Mobile the Next Big Thing: Eric Schmidt
Some 40% of Silicon Valley start ups are by Indians , who got skilled and educated in India.   A population of 20 million already has broadband access while 30 million people access the internet and that still covers less than 10% of the country’s population. Some 600 to 800 million people are expected to join the conversation, to access healthcare, telemedicine, ecommerce services in their own language. So it’s a global opportunity for India.
“The next big thing is mobile, it was mobile last year and it was mobile the year before that.”

Evolution of Mobile Search Ads
Just last month, Google launched its “enhanced campaigns” to meld desktop search ads with mobile search ads, removing the option for advertisers to opt out of using mobile ads in their campaign. It was a bold move by the company and showed that Google is moving its advertisers quickly into the mobile world, where competition is heating up. 

The Mobile App Effect
2013 – The mobile app economy continues to show impressive growth all round. Annual volume of smartphone app downloads will reach 56 billion this year.
“Mobile Apps vs. Mobile Websites” – The debate continues…

Wal-Mart’s Mobile Checkout Program
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is expanding a test of a new checkout program that allows shoppers to scan items with their smartphones while they’re in the aisles and then pay at self-checkout terminals.

Mobile Trends for Publishers
One out of every three minutes spent online originates from a mobile device. And four out of every five minutes on a mobile device is spent using an app. Two-thirds of tablet users access mobile news sites and apps, while nearly half of smartphone users find themselves viewing news on their devices daily.

2013 – The mobile app economy continues to show impressive growth all round. Annual volume of smartphone app downloads will reach 56 billion this year.

“Mobile Apps vs. Mobile Websites” – The debate continues…

The penetration of mobile devices continues to grow at faster rates with no end in sight. Many mobile trends indicate the necessity for publishers to adopt mobile platforms in order to keep their heads above water. The comScore study indicates several trends on how mobile users interact with their devices on a daily basis. This is information that publishers should be aware of as they move into the mobile realm. Here are a few things to consider:

* One out of every three minutes spent online originates from a mobile device. And four out of every five minutes on a mobile device is spent using an app.

* News is highly viewed on mobile. Two-thirds of tablet users access mobile news sites and apps, while nearly half of smartphone users find themselves viewing news on their devices daily.

* Several companies that have adopted mobile platforms have seen a significant rise in traffic since launching their mobile-friendly sites and apps. Gannett, a media holding company headquartered in Virginia, has grown mobile traffic by 32 percent since last year. Some of their largest newspapers include USA Today, The Arizona Republic, The Indianapolis Star and the Detroit Free Press.

* Not only how, but when people interact with their mobile devices affects the creation of engaging mobile platforms that readers enjoy. The majority of smartphone traffic is seen during travel hours and lunchtime, while the majority of tablet use is seen at night between the hours of 8 and 11 o’clock.

* During travel hours, consumers look for quick, up-to-the-minute updates on news happening throughout the day. They don’t have time to read an article in its entirety, but want to stay informed. At night, on the other hand, consumers have time to relax and read in-depth analysis of the daily news. This impacts the type of content publishers deliver on the respective mobile platforms.

* Local businesses have relied on local publishers to attract community members to their storefronts for decades. Mobile platforms make this easier for both publishers and retailers. Location-based marketing allows retailers to deliver ads to consumers within a certain vicinity of their store and gives publishers the opportunity to sell more ad space on their site, depending on where their readers are located.

The comScore report says it best: “Those who fail to devise an effective multi-platform strategy will likely be left behind.” Mobstac creates and powers mobile sites and apps for publishers. The cloud system gives you the ability to easily manage and track results. Take a tour and discover how Mobstac can increase the traffic to your publication and create new revenue streams to help your bottom line.

• Usable how-to tips for creating the best mobile sites and apps
• Ways to market your mobile website and apps right
  
  

Does the World Need a Third OS?
Mozilla launched its Firefox OS, LG purchased Web OS, and Samsung has renewed focus on Tizen. But given that iOS and Android currently dominate the market—they reside on 90 percent of all mobiles devices today—do we really need a new mobile OS? If so, how would it fare?

Facebook to attract more Developers with conferences
Facebook announced a series of conferences for mobile developers in the coming months. The first will take place April 18 in New York, and will be followed by events in London and Seoul. The focus will be on topics such as integrating Facebook login and Open Graph into apps for Android, iOS and the mobile Web. 

Mobile Searchers act quickly, says Google study
45 percent of mobile searches are conducted to help make a decision. Most mobile searches (77 percent) are actually conducted at home or at work, but they’re purposeful when people are in a store, where two-thirds of searches are conducted to help with a decision.

