Mobile app ad inventory is growing at staggering rates

Mobile app ad inventory is growing at staggering rates:

Smartphones and the apps that come with them are one of the fastest-growing markets in history. It’s no surprise then that the opportunities to advertise in smartphone apps are growing at staggering rates.

Mobile analytics firm Flurry said in a blog post this morning that the ad inventory of mobile apps — all of the space available for ads within apps on iPhone and Android devices — is growing so fast that it will soon be able to absorb all of the online ad spend for U.S. display ads on the web. That is, the two-year-old market will soon meet the demands of a 15-year-old mature market in online web ads, said Charles Newark-French at Flurry.

The assessment is consistent with projections about mobile ad growth. Gartner estimated that mobile ad revenue would double to $3.3 billion in 2011 on a worldwide basis. eMarketer estimates U.S. mobile ad spending will top $1.1 billion this year.

To calculate these numbers, Flurry tracked the average number of ads show per session a user has with a mobile app. That number is 4.3 and the session time is 4.2 minutes. The average session length for a web ad is under 1 minute. Flurry tracks about 20 percent of all sessions in the market. Then Flurry compared the inventory available on mobile apps with the net ad spending on display ads in the U.S. online web market. That amount is just over $12 billion per year. Assuming that the CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions) is $2.50, Flurry came up with its numbers shown in the top chart. The figures show that mobile app inventory value will rise from $300 million in January 2011 to $1 billion by December 2011.

The reason the ad market is growing so fast is that over a million devices are being activated daily. The Apple App Store now has more than 400,000 apps and the Android Market has more than 200,000. Users are spending more time in mobile app sessions per day than they do on the web. And more publishers are integrating ads into their apps.

Flurry says the average smartphone user has 65 apps per device. And the average user is better educated and earns a higher household income than that of the U.S. average. Smartphone app users also cluster into younger age groups and trend slightly more female. Overall, Flurry said it has taken a lot less time for advertisers to embrace ads in mobile apps compared to the original display ads for the web.

Filed under: VentureBeat

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Windows Phone 7 Connector 2.0 arrives in the Mac App Store

Windows Phone 7 Connector 2.0 arrives in the Mac App Store:

Good news, users of Windows Phone 7 mobile phones and Apple Mac computers. Microsoft has just released the latest iteration of its Windows Phone Connector software -- version 2.0. And it's available for download now in the Mac App Store.

Windows Phone Connector is developed by Microsoft to allow the syncing of files, photos, videos and music between Mac computers and mobile phones running the Windows Phone 7 OS. And this update brings with it a whole host of new features, and fixes to previous bugs. All the juicy details are on the Mac App Store, but suffice to say, it's a good step forward in the right direction from version 1.0.

The update is compatible with Mac OS X 10.6.6 and above, and is applicable to all Windows Phone 7 device and users of the now defunct Zune HD.

[Via Pocket-lint]

Windows Phone 7 Connector 2.0 arrives in the Mac App Store originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 30 Aug 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Android continues to grow, now makes up 42% of U.S. smartphone market

Android continues to grow, now makes up 42% of U.S. smartphone market:

Earlier this morning, comScore released their quarterly report of the U.S. smartphone market for the three month period ending July 31. The report measures market share across three segments of the mobile market: manufacturers, platform (operating system), and service use.

Manufacturers

When it comes to cell phone manufacturers for both smartphones and non-smartphones, Samsung continued to hold the lead with 25.5%, up 1% from the period ending April 2011. LG and Motorola round out the top three, with 20.9% (+0.0%) and 14.1% (-1.5%) respectively. Apple found itself in the 4th spot with a 9.5% share (+1.2%), and struggling RIM dropped to 7.6% (-0.6%).

Sadly, comScore did not report the market share for only smartphone manufacturers, which is what we as Android users are really interested in. It is, however, nice to see manufacturers that make Android smartphones in the top 3 spots overall.

Smartphone Operating Systems

When it comes to the smartphone landscape, there was some good news for Android in the July report. As a platform, Android saw significant growth from April to July. Android can now be found on 42% of all smartphones in the U.S., up a commanding 5.4% share since April.

Apple, the obvious #2, also saw a modest 1% increase from April to July, making up 27% of the mobile OS landscape. Android and Apple’s gains come at the direct expense of RIM (21.7%, -4%), Microsoft (5.7%, -1%), and Symbian (1.9%, -0.4%).

Judging from this information, consumers are continuing to shed Blackberry’s for sleeker Android and iOS devices, and Microsoft and Symbian continue to struggle to gain relevance in a crowded mobile market.

Phone Usage

When it comes to actual usage (again both smartphones and non-smartphones), July’s comScore report reinforces what we all already know; as consumers continue to move from non-smartphones to smartphones, they simply are using their devices more.

comScore measured the following categories of mobile device usage:

• Sending of text messages


• Mobile browser use


• Use of downloaded applications


• Use of social networking and/or blogging


• Playing games


• Listening to music

In each of the categories listed above, usage increased anywhere from 1 to 3% from April to July.

