Research

Search Engines Challenge Email As Most Popular Web Activity
Using search engines has become the second most popular activity for Web users, according to new research from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
The figures put search engines second only to email as the numero uno Net application, with reading the news registering as the third most popular Web activity.
The research reveals that an average 41 per cent of Web-connected Americans use search engines on a typical day, a sharp 55 percent rise from the middle of 2004.
In numbers, this equates to a jump from 38 million daily search engine users in June 2004 to around 59 million users in September, 2005.
As expected, email remains the Web’s major attraction, with 52 per cent of Americans checking mail on any given day, up 45 per cent from June last year.
The Pew project looked into the demographics of Web users and discovered that those spending the most time on search engines tended to be in their 30s and well-off.
‘Gen X’ surfers (29-40 year olds, not the Billy Idol-fronted band) were online the most (51 per cent), followed by ‘Gen Y’ users (18-28 year olds), ‘Older Baby Boomers’ (51-59 yrs old), ‘Younger Baby Boomers’ (41-50), ‘Matures’ (60-69) and, finally ‘After work’ (70+). We wonder who makes up these daft categories?
The report commented, “Those who use search engines on an average day tend to be heavy Internet users. They are much more likely to have broadband connections than dial-up connections; to log on to the Internet several times a day; and to have spent considerable time online during the day.”
With Google recently claiming to have trebled its index of 8bn pages and Yahoo! claiming 19.2bn pages, it’s not surprising that the search engines are getting a hammering.
What is interesting, however, is the rise in people searching using ‘local’ qualifiers, like postcodes or addresses, to narrow down their search results.
Google still rules supreme as the king of the Web search tools, registering 43.7 per cent of local searches, with Yahoo! lording it over Internet Yellow Page search sites (where users type in data such as location and business type) with 27.6 per cent of searches.
Pew Internet & American Life Project report [PDF]
22 November, 2005
Mesh Networks Discovered By The Mainstream
Mesh Networks are going to grow enormously by the end of the decade, according to ABI research. This ‘revalation’ is following years technical-types raving on about them.
While predicting “stellar growth rate”, they don’t think it will eat into current providers of current infrastructure, but instead new markets will emerge such as alternative service providers, municipalities and college campus’s. Oh and buy happy co-incidence, ABI have a report that you can buy about the subject, “Wireless Mesh Networking: Technologies and Deployment Strategies for Metropolitan and Campus Networks.”
Indeed, at the launch of the One Laptop Per Child event earlier in the week, Nicholas Negroponte explained that Mesh Networking was intrinsic to the success of the project, as many countries it would be used in do not have communication infrastructures.
Mesh Networks explained
Mesh Networks, have been spoken about, and set up by some, for many years. The idea behind it is simple. Each user of the network expands the reach of the network, by letting information pass through their machine to its eventual destination, be that another user of the network, or an external connection.
Using this a small community of people could share a single network connection. The network is ‘organic’ – everyone who uses it, contributes to it.
There are technical challenges. As each person on the network could disappear at any time, the routing of the information needs to be highly dynamic.
At the start of this week, Cisco announced their first Mesh network products, following their purchase of Airespace for $450 million in December of 2004.
ABI Research
18 November, 2005
Digital Music Grabs 60% Of Single Market
BPI, the UK record label industry association has released its third-quarter report revealing that it’s boom time for the Brit digital music industry.
There’s a veritably frenzy of digital downloading going on, with UK single track download sales totalling 25 million since the format launched, with 5.7 million sales in 2004 and a thumping great 16.9 million sales already notched up this year.
According to the BPI, weekly sales regularly top half a million, with digital downloads accounting for over 60 percent of the entire singles market – compare that to the 3.6 percent market share at the beginning of 2004.
Digital is also claiming a bigger share of the Top 75 singles chart, growing from 15.9 percent when the combined chart launched in mid-April to 25.5 percent at the end of August.
