With mobile phones getting smarter by the day, the number of people who access gaming applications on their mobile phone is definitely on the rise. Consequently, we have a number of new startups focusing on this specific market segment. While a majority of such mobile gaming applications make money either via gaming credits or requiring a paid dowload, some game developers also sustain on volumes and make money off ads.

According to a recent report on eMarketer, the revenues from mobile gaming is estimated to reach $1.5 billion by 2014. At this point, more than $1.3 billion is expected to be from paid gaming – a thumping victory for this monetization model.

Here is the revenues that are expected to be made from mobile games over the next few years. The percent contribution from paid games (as opposed to ad-supported) is provided inside brackets.

2009 : $627 million (94.3%)
2010 : $849 million (93.4%)
2011 : $1.028 billion (92.5%)
2012 : $1.1734 billion (90.9%)
2013 : $1.3767 billion (89.2%)
2014 : $1.514 billion (87.7%)

Ad spending on social networks is on the rise and as it is in other segments of the digital media, US leads the pack when it comes to advertiser adoption. However, thanks to the terrific adoption of social networks, Facebook in particular, across the globe, advertisers in other parts of the world are taking cognizance as well. According to a report by eMarketer, US and the rest of the world shall more or less even out in ad-spending on social networks by next year. That is still a signficant lead for USA when you consider we are comparing one country against the rest of the world.

So, this is the ad spend in USD across US and non-US over a three year span. The percentage of total ad spend worldwide is provided in brackets.

USA
2009 : $1.40 billion (55.4%)
2010 : $1.68 billion (51%)
2011 : $2.09 billion (49.1%)

Non-USA
2009 : $1.13 billion (44.6%)
2010 : $1.62 billion (49%)
2011 : $2.17 billion (50.9%)

Like it is elsewhere, Facebook is the most popular social network and the second biggest website in the Blighty. However, the social network is facing a slowdown in growth – not because it is getting less popular, but because there are not enough people on the internet to take the growth forward – Less than 10 million of the total 37.6 million online adults in the UK today do not have a Facebook account! To put it more appropriately, Facebook in UK is inching towards a point of saturation.

Thanks to the popularity, Facebook is already the largest website by a mile in terms of pageviews – the website receives close to double the number of page-views that Google receives in UK. So here are some interesting facts about Facebook in UK

• Second largest website in the UK

• Facebook traffic made up
  • 7.14% of all internet visits
  • 16.73% of all internet pageviews
  • 54% of all social network visits

• 26 million Facebook accounts in UK

Students are increasingly being lured towards Macbooks, a recent study by Student Monitor has showed. In their recent report, the Ridgewood, NJ based research firm has noted that 47% of the 87% of students who were contemplating a laptop purchase were contemplating the purchase of an Apple Macbook. Consequently, the level of interest on Dell and HP was seen at just 12% and 11% respectively.

So what this has resulted in is that more than one-fourth of laptops on campus are now being made by Apple. Apple and Dell now make up more than 50% of all laptops on campus. HP now makes it to number three – at 15% market share.

The study is a grim reminder for Dell of its glorious days not so long ago. A Student Monitor study back in 2005 showed interest in Dell laptop at 47%. Macs back then had a 14% interest level.

So this is how the market share among laptops stack up in the student community

Apple : 27%
Dell : 24%
HP : 15%
Toshiba : 10%
Compaq : 4%
Sony : 5%
Gateway : 4%
Acer : 4%
Lenovo : 2%
Others : 5%

Men or Women – Who do you think own a majority share in smartphone ownership? Not being chauvinistic, but I found the results from this study entirely along expected lines. A recent study from ComScore shows that over 60% of smartphones in the US and European Union (measured across France, UK, Germany, Italy and Spain) are owned by men.

According to Comscore, a reason for this gender imbalance could come from the fact that male are early technology adopters and hence are more likely to be attracted to these newly launched gizmos. Additionally, the report also suspects the possibility for men to be high wage-earners as well as have a part of their mobile bill being paid by the employer as reasons for higher smartphone adoption.

Percent smartphones owned by men in US
April 2009 : 59%
April 2010 : 60%

Percent smartphones owned by men in EU5
April 2009 : 66%
April 2010 : 63%

An Interesting Related Article - Blackberry owners are predominantly female

Zombie computers are those machines that are hacked by spammers with the help of computer virus so that they may be used as a host to send out thousands of spam messages. A study conducted by McAfee earlier this year showed that USA, Brazil and India are among the leading nations when it comes to producing spam. However, the report noted that China, USA and Brazil are countries that host the maximum number of zombie computers. India is nowhere in the top 10.

In a somewhat contrary note, CommTouch has come up with its latest quarterly security report where the researchers have noted that India has just overtaken Brazil as the country with the largest number of zombie computers. According to the report, here are the top ten countries and the percentage of zombie computer that they host.

