BII MOBILE INSIGHTS: Five Questions Advertisers Need To Ask About Mobile

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5 Questions Advertisers Need To Ask About Mobile (Deutsch Inc.)
Why should mobile matter to advertisers? Because it connects the physical and digital worlds and brings a campaign literally into the palm of your hand. Creative development is changing to accommodate mobile. But in order to make any changes, we needed to understand mobile a little better first.

1. What is mobile?
2. Why is it so important?
3. What's the role of the tablet?
4. What's the advantage of apps?
5. How do you design for the mobile Web?

It’s important to remember that mobile is more than just apps and fancy technology. In developing new mobile opportunities, we must take into consideration the context of where people are and what they need because, as we know, they always have their phones with them.

Mobile's Rude Awakening (Monday Note)
Call it a double whammy: Publishers took a severe hit by going digital in a way that compounded commoditization of content with an endless supply of pages. The result is economically absurd: in a “normal” world, when audiences rise, advertising reaches more people and, as a result, rates rise. At least, that was the rule in the comfy world of print. No such thing in digital media. As many news sites experienced, despite double-digit audience growth, CPMs (cost per thousand page impressions) actually declined over recent years. Fact is, this sector is much more sensitive to general economic conditions than to its extraordinary large adoption. And as if that wasn’t enough, publishers are now taking another blow as a growing share of their audience moves to mobile where money hasn’t followed … yet. Mobile audiences are large and growing. Great. But their monetization is mostly a disaster. The situation will be slow to improve, but the potential is still there — if the right conditions are met.

Convergence Can Make 2013 The True ‘Year of Mobile’ (VentureBeat)
For mobile to get to the next level, and for it to truly come first — for brands, consumers, and publishers — we need to see the existing mobile "divergence" transformed into mobile convergence. At the moment mobile still means too many things to too many people. There’s a serious disconnect among the mobile-related needs and objectives of three key groups in the mobile landscape: brands, consumers, and publishers. We need to stop thinking of mobile as a world unto itself. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Mobile is just another platform, facing the very same questions and challenges as TV, the Internet, magazines, and newspapers have done at various stages of their development. The sooner we recognize this – and the sooner we can bring what we’ve learned in other realms to the world of mobile – then the better our mobile ads will be, and the more we’ll be able to deliver for everyone involved. These are the essential points of “convergence” for the industry’s mobile stakeholders: sponsored content creation, tablet-first design and development, and cross-platform thinking.

10 Skills Developers Need To Focus On In 2013 (Tech Republic)
Software development had a few years of relative calm. But now the rollercoaster is back on track and it’s picking up speed, as HTML5 gains a foothold and Windows 8 threatens to significantly change the Windows development landscape. Here’s a look at the must-know technologies for the year ahead:

1. Mobile development
2. NoSQL
3. Unit Testing
4. Python or Ruby
5. HTML5
6. Windows 8
7. RESTful Web services
8. JavaScript
9. jQuery
10. User experience

The growth in tablets, especially in Android tablets, has propelled the mobile market to new heights.

10 Ways Augmented Reality Could Change The Learning Experience (Classroom Aid)
The technology behind Augmented Reality (AR) is taking a real-world view and enhancing it with computer-generated imagery. How can AR technology impact our educational system for primary and tertiary learning? 

1. 3D
2. Cause and Effect
3. AI
4. Representation
5. Reading
6. Ancient Civilizations
7. Dissections
8. Space
9. Landmarks
10. Alive Textbooks

The full scope of AR technology has endless possibilities. Students are able to affect a seemingly real-world change through the use of computer-generated imagery. This imagery can be programmed for virtually any subject matter.

Apple Dominates Mobile Manufacturer And Web Usage Statistics (Chitika)

Chitika released November mobile market share data. Highlights include:

1. Samsung saw the largest gain in Web share in November with an increase of 1.1 percent due to the success of new hardware.
2. Google saw a minor lift due to the release of the Nexus product line.
3. HTC dropped in market share for the 5th straight month.
4. Apple declined after the success of the iPhone 5 debut in the Fall.

Predictions include:

1. Google's market share will continue to rise with the Nexus product line.
2. RIM is expected to make a "significant" comeback in 2013.
3. Usage will also continue to grow for Chinese companies ZTE and Huawei as both establish a foothold in other markets.

Will be interesting to see what happens to Apple.

Apple Cuts iPhone Parts Orders; Entire Ecosystem Plunges (The Motley Fool)
Apple stock never falls alone. When the company's shares took a 4.5 percent plunge on Friday, it brought a whole bunch of peripheral stocks along for the ride. Some fell even harder than Apple:

• Audio-chip supplier Cirrus Logic lost as much as 7.6 percent.
• Wireless-radio producer Skyworks Solutions took an 8.5 percent dive.
• Camera-chip designer OmniVision Technologies lost 3.5 percent at most
• And even mighty Qualcomm dropped 5.2 percent.

This is the downside to riding Apple's powerful coattails.

What's behind this chart? Most recently, in separate research notes, two analysts slashed their iPhone unit forecasts based on order cuts they've seen while talking to the Chinese supply-chain. Jefferies analyst Peter Misek predicts that Apple may have built too many iPhones in the current quarter while UBS analyst Steve Milunovich sees the iPhone 5 doing worse than the previous generation's iPhone 4S.

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