Yesterday, ComScore released its latest stats of the US mobile device market.  Surprisingly, Smart Phones are still a small percentage of the overall devices at 19.4%, with the growth of both RIM and Apple  pretty constant, but there was an explosion in growth of Android devices.  Even though Android is still only 1.7% of the overall market, the 57% change was incredible.   I took the results and put it in a tabular form based on what they reported.

About a year ago, I was a strong believer in the fact that native applications would only be a passing trend and the web page for mobile would start to overtake them in usage volume due to the transition to the full HTML browser in Smart Phones, the  larger volume of web sites and the ease of access via search and social media links.  According to Wolfram ( and a variety of other sources), I was able to find out that  on the web there is over 150M websites globally, there are over 8Billion page-views a day from the major Search Engine leads and over 8Billion page-views a day from clicks on links from Social Media.  Even though there are still only hundreds of thousands of Apps, this is a tiny number compared to the relative business of  the web and that over time the app would become part of the web experience with all content tied to links for ease of discovery.   In the case of a Native application that has been developed for a device like the iPod, iPhone or iPad is a self-contained black box and the content seems to only be accessable via installing the app and going to the home screen of the App.  Deep content in the App may be difficult to tag today for SEO    ( Search Engine Optimization) and this will leave many of the publishers of Apps only in a position to drive a user to the App and possibly not all the content contained in the app.  The fluidity of what we have know as Search Engine Marketing or Social Media Marketing that is the art of driving people to your site or landing page of content does not seem to have the same foundation around Apps in the internet that we have know to love with a one-click to get to the rich deep content.

Many SEO’s have struggled with the use of Flash in a site from the standpoint of this discovery and it has been a pain point in marketing for the greater search or social media marketing community.  New methods of tagging or marketing the Flash content and the use of other meta data/ keywords on a site have been used to refer to content , but it has not been optimal.

As Apps become more and more relevant and devices centralized around this experience has made it so that today we are looking at an entirely new Internet in my mind.   An Internet that has been structured by massively indexing webpages of content and the discussion and road map of the future of the Semantic Web.  Everything has been tied to links and now the rise of the meta-tags that can make discovery and access that much easier.  All of the things from the deep content we can search and discover to the apps and content that once was discoverable from a webpage.  Now with the growing trend of user experience and content consumption that are really self-contained packages derived from App stores the type of search needs to be treated differently.  This could be a new revolution for the advent of a new search engine to take on the Google, Yahoo, Bing of today that could essentially even be more social-media friendly as a search architecture.  Lately, I have found Google to be a mess in search relevancy, and I have been using Twitter as an alternative search engine for news and discussions more then 50% of my time.  It is also interesting to hear that   if Apple were to launch a new kind of search engine for applications it would clearly make sense given the course of this new Internet.

However, my gut still tells me it is going to be very difficult for one company like Apple to take on the world and create the next generation of Global Search Engine.  Rather a Search Engine for its own world and hopefully we will see some of the cool social elements associated with it.  What I believe could be the case from this strong spike in user adaption and the massive effect of apps on all of us is rather a new debate that stems back to the HTML5 vs. Flash discussion.  As Apple has been a strong advocate of the usage of HTML5 and has left Flash as the proprietary rich media standard out of its devices, there is room for the new innovation of leveraging now HTML5 as the new Application platform of choice for many media companies and developers and to breed an entirely new industry of Search Engine Optimization around HTML5 as it becomes the next foundation of the webpage and the run-time widget architecture of the Web.

Of course we will probably continue to see this self-contained in the closed ecosystem of Apple, and even through they are working with these open standards of HTML5 and others, there is this new paradigm shift toward Apps that will exist across all platforms that makes this discussion quite interesting.   Last week, at CTIA, I was discussing this with several different App developers from the Blackberry camp and found that they have started to do unique tagging of content even in the alert and push architecture of content from Apps.  This could be another hook into strong opportunities for searchable methods to all of this content that is formed from push experiences.  Apps have now been definitely know to be able to give us better experiences then typical web pages, but  the opportunities surrounding them from the standpoint of market discoverability of the deep content is still very open.  Will Blackberry at some point come up with there own search engine as well?  Will we see multiple search engines for different forms of App content that will then lead to the subject of an open API for the massive crawlers of the world to link each one in a greater search interface to find across multiple different channels?   Will this phenomena of the app keep evolving and create the opportunities for a new internet of channels and deep search accross those channels with dedicated tagging platforms within the apps of a each of the different platforms?

As the iPad’s application ecosystem evolves and so does the application ecosystems of  Blackberry, Nokia, Android, Palm, Windows, we will need to have a new kind of search and discovery mechanism that will lead us to a new form of Internet?  Look at all the Apps that live across Facebook and other social media and the opportunity for discovery requires one to be living in that portal. A simple Google or Bing search may take you to the App, but not the content within.

I would have never expected to see Apps over take Web pages, but this phenomena is getting so strong that it has and will create a New Internet  or Branch of the Internet that will keep evolving with the phenomena of  mobile usage case.  As we saw a strong growth in the area of SEO, SEM of the last 10 years, will we see a new form of SEO called SEOA ( Search Engine Optimization for Apps)?

