Effects of urbanization

Urbanization is currently a major global trend.
Figure 8 shows that by 2016 over 30 percent of the
world’s population are expected live in metro and
urban areas with a density of more than 1,000 people
per square kilometer. These areas represent less than
1 percent of the Earth’s total land area, yet they are
set to generate around 60 percent of mobile
traffic by 2016.
In metro and urban areas, heterogeneous networks
will complement macro network improvements
to serve the traffic and provide high-quality user
experience. In less-densely populated areas the
focus will be more on building cost-effective
coverage and capacity.

This analysis is made based on knowledge of traffic
volume data from different geographical areas in
many networks combined with traffic forecast figures.
A high quantity of today’s mobile data traffic is
already being generated in metro areas. However, it is
worth noting that by 2016 the amount of mobile data
traffic is forecasted to be 10 times that of 2011.

Original report at file:///E:/SONY%20CHANDRAN/Univercell/Articles/erricson%20report.pdf

Mobile Coverage

The coverage of the world’s mobile 
networks is constantly increasing
as more and more base stations are
being deployed. GSM/EDGE is the
technology that by far has the widest
reach and today covers more than
85 percent of the world’s population
(see figure 7). WCDMA/HSPA covered
around 35 percent of the population
by 2010 but is now accessible by over
40 percent of the world population.
Further build out of WCDMA/HSPA
coverage will be driven by the
availability of affordable smartphones,
the surge in mobile broadband
services and faster speeds, as well as
regulator requirements to connect the
unconnected. By 2016 it is estimated
that 80 percent of the world’s
population will be able to access
the internet using WCDMA/
HSPA networks.
The combined 2G and 3G population
coverage for CDMA is estimated to be
above 50 percent. CDMA coverage
is expected to grow slightly, and
most large CDMA operators have
announced a migration plan to LTE.

Original post at  file:///E:/SONY%20CHANDRAN/Univercell/Articles/erricson%20report.pdf

Apple iPad Air

The announcement of Apple’s iPad Mini is right around the corner. Speculations are rife about the device, especially regarding its hardware and price-range.ccording to iMore, the Cupertino-based company may go the way of the MacBook Air, and introduce an ‘iPad Air’ that is smaller, more portable, lighter, and features a screen that doesn’t have retina display.

John Gruber from Daring Fireball said, “You know what other Apple product’s primary attributes are thinness, weight, and price? The MacBook Air. And, no coincidence, the latest revisions to the Air lineup debuted on stage at WWDC without retina displays. We’re a couple of years away from Apple going retina across the board.”

Earlier, it was revealed that Apple may discontinue the iPad 2 to make way for the new iPad Mini, or ‘Air’ as we earlier speculated. According to AppleInsider, Rob Cihra with Evercore Partners has said in a note to investors that Apple may phase out the iPad 2. The reason stated mentions Apple’s visions of “clearer product tiers.” This could point to Apple’s aims of lowering the entry-bar of iPad products.

So if one wants to purchase an iPad 2, now would be a good time as the product may be not available when the next line-up of Apple devices hit the shelves.

Apple may launch the iPad mini as soon as November 2, 2012, which is roughly 10 days after its announcement taking place on October 23. Apple has sent out media invites for an event slated for October 23 with the caption, ‘We’ve got a little more to show you.’

The invite could mean that Apple has more gadgets in the offing for the year 2012. This invite also confirms a recent report, which stated that Apple would be hosting an event on October 23.

As far as the rumours of the iPad mini go, it appears that the Cupertino-based company is not holding back any punches with this smaller iPad, and launching it in various storage capacities such as 8GB, 16GB, 32GB, and the top-of-the-line model at 64GB of internal storage. The top of the line iPad mini is expected to be sold at approximately €649 for the 64GB Wi-Fi plus cellular version. The cheapest model, an 8GB Wi-Fi only version is believed to retail for approximately €249.

Rumours claim that Apple will introduce a redesigned version of the iPad which was launched earlier this year and the new model is expected to come with the Lightning connector as well as making it lighter.

It is also believed that the Apple event will also play host to a number of other announcements, which include the updated line up of Macs and on the software front, iBooks.

Mobile Payments

Source : mobithinking

Worldwide mobile payments (m-payments) are growing strongly, but will still only be worth a fraction of e-commerce payments: N.B. definitions of m-payments may vary between analyst groups.

