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January 2009 | |
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Market Data 1 Billion Internet Users World WideThe number of internet users was more than 1 billion for the first time in December 2008. There were 1,007,730,000 unique visitors to web sites according to estimates by leading digital metrics company comScore. The total includes people aged 15 and older accessing the internet from home and work computers. (comScore, January23rd 2009) China now has more Internet users than the USAChina represented the largest online audience in the world in December 2008 with 180 million internet users, representing nearly 18 percent of the total worldwide internet audience, followed by the U.S. (163 million, or 16.2 percent share), Japan (6.0 percent share), Germany (3.7 percent share) and the U.K. (3.6 percent share). Since these figures exclude traffic from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs all of which are used in great numbers in China, this data probably understates the number of Chinese internet users quite considerably. Overall, the Asia-Pacific region (including China and Japan) accounted for the highest share of global Internet users at 41 percent, followed by Europe (28 percent share), North America (18 percent share), Latin-America (7 percent share), and the Middle East & Africa (5 percent share). (comScore, January23rd 2009) Microsoft dominance shows cracksOnly 68% of web surfing activity in December 2008 was by people using Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser. This is down from 80% in January 2007. Mozilla's Firefox at 21.3 percent (up from 13 percent) was the second most heavily used, followed by Apple's Safari at 8% (up from 4.7 percent). In January 2007, 93.3 percent of the Web users were running Windows; in December 2008, that figure was down to 88.7 percent. Across the same period, the Apple Mac share rose from 6.2 to 9.6 percent. Problems in this and many other areas of its business has resulted in Microsoft's January 09 announcement that it will lay-off 5,000 workers. Microsoft's struggles really began with the introduction of the Windows Vista operating system, which has not proved popular. On the cost side, having to support and improve a wide range of products means that Microsoft carries a huge burden in product development and maintenance costs: Microsoft's research and development costs for the six months ending December 31 2008 totalled $4.6 billion. (NetApplications data quoted in San Jose Mercury News online 2 January 09, and CIO.com.au 23 January 09) Number of New PCs sold Set to Fall in 2009The number of new PCs sold is likely to drop to 240 million in 2009, 60 million fewer than was sold in 2008, according to Microsoft's CEO, Steve Ballmer.(Quoted in The Financial Times 8 January 2009) Search Advertising in Australia an A$870 million market in 2008Search advertising spend in Australia totaled A$869.7 million during 2008. The industries which allocated the highest proportion of their media budgets to online search advertising in 2008 were: Travel and accommodation at 26.3% of their total media spend, media and entertainment (16.9%), and banking, finance and insurance (12.7%). All of these industries are likely to suffer significantly during the economic downturn in 2009. The FMCG and communications industries allocated just 1.1% and 6.7% of total media spend to search. (Australia Search Advertising Market 2008-2012, Frost and Sullivan) Record Companies Grow Digital Music Revenues - but still struggleThe music industry is struggling to replace collapsing CD sales with digital revenue growth. Warner Music Group Corp, the only publicly quoted music company, reported a 39 per cent growth in digital revenues for 2008 to $639m or 18 per cent of total sales ($3.49bn). Warner's revenues from CDs fell substantially during 2008, and (although the company has gross margins of 47.5 percent) the company's net income fell by 166.67% from a loss of 21.00m to a larger loss of 56.00m. EMI, owned by Terra Firma, the private equity group, reported full year digital revenues rose 29 per cent to £166m, while Universal, owned by Vivendi, reported 33 per cent growth in digital revenue for the first nine months of its financial year. (Financial Times 28 Dec 08, and annual reports) Internet overtakes Newspapers as News Source; TV still Top in USFor the first time, during 2008 more Americans reported that the internet is the source of most of their international and national news, rather than newspapers. (40 percent versus 35 percent). In the survey by the Pew organization, however, TV was still found to be the main source of news for most Americans, with 70 percent saying they get most of their news from television (respondents were allowed to nominate more than one source). (Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, December 2008).