Final Thoughts

Android as a mobile platform continues to grow at a seemingly impossible level. If our beloved OS is able to keep up this level of growth, it will find itself on more than 50% of all smartphones by the end of 2011. Will Android be able to maintain this level of growth is an entirely different question, and one that requires us to hear something we probably don’t want to hear.

It’s been over a year since the iPhone 4 was originally released on At&t, and 6 months since it made it’s way to Verizon’s network. With the iPhone 5 launch right around the corner, and the fact that it will be available on At&t, Verizon, and Sprint (rumored), could the picture change a bit when the January report is released?

Regardless of the future, we Android users can rest assured that usage of Android is growing at astronomical rates and we probably will hit that 50% number before too long. I, for one, am just happy to be seeing many more Android phones than iPhones around the office and out in public, and I’m sure you guys are as well.

Spotify opens doors to iOS devs with new API

Spotify opens doors to iOS devs with new API:

Subscription streaming music service Spotify launched an API on Wednesday that allows third-party iOS developers to integrate Spotify into their apps. Called libspotify, the new resource should allow for some fairly innovative uses of Spotify services.

The free API will allow developers to create apps that provide access to Spotify’s more than 15 million tracks, so long as developers have a Spotify Premium account and app users are active subscribers to the service. We’ll likely see some attempts at straightforward third-party clients, including maybe one tailor-made for the iPad, but there are a number of other more interesting possibilities that also come to mind.

Imagine, for example, a game that lets you choose Spotify as the source of the soundtrack while you play. Or a game that actually uses Spotify more directly, like a music trivia app that has you identify tracks from the service’s library. Another interesting possibility that comes to mind is an augmented reality app that can match tracks available in Spotify’s library to real-world landmarks and locations via the iPhone’s camera or geolocation abilities; a real-life soundtrack for your walking tours, or even just a trip to the grocery store.

There’s one big limitation on the API, however: it’s for non-commercial use only. That means developers won’t be able to use it in apps that aren’t free. Spotify does offer to talk about a partnership with for-profit apps that want to use the API however, so it could be a good way for developers to test interest in Spotify integration among its users before entering into a binding business agreement.

Where would you like to see Spotify integrated in your iOS apps? Let us know in the comments.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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• Flash analysis: Steve Jobs
• Mobile Q2: Smartphone growth surges; iPad’s rule continues
• Mobile Q1: All Eyes on Tablets, T-Mobile and AT&T

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Survey of 3,300 companies shows cyberattacks are a growing menace

Survey of 3,300 companies shows cyberattacks are a growing menace:

An extensive survey of businesses shows that cyberattacks are a growing threat to corporations of all kinds. Companies consider safeguarding their networks to be critically important to their business, resulting in substantial costs.

As more employees work remotely and use mobile phones for work, the risks are growing and security is getting harder to implement. Those are some of the conclusions of Symantec’s 2011 State of Security Survey, where Symantec surveyed more than 3,300 companies about the security threats they face. There’s no surprise in the report, but it reinforces the notion that companies need to pay more attention to cyber threats.

“Cyber security is once again top of mind for a lot of CEOs,” said Ashish Mohindroo, senior director of product marketing at Symantec, said in an interview. “It has always been a top-three concern for operations executives and chief information officers. But the awareness is high because of all of these breaches. The companies feel more vulnerable than in the past.”

About 71 percent of the companies surveyed reported that they have been attacked in the last year. About 21 percent saw the frequency of attacks increasing and 25 percent saw the attacks as somewhat to significantly effective.

Some 92 percent of those attacked saw losses including downtime, intellectual property theft, and customer credit card info loss. About 84 percent of attacks led to actual costs. About 20 percent of the businesses said they had lost at least $195,000 as a result of attacks.

“That’s a big disruption to the business and it takes a long time to recover from reputation loss,” Mohindroo said

As noted in a recent McAfee report, high-profile “hacktivist” groups such as Anonymous and LulzSec have changed the landscape by drawing a fine line between attacks for personal gain and attacks meant to send a message. There were roughly 20 major hacktivist attacks in the second quarter alone, mostly due to the alleged activity of LulzSec.

Companies said they are getting better at fighting the war on cyberattackers. Many suffered damages in cyberattacks, but more respondents reported a decline in the number and frequence of attacks compared to 2010. Spam has been reduced, thanks to the take-downs of some big bot nets such as Rustock.

Half of the respondents said they could still do more to secure their networks and assets. So they are increasing their cybersecurity staffing and budgets. About 46 percent are increasing security staffing and 38 percent are increasing security system budgets.

Mohindroo said that some of the drivers of the attacks are new, such as social networking as a vector for finding vulnerabilities. More attacks are personally targeting individuals as well. For instance, hackers can get your name or email address and send a message with a malware payload to one of your trusted friends.

“If you tell your friends that you are going to a conference, the attackers would discover that and craft a message saying they saw you there,” Mohindroo said.

And incidents such as the Wikileaks episode should remind companies that employees are often the perpetrators of cyberattacks against company networks.

The majority of the companies interviewed had more than 5,000 employees, and 1,200 of the respondents were high-level employees. The survey was conducted from April to May.

Filed under: security, VentureBeat