• Merchandise purchases (e.g. via Amazon and eBay) account for most of m-payments in developed markets.
• Money transfers and prepaid top-ups account for most of m-payments. Travel ticketing and parking are also expected to be popular in developing markets.
• Gartner (May 2012): there will be 212.2 million m-payment users in 2011 (up from 160.5 million in 2011), m-payments will total US $171.5 billion in 2012 (up 61.9 percent from $105.9 billion in 2011).
• Gartner predicts that in 2016 there will be 448 million m-payment users, in a market worth $617 billion. Asia/Pacific will have the most m-payment users, but Africa will account for the highest revenues.
• Mobile Web is expected to dominate mobile payments in North America and Europe through to 2016. SMS is expected to remain the key vehicle for m-payments in developing markets. NFC transactions will remain relatively low through 2015, but will start to pick up from 2016.
• Yankee Group (June 2011): Global mobile transactions predicted to be US$241 billion in 2011 growing to more than $1 Trillion by 2015.
• EMEA is the mobile money hot spot, says Yankee, accounting for 41 percent of mobile transactions value in 2011, compared to 35 percent in North America, 22 percent in Asia-Pacific and just 1 percent in Latin America.
• Portio Research (March 2010): There were 81.3 million people worldwide using their mobile device to make payments (including in-app payments, mobile ticketing and mobile coupons) in 2009. By the end of 2014, this is forecasted to rise to nearly 490 million (8 percent of mobile subscribers).
• The volume of m-payments i.e. face value of purchases and transactions was US$68.7 billion in 2009, rising to US$633.4 billion by end-2014.
• Juniper Research (July 2011 ): Total value of mobile payments for digital and physical goods, money transfers and NFC (Near Field Communications) transactions will reach $670bn by 2015, up from $240bn this year.
• Estimates include mobile ticketing, NFC contactless payments, physical goods purchases and money transfers.
• Active mobile money users will double by 2013.
• Digital goods is the largest segment and will account for nearly 40% of the market in 2015.
• Juniper Research (June 2011): 1.8 billion consumers globally will buy digital goods via their mobile in 2011, this will rise to 2.5 billion in 2015.
For example, in 2015, more than 400 million people on the Indian Sub-Continent will purchase digital goods via mobile.
• But IDC (May 2010) believes that in EMEA, m-payments will take off slower than m-banking, forecasting that less than 13 percent of mobile subscribers will be registered to use m-payments and volume of m-payments will be no more than $125 billion. Thus m-payments will take off slower than many industry observers hope, due to the complexity and set-up costs for retailers. However, strong growth in m-banking will lay the foundations for growth in mobile payments.

Original posted at http://mobithinking.com/mobile-marketing-tools/latest-mobile-stats/f#m-payments

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Gartner Says Android to Command Nearly Half of Worldwide Smartphone Operating System Market by Year-End 2012

Courtesy : Gartner ( www.gartner.com ).

Worldwide smartphone sales will reach 468 million units in 2011, a 57.7 percent increase from 2010, according to Gartner Inc. By the end of 2011, Android will move to become the most popular operating system (OS) worldwide and will build on its strength to account for 49 percent of the smartphone market by 2012 (see Table 1).

Sales of open OS* devices will account for 26 percent of all mobile handset device sales in 2011, and are expected to surpass the 1 billion mark by 2015, when they will account for 47 percent of the total mobile device market.

“By 2015, 67 percent of all open OS devices will have an average selling price of $300 or below, proving that smartphones have been finally truly democratized,” said Roberta Cozza, principal analyst at Gartner.

“As vendors delivering Android-based devices continue to fight for market share, price will decrease to further benefit consumers”, Ms. Cozza said. “Android’s position at the high end of the market will remain strong, but its greatest volume opportunity in the longer term will be in the mid- to low-cost smartphones, above all in emerging markets.”

Table 1Worldwide Mobile Communications Device Open OS Sales to End Users by OS (Thousands of Units)

OS	2010	2011	2012	2015
Symbian	111,577	89,930	32,666	661
Market Share (%)	37.6	19.2	5.2	0.1
Android	67,225	179,873	310,088	539,318
Market Share (%)	22.7	38.5	49.2	48.8
Research In Motion	47,452	62,600	79,335	122,864
Market Share (%)	16.0	13.4	12.6	11.1
iOS	46,598	90,560	118,848	189,924
Market Share (%)	15.7	19.4	18.9	17.2
Microsoft	12,378	26,346	68,156	215,998
Market Share (%)	4.2	5.6	10.8	19.5
Other Operating Systems	11,417.4	18,392.3	21,383.7	36,133.9
Market Share (%)	3.8	3.9	3.4	3.3
Total Market	296,647	467,701	630,476	1,104,898

Source: Gartner (April 2011)

Gartner predicts that Apple’s iOS will remain the second biggest platform worldwide through 2014 despite its share deceasing slightly after 2011. This reflects Gartner’s underlying assumption that Apple will be interested in maintaining margins rather than pursuing market share by changing its pricing strategy. This will continue to limit adoption in emerging regions. iOS share will peak in 2011, with volume growth well above the market average. This is driven by increased channel reach in key mature markets like the U.S. and Western Europe.