But with the Yin of the increased digital music sales comes the Yan of declining retail sales, with the BPI reporting a 21.8 percent decline in physical single sales.
This decline has, however, been more than offset by the hefty growth of digital song purchases – up 288 percent – helping the overall singles market grow by a massive 49 percent. Significantly, these figures do not include subscription sales or paid-for streams.
Once again, the death of vinyl has been exaggerated with the 7-inch physical singles market registering 80 per cent growth with 800,000 sales.
A clearly chuffed BPI Chairman Peter Jamieson said: “This year digital made the transition from mere potential to becoming a significant revenue stream. But this is just the beginning.”
“While the record label model of investing in the best new music talent remains the same, the emergence of innovative new digital services means that the record companies can offer consumers even greater choice as to how to access their music.”
The report also highlighted figures from The Official UK Charts Company which suggested that digital punters are taking advantage of increasing consumer choice, with 81% of all download sales being non-chart titles.
Out of the 1.5 million different songs available legally online, around 80,000 different tracks are being sold each week – up from 55,000 last August.
BPI
11 October, 2005
One In Five Americans Has Never Been Online
A new study has revealed that one in five Americans is without home Internet access and have never been online, potentially hindering their access to crucial information and services.
The survey by the non-profit Pew Internet & American Life Project has highlighted the existence of a digital divide running along lines of age, race and income.
American wrinklies are lagging far behind in Internet adoption, with only 26 percent of folks 65 and older going online, compared with 67 percent of the 50 to 64 group.
One in five American adults (22 percent) remain completely untouched by the Internet and have never been online or received an email – roughly the same percentage of the population as in 2002.
Not surprisingly, the study also found that people with lower incomes and less education also registered lower percentages of Internet adoption.
Although around 70 percent of white Americans use the Internet, only 57 percent of African-Americans are online, with an emerging divide among those who have high-speed “broadband” Internet access and those on cranky old dial up.
The Pew study found that the majority of those using broadband are affluent and well-educated and that 66 percent of households earning $75,000 (~£42,260, ~€61,825) or more annually have a high-speed broadband Internet service at home.
This compares to just 21 percent of households on low incomes ($30,000 a year, ~£16,900, ~€24,730) possessing a high-speed Internet service.
Broadband makes it easier for surfers to whiz around the Web and download music, view videos, enjoy free VoIP calls and access online services and important information on topics like health and finance.
The differences are similar between those who have college degrees and those who have high-school degrees with Susannah Fox, associate director of the Pew project, commenting, “What’s starting to emerge … is an elite group of people who are pulling away with what they can do online.”
Fox added that businesses and governments should not forget the needs of the unconnected population and ensure that offline sources for health and government material is made available.
The study estimated that 53 percent of Internet users now have a high-speed connection at home, up from 21 percent in 2004, while a separate report last week by Nielsen/NetRatings, estimated that around 42 percent of the US population has broadband Internet service, up from 36 percent in January.
Pew Internet & American Life Project
7 October, 2005
Silver Surfers Send Sales Soaring
The UK market for online shopping looks set to soar to £60 billion (~€88 billion, US$108 billion~) by 2010 according to a new report.
Research carried out by The Future Foundation for The Air Miles Travel Company claims that within five years 20% of all retail spending could be generated by items bought over the trusty Internet
The report also highlights the growth of silver surfers – old ‘uns aged between 55 and 64 – a demographic traditionally ignored by e-tailers.
According to the report, nearly two-thirds of people heading for retirement are currently clicking away on the web – up from only a third in 2001.
These figures suggest a silver surfer shopping boom is only five years away as there’s traditionally a two to six year delay between first using the Internet and whipping out the wallet online.
James Roper, chief executive of industry body for global e-retailing IMRG, warned that companies assuming that online shopping is only young hipsters could be restricting their growth.
“It’s essential for company growth to invest in this older online shopper,” he added.
