Instagram has 13m users and 7 employees

"The popular photo app that’s responsible for flooding the internet with fuzzy, low-contrast, retro images of cats, hipsters and urban street scenes shows no sign of slowing down.
Of course we’re talking about Instagram and its iPhone-only app for sharing stylized photos. The startup attracted 12 million users in just over a year on the App Store. By early November, the small company — and we mean small; Instagram has just seven employees — grabbed another million and now boasts well over 13 million application users, co-founder Kevin Systrom shared with VentureBeat."

Source:  VentureBeat, 18th November 2011

Earlier - 10m users announced in September

Paypal's global mobile payments were 516% higher Y-o-Y on Black Friday 2011

"By using their mobile devices, shoppers have access to a “mall” in the palm of their hand, complete with millions of products and simple, secure payments, to find and buy the hottest holiday deals. An increasing number of shoppers turned to their mobile devices on Black Friday to shop wherever, whenever.
- eBay Mobile announced that shoppers in the U.S. purchased nearly two and a half times as many items via eBay Mobile this Black Friday when compared to 2010
- PayPal Mobile announced a six-fold (516%) increase in global mobile payment volume compared to 2010
- GSI Commerce announced a three-fold (254%) increase in U.S. mobile sales this Black Friday compared to 2010.
“Shoppers are increasingly choosing the convenience of mobile to find the best deals from wherever they are while avoiding big crowds and long lines,” said Steve Yankovich, vice president, Mobile, for eBay Inc. “The ability to simply pick up your phone or tablet and purchase what you want, when you want it, has become an attractive alternative to shoppers in record numbers this holiday season.”"
Source:  Press release from eBay, 26th November 2011

40% of mobile users in Canada have a smartphone

"8 million people in Canada owned smartphones in September 2011, representing 40 percent of the mobile market in Canada, a gain of 7 percentage points in the past six months. RIM ranked as the top platform with 35.8 percent of the smartphone market, followed by Apple at 30.1 percent. Google Android gained ground among the competition by doubling its market share to 25.0 over the past six months. Symbian ranked fourth with 4.2 percent share, followed by Microsoft with 3.2 percent."
Source:  Data from comScore, reported in a press release, 30th November 2011

Social, Digital & Mobile in Asia

We Are Social's Guide to Social, Digital & Mobile in Asia (Overview, Nov 2011)

View more presentations from We Are Social Singapore

The Economist's apps are accessed by 650,000 devices each month

"The Economist apps are currently available on iPhone, iPad and Android Smartphone.
- Since our launch in November 2010, the apps have been downloaded to over 2m iPhones and iPads.
- Every month over 650,000 unique devices access The Economist app content."

Source:  The Economist Group, retrieved 28th November 2011

84% of iPhone users say that they are loyal to the brand

"Apple is well ahead of rivals in building brand loyalty among its users in a mobile market where the key brands are rushing to build as large a foothold as possible, a study by research firm GfK showed.
Some 84 percent of iPhone users said they would pick iPhone also when they replace their cellphone, while 60 percent of consumers who use smartphones running Google's Android said they would stick with phones using the same software.
Only 48 percent of people using Research In Motion's cellphones said they would stay loyal to their Blackberrys, the study showed.
More than 70 percent of consumers said they would stick with their phones due to their seamless integration of features and access to content."

Source:  Research by GfK, reported by Reuters, 25th November 2011

Methodology:  "The research firm interviewed around 4,500 people in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Brazil, China, the United States and Japan."

20% of the page views at FT.com come from mobile devices

"The Financial Times has registered another digital milestone with the FT Web App seeing over one million users since its launch in June.
Available on the iPhone and iPad by visiting app.ft.com directly from the device’s web browser, almost half of its users have downloaded a shortcut to their iPad or iPhone home screen, replicating a native app experience.
The launch of the FT Web App has significantly boosted mobile and tablet traffic. FT.com now sees 20% of total page views and 15% of new B2C subscriptions each week coming directly from mobile and tablet devices. These readers are also more engaged, with FT.com users who register on mobiles and tablets 2.5 times more likely to subscribe, as well as being more active in giving feedback."

Source:  Blog post from the Financial Times, 18th November 2011

Google has activated over 200m Android devices

"Google shared some interesting statistics about its Android platform during the Google Music press conference held in Los Angeles on Wednesday. More than 200 million Android smartphones and other devices have been activated around the world. That's up from 100 million six months ago. That's an incredible amount of growth for a platform that didn't exist three years ago."

