Mom’s Apps

July 22nd, 2013

According to a Flurry study and analysis of smartphone and tablet users app usage patterns, posted by Mary Ellen Gordon, PhD, Moms spend a lot of smartphone and tablet time playing games. On Android, more than half of the time American Moms spent in apps was spent playing games. On iPad moms spent about half their time in games, but on iPhone, that percentage drops to a little less than a third of their time. On iPhone, lifestyle apps capture a larger proportion of Moms’ attention (12%) than on iPad and Android devices.

Flurry is kicking off a series of blog posts to shed light on different groups of smartphone and tablet users and their app usage patterns, starting with Moms who, says the report, often control household budgets and expenditures, and are considered the prime audience for many brands. App usage, says the report, reveals a lot… Read the rest of this entry »

Are Two Heads Really Better Than One?

July 1st, 2013

“Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.”
- John Steinbeck, East of Eden, Chap. 13, 1952

We always hear it and we always say it, “two heads are better than one.”  But when is the last time you ever saw anything with two heads that wasn’t a monster? Read the rest of this entry »

Millennials Forge The Future (Depending on Life Stage)

July 1st, 2013
According to a new study by Fizziology and Horizon Media, as the largest generation in U.S. history enters adulthood, they’re making a massive impact on our society. From pop culture to the workplace, gender roles and family life, Millennials are forging the future. With such scale and influence, Millennials are becoming a central focus for many marketers.

Spanning college-aged to career and family-building years, Millennials occupy many life stages which impact their behaviors and attitudes, says the report. Millennials are the first generation to grow up with social media, and for many, their daily activities, highs and lows, meals, purchases and media viewing habits are continuously recorded and shared with friends and followers. The combination of social, technological and economic factors shaping Millennial behaviors and attitudes is powerful and evolutionary, concludes the report.

The Millennial Segmentation study revealed two primary drivers of how Millennials are reacting to their situations: Read the rest of this entry »

Tablets Displacing Portable PCs

June 14th, 2013

According to a new forecast from the IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Tablet Tracker, tablet shipments are expected to grow 58.7% year over year in 2013 reaching 229.3 million units, up from 144.5 million units last year. The study predicts tablet shipments will exceed those of portable PCs this year, as the slumping PC market is expected to see negative growth for the second consecutive year. The study also expects tablet shipments to outpace the entire PC market (portables and desktops combined) by 2015.

Ryan Reith, Program Manager for IDC’s Mobility Trackers, says “… tablets surpassing portables in 2013, and total PCs in 2015… significant change in consumer attitudes about compute devices and the applications… for many consumers, a tablet is a simple and elegant solution for core use… previously addressed by the PC.” Read the rest of this entry »

The Myth of “Playing it Safe”

June 12th, 2013

This is a common practice I find business owners embracing lately and it may be related to the economic uncertainty each of us faces every day. The fantasy is this: if your company is a reasonable success, you can hold that position by making incremental changes (“tweaking”) until you “click up” to the next level.  Tweakers find comfort in numbers, decimal points, percentages and line graphs. Read the rest of this entry »