Regardless of where this all goes, there is clearly new business opportunities for the SEO’s to start to design services and products for Application Publishers and Developers in designing their marketing and discovery platforms in a new way that is related to this phenomena of the mobile usage case.

As there has been a lot of debate about the future of search, I have found Twitter-Search to be so useful. It is clearly an enabler to find people of a certain interest group as a way to get good content and direct answers to your questions.  A lot of people still have not been able to really see the real usefulness of twitter, and I have  been telling them that is is all in the search functionality.  Whenever there is a topic or question I have, I can immediately find people that share that interest and can have a dialog with them.  Must recently, I have been facinated with the debate around HTML5 and mobile.  Here is my search on Twitter:

Once searching for this topic, I can have direct conversations with those that are experts or interested as well with the subject.

I saw this today and thought is was another fun example of Analog meet Digital. Published in Yanko Design about Google Envelopes, students from Syracuse University came up with this concept of automating your email to work with the main mail system in Envelopes that are actually maps that have the route of how the actual Envelop will travel.  We forget about 20 years ago we were sending letters to our friends instead of the real-time messaging of them. Just in one generation we have shifted from an analog experience to a digital one.  Going back to the analog one could be quite nostalgic for more meaningful delivery of messages in all the clutter of a crowded digital mailbox.

We at ADO enjoy the discussion of Smart Phone penetration as  to “what is to come” in the world of ” media meets mobile devices” .  In this chart from Nielsens  the fast trend toward smart phones is clearly shown . By 2012 more then 50% of users in the US will be carrying around a powerful Multimedia Computer.

With this rapid shift there is really still many opportunities for companies to join the competitive fray and  bring their products into the market.  This year at CTIA there was a flood of Android devices with many of the 2nd and 3rd tier handset manufacturers all getting on the smartphone bandwagon.  Even Tim O’Reilly ( O’Reilly Media) was recently caught Twittering about how surprised he was to see that ” the Android mobile web access is approaching the iPhone”.  Apple has just released its next 2 iPhones that should bring additional momentum to the smart phone battle ( Especially with Verizon).  Is this going to be enough for Apple to keep its lead? Where is the iPhone killer?  It was mentioned from an Apple employee that there is nobody that wants to create an iPhone killer more then Steve Jobs himself!

With this massive shift in Smart Phone devices and advanced applications makes you wonder how the Carriers are going to leverage this for longer term business models.  I have liked seeing the back-n-forth between Verizon and AT&T with 3G coverage.  This is the kind of  fuel needed to throw into the fire on the battle of capacity and end-user network needs.

By 2013 the overall Data consumption requirements are going to skyrocket and continue in a hockey-stick like pattern to 2015.  People will be consuming more media then ever from there mobile devices, and it is really fair to say that Mobile will really become the 1st screen in our lives by 2015.  However, with this growth, there is surely going to be innovation surrounding our online environment as well.  The seamless integration of websites, apps and the cloud is clearly the future in the next couple of years.  Therefore I believe it is fair to say that 2012~2013 is clearly the transition timing for real cross-media  integration.  For the companies making investments to be leaders  for the next couple years out need to really think of their strategies on how all their media strategies should come together with platforms that support all of the different extensions of access.

I  believe we will potentially see innovation in compression technologies and the efficient delivery of content. Companies like Speedbit and Strangeloop Networks are very well positioned to offer these kinds of tools that publishers need to deliver the right experiences to end-users no matter what device they are carrying.

So the transition continues from Feature to Smart Phone and the craving for new applications and services will continue.  This shift has finally happened and mobile is now here to stay.  Getting a mobile strategy that is sustainable is now the chance to grab this opportunity.

As there has been a lot of debate out there about the state of Android, I thought I would share this presentation published  by Stuart Dredge of the UK publication Mobile Entertainment.  It’s quite comprehensive summary of  latest market research data on Android in US and ROW.

Even though this is not too surprising and Facebook has been able to spread around the world as a social wave that is defining how we all communicate, share and connect, I thought it interesting to post a chart published by insidefacebook that shows the breakdown of the >400M users of Facebook.   With approximately 35% of all users under 25 years old  they have captured more then 125M of the Gen-Y population and about 75% of the users are all under 35 years old or 300M users.

Here is a recent chart published by Silicon Valley Insider on the relative Average Revenue Per User (ARPU)/ Year in 2009 for some of the leading Internet players.  Google leads the pack with an ARPU of >$18 USD, where as the social media players are still much lower.  I think it is going to be interesting year in 2010 as Facebook/Twitter and others really build on there social advertising strategies.   I think what would be interesting to model is the time it took Google to reach this value as opposed to now both Facebook and Twitter.

I was once  told that the advertising business is “a distribution constrained business”;  based on the quality of segmentation and reach.  As Social channels do offer that deep insight, as they move from a Social utility business structure to more Social entertainment, I am interested to see how high they will go over the next 5 years and the major brands gravitation toward them.