1. India : 13%
2. Brazil : 11%
3. Vietnam : 6%
4. Germany : 5%
5. Russia : 5%
6. USA : 4%
7. Argentina : 3%
8. China : 3%
9. Saudi Arabia : 3%
10. Italy : 3%
11. Columbia : 2%
12. UK : 2%
13. Argentina : 2%
14. Romania : 2%
15. Poland : 2%

What percent of the world’s total internet users come from USA? or China, Japan or India for that matter? According to reports from Cisco, China and USA alone contribute more than a third of the total internet users in the world. By that same measure, China and Japan together constitute one-fourth of the total users. Now, here is a tabulation of the top countries in terms of internet users and the percent of internet users they contribute to the total world numbers.

1. China : 20.8%
2. USA : 13.1%
3. Japan : 5.5%
4. India : 4.7%
5. Brazil : 3.9%
6. Germany : 3.1%
7. UK : 2.7%
8. Russia : 2.6%
9. France : 2.5%
10. South Korea : 2.2%
11. Iran : 1.9%
12. Italy : 1.7%
13. Indonesia : 1.7%
14. Spain : 1.7%
15. Mexico : 1.6%
16. Turkey : 1.5%
17. Canada : 1.4%
18. Philippines : 1.4%
19. Vietnam : 1.3%
20. Poland : 1.2%

According to this study, there are close to 1.734 billion internet users across the world. That makes the United States and China the only two countries to have more than 100 million internet users in their region.
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Till sometime back, nobody, even the great Google did not have a clue about effectively monetizing online video. The problem compounded with the advent of 3G and the subsequent proliferation of mobile videos. Advertising has always been the last resort for companies looking to monetize their traffic and according to a recent study by eMarketer, nearly one-sixth of mobile video revenues in USA are expected to be from advertisements by 2014. So where does a majority of revenue come from? The study notes that though subscription based models are normally frowned upon, they continue to deliver the most revenues – at least in the case of mobile videos. $413 million of the total $548 million that mobile videos are expected to make this year in the US are from subscriptions alone.

Total Revenues from Mobile Videos – Estimate
2008 : $340.8 million
2009 : $436 million
2010 : $548.3 million
2011 : $719.2 million
2012 : $925.9 million
2013 : $1128.6 million
2014 : $1342.2 million

Revenues from Advertising
2008 : $12.2 million
2009 : $20.0 million
2010 : $35.1 million
2011 : $58.7 million
2012 : $92.6 million
2013 : $142.3 million
2014 : $206.3 million

Revenues from Subscription
2008 : $273.8 million
2009 : $344.3 million
2010 : $413.4 million
2011 : $524.4 million
2012 : $669.1 million
2013 : $786.4 million
2014 : $901.2 million

AOL has been attempting a transition to content-based business model and while it has definitely helped the company find a focus area for the future, the revenues are hard to come by. According to the recent quarterly revenue report filed by the company, the revenues have been gradually falling and the company that made over $1 billion in revenue back in Q1 2008 has barely crossed the $500 million mark this time around. The company is clearly dependent on advertising revenues as the report shows. Close to 50% of AOL’s quarterly revenues are from advertising – a good chunk of it from display advertisements.

Here is the quarterly breakdown of AOL’s revenues. The money made from advertising in each of these quarters is provided inside brackets.

Q1 ’08 : $1.116 billion ($540 million)
Q2 ’08 : $1.043 billion ($517 million)
Q3 ’08 : $991 million ($487 million)
Q4 ’08 : $961 million ($500 million)
Q1 ’09 : $855 million ($432 million)
Q2 ’09 : $792 million ($407 million)
Q3 ’09 : $764 million ($402 million)
Q4 ’09 : $796 million ($459 million)
Q1 ’10 : $655 million ($346 million)
Q2 ’10 : $584 million ($297 million)

Now where does the average internet users hang out on the world wide web? If personal experience is anything to go by , it may not be difficult for a good majority of us to fathom that a significant amount of time is spent on social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

According to a study by Nielsen, the average internet user in the US spends close to 23% of his/her internet time on social networks. That’s a rise of nearly 7 percentage points from just a year back. Now what’s driving this usage is well worth a discussion. But I would assume this rise to be more so because a lot more users are on the SNS websites today (consequently pushing the average time up) rather than any drastic rise in time spent because of rise in popularity of social games like Farmville. That’s because both Facebook and Twitter have seen a significant rise in average time spent per month per user.

Here are the average numbers for June 2010. The corresponding numbers for June 2009 is in brackets.

Facebook : 4hrs 39mins 33sec (1hr 22min 14sec)
Twitter : 31min 17sec (5min 2sec)