Global tablet sales will pass 381 million units in 2017, according to a new report by Forrester. Tablets will become so mainstream that one in eight humans on earth will own one, representing 29% of online consumers worldwide, according to the Global Business And Consumer Tablet Forecast Update, 2013 to 2017 report.

Global shipments of tablets slowed in the second quarter of 2013 as compared to earlier in the year, according to new research from the International Data Corporation. According to the Worldwide Quarterly Tablet Tracker, shipments dropped 9.7% from Q1 2013, and the drop was driven by the lack of a new iPad. But it’s not all bad news. During the quarter 45.1 million units shipped worldwide, which was up 59.6% from the same quarter in 2012, when 28.3 million tablets shipped.

During the quarter, Apple shipped 14.6 million iPads, down from 19.5 million in Q1 2013, and less than expected. In previous years, Apple has introduced a new iPad which has included Q2 sales. This year the company did not, though they are expected to launch a new iPad later this year, which is expected to boost holiday tablet sales.

“A new iPad launch always piques consumer interest in the tablet category and traditionally that has helped both Apple and its competitors,” stated Tom Mainelli, research director of tablets at IDC. “With no new iPads, the market slowed for many vendors, and that’s likely to continue into the third quarter. However, by the fourth quarter we expect new products from Apple, Amazon, and others to drive impressive growth in the market.” Read more

Purchases made from mobile devices represented 19.4% of all online retail sales in Q2 2013, up 28% from the same quarter in 2012. The majority of these mobile sales are coming from the iPad, according to IBM’s Retail Index. Here is more from the press release:

“Apple continues to dominate the mobile device experience, with the iPad generating more traffic than any other mobile device at close to 11 percent of retail traffic – a 60 percent increase over Q2 2012. The iPhone closely follows, generating 10.5 percent of traffic, with Android devices generating 7.1 percent.”

Mobile devices have become a mainstay in the retail shopping experience as consumers are using phones and tablets to read about product both at home and in stores. The research revealed that consumers using a mobile device to visit a retailer’s site reached 27 %, which was up more than 35% over the same period last year.

Comedian Stephen Colbert once brought national attention to the subject of crowd sourced knowledge in a humorous comedy short about Wikiality, but the nature of controversial topics on Wikipedia is actually more like a digital blitzkrieg. Volunteer editors are constantly changing topics in real-time edit wars that are now being monitored as subject of scientific and geographical analysis.

Read more

Worldwide smartphone shipments is expected to reach 1.5 billion units by 2017, up from 712 million in 2012, according to a new report from IHS Inc. The Mobile & Wireless Communications Report revealed that smartphone shipments will reach 897 million units this year and will expand at a compound annual growth rate of 15.8 percent every year until 2017. That equates to 1.1 billion units in 2014, 1.2 billion units in 2015, and 1.4 billion units in 2016.

At the same time, Apple’s iPhone may be hitting a brick wall. The company shipped only  37.4 million units during Q1 2013, which fell below expectations. IHS predicts that even if the company releases a new iPhone in the second half of the year, 2013 iPhone sales will likely reach 150 million units, not a huge increase from 2012 when Apple sold 134 million units. Read more

The average cost of an app is on the decline. According to a new report from mobile analytics company Flurry, in 2011 80% of apps in Apple’s App Store were free. In 2012, 84% were free, and by this year 90% of App Store apps are free.

Here is more from the Flurry blog:

Some might argue that this supports the idea that ‘content wants to be free’. We don’t see it quite that way. Instead, we simply see this as the outcome of consumer choice: people want free content more than they want to avoid ads or to have the absolute highest quality content possible.

Flurry also revealed that Android users are even less willing to pay for apps than iOS users. In fact, according to the company’s research, as of April 2013, the average price paid for an Android app was $.06. Comparing this to iOS devices, consumers paid an average of $.19 for an iPhone app and an average of $.50 for an iPad app.

Free People’s first app is seeing some noteworthy sales – nearly 7-10% of the bohemian’s clothing store’s online purchases within the first week alone. The app has already been downloaded at least 24,000 times with as much as 100,000 user sessions. What’s more, Free People is reporting that its app sales are not replacing its mobile sales, which have surpassed the company’s forecast:

We were expecting our mobile [web] shoppers to migrate to the mobile app, and for sales on the mobile site to drop but sales held steady on the mobile site, and we got a 100% boost from the app. – Jed Paulson, Director of Marketing and Commerce

Currently, Free People is hoping to continue its good fortune by offering online exclusives in addition to free shipping on first orders.
Via Mashable

It’s not uncommon to hear reports about people using their smartphones in bed, but it’s pretty surprising to hear that 9% of U.S. adults admit to having used their smartphones while having sex.

According to the 2013 Mobile Consumer Habits study from Harris Interactive released by mobile payments services company Jumio, also revealed that The study also showed that 20% of adults aged 18-34 admit to having used a smartphone while having sex. Not surprisingly, 12% of the adults surveyed in the study admitted that their smartphone got in the way of their relationship.

But adults aren’t just using their phones in bed. They use them all over the place. According to the report, 12% of people use them in the shower, 19% of people use them at church, 35% use them at the movie the­ater, 33% will check their phones during a dinner date and 32% will pull out their phones at a child’s school func­tion. (Via The Los Angeles Times).

There were 2,600 less full-time professional editorial jobs at newspapers in 2012, a 6.4% drop from 2011, according to The American Society of News Editors’ latest annual newsroom census figures.

Pew Research has more: “That leaves the industry at 38,000 full-time professional editorial employees and is the first time that figure has been below 40,000 since the census began in 1978. The losses are also more than twice the level estimated in March by Rick Edmonds, coauthor of the chapter on newspapers in the Pew Research Center’s State of the News Media report.”

But the news might not be as bad as it sounds as the role of editor is changing and newspapers were left to decide for themselves who to count. It was up to newspapers with regional editing centers, where copy gets edited, to decide whether or not to include these editors in the numbers.

Also, USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Arizona Republic, The Miami Herald, and The Times-Picayune were among publications not to respond. The research included responses from 978 of the 1,382 daily newspapers in the U.S.

Where are consumers spending most of their time on their phones? While Facebook, Gmail and Google Search top the list, according to new research from Mobile Posse, consumers spend the most time on their phones checking their homescreen.

Arbitron Mobile conducted the research on behalf of Mobile Posse over a three month period. They installed the “Arbitron Mobile Meter” onto the devices of 3,000 consumers using different Android phones made by Samsung, LG, ZTE and Huawei to monitor the users’ voice, data and app usage.  They found that a preinstalled homescreen app generated an average user session of 88 minutes per month, compared to 74 minutes for Facebook and 44 minutes for Gmail.

So what does this mean for content creators? Well the homescreen is pretty useful property and could be the best place to run ads or even as a place to create fun content for.