The Future Foundation commented that websites sporting yoof-orientated design, teensy weensy text and kray-zee interfaces are likely to miss out on silver surfer sales.
Instead, the report stressed the importance of creating accessible sites with clear navigation, letting age-challenged users unleash their pensions and Spend! Spend! Spend!
Internet shopping continues to increase overall, with nearly 40% of people in the UK spending online during the past six months – up 100% from three years ago.
“Today’s online shopping market is certainly booming and is set to evolve dramatically over the next five years,” said Michael Wilmott, chief executive and head futurologist at the Foundation.
“If current trends continue, the proportion of Internet users among the general population could be as high as 85% by 2010 – with a whopping 80% of people shopping online.”
The Future Foundation
15 August, 2005
Three Quarters of US Homes Have A Computer
New US research claims that Americans are becoming increasingly “digital,” with over three quarters owning computers and many households verily humming with multiple digital electronics products, including cell phones to entertainment devices to cameras.
A recent survey conducted by Opinion Research Corporation’s CARAVAN poll involving 2,000 respondents discovered that three-in-four American adults (76%) own a computer, two-thirds (67%) own a mobile phone and nearly half (47%) are snapping away on digital cameras.
Other digital lifestyle products contributing to the Greenhouse Effect in US homes included digital cameras (47 per cent); video game consoles like XBox, PSP etc (38 per cent); TiVo/digital video recorders (27 per cent); home security systems (19 per cent), and iPods or other MP3 digital players (17 per cent).
The research was commissioned by hard drive manufacturer, Seagate, who were keen to remind users of their role in the digital revolution:
“Technology advances that enable smaller, higher capacity, more stable storage solutions are allowing consumer electronics manufacturers to develop products with greater functionality,” said Bill Watkins, CEO of Seagate Technology.
“The convenience, reliability and huge capacity of hard drive storage is enhancing applications as diverse as digital audio players, gaming devices, DVRs, HDTVs, automobiles, cell phones, PDAs, and a host of other products. Ground-breaking storage solutions are helping to drive the adoption of a digital lifestyle.”
3 August, 2005
Music File Sharers Spend The Most
Illegal music downloaders shell out more for legitimate music downloads than goody two-shoes music fans.
The results of the ‘2005 Speakerbox’ study by market researchers The Leading Question revealed that music fans who download music illegally via file-sharing networks also fork out four-and-a-half times more on legitimate music downloads than average fans.
The survey asked 600 British PC and mobile-owning British music fans about their downloading activities and discovered that music pirates spend substantially more on legally downloadable music through sites like Apple’s iTunes Music Store or Napster
According to the report, pirates who regularly download or share unlicensed music spend an average of £5.52 (~US$9.63, ~€7.99) per month on legal digital music, while average music fans only spend £1.27 (~US$2.21, ~€1.84) on digital tracks.
How much both groups spend on CDs wasn’t specified.
“Music fans who break piracy laws are highly valuable customers,” said Paul Brindley, director of The Leading Question.
“Legal actions are making something of an impact but unlicensed file sharing will never be eradicated. The smart response is to capitalise on the power of the p2p networks themselves to entice consumers into more attractive legal alternatives,” he added.
The research also revealed that illegal downloaders were mustard keen to try emerging music services, with 60% wanting to get their hands on a MP3-enabled phone, compared to just 29% of other music fans.
“There’s a myth that all illegal downloaders are mercenaries hell-bent on breaking the law in pursuit of free music,” Brindley continued. “In reality, they are often hardcore fans who are extremely enthusiastic about adopting paid-for services as long as they are suitably compelling.”
The survey highlighted that phones still have some way to go before they can compete with dedicated MP3 players as de-facto music playing devices.
Only 8% of punters surveyed were planning to buy a music playing mobile phone in the next 12 months, compared to 33% ready to rip out the readies for an iPod or dedicated MP3 player during the same period.
Respondents cited built-in cameras, organiser functions and video cameras above music players in their preferences for mobile phone features.