Retail Top Mobile Ad Category in 2012
Ad segments that led in growth in 2012 included employment, up 523%, travel (495%), personal and home services (461%) and health, fitness and wellness (281%). Retail and restaurants took the top spot among ad categories overall last year — displacing finance, which fell to fourth. Rounding out the top five was entertainment, telecom and automotive.

What people are Doing on Mobile
We’ve discussed the rapid migration to the mobile web through devices like smartphones and tablets, but how exactly are users interacting with their mobile and tablet devices? This is the question that marketers, businesses and publications are dying to know in order to best attract their current and potential customers to their mobile platforms.

* iOS and Android are the top competing operating systems for mobile devices. Both run on smartphones and tablet devices, but iOS-enabled devices have shown significantly more daily data usage. On average, iOS devices use 33.47 MB of data per day compared to Android tablets totaling 9.36 MB of daily data. The same is true for smartphones; the average iOS powered smartphone uses 12.82 MB of data per day compared to just 5.34 MB daily data on an Android device. Optimizing your mobile presence on both platforms is essential to mobile success, however these numbers give you a direction on where to start.

* Watching videos on mobile devices is extremely popular, with 70 percent of mobile device owners actively streaming videos on their devices. The average length of these videos is two minutes, however if the video doesn’t load in eight seconds, users tend to move on from it. Users typically split the blame for the slow loading time between their service provider and the mobile site.

* Smartphone and tablet devices promote ideal platforms for social media networks like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and others. 4 out of 10 users access these mobile sites and apps daily through their mobile/tablet devices.

* Another popular way to use smartphone and tablet devices is mobile payments through bank apps and other private entities like Square. These apps enable merchants to accept credit card payments through their mobile device, along with general e-commerce liking shopping. 3 out of 10 users engage in e-commerce daily.

* Other than video, the most common interaction on smartphone and tablets are checking news, weather, blogs and maps, as 60 percent of users engage with these mediums on a daily basis.

* 50% of all mobile health-related traffic is tied to personal fitness apps, speaking to the portability of these devices enabling users to take them while on the go or during a workout.

Use this information to help understand where your customers are and how they interact with their mobile devices. Mobstac is a leader in creating and powering mobile websites and apps for your business or publication. Using a cloud service Mobstac gives you the ability to easily manage your mobile site or apps across all mobile platforms.

In October 2012, India was home to 78.7 million mobile internet users, a number that grew to 87.1 million by the end of 2012, according to the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI). The statistics below offer insight into how mobile subscribers worldwide are interacting with their devices. Use the figures to assess your mobile presence and determine the best mobile strategy to attract potential mobile consumers.

* Mobile subscribers in India have shown their willingness to engage with several forms of content on their mobile devices. IAMAI’s report showed that they send and receive e-mails and messages, interact on social networks and use the Internet for search queries daily.

* Watching video, playing games and reading news online is less frequent, but still occurs two to six times per week in India.

Pew Internet Research conducted a study to find how mobile device owners are interacting with their devices and what the most engaging type of content is worldwide:

* Accessing news sites and obtaining the latest news stories is the second most popular activity done on tablets behind sending and receiving e-mails.

* 31 percent of people said they are likely to spend more time and visit a new news source while getting news on their tablet device.

* The majority of tablet users say they read two to three articles every time they browse the news on their device.

* Thirty-seven percent of tablet owners read news stories on their device daily, while 36 percent of smartphone owners visit news sites on their device once every day. In fact, the average mobile device owner spends roughly 50 minutes per day on his or her mobile device.

* One of the more interesting figures is that those who prefer apps to Internet browsing are more likely to consume in-depth news stories and pay for premium content.

The mobile market has grown from the amount of users to the physical devices being made. Before, iPads dominated the tablet industry. However, the rise of Kindle Fire and the newer Kindle Fire HD as well as Google’s Nexus 7 and Android’s line of tablets, has brought more accessibility of tablet devices to the masses, causing a rapid increase in mobile device ownership and usage numbers.

Mobile users are accessing and reading all types of content online through their tablets, smartphones and laptops. They are able to search the web from anywhere and have access to hundreds of thousands of apps right in their hands. Join the mobile market and control your mobile presence with a Mobstac powered website or app. Learn from those who have and how creating a mobile presence helped increase their audience, views, leads and subscriptions.

Facebook’s active monthly mobile users increased by 57 percent as of December 2012, topping off at 680 million according to the company’s fourth quarter earnings report. For the first time in the company’s history, that’s more Facebook mobile users than members who used the web to access the site, with 618 million logging in that way. 