Source:  Information Week, 17th November 2011

More smartphones were shipped to China in Q3 2011 than to the US

"China has overtaken the U.S. as the largest market for smartphones by volume, according to one firm’s estimates.
Nearly 24 million smartphones were shipped to providers in China during the third quarter of 2011, compared to 23.3 million units in the U.S., data from Boston-based research and consulting firm Strategy Analytics suggests.The growth of China’s smartphone market has been significant, up 58% from just the previous quarter. Shipments of smartphones in the U.S. fell 7% from Q2 2011.
(Note the firm’s estimates only calculate the number of devices shipped, not sold, and that the U.S. still leads the market by smartphone revenue.)"
Source:  Mashable, 23rd November 2011

90% of the money spent on apps is spent on iOS apps

"Apple devices still hammering the rest when it comes to real spending by punters.
Analyst Gene Munster with Piper Jaffray made his projection earlier this week, and also said that he believes Android Market has generated a miserly seven per cent of the amount Apple's App Store has grossed in its lifetime.
He also claims that about $330 million has been generated on the Android Market, and that only 1.3 per cent of the apps on it are paid.
Munster doesn't see Android making up too much ground in revenues despite the gains its making in overall usage."

Source:  MobileEntertainment, 22nd November 2011

European Mobile Benchmarks September 2011

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Source:  Data from comScore for the 3 months to September 2011, reported in a press release, 21st November 2011

There are 110m 3G subscriptions in China

"Of the combined total of 109.67 mln 3G subs, China Mobile holds 41.3%, China Unicom 30.2%, and China Telecom 28.4%. Of total new mobile subs added in October, China Mobile took 44.57%, dropping its share of China's total mobile user base to 67.14%. China Unicom's share of the total mobile user base rose to 20.22%, while China Telecom's share increased for the 34th straight month, rising from 12.45% at the end of September to 12.64% at the end of October."

Source:  Marbridge Consulting, 21st November 2011

A quarter of Christmas shopping-related searches in Australia come from mobile devices

"While Christmas Day may be 6 weeks away, the Christmas shopping season is already in full swing, and everyone wants to know what’s in store for the millions of businesses, shops, and retailers looking forward to a very busy Christmas. We may not have a crystal ball, but we do have a good sense of what Australia’s Christmas shoppers are searching for online. So we started crunching the numbers to see what we could learn about how people are searching and shopping this year.
We discovered some interesting facts. First of all, 2011 is retail’s biggest year yet online--even bigger than the record-setting online shopping season driven by the strong Aussie dollar last year. Year over year, shopping-related searches are up 29%, making it more important than ever for businesses who want a piece of the action to get online.
However, it looks as though this year’s true Christmas miracle is mobile. While retail has posted impressive gains over last year’s season, the number of shopping queries coming from mobile devices increased 220% year on year. In fact, one quarter of all Christmas shopping-related Google searches this year now come from mobile devices.
This growth may be dramatic, but it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise. As we revealed in September, Australia has the second-highest smartphone penetration in the world. And by the end of this year, more than 50% of Australian adults will own a smartphone--just in time for Christmas. They’re using those smartphones to research gifts and contact local businesses. 1 in 5 sometimes even bypass the PC to make online purchases directly via their mobile phones.
So what does this mean for retail? To start with, it means that more people are looking for them, in more ways, and in more places: on the bus, from the train, even from the sofa while watching TV. At the same time, it means Australian businesses can’t afford to ignore mobile--without mobile-friendly websites, they’re invisible to the shoppers who’re trying to find them."

Source:  Blog post by Google, 10th November 2011

A Tweet from Selma Gomez generated 20,000 downloads of the Postcard on the Run mobile app

"Selena Gomez, the 19 year-old pop princess, actress and girlfriend of Justin Bieber, tweeted the above approbation for the iPhone application to her 8.3 million followers two weeks ago. Today, she informed the world that she too can play the celebrity investor and advisor part, and participated in Postcard on the Run’s $750,000 round of financing.
Postcard on the Run is a fresh, Los Angeles-based startup with iPhone and Android applications that lets you send real postcards to friends anywhere the world for $0.99 a piece. It has a few hooks including automatic address retrieval and “smell mail,” a feature that lets users add scratch-and-sniff scents to postcards.
The startup, which competes directly with Postagram and Apple’s similarly-purposed Cards app, now has Gomez, a powerful social media socialite — and possibly her even more influential boyfriend by association — in its corner. In addition to her Twitter legions, Gomez has nearly 25 million fans on Facebook. A Facebook update on today’s news nabbed 4,117 likes and 663 comments in four hours. Score one for Postcard on the Run.
The story goes that Gomez found the iPhone application on her own and loved it so much she tracked down founder Josh Brooks in September. The pair continued to chat and talks quickly turned to investment opportunities, Brooks told VentureBeat.
“She’s a fantastic partner for me,” Brooks said. Case in point: A recent tweet from Gomez netted the startup 20,000 downloads in 24 hours, he said."