Punters expressed concern about the low battery life of music playing phones, with some fearful of losing their music collection if they lost their phone.
With many consumers getting their phones for nowt through contract deals – and often replacing them regularly – the survey concluded that most punters have a low “emotional attachment” to their phones.
Despite this, 38% of those surveyed liked the idea of downloading full-length tracks direct to their mobiles, with the figure rising to over 50% for punters already downloading tracks to their computers.
Mobile phone manufacturers trying to tempt new users with bigger onboard memory will note that only 4% of the survey respondents wanted more than 1,000 songs worth of music to take with them on holiday.
Online file sharers ‘buy more music’ [Guardian]
The Leading Edge
27 July, 2005
MSN Virtual World Goes Live, Apple Vanishes
Microsoft has launched the first public beta of its Virtual Earth, an online mapping application overlaying satellite images with local searches and maps.
MSN’s Virtual Earth will provide both street-map and satellite views of locations and serve up driving directions between places, competing directly with Google’s popular “Google Maps” service.
Virtual Earth has a trick up its sleeve through its ability to transform Wi-Fi enabled PCs into “location-determining devices” without the need for any separate hardware, as we reported earlier.
The system works by noting the latitude and longitude of available Wi-Fi access points and then triangulating a user’s location after consulting Microsoft’s huge database of router MAC addresses.
A user’s current location is then highlighted onscreen with subsequent search results tailored around that location.
Virtual Earth will also have the capability to visually point out locations for ATMs, restaurants, and petrol stations – something that the rival Google Maps service has been able to do since incorporating satellite imagery in April this year.
“MSN Virtual Earth provides a deeply immersive search experience that lets people see what it’s like to be in a location and easily explore what they can do there,” purred Stephen Lawle, general manager of the Microsoft Mappoint business unit.
The service which currently shows US-based satellite images only and users must download the Microsoft Location Finder client application access the location-finding services.
Microsoft plans to knock out updated versions of Virtual Earth every four months, with the next beta release set to incorporate bird’s-eye imagery licensed from Pictometry International which will add cities, landmarks and points of interest to the product.
Microsoft also plans to integrate traffic data and weather data to the service in the coming months.
Mac users, however, will have to wait until autumn for a version that runs on their machines.
MSN Virtual Earth project manager Mark Law has insisted that MSN Virtual Earth is not a purely consumer-based site only, adding that Microsoft will be making the application-programming interface available to developers.
Microsoft has said that future versions of Virtual Earth will allow users to create their own interactive maps, and add their own reviews of restaurants and other places.
Wags on the Internet are claiming that Microsoft has virtually wiped Apple off the face of the Web, noting that Apple’s Silicon Valley headquarters – which can be seen in their full glory on Google Maps – appears as nothing more than a deserted parking lot in Virtual Earth.
Microsoft insisted that because the service was still in its testing phase, it’s just a coincidence that they used older, black-and-white photographs to display the barren wasteland around Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California in 1991.
Others might put it down to wishful thinking.
MSN Virtual Earth
26 July, 2005
Accenture ‘Digital Home’ Study Finds Big Barriers To Convergence
Hefty prices and consumer-baffling technology continues to hold back the development and adoption of space age converged digital home solutions, according to a survey by Accenture.
The survey – which involved 2,600 consumers in the US, UK, France, Germany and Japan – asked people their opinions on a converged digital home; i.e. a home system covering entertainment (home theatre, TV and hi-fis), healthcare (remote measure blood pressure sensing, pulse and temperature), home management (controlled security sensors, locks, fire detection and cameras) and the virtual office (voice, email and fax).
In no uncertain terms, cost was flagged up as the biggest barrier to purchasing a digital home solution, with more than three-quarters (80 percent) unhappy with the wallet-draining prices of home systems.
Consumers also wanted things simplified, with more than two-thirds (70 percent) saying that they would prefer to have a single provider for the content, services and digital devices.