There have been many charts that show Google’s search growth has been relatively flat, so  I would expect their first priority is definitely to move toward innovative location-based local advertising with a focus on mobile.  Even if we were to add up $18 per person for year for 2 years= $36 does not completely buy a mobile device.  There is still a long way to go for a free phone powered by advertising only by Google.

Most recently, the Digital Entertainment Group published this chart that shows the changes in consumer spending. Although there is an increase in spending for Blue-Ray and VOD, if we extract the lines to run until 2012, it appears that there could be about a $3B USD drop in the industry of consumer spending in the home.

Again we are seeing a major shift in an industry that has been pretty well established with hardware and physical goods and the growth curve that existing from 200o~2006 with the shift from VHS to DVD’s is not showing the same spurt in growth like it did before.  We could guess that Blue-Ray and VOD will fill this new paradigm shift, but we must imagine with the fragmentation of media and the rise of consumer spending on mobile could really be the culprits that will this industry as well.

It would be nice to think that the $3B USD that disappears moves toward mobility and other consumer  services, and that the “Connected Home” as a strategy and philosophy will be made up of consumer spending on more of subscription and digital transactions to offset the purchasing culture of hard media.

Major Retailers such as Best Buy and others will really need to look at the strategy of mobile and consumer behavior of on-demand, real-time media with models that tie this all together to the convenience of anytime, anywhere as well, I believe.

In a recent interview on Charlie Rose with Paul  Otellini, CEO Intel Corporation, Paul mentioned that in the next 5 years we will see changes in consumer products like we have seen with mobile devices. Everything will become “Smart” in the next 5 years.  Today Intel has been a leader in providing the brains behind the PC, but with Intel’s strategy behind the “Atom” processor ( A chip that is minimum in size with the most advanced processing power) to become the low-cost solution that powers everything. ” We will see chips in TV’s, in the car, in appliances- for what will be the SMART era”- he stated. ” Today we have over 10K engineers working on these software solutions that the consumer does not see”. As Paul sits on the Board of Google, it is pretty clear that we can see that this might lead to a strong alliance to Android, but most recently at MWC ( Mobile World Congress) in Barcelona,  Nokia-Intel announced their strategic partnership around the next generation OS called- MeeGo.  So there is that angle to think about.  ”No we are not creating another WinTel”- he stated, but the battle will ensue between Android, iPhone and now potentially MeeGo that will be the OS that not only occupies those 1.2Billion mobile devices shipped yearly, but all of the consumer appliances and electrical objects around us.

So where does this leave the Best Buy’s of the World? Yes- they need to grow the Best Buy-Mobile business, but it really opens an interesting opportunity for customer support and services.  In a recent presentation I heard from the VP of Marketing of Best Buy Canada, Angela Scardillo, she stated that the core of their marketing strategy is to build the brand around the “Connected Home”.  What a phenomenal strategy! Geek Squad will now be the customer support function to help us fix all of those problems that the online services have left us in utter abyss? We hope that Google and the rest of them will offer more customer support services instead of inanimate forums to answer questions, but if this does not happen, it will potentially be your local Super Geek ( A close colleague of mine that invented this concept way before Geek Squad) to now come to the rescue.

So I think that this shift has the players and the strategies in place now to really take us forward in this new decade.  The big losers could potentially be the hardware manufactures that will need to look for new avenues to build revenue streams  around ” Smart” objects.  We have seen the release of the iPad from Apple in 2010, but how cool will it be to start seeing the new “Smart” TV’s, Cars, Refrigerators, Washer and dryers, Rice cookers all connected into a grid that is controlled by our mobile devices.

I was moved by a recent blog post by Clara Shih titled, titled “Social Showdown: Google vs. Facebook” who in my mind is one of those real though leaders in the social media space.

What I find interesting and challenging for Google as they attempt to enter the social media space is about spread of the social graph amongst users that are looking for choice.  Even though Google has 176M users of Gmail, Facebook is ~400M  strong as a user base, with many of them using Gmail as a subset to their Facebook accounts.   I thought with the release of Wave, Google was positioning itself out of the box from its own services to have an agnostic service that could eventually spread to all users.  What makes Facebook so powerful ( in my mind) is that it can exist with many other products as a connector.  Once you build something into an existing product, I find it pigeon-holes you into the users of that service and in many ways you can fall victim to your own boundaries.  This has been a very complicated position for many years when I was at Nokia.   Even when many services were launched, they were mainly only for Nokia devices and it was a challenge for those services to also work across other devices to create that brand awareness that this existed.  This is my opinion, but I feel Social communication services should be agnostic to all services and devices and work as a form of connector of services.  How will Buzz work within a Google defined structure of Gmail vs. Facebook that is agnostic and a service that stands alone on its own right that now is getting positioned across all mobile operators and something complementary to your email, IM, etc…   In other words, I would say it would probably make more strategic sense for Facebook to incorporate the email service of your choice as opposed to try to create your own email service that again artificially creates a boundary of usage when users are comfortable with their own email service and email address to begin with.

I do believe that Google will find a very strong way to make Buzz a success, but being positioned in Gmail was something that might be limiting.  Any other thoughts out there?  Here is also a great presentation by Facebook Mobile at #MWC this past week.