Source:  VentureBeat, 17th November 2011

Transactions on Kenya's M-Pesa mobile money service exceed transactions made by Western Union globally

"Local transactions by Kenya’s mobile money service, M-Pesa currently exceed transactions made by Western Union globally, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reports. According to the IMF, “M-Pesa now processes more transactions domestically within Kenya than Western Union does globally, and provides mobile banking facilities to more than 70 per cent of the country’s adult population.”
Launched in March 2007 by Kenyan telecoms operator, Safaricom, the service which now has over 14 million users in Kenya is currently the world’s most successful mobile payments system."

Source:  TheNextWeb, 24th October 2011

Via

Average Android app downloads per market

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Source:  Data from Research2Guidance, 16th November 2011

The top 10 most popular purchases through mobile

"Jumptap’s study looked at the most popular mobile purchases. Here's the top 10:
1. Event tickets; daily deals: 38 percent of mobile device owners have made these purchases (tie)
3. Apparel or accessories: 36 percent
4. Travel; physical copies of books, video games or movies: 33 percent (tie)
6. Consumer electronics (TVs, etc., but excluding mobile phones): 32 percent
7. Flowers and gifts; toys: 30 percent (tie)
9. General services (photo printing, shipping services, etc.): 26 percent
10. Consumer packaged goods; sports and fitness: 25 percent (tie)"
Source:  Research from Jumptap and comScore, reported by AdWeek, 10th November 2011
Note - no country is stated, but I'm assuming that it's the US

US Portable Game Software by Revenue 2009-2011

Click to enlarge

Source:  Lurry Analytics, NPD Group and other estimates, reported on the Flurry blog, 9th November 2011
Note - I don't normally put projections in, but this contains more real data than projections

80% of American mobile users multitask in front of the TV

"While 80% of mobile users multitask in front of TV, 70% say they multitask once a week, and 49% on a daily basis. More than 60% percent check their phones at least “once or twice” during a show with 15% active on their devices the entire time.
– 38% say their mobile activity enhances the broadcast, while another 38% say it’s distracting.
– The top 5 categories that attract multitaskers are reality shows, news, comedy, sports and food.
– 94% of mobile multitaskers communicate while watching TV, while 60% are looking up content. Of the communicators, the most popular activities in order are: texting, talking, email, social networking and IM.
– 44% of the content that multitaskers consume is unrelated to what’s on TV compared to 38% that’s related. 36% look up information about a commercial they just saw. Most multitasking activity, overall, happens during commercial breaks."
Source:  Research from Razorfish & Yahoo, reported by LostRemote, 10th November 2011
The original article is here.  There's no mention of the methodology, but since all shows referred to are Aerican, I'm assuming the study took place in the US.

Smartphones account for 44% of all handsets in UAE, 55% in Saudi Arabia and 42% in Jordan

"Arab Advisors new surveys reveal that Smartphones constitute 43.7% of total cellular handsets in the UAE, 54.6% of total handsets in Saudi and 41.6% in Jordan.
A new Arab Advisors Group’s survey of cellular users in the UAE reveals insightful details on the smartphones adoption and usage patterns in the UAE. The survey also probed general cellular usage habits, smartphones awareness in addition to tablets availability among cellular users in the UAE. This survey comes on the heals of a similar survey in Jordan. Full results of a similar Saudi survey will be out in October 2011.
The Arab Advisors Group concluded a ground breaking survey of cellular users in the UAE probing smartphones adoption and usage. The survey revealed that Blackberry leads with 51% share of smartphones operating systems (calculated based on handsets’ brands). iOS (iPhone) ranked second while Symbian came in third. Smartphone users prefer the English language for their applications. Over 300 delegates will discuss and deliberate the ongoing trends in the regional smartphone ecosystem at Arab Advisors’ Smart Handheld Summit which will be held on December 5 & 6, 2011 in Dubai. Saudi Telecom Company (STC) is the Strategic Summit Partner. Qualcomm is sponsoring the summit which is also supported byAppsArabia, Microsoft, nPario, Teletimes, DVV, ITP CommsMea, MediaME and Telecom Watch."

Source:  Press release from the Arab Advisors Group, 19th October 2011