Mobile

Media usage trends paint a bleak picture for old media

This hardly comes as a surprise but, if this report by Ofcom on media usage published last week  is to be believed, then the falling attention of users towards newspapers and TV is not going to stop any time soon. As eyeballs shift to digital media and smartphone and tablet content consumption continues to grow unabated, old media is increasingly being marginalized.

Ofcom researchers asked consumers which media (Newspapers, Radio, Web, TV, Mobile) they would miss the most, then segmented the results by age. Newspapers don’t even seem to be on the radar of those under 35 and only 13% of 16-24 year olds claimed that they would miss TV the most. As is clear from the below chart, this shift to digital is very much generational. It may be be just the beginning, but it is clear that digital consumers are slowly but surely taking over the most coveted media demographics.

While the results don’t come as much of a surprise, it should cement the need for players in this space to urgently look at their long term strategy if they have not already done so.

Media Usage

 

Posted by Rob in Media, Mobile, Old Media

Snapchat live chat & video could be a game-changer

This could be massive. In what was quite an unassuming blog post yesterday to announce their new live chat feature, Snapchat casually threw in that they are also adding a live video aspect to the service too. This move makes a heap of sense as the company grapples with ways of giving users a more valuable service. Sharing vanishing selfies will only interest people for so long after all.

By going in this direction, the company is clearly trying to branch out from their relatively niche focus and become a platform where users can interact with each other in a more meaningful and rich way. If they can eek out a place in the younger generation’s world as an alternative to Skype or WhatsApp, then turning down Facebook’s reported $3 Billion advances could turn out to be a very savvy move in the end.

Posted by Rob in Mobile, Snapchat, WhatsApp

Nokia launch first ever Android smartphone

They might be in the middle of being acquired by Microsoft with the intention of ultimately becoming a Windows-only phone producer, but that hasn’t stopped Nokia announcing today the launch of their first Android smartphone, the Nokia X, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

The new model comes in three versions (the X, X+ and XL) and is aimed at the masses with modest specs and a low-cost design resulting in a cheap price-point of €89. Hardly a competitor to the iPhone 5 or Galaxy S4, the range is hoped to find a market with price sensitive users in Eastern Europe, Asia and South America. It’s not going to bring them back to their glory days as the biggest handset maker in the world but it’s a move in the right direction at least.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUCEN-XvC7g

Posted by Rob in Android, Mobile, Nokia

Twitter co-founders launch new Q&A social app Jelly

Jelly, a new question-and-answer-based social app by Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, has been launched this month on iOS and Android. A cross between Quora and Snapchat, Jelly’s aim is to help users find answers to their questions in real time by crowdsourcing opinions from their social networks. Users snap a photo, ask a question, and get answers from connections in their social networks.

With investors like Bono, Al Gore and other Twitter founders Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams, Jelly looks like it’ll at least have the financial weight behind it to make a splash.

Posted by Rob in Apps, Mobile, Twitter

Yahoo acquires app organiser Aviate

Yesterday at CES, Yahoo announced the acquisition of Aviate, a startup app that organises the apps on your phone’s home screen according to its best guess at what you need to see at any given moment.

As well as automatically organising your apps into groups (or ‘spaces’ as they call it) based on their function, it also incorporates elements of Google Now, ‘using signals to understand your context – WIFI, GPS, Accelerometer, Time, etc’. Say you’re at the gym, bam, up pop your work-out apps.

At the moment, Aviate is still in beta and exclusively for Android unfortunately so watch this space.

Posted by Rob in Apps, Mobile, Yahoo