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According to a June 2010 survey by King Fish Media, HubSpot and Junta42, a remarkable 72 percent of the polled American business leaders said that they now had a social media marketing strategy.

eMarketer reports that the companies surveyed 457 U.S. marketers and managers -- 52 percent of respondents were in the publishing, media, advertising and marketing industries.

Those findings are among the highest percentage from surveys that polled whether U.S. marketers had a social strategy. In May 2010, Digital Brand Expressions found that 52 percent of marketers had no plan -- similar to the 50 percent of poll participants in an April 2010 study by R2integrated. More...

USB connectivity has been extremely successful in the digital still camera and digital camcorder markets. Most people want to use it to transfer images to PCs, to store video recordings, or to print their pictures.

As picture file sizes increase with digital camera image resolution, and as camcorders move from standard-definition (SD) to high-definition (HD), the desirability of SuperSpeed USB becomes even more apparent, according to the latest market study by In-Stat.

As a result, adoption of SuperSpeed USB into digital cameras and camcorders will be much more rapid than other CE device segments -- with penetration levels reaching 50 and 60 percent respectively, by 2014. More...

Infonetics Research released excerpts from two new market studies of broadband access services. Most FTTH equipment vendors may be surprised to learn that many operators are already evaluating next generation technologies to solve their current and future bandwidth requirements.

In most cases, the accelerated adoption of online video entertainment services has been a primary driver of new broadband infrastructure investment planning.

When Infonetics recently surveyed global service providers about their Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) deployment strategies, almost half said they are evaluating 10G GPON, and a small but significant number are already evaluating WDM PON, asymmetric 10G EPON, and symmetric 10G EPON. More...

The growth of online video adoption and consumption is happening faster than most media industry analysts had expected. By 2014, it's forecast that there will be 57 million U.S. broadband households viewing full-length online video on the TV, according to the latest market study by In-Stat.

Revenue associated with this web-to-TV video content will grow at an accelerated rate, from $2 billion to over $17 billion during a five-year period.

"The over-the-top (OTT) video market represents a new distribution channel for digital entertainment. Content producers want to market premium video content directly to the consumer," says Keith Nissen, Principal Analyst, In-Stat. More...

To date, most media industry analysts still insist that consumer use of online video has no negative impact on traditional pay-TV service revenues. Even when there's mounting evidence that consumer behavior is shifting away from traditional linear broadcast programing, the denial continues. The recent disclosure of a huge decline in U.S. pay-TV subscriptions is the latest example.

Meanwhile, comScore released July 2010 data showing that 178 million U.S. Internet users watched online video content during the month -- for an average of 14.7 hours per viewer.

Google Sites, driven primarily by video viewing at YouTube.com, ranked as the top online video content property with 143.2 million unique viewers, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 55.1 million viewers. More...

According to the latest market study by ABI Research, healthcare, retail and manufacturing -- three sectors each with a double-digit share -- will command over 36 percent of all mobile business customer data revenues worldwide over the next five years.

By 2014, enterprise data revenues derived from messaging, mobile broadband access, and applications will reach nearly $27 billion.

Enterprise practice director Dan Shey says, "Manufacturing and retail are the second and third largest employment industries in the public/private sector worldwide (after agriculture). Healthcare also employs many people and is rapidly mobilizing -- it will experience one of highest growth rates in mobile data services revenue."

But, apparently mobile data services revenue share by sector will vary on a region-by-region basis. More...

 
Casual gaming has driven the adoption of mobile games to more than a quarter of mobile phone subscribers and more than one in five members of the U.S. population, according to the latest eMarketer estimates.

This year, 64 million people will play mobile games at least monthly, a number that will rise to 94.9 million by 2014. eMarketer's estimates exclude mobile users who play pre-installed games, which offer publishers decent brand exposure but little in the way of monetization opportunities.

While games are currently popular on both smartphones and feature phones, the composition of the mobile gaming audience will shift further toward smartphones as they increase in penetration across the population. More...

Smartphone manufacturers need to focus on accommodating all seven core user-preferred applications in their next-generation handset designs, according to the latest market study by In-Stat.

These seven applications include email, games, social networking, instant messaging, mapping and travel directions, music and radio, and the always popular weather forecast app.

Combined, the big seven apps will account for 7 billion downloads worldwide in 2014.

"In-Stat tracks 26 different categories of smartphone applications," says Frank Dickson, VP of Research. "A designer can optimize a handset for any one of the application categories. More...

Some forward-looking mobile phone service providers are attempting to attract new smartphone customers with attractive feature-rich and truly economical offerings.

In a cross-country comparison of mobile data pricing, ABI Research found The United Kingdom, France and Indonesia to have among the lowest prices for mobile broadband plans.

In Indonesia, a 4GB data package for the BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) costs as low as $17 monthly. Indonesia and other developing countries are driving mobile Internet usage through the use of low-cost prepaid mobile broadband and Internet plans, driven by the popularity of BlackBerry and other smartphones. More...

Digital video players, blu-ray disc players, game consoles, and now television sets are connecting to the Internet. Moreover, everything online is becoming accessible on smartphones and other connected mobile devices.

Internet video streaming is the new service that's in high demand. However, most TVs are not enabled to display these offerings. The hybrid Web-to-TV set top box (STB) will deliver over-the-top services to these TV sets -- by integrating Internet access capability into cable, satellite, telcoTV (IPTV), and digital terrestrial STBs.

Work is underway to create hybrid services that bring apps and widgets to TV programming, along with advanced advertising, according to the latest market study by In-Stat. More...