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Nearly One-Third Of Mobile Web Traffic Will Be From Tablets This Year (Jumptap via TechCrunch)
Tablets are continuing their rise as the preferred screen for consuming mobile data, according to the latest figures from mobile advertising network Jumptap. The company says that by the end of 2012, tablets accounted for 18 percent of all traffic on its network, compared to 78 percent for smartphones and 4 percent for feature phones.
But given usage trends over the past few months, it believes that by the end of 2013, the percentage for tablets will grow to just under one-third of all traffic (29 percent).
Jumptap also used some of its recent usage to forecast how Android, Apple’s iOS and other platforms would perform in the year ahead. Read >>
Mobile Ads Coming To Tumblr (Bloomberg via Mashable)
It's been a little more than a year since Tumblr began allowing users to promote their content on the network. Now, Tumblr is bringing those ads to mobile as it eyes its first annual profit. Derek Gottfrid, vice president of product at Tumblr, said that companies will be able to start promoting their blogs as well as individual posts on Tumblr's apps for iOS and Android within the first half of the year. After running internal tests, Tumblr is now seeking out launch partners for the new products. The foray into mobile advertising should help six-year-old Tumblr, which has a monthly audience of more than 170 million, turn a profit for the first time this year, said Lee Brown, head of sales at Tumblr. The average ad buy on Tumblr is currently "just under six figures," he said. Read >>
Android 4 Use Finally Takes Over (Engadget)
What a difference a month makes. In early February, Gingerbread was still the most commonly used major version of Google's mobile OS despite having launched all the way back in 2010.
As of the start of March, there's a different story to tell: variants of Android 4 are at last more popular, collectively representing 45.1 percent of active use versus Gingerbread's 44.2 percent. Most of those on the newer OS are still using the 2011-era Ice Cream Sandwich, although Jelly Bean has grown to represent 16.5 percent of current users. There's a long distance to go before any one version of Android 4 surpasses Gingerbread, but the gap is closing fast. Read >>
Mobile Email Is Broken, So Taskbox Launches To Fix It (Forbes)
For the most part, there has been little innovation with email. But this is going to change soon. For example, Austin-based Taskbox wants to take email to the next level, with a focus on mobile. The company has already gotten some buy-in, such as a $600,000 angel round. Investors include McAfee’s CTO Michael Fey and serial entrepreneur James Foster. The CEO and founder of Taskbox, Andrew Eye, is no stranger to the tech world. He was a software architect for NASA and the U.S. Marine Corps. Check out Andrew's full interview. Read >>
Will Fragmentation Kill The Developer App Star? (TechCrunch)
In a new report published today by Flurry, the company notes that optimizing apps to hit the majority of mobile devices that are active out there is an increasingly difficult task. In order to reach 80 percent of the active connected devices per Flurry’s data, you’d have to take into account 156 different devices.
Even just edging over the 60 percent mark requires that developers account for 37 individual devices. Flurry concludes that this increased fragmentation could mean curtains for the indie app developer. Read >>
Less Than 14 Percent Of Chinese Developers Make Money (Tech In Asia)
Xu Long, a National People’s Congress rep and the CEO of China Mobile’s Guangzhou subsidiary, took to the airwaves and made a grim pronouncement for China’s mobile market: only 13.7 percent of Chinese mobile app developers are actually making a profit. Xu says the low number of profitable developers is evidence that China needs to continue exploring healthy and sustainable models for developing the mobile market. Despite that rather depressing number, Xu says he’s still quite optimistic about the future of the mobile marketplace in China. Read >>
Could Samsung Take Down Apple? (MBA Online via Dashburst)
Apple and Samsung basically split 100 percent of all the profits in the smartphone market last year. Lets take a look at the numbers to see how it all really breaks down between Apple vs. Samsung. Read >>