Research In Motion’s share over the forecast period will decline, reflecting the stronger competitive environment in the consumer market, as well as increased competition in the business sector. Gartner has factored in RIM’s migration from BlackBerry OS to QNX which is expected in 2012. Analysts said this transition makes sense because RIM can create a consistent experience going from smartphones to tablets with a single developer community and — given that QNX as a platform brings more advanced features than the classic BlackBerry OS — it can enable more competitive smartphone products.

Gartner predicts that Nokia will push Windows Phone well into the mid-tier of its portfolio by the end of 2012, driving the platform to be the third largest in the worldwide ranking by 2013. Gartner has revised its forecast of Windows Phone’s market share upward, solely by virtue of Microsoft’s alliance with Nokia. Although this is an honorable performance it is considerably less than what Symbian had achieve in the past underlying the upward battle that Nokia has to face.

Gartner analysts said new device types will widen ecosystems. “The growth in sales of media tablets expected in 2011 and future years will widen the ecosystems that open OS communications devices have created. This will, by and large, function more as a driver than an inhibitor for sales of open OS devices,” said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner.

“Consumers who already own an open OS communications device will be drawn to media tablets and more often than not, to media tablets that share the same OS as their smartphone,” Ms. Milanesi said. “This allows consumers to be able to share the same experience across devices as well as apps, settings or game scores. At the same time, tablet users who don’t own a smartphone could be prompted to adopt one to be able to share the experience they have on their tablets.”

Note *: An open OS makes a software developer kit (SDK) available to developers, who can use native application programming interfaces (APIs) to write applications. The OS can be supported by a sole vendor or multiple vendors. It can be, but does not have to be, open source. Examples are BlackBerry OS, iOS, Symbian, Android, Windows Phone, Linux, Limo Foundation, WebOS and bada.

Gartner’s detailed forecast is available in the report “Forecast: Mobile Communications Devices by Open Operating System, Worldwide, 2008-2015.” The report is available on Gartner’s website at http://www.gartner.com/resId=1619615.

Mobile device shipments

There were 11.1 percent more mobile devices sold in 2011 compared to 2010.

• IDC (February 2012): 1,546 million handsets were sold in 2011, up 11.1 percent compared with 2010.
• Gartner (February 2012): 1,775 million handsets were sold in 2011, up 11.1 percent compared with 2010.
• Gartner (February 2012): predicts mobile device sales will grow by 7 percent in 2012, while smartphone growth is expected to slow to 39 percent.

• Strategy Analytics (February 2012): 1,551.4 million handsets were sold in 2011, up 14 percent compared with 2010.
• These figures include feature phones (68-69 percent of handsets sold in 2011) and smartphones (31-32 percent of handsets sold in 2011). Smartphone sales are broken out below.

Top ten mobile phone manufacturers, by 2011 global sales according to Gartner						Top five mobile phone manufacturers, by 2011 global sales according to IDC
Vendor	Shipments 2011 (millions)	Market share 2011	Shipments 2010 (millions)	Market share 2010		Vendor	Shipments 2011 (millions)	Market share 2011	Shipments 2010 (millions)	Market share 2010	Annual growth
Nokia	422.4	23.8	461.3	28.9		Nokia	417.1	27.0%	453.0	32.6%	-7.9%
Samsung	313.9	17.7%	281.0	17.6%		Samsung	329.4	21.3%	280.2	20.1%	17.6%
Apple	89.2	5.0%	46.5	2.9%		Apple	93.2	6.0%	47.5	3.4%	96.2%
LG Electronics	86.4	4.9%	114.1	7.1%		LG Electronics	88.1	5.7%	116.7	8.4%	-24.5%
ZTE	56.9	3.2%	29.6	1.9%		ZTE	66.1	4.3%	50.5	3.6%	30.9%
RIM	51.5	2.9%	49.6	3.1%		Others	552.1	35.7%	443.6	31.9%	24.5%
HTC	43.2	2.4%	24.6	1.5%
Huawei	40.6	2.3%	23.8	1.5%
Motorola	40.2	2.3%	38.5	2.4%
Sony Ericsson	32.5	1.8%	41.8	2.6%
Others	597.3	33.7%	485.4	30.4%
Total	1,775	100%	1,597	100%		Total	1,546	100%	1,391.5	100%	11.1%
Source: Gartner (Feb 2012)						Sourc