“Despite strong consumer desire for a single aggregator for converged or complete digital home packages, many companies in this space provide only a portion of the content or services that comprise the complete digital home,” said Al Delattre, a partner in Accenture’s Communications & High Tech practice.
“In order to truly meet consumer needs, stronger collaboration and partnerships among hardware, content and service companies is imperative,” he added.
The survey respondents were served up four different types of digital home formats – home entertainment, home heathcare, home management and virtual office offerings – and asked for their feedback.
When asked what benefit would most encourage them to wedge out for a converged digital home solution, the greatest number of respondents, 56 percent, said, “save money,” followed by, “make life easier” (46 percent), “improve home energy efficiency” (41 percent), “save time” (40 percent) and “make my life at home more fun” (34 percent).
Although consumers show strong interest in the digital home concept, it’s not just the cost that is making them a tad wary: the survey revealed concerns about data privacy and security (40 percent), complexity of installation (35 percent), equipment becoming outdated quickly (33 percent), and the need to replace current home equipment (32 percent).
The bad news for box-shifting hi tech companies is that a mere 4 percent of all respondents said they could afford a converged digital home service now, although 48 percent believed such a service would be affordable in one to five years.
Nearly one-quarter (24 percent) reckoned they’d never be able to afford such a service.
But it’s not all doom and gloom, with consumers expressing a willingness to pay additional fees each month for services designed to enhance ease of use and convenience.
In the survey, 65 percent of respondents said they’d be happy to shell out for digital home services and content in a subscription or leasing model, and that they’d be willing to pay an additional US$20 (~€16~£11) to US$50 (~€41~£28) per month for automated, value-added services like secured data backup, system support, and specialised content such as medical data collection.
“Consumers will increasingly become more of a development driver for digital home solutions,” said Delattre. “But it is clear that the technology itself is just one piece – business models and customer support are almost as important as the product itself. Without demonstrated and specific consumer preferences to drive adoption of the digital home concept, it will continue to be just that – a concept.”
Accenture
12 July, 2005
Legal UK Music Downloads Top Ten Million, Up 743%
The UK record industry trade association the BPI has revealed that download sales in 2005 have raced past the ten-million mark – almost twice the amount for the whole of 2004.
Sales are racing ahead of last year’s 5.7 million legal download total, with 5,562,638 single track downloads registered between April-June 2005 compared to just 659,377 for the same period last year – up a thumping great 743.6% for the quarter.
Purring wildly, BPI Chairman Peter Jamieson said: “The record industry has enthusiastically embraced the new legal download services since their emergence in the mainstream little more than a year ago and now we’re beginning to reap the rewards.”
Illegal music downloads remain a thorn in the side of the industry, but the growth in legal downloads now outstrips the growth in dodgy file sharing with Jamieson adding, “The battle against illegal files-haring will continue, but we are delighted to have hit this milestone so soon”.
Big gains in DVD single sales have compensated for the continuing decline in CD single sales (down 23% to 5,721,873) with an overall 52.4% improvement in single sales being recorded (including downloads).
Once again, the death of trusty old vinyl has been exaggerated, with quarterly sales for seven inch vinyl up by 87.3% on last year, although figures are comparatively small (288,780 between April-June 2005 against 154,216 for the same period last year).
Data compiled by the BPI shows annual sales of seven-inch vinyl singles climbing up to 1.4 million units, representing a huge 64% improvement year-on-year – the best 12 months for the format since 1998.
The resurgence of vinyl has been attributed to British indie and rock acts love affair with their near ancient format, with bands like Iron Maiden’s, Libertines, Babyshambles, Kaiser Chiefs and Franz Ferdinand all releasing songs on vinyl.
BPI Chairman Peter Jamieson added: “Despite the incredible growth in download sales, there is still a huge demand for the collectible physical formats. It would be wrong to write-off physical formats just yet. Record companies are committed to meeting consumer demand in whatever format people want their music”.
BPI report
11 July, 2005