unveil its next generation software - Lion, the eighth major release of Mac OS X; iOS 5, the next version of Apple’s advanced mobile operating system which powers the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch; and iCloud, Apple’s upcoming cloud services offering."
iCloud has been the subject of constant rumours in recent months. The service is expected to build on Apple's existing MobileMe offering, but may also include streaming access to people's music and video collections.
Earlier today BGR reported that Microsoft is buying Nokia’s mobile business for around $19 billion. While I usually don’t listen to hear-say and rumors, I think this deal is very likely to happen taking into consideration that Microsoft had picked up Skype for $8 billion earlier and $19 billion for Nokia will surely seem like a bargain. It would make a lot of sense strategically to add Skype to the largest manufacturer of smartphones in the world.
Nokia will surely be a good fit for Microsoft as they have been playing behind the scene for years and perhaps this would be the best way for them to get in front of the game. And owning Nokia will allow Microsoft to embed Windows OS on all their future devices instead of begging the other device manufacturers to embed them.
While its a great fit for Microsoft, i m not too sure whether the deal will pan out positively at the end as its going to take a lot of pursuasion to Nokia shareholders to give up their crown jewel mobile business. Even if the shareholders were to agree, its going to be fascinating to see whether other bodies like the US government, Finnish government, and the internal staff of Nokia will give the support and approval.
Good luck to Microsoft and Nokia and as for us, lets enjoy the show.
Global mobile advertising revenue is forecast to reach $3.3 billion in 2011, more than double the $1.6 billion generated in 2010, according to Gartner, Inc. Its expected to reach $20.6 billion by 2015, but not all types of mobile advertising will generate the same opportunity. Search and maps will deliver the highest revenue, while video/audio ads will see the fastest growth through 2015.
