MarCom Professional

My big take-away from the South-by-Southwest (SXSW) Interactive festival this year was a further validation that big media companies -- traditional publishers of print content in particular -- are still searching for a way to halt their collective slide into eventual insolvency.

Surely, given their vast resources, the very best big publishers are capable of evolving their business model. At least, that's their hope for the future. But, how does an innovation-challenged organization avoid extinction when unrelenting disruption of the prior status-quo continues to erode their once dominant market position?

As I attended the various panels related to this topic, I was reminded of the book "Inside Project Red Stripe" by Andrew Carey -- the story of how six of The Economist's cleverest people tried to create the "next big thing" online and essentially failed, after investing six months in idea exploration More...

comScore reported key subscriber trends in the U.S. mobile phone market between October 2009 and January 2010. They also ranked the leading mobile OEMs and smartphone OS platforms during the same period.

The latest market study found Motorola to be the top handset manufacturer overall with 22.9 percent market share, while RIM led among smartphone platforms with 43.0 percent market share.

In the 3 month average ending in January, 234 million Americans were mobile subscribers ages 13 and older. Moreover, 42.7 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones in an average month during the November to January period -- up 18 percent from the August through October period. More...

Tablet computers are the next significant device trend or simply another fad, depending on your point of view. The iPad promises to energize the emerging tablet PC segment and the opportunities extend well beyond just Apple.

According to the latest market study by In-Stat, the potential unit Total Available Market (TAM) for tablets could be as high as 50 million in 2014, but the success is highly dependent upon two key success factors.

The first requirement is to follow other successful devices in the market by offering a complete solution that includes the device, the wireless service, and the content. More...

Baby boomers will eventually adopt smartphones and the Mobile Internet, and at the front-line of this movement are the younger boomers. But boomer mobile Internet adoption rates will be similar to their social media uptake -- that is, slower than the typical early-adopters.

According to the latest U.S. market assessment by eMarketer, boomers must see the benefits before they adopt smartphones and mobile Web applications (Apps).

Back in 1995, boomers were the pioneers of basic mobile phone usage, exceeding or equaling other age group's uptake of the devices, according to the Pew Research Center. More...

Consumers want their Internet TV, and they want it now, according to the latest market study by In-Stat. Already, based on In-Stat's new multi-client research study, 26 percent of U.S. consumer respondents report viewing Internet TV more than once per week.

However, rather than a substitute for traditional pay-TV services, consumers want their Over-the-Top (OTT) Internet video to complement their traditional TV offerings.

At least, that's the trend at this moment in time -- meaning, it's likely subject to change over time, as people gradually choose to abandon the legacy linear TV experience. More...

Compendium announced results from its Corporate Blogging and Social Media Trends Survey. They gathered data from 266 companies about blogging traffic, visitor trends, and their business related Twitter usage.

The results counter the commonly held belief that business blogs have a core group of loyal readers. The study found that almost two-thirds of respondents reported more than 80 percent of all blog traffic was "first-time" visitors.

"As more traffic is being driven to corporate blogs through organic searches and more first-time visitors are landing on blogs, companies need to develop blog and social media content that is appropriate for this audience in order to be effective," said Chris Baggott, CEO and co-founder of Compendium. More...

While it's expected that enterprise users might express concern over the security of Wi-Fi hotspots, it is actually the individual consumer user that is driving these concerns, according to the latest market study by In-Stat.

Regardless, that concern isn't significantly holding back hotspot usage growth.

According to In-Stat's Wi-Fi hotspot market research, over three-quarters of survey respondents are personally aware of and proactive regarding security concerns.

The number of respondents indicating that their companies restrict Wi-Fi usage has dropped below 15 percent of the total respondents -- a significant shift from 2008 when nearly the figure was 31 percent of respondents. More...

The latest comScore market study found that 30.8 percent of smartphone users accessed social networking sites via their mobile browser in January 2010 -- up 8.3 points from 22.5 percent one year ago.

Access to Facebook via mobile browser grew 112 percent in the past year, while Twitter experienced a 347 percent jump.

"Social networking remains one of the most popular and fastest-growing behaviors on both the PC-based Internet and the mobile Web," said Mark Donovan, comScore senior vice president of mobile.

"Social media is a natural sweet spot for mobile since mobile devices are at the center of how people communicate with their circle of friends, whether by phone, text, email, or, increasingly, accessing social networking sites via a mobile browser."

In January 2010, 11.1 percent of all mobile phone users accessed a social networking site via mobile browser, an increase of 4.6 percentage points from the previous year. More...

With home broadband networking adoption passing 50 percent of households in North America and 13 percent worldwide, the consumer network storage (CNS) market is seeing continued growth.

Web-enabled consumer devices, such as TVs and Blu-ray players, are further diversifying the demand and applications for consumer network storage devices, according to the latest market study by In-Stat.


"Consumer network storage devices increase the content that can be stored and distributed via the home network," says Norm Bogen, In-Stat analyst. "This increases the value of the entire home network to its users, as well as enabling new applications and capabilities."

I've been working on enhancing my own content storage capabilities, and will post a review of a high-capacity USB flash drive shortly. More...

eMarketer reports that U.S. small and medium businesses (SMBs) are adopting social media marketing in greater numbers, according to a market study by Network Solutions and the Center for Excellence in Service at the University of Maryland.

Social media usage increased to 24 percent, from 12 percent the year before.

It's interesting to note that the most common usage of social media among small business was a company page on a social networking site, followed by posting status updates.

SMB expectations of social media are in line with their experiences, although they are not quite as successful as they had hoped. More...