Tablets to overtake smartphones

Tablets are continuing their rise as the preferred screen for consuming mobile data, according to the latest figures from mobile advertising network Jumptap. The company, which produces a monthly report of what platforms are performing the strongest based on its ad network covering 134 million mobile users in the U.S. and 206 million mobile users worldwide, says that by the end of 2012, tablets accounted for 18% of all traffic on its network, compared to 78% for smartphones and 4% for feature phones.

Mobile Advertising Forecast   
A recent study by Smart AdServer expects mobile Web traffic to exceed desktop traffic as early as this year, marking the overall switch consumers are making to the mobile Web. The study went on to praise the adoption publishers have made to the mobile Web and apps showing increased mobile-based traffic worldwide: 2.6 times more in the United Kingdom, 2.9 times more in Germany, 4.3 times more in the United States, 2.7 times more in France and 4.2 times more in Brazil.

HTML5  

HTML5 hosts a full suite of programming opportunities and capabilities across multiple mobile platforms including easy application access to video, animation, graphics, unique styles and typography, and multiple digital publishing tools. HTML5 is also extremely compatible with Mobstac’s cloud platform that enables you to easily manage, track and analyze your mobile website and app from any Internet-connected device.

Android to dominate 2013 app downloads       

Of the 56 billion app downloads, approximately 32.5 billion, or 58% of them, will go to Android smartphones. Apple iPhone owners will download 18.5 billion apps, representing about 33% of the 56 billion total. That means 88 out of every 100 apps downloaded in 2013 will come from the Google Play Store or the iTunes App Store.

HTML5 has become the preferred medium for publishers, all of the mobile sites and apps Mobstac creates and powers utilize the growing platform. Here are a few reasons why HTML5 has become a leader in the mobile realm:

1. HTML5 provides a highly interactive and user-friendly interface compatible with the majority of Internet browsers, tablet devices and smartphones.

2. One of the favorite aspects publishers and businesses share about HTML5 is the variety of multimedia factors. HTML5 allows music, video and graphic embedding without the need for a third party plugin, optimizing download time and user-friendly connectivity.

3. We live in a world where consumers rely heavily on search engines to answer their questions, locate restaurants and find the latest news stories. HTML5 uses simpler coding than other platforms when writing a mobile site; with readable and semantically accurate codes search engines like Google have an easier time finding your mobile-friendly website and giving it a favorable rank.

4. When traditional DRM (Direct Rights Management) programs encounter a breach or threat to their servers, individual sites are unable to solve the problem on their own, instead waiting on the large corporation to solve the issue. HTML5 is different and gives the professionals at Mobstac the ability to target the threat or breach immediately, helping safeguard your mobile site or app from potential hackers and pirates targeting your content.

Overall, HTML5 hosts a full suite of programming opportunities and capabilities across multiple mobile platforms including easy application access to video, animation, graphics, unique styles and typography, and multiple digital publishing tools. HTML5 is also extremely compatible with Mobstac’s cloud platform that enables you to easily manage, track and analyze your mobile website and app from any Internet-connected device.

HTML5 continues to grow and make improvements to enhance its content delivery platform. At Mobstac we are well-versed in the constant updates and growing capabilities the medium has to offer. Take a tour and find out how we can help your publication, business or organization enhance its mobile presence and cater to your continued success.

Consumer engagement is easier to analyze on mobile devices as it results from a direct click-through from a link on a mobile Web page or app, helping businesses and publishers determine their ad impressions in real-time. It is also easier for consumers to interact with because the action is directly in front of them in the form of one click on the screen, opposed to a television commercial or newspaper ad where further action is required for any engagement.

A recent study by Smart AdServer expects mobile Web traffic to exceed desktop traffic as early as this year, marking the overall switch consumers are making to the mobile Web. The study went on to praise the adoption publishers have made to the mobile Web and apps showing increased mobile-based traffic worldwide: 2.6 times more in the United Kingdom, 2.9 times more in Germany, 4.3 times more in the United States, 2.7 times more in France and 4.2 times more in Brazil.

The dominant forces in the mobile device market have been the Samsung Galaxy and iPhone platforms. They account for 60 percent of the ad impressions on the mobile Web, according to the Smart AdServer study. The study also stated that ad impressions on Android-powered devices outweighed iOS devices last year. This signifies the importance to optimize your mobile website and app for the unique mobile platforms that exist in order to reach the full gamut of mobile users. While it might be difficult for you to create an optimized experience on every mobile device, MobStac can power and let you manage your mobile presence easily. Try MobStac out for free and call us only after you are satisfied with the experience.

Mobstac is here to create, power and analyze your mobile websites and apps across all platforms, giving publishers the ability to easily manage and track them from a mobile cloud. Enhance your mobile presence with Mobstac and see a boost in overall traffic and ad impressions.