Tag Archives: market

A New Android Market Coming Soon

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Google announced today that they will be rolling out an update to the Android Market for devices running version 2.2 or higher of the OS.  The new version will still contain all of the apps we know and love, but will books and movies.

Google claims that the US version will give users the ability to rent thousands of movies for $1.99 each, however, I found plenty of $3.99 rentals so it may be based on the popularity of the title.  The movies will be available for download or streaming.  The rental period be 30 days, but, once you begin a movie, once you begin watching a rental you will have 24 hours.  It is not only available from your Android device, but also from the web on your computer.  Just head over to the Android Video Market.

To browse Books for purchase you can visit the Android Books Market.  Books listed on the front pager were all $12.99, but older titles will likely be discounted.

If you are already wondering why you aren’t seeing this update on your device, Google has the following to say:

“The new Android Market will be rolling out in the coming weeks to Android 2.2 and higher phones around the world. You don’t need to do anything – the update is automatic on supported phones. If you’re in the U.S., you’ll also be able to download the Videos app, rent movies, and buy books once you receive the new Android Market.”

Gartner: PC Shipments Worldwide Continue to Decline

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Gartner came out with their quarterly press release detailing PC shipments in 2011. In Q1, they found Worldwide PC shipments totaled only 84.3 million units. It’s only a 1.1 percent decline from Q1 – 2010, however, this trend has shown that PC shipments have, for the first time, suffered a year-over-year decline.

That means PC shipments have declined for 2 years in a row. This after Gartner predicted a 3 percent growth in Q1.

Of course, you can guess what caused the decline.

“Weak demand for consumer PCs was the biggest inhibitor of growth,” said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner. “Low prices for consumer PCs, which had long stimulated growth, no longer attracted buyers. Instead, consumers turned their attention to media tablets and other consumer electronics. With the launch of the iPad 2 in February, more consumers either switched to buying an alternative device, or simply held back from buying PCs. We’re investigating whether this trend is likely to have a long-term effect on the PC market.”

Preliminary Worldwide PC Vendor Unit Shipment Estimates for 1Q11 (Units)


Company		1Q11 Shipments1Q11 Market Share (%)1Q10 Shipments1Q11 Market Share (%)1Q11-1Q10 Growth (%)
HP14,797,29917.615,312,46818.0-3.4
Acer Group10,893,79312.912,412,85914.6-12.2
Dell9,984,37011.910,210,76612.0-2.2
Lenovo8,137,9049.76,976,6838.216.6
Toshiba4,821,6005.74,580,7465.45.3
Others35,615,95342.335,686,99541.9-0.2
Total84,250,918100.085,180,518100.0-1.1

Note: Data includes desk-based PCs, mobile PCs, including mini-notebooks but not media tablet such as the iPad.
Source: Gartner (April 2011)

Will this Trend Continue?

While we are definitely on a tablet kick, we still need another computer for when the tablet becomes more of a hindrance. Something that holds more data, plays higher-resolution games, sits on the desk while we enter finances or taxes, or something that has a little more horsepower than the iPad or Galaxy Tab. It’s definitely getting overshadowed by a tablet, but we are not ready to ditch the old tower or laptop just yet.

The big question: Have you parted ways with your desktop or notebook for a tablet? Let me know by commenting below.

Cost of PC = Cost of Accessories

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That’s a bit harder to answer.

Well, if you’re Jane or Joe Average, you’ll have probably spent pretty much the same again on stuff to enhance your PC, from anti-virus software to graphics card upgrades.  IDC have been looking at the “beyond-the-box” purchases and for every dollar spent on the PC, you spent $1.05 on extra bits’n’bobs in 2009.

This is up from only $0.87 per dollar in 2008, partly due to the fall in price of PCs but overall the market is worth $28.6 billion, which is pretty healthy, regardless.

IDC also said, “PC users have moved en masse toward a Web-centric environment, and cloud-based activities are on the rise. In contrast, productivity-based activities have become a secondary focus among consumers.”  I’m not 100% sure what this means but I think it’s saying that PC use is moving away from writing letters and balancing bank accounts and into entertainment from YouTube, Facebook and Spotify.  No surprises there then.

The Research Director, David Daoud, went on to say, “With the trend of a multi-PC per user environment, the accessories market will play a growing role in insuring seamless integration of all the devices in businesses and households. The need for solutions to enhance user experience, improve productivity, and secure users’ computing environment mean that the accessories market will continue to expand going forward.”

Translating…as people increasingly have more than one computer, e.g. a PC and a netbook, they’re having to spend more money making everything work together.  Absolutely true.  They’ll need a Wi-fi access point for the netbook, a NAS to share files, a printer with a print server and external HDDs for backup (yeah, right).

So, the next time you are budgeting for a PC, think of a number and double it.

Will You Survive The Coming Changes?

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Get ready for a world where everything is on demand and à la carte. Traditional broadcasting is going to change whether it wants to or not. Marketing will be forced to change in profound ways. As a result, content-making will also go through a major metamorphosis.

Marketing and traditional broadcasting have long had an interesting relationship that has had a potentially detrimental effect on the quality and quantity of available content. Television in particular has long been known as “a vast wasteland.” If one thinks about how this lowest-common-denominator programming can exist, the realization emerges that anxious, aggressive television advertisers have often been willing to sponsor junk programming content to capture passive viewers. In the pre-Internet world of broadcast TV, people would surf channels in order to find what was often the least-boring programming. Also because of the hypnotic potential of this type of TV watching, many viewers were willing to sit in front of virtually any programming without really caring about what they were watching, using TV viewing itself as a sort of nightly drug. Marketing messages get programmed into viewer’s brains, but more importantly using this type of passive TV viewing as a drug has definite detrimental side effects to both the individual, the family unit, and society at large.

After a few months of agonizing, I recently cancelled my Dish Network account. I was already a Netflix customer and was watching more stuff from Netflix than I was from Dish Network, so it has been a remarkably easy transition.

There are differences. One of the differences is that I’m now forced to choose what I want to watch when I want to watch TV. Being forced to choose necessarily forces me to choose something I find personally interesting. The net effect is I’m making a conscious choice of my television influences. Of course, another difference is that streamed Netflix content has no ads.

Hulu.Com offers streaming content with ads, and recently started offering an inexpensive monthly premium streaming content option, which also has the added benefit of vastly expanding the list of devices they will stream to beyond the desktop/laptop computer to include media extenders and cell phones. Like Craig’s List cannibalized the local newspaper ad business, Hulu.Com and similar emerging streaming services are going to further cannibalize the now-breaking and broken broadcast TV model. I say this not to blame Hulu and other services as I believe this push for choice has been well underway for a long time and these emerging streaming services are simply accelerating it.

The ad-supported content will be forced to change because the programming must be appealing-enough to consumers to get them to choose the particular content. Non-ad supported content will continue to have a market but will be forced to appeal just the same to induce consumers to choose that content.