| Event | Date | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 05/20/2013 | New York NY | |
| 05/27/2013 - 05/28/2013 | New York NY | |
| 06/02/2013 - 06/04/2013 | San Francisco CA |
IDG News Service
Coming up on WTU this week we check research at the Computer Human Interaction conference in Paris where Microsoft Research shows the future of gaming, electricity zaps muscles for force feedback gaming and more.
IDC Press Release
SAN MATEO, Calif.– Worldwide tablet shipments continue to surge, growing 142.4% year over year in the first quarter of 2013 (1Q13), according to preliminary data from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Tablet Tracker. Tablet shipments totaled 49.2 million units in 1Q13, surpassing that of the entire first half of 2012. With growth fueled by increased market demand for smaller screen devices, tablets have shown no sign of slowing down.
For the full release click here
IDG News Service
Coming up on World Tech Update this week Microsoft announces the next Xbox, robots offer helping hand and we reflect on the Boston Marathon bombings.
IDC Press Release
4/10/13
FRAMINGHAM, Mass. – Worldwide PC shipments totaled 76.3 million units in the first quarter of 2013 (1Q13), down -13.9% compared to the same quarter in 2012 and worse than the forecast decline of -7.7%, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker. The extent of the year-on-year contraction marked the worst quarter since IDC began tracking the PC market quarterly in 1994. The results also marked the fourth consecutive quarter of year-on-year shipment declines.
IDG News Service
On WTU this week we’re at the NAB Show in Las Vegas where “affordable” 4K pricing is announced, a second screen experience hopes to boost couch commerce and a flying drone captures stunning, stable video.
Digiday
There is no Santa Claus. The tooth fairy isn’t real. And this is not the year of mobile. Mobile marketing, like a lot of other digital tactics, is full of myths and misconceptions. Digiday spoke to brand executives to get a sense of what these myths and misconceptions are. The gist: Mobile is a mindset, not a technology, and consumers are using their phones for more than just social networking and playing games.
Barbara Williams-Pamplin, mobile marketing global practice lead, Microsoft
The biggest misconception about mobile marketing is that due to the computing power of the current generation of smartphones and the tablet’s screen size, mobile-first experiences are not a priority. The misconception is based on the idea that viewing the “normal” Web is technically feasible on these devices, so there is no need to create experiences especially for these devices. However, that approach fails to take into consideration several facts. First, consumers don’t use all devices in the same way or for the same purpose, so content and input methodology needs are different. Also, consumers will move on to look for another source of info (competitor if necessary) if they are unable to find what they are looking for on the mobile site visited. And, lastly, a poor non-mobile optimized experience can and will negatively impact the consumer’s perception of the brand.
VentureBeat
ComScore’s Digital Future report for 2013 just came out, and the analytics company has a lot to say about what happened in 2012 … and what might be coming up in 2013.
Online advertising, for one thing, was way up, with almost six trillion display ads published in 2012. That’s up 500 billion from 2011. Shockingly, AT&T accounted for a massive 1.04 billion of them, more than double the next largest online advertiser, Microsoft, which bought almost 50 billion impressions.
ComScore’s massive report also includes data on the top web properties, the battle for search dominance between Google and Bing, and smartphone market share, among other things.
Facebook, for instance, is the most popular app on phones in America, according to ComScore, showing up on 76 percent of phones. That’s impressive, but not as impressive as Google’s utter domination of the mobile charts. The search engine/social network/advertising giant has no less than five of the top six mobile apps in the U.S. Google’s apps such as Maps, Google Play, Google Search, Gmail, and YouTube take positions two through six.
eMarketer
Trends emerge in app preferences of iPhone vs. Android users
Which web and mobile properties found the largest audiences in 2012? According to Nielsen, Americans on the web were most inclined to search, socialize, shop, browse or, of course, look things up on Wikipedia.
The two US sites that averaged the greatest number of monthly unique visitors were web giants Google and Facebook: the former averaged over 172 million monthly unique visitors, the latter close to 153 million. Large online media sites Yahoo! (#3) and AOL (#7), shopping juggernaut Amazon (#8) and search offerings from Microsoft (#6) and Ask.com (#10), all found their way into the top ten as well.
Mashable
The Surface was supposed to be Microsoft’s real answer to the iPad — a Windows-based tablet that would satisfy both casual users and digital workers. Now it looks like it’s appealing to neither.
UBS analyst Brent Thill estimates Microsoft has sold only 1 million Surface RT tablets,reported by Business Insider. He had previously estimated 2 million. To put those figures in perspective, Apple is estimated to sell in the neighborhood of 20 million iPads for the same period.
This is far from the first sign that the Surface isn’t doing very well. A month ago, brokerage firm Detwiler Fenton said Microsoft wouldn’t even break a million units, estimating sales for the quarter at 600,000 units maximum. However, that was before Microsoft expanded retail distribution of the Surface early, which likely led to better numbers.
In addition, last week Samsung said it was pulling back plans to release its own tablet based on Windows RT — the same operating system running on the Surface — citing customer ignorance about the pared-down version of Windows made to run on ARM-based devices. Cost was also a factor.
“We didn’t necessarily attain the price point that we hoped to attain,” Samsung senior vice president Mike Abary told CNET.
Looking at web usage, a study conducted by Chikita Insights just before the holidays found the Microsoft Surface accounted for just 0.22 ad impressions for every 100 impressions from an iPad. Finally, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said in an interview last November that sales were “modest” (although Microsoft later said Ballmer was talking about supply and distribution of the Surface, not sales).
If the Surface RT is doing poorly, Microsoft’s hopes in the tablet space could be resurrected by the Surface Pro, a slightly larger version of the device that runs Windows 8 Pro. Microsoft has previously said the Pro version would launch three months after the Surface RT, or about the end of January.
Why do you think the Surface is struggling, and do you think the Surface Pro will turn things around? Let us know in the comments.
SEE ALSO: The Problem With Windows 8