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| Back to top | What Happened. Google Gifts: All I got for Christmas was this Dammed G Phone!A sure sign that the joy ride is over in the Googleplex: instead of their traditional four or five-figure bonuses this Christmas all that Googlers got was a shiny new mobile phone. The phone is the G1 handset made in Taiwan by HTC, running Google's Android smart phone operating system (manufacturing cost estimated at under $90). The phones did not come with SIM cards. Google has been attempting to reign-in its people-costs in recent months (mainly in the area of contract workers) after experiencing significant slowdown in advertising growth. In January 2009 the company announced it was laying off about 100 Google recruitment staff (HR specialists), and it has begun slashing it's wages bills starting with contract workers: many hundreds of contractor staff are being shed. At 31st December 2008 Google had 20,222 full-time employees, just 99 people more than it employed on September 30th. Apple iPhone now sold in Walmart & Best Buy StoresWalmart, the world's biggest retailer, began selling the Apple iPhone in its 2,500 U.S. stores at the end of December 2008. Best Buy started selling the iPhone in September 2008, becoming first U.S. chain to do so outside of Apple's and AT&T's own stores. iPhone is available in Best Buy's 970 full-size stores and 16 smaller Best Buy Mobile stores across America. AT&T, the exclusive U.S. carrier for the iPhone, sells it in more than 2,000 stores. Apple has over 190 U.S. stores. Apple Mac turns 25It is now 25 years since the launch of the Apple Macintosh (on January 24, 1984). Having proven itself and already gained considerable popularity with the Apple II, Apple chose to announce the Apple Mac in one of the most famous-ever commercials, aired during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII on 22 January 1984. View the Apple Mac 1984 TV advert, read about Apple marketing strategy. The formal product release came a couple of days later on January 24th, 1984. Super Bowl XLIII Advertising Drop-offAmerica's Super Bowl annual spectacular draws about 140m viewers and will take place this year on February 1. While 30 second TV ad spots are selling for $3 million, a number of regular advertisers are giving this year a miss, including General Motors and FedEx. As late as Friday before the game, four of the TV commercial spots remained unsold. Brand China Suffers on the Home Front - Toxic Baby Milk ProductsIt took a domestic scandal and health-scare among Chinese babies for China to finally take seriously the rash of dangerous products which have emerged from the country in recent years. In January 2009 two people were found responsible for causing the death of Chinese babies though manufacturing toxic baby milk products and sentenced to death by the Chinese legal system. We first reported on the impact on "brand China" of faulty and dangerous products being manufactured exported around the world in 2007.
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Google is Ten Years Old - What will Adolescence Bring?The Google search engine had it's 10th birthday in October. For now, Google's main customer service (search) seems set to maintain its market dominance. How long this will be so is anyone's guess. Even the best products eventually get replaced with something better. (Google's revenue-generating product is advertising, of course). Despite minor excursions into traditional advertising media and a few modestly successful add-ons such as Google Apps and Google Enterprise, Google remains pretty much a one-product company. Other companies who held similar market dominance in their day were Kodak, Xerox, Polaroid, Hoover, Wang, Texas Instruments (calculators), Woolworths (in the UK), and Thomas Cook. Watching Google over the past few years, the fascinating thing has been to see how it decided to expand its sales organization to keep pace with its growth in revenue around the world (and it did look like it was that way round - first grow sales, then hire people to try and sustain it). Unsurprisingly, since these people had little to do with the company's initial growth, as the recession hits advertisers in 2009 the signs are that a job at Google may well not mean a job for life. In December Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, announced that the company would cut back on projects which have not caught on. In addition to numerous "beta" projects, this has included Google's service which enabled its customers to place adverts in printed newspapers in the US. Interesting New Links Hear What Economic Depression REALLY is LikeRecordings of Studs Terkel's interviews with scores of people sharing their recollections of the Great Depression. Steve Jobs Obituary - Mistakenly made public by BloombergAs we all know, Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs is not in the best of health. While we sincerely wish him well, it was something of a shock when Bloomberg, the global news organization, inadvertently released Steve Job's obituary, which it has ready to go: http://gawker.com/5042795/bloomberg-runs-steve-jobs-obituary List of the World's Top SpammersSpam makes up a large part of the world's email traffic, but did you know that 80 percent of all spam comes from around 200 known professional spam gangs. Here is a listing of the biggest spammers: |
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Just for Fun Jokes What is the difference between a pigeon and a stockbroker? A pigeon can still make a deposit on a Ferrari. --- How do you kill a circus? --- A C note, an E-flat note and a G note walk into a bar. The bartender tells the E-flat to leave because he doesn't serve minors. So the E-flat leaves and the C and G notes share a fifth between them! --- How do you make a small fortune in the restaurant business? |
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