Digital Innovation and Disruption

Posted on October 9, 2011 by Mark Levy — No Comments ↓

Via Mashable: Who are the movers, the shakers, the companies that affect profound change? And what products do they bring to market that disrupt all others, making other companies completely re-think their strategies? Let’s take a look at seven of those products whose competitors wish had never existed.

That’s what we’ll find out with this infographic by professional networking site Focus.com. You’ll see how 7 companies such as Skype, Netflix, Apple and Google rolled out products and services that approached their market in such a unique way that they changed everything.

Besides those usual suspects, there are a few surprises in the group, too — products that lowered prices, approached their markets in unheard-of ways, even created new markets — and changed the world. See how they did it in this rich infographic, and then let us know of disruptive innovations you’ve encountered. What do you think will be the next disruptive product or service?

Posted in infographic

USC Marshall Study Projects Massive Tablet Growth

Posted on May 20, 2011 by Mark Levy — No Comments ↓

A new study by the USC Marshall Institute for Communication Technology Management (CTM) highlights the increasing penetration of tablets and smartphones in the North American market. Among the key findings:

• Tablet ownership in North American households is projected to increase from 8 percent in 2011 to 27 percent in 2012. The biggest growth in tablet users will be among 13-44 year olds.

• The profile of current tablet users is revealing: 70 percent are between the ages of 18 and 44. They are slightly more likely to be male than female, and they largely live in high-income households. Members of ethnic groups, including African Americans, Latinos and Asians, are nearly twice as likely to buy a tablet in the next year as Caucasians.

Posted in Tablets

The Growth of Mobile Marketing

Posted on March 23, 2011 by Mark Levy — No Comments ↓

Learn More about Mobile Tagging at Microsoft Tag.

Posted in Mobile Marketing

170 Million Watch Online Video in US in February

Posted on March 17, 2011 by Mark Levy — No Comments ↓

Image via CrunchBase

Via Techcrunch

ComScore has just released data from its Video Metrix service, showing that 170 million Internet users in the United States watched online video content in February for an average of 13.6 hours per viewer.

Tagged with: ComScore, facebook, Vevo, youtube
Posted in Online Video

The Future of Home Networking

Posted on February 24, 2011 by Mark Levy — No Comments ↓

via Mashable

David Henry is a senior director of product marketing for NETGEAR where he works on high performance, dependable and easy home networking, storage and digital media products to connect people with the Internet and their content and devices. You can follow NETGEAR on Twitter @NETGEAR.

The future of home networking will see multiple devices connected to the Internet and to each other. At the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the emphasis was on Internet-enabled everything. Recent market studies also confirm this trend. The penetration of connected consumer electronic devices such as TVs, Blu-ray players, and smartphones are projected to grow 400% between 2010 and 2015, as shown in the chart below.

The introduction of so many new tablets is another indication that the demand for connected consumer electronics is surging. Consumer expectations about the quality of their connectivity is increasing as more and more of the devices are used for entertainment such as streaming movies or online gaming.

Tagged with: connected home, Home network, NETGEAR, Network-attached storage, Wi-Fi
Posted in Digital Home

Multi-Screen Services: Growth Trend or Just Hype?

Posted on February 22, 2011 by Mark Levy — 1 Comment ↓

Image via Wikipedia

The term multi-screen is being used just about everywhere these days. But what does multi-screen actually mean? For years, network equipment suppliers and operators have been espousing the benefits of a converged intelligent network that offers integrated multi-screen services. Converged network services will, for example, permit a voice call session to be upgraded to a video call session on the fly. The term multi-screen can also imply bundled network services, such as TV Everywhere, with a common authorization mechanism linking pay TV subscriptions to the PC and mobile handset. Since Netflix is accessible from just about any web-enabled device, it must be a multi-screen service. And last month at CES, Samsung (and others) demonstrated the ability to share video between a tablet and a big screen TV, provided both are running the same proprietary multi-screen application platform.

Tagged with: Alcatel Lucent, CES, Netflix, Television, TV Everywhere
Posted in Digital Video, TV

Top Mobile Internet Trends

Posted on February 11, 2011 by Mark Levy — No Comments ↓

Mary Meeker from Kleiner Perkins shares her views on the mobile Internet. Mobile is affecting every part of the world and growing massively.

Top 10 Mobile Internet Trends (Feb 2011)

Posted in Internet, Mobile

Digital Multi-tasking on the rise

Posted on February 1, 2011 by Mark Levy — No Comments ↓

More Americans than ever are multitasking while they watch TV, according to a new survey from Deloitte.

Between September 10 and October 8, 2010, Deloitte polled 2,000 U.S. consumers ages 14-75 on their digital habits. Unsurprisingly, it found that Americans are plugged in. 85% own a desktop computer, yet another 68% own a laptop or a netbook and another 41% have Internet-enabled phones. Moreover, 1/3 of American households now own a smartphone, up from 22% in 2007.

TV is still king, though. 74% of U.S. consumers still watch TV primarily on their TV sets, and a full 59% of U.S. households now own flat-screen TVs. In 2007, that number was just 17%. Still, Deloitte’s survey shows that younger consumers are moving towards the Internet for their TV content; 37% of 22 to 27-year-olds surveyed said that they watch TV on the web five to seven times a week.

Posted in TV

What’s a DVD Daddy?

Posted on December 16, 2010 by Mark Levy — No Comments ↓

: Image via Wikipedia

Home video retail revenue has fallen precipitously over the past five years. Worse yet, double-digit declines in annual retail sales of physical discs are expected, resulting in a drop of $4.6 billion from 2009 to 2014. To replace retail DVD revenue losses, the online digital paid video download and streaming segment, (which includes both purchase and rental) is expected to show high revenue growth. Annual revenue is forecast to grow from $2.3 billion to $6.3 billion within five years, says In-Stat (www.in-stat.com).

The battle lines for online offerings are continuing to be drawn and are intensely competitive. Online à la carte rental of TV episodes will directly compete with online subscription TV services, such as Hulu Plus and Netflix, and may detrimentally impact the use of TV Everywhere services. Further competition will come from paid online video stores, such as Apple iTunes, Amazon, Vudu and CinemaNow.

Posted in Digital Video, DVD

Internet use catches up to the TV

Posted on December 14, 2010 by Mark Levy — No Comments ↓

: Image by Getty Images via @daylife

It could be that it just takes longer to surf the Web than it does to surf channels, but new Forrester Research suggests that people are now spending as much time on the Internet as they are watching TV–and that time spent on the Internet has jumped 121 percent in the last five years.

So should cable executives jump off the Comcast building in Philadelphia or recycle all their set-tops and build only cable modems? Not really. While the research shows that 33 percent of adults use the Internet to watch video (up from 18 percent in 2007) the amount of time they’re spending in front of their TVs has remained pretty stable. It’s likely, according to the report, that people are just abandoning more traditional media like newspapers and the radio–unless, of course, they’re on the Internet.

Posted in Internet, TV