Boomers Slowly Joining the Mobile Web
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By SARAH PEREZ of ReadWriteWeb
Published: March 4, 2010
New statistics about baby boomers' usage of the mobile web are here, and the news, sadly, is not surprising. This generation of users (ages 45 and older) has been slow to adopt mobile Internet technology. However, that's not to say they aren't getting on board with the mobile web revolution - they're just taking a little more time to get here than the other demographic groups surveyed.
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Today, only 55% of boomers consider their mobile phone a necessity, a number which likely shocks younger generations whose attachment to their handheld device is so strong, they claim to "feel naked without it."
Boomers: Slow to Adopt New Technology
The delay with which baby boomers embrace new technologies isn't limited to the mobile web - this is just the next item in a series of technology trends where boomers seem to lag behind. Outside of the pro-social media analyst group Forrester (whose reports we desperately want to believe), most studies show boomers have been slow to adopt new technology, be it social networks or smartphones.
Although as of summer 2009, older users were joining Facebook in record numbers, even outnumbering high school students on the site, it took a long time for them to get there. This group of technology users is definitely not filled with early adopters. Instead, boomers need to wait and see the benefits of a new technology before signing on, or so says eMarketer, the analyst firm who released this latest mobile web report. On Facebook, that benefit was likely the "network effect" - enough of their friends urged them to join at the same time as their younger family members were busy posting photos and videos of the boomers' grandchildren, something boomers didn't want to miss out on.
Stats on Boomers and the Mobile Web
As for the mobile web, although the technology in question is different, the desire (or lack thereof) to participate is the same. Until the boomers see a real need for the mobile web, smartphones and the accompanying mobile apps, they'll get by just fine without it, thank you very much.
A few key stats from eMarketer's report:
85% of baby boomers own a mobile phone, but the majority own feature phones (non-smartphones)
55% consider their mobile phone a necessity
Boomers make up only 19.6% of touchscreen phone users
Boomers make up only 21.1% of smartscreen phone users
Younger boomers (ages 45-54) are more likely to own a smartphone or touchscreen phone than older boomers
Things are Changing
As Lisa E. Phillips, eMarketer senior analyst, kindly puts it, "boomers are underrepresented among smartphone users." The good news is that's starting to change. Slowly but surely, boomers are becoming more interested in smartphone devices. Phillips notes that their interest is influenced by the prevalence of smartphones in the marketplace combined with a down economy which is forcing boomers to forgo retirement. Because many smartphones have a business aspect to them, boomers are starting to see the appeal of these devices.
However, the most important factor slowing their adoption is price. As carriers reduce prices for both phones and data plans, many more boomers will join their younger counterparts to become mobile web users themselves.
Copyright 2010 ReadWriteWeb. All Rights Reserved.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Mobile and Touch Screen
Gartner: Touchscreen Mobile Device Sales Will Grow 97% in 2010
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By FREDERIC LARDINOIS of ReadWriteWeb
Published: March 4, 2010
According to Gartner, the worldwide market for mobile devices with touchscreens will grow over 97% this year. Last year, consumers bought 184 million devices with touchscreens. Gartner predicts that this market will surpass 362 million units this year. By 2013, Gartner predicts, touchscreen mobile devices will account for 80% of all sales in North America and Europe. Once the domain of high-end devices, touchscreen are now finding their ways into midrange phones and a growing number of consumers now expects all of their screens to be touch-enabled.
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As Gartner analyst CK Lu notes, a touchscreen alone won't be enough to convince users to buy a specific phone, however. According to Lu, "Consumers won't buy a mobile device purely for the touch UI, Touch technology is just an enabler, and ultimately, it is a compelling user experience -- which includes good UI design, applications and services -- that will make or break a product." Indeed, Gartner advised manufacturers to double down on their efforts to create good touch-driven UIs. While Gartner doesn't mention the iPhone explicitly, it is clear that Apple's popular phone has set the standard for touch-driven UIs and most manufacturers are still struggling to catch up.
Bonus: What Does the Mobile, Touch-Friendly Web Look Like Today?
The mobile web, according to a new report from mobile search engine Taptu, is currently all about shopping and services. Taptu - which specializes in indexing mobile sites - surveyed about 326,000 sites that are optimized for mobile, finger-friendly browsing and found that the largest concentration of these sites falls into Taptu's "shopping and services" category. In total, Taptu found 83,000 mobile-enabled commerce sites, ranging from mobile shopping assistants to banks and mobile real estate sites.
According to Taptu, mobile shopping and services sites make up close to 25% of all mobile-friendly sites in the company's index, followed by sites in the "photo and design" category (17.7%). Social sites rank third with 9.2%. Personal blogs only make up 1.5% of Taptu's index, a number if is easily bested by adult sites, which account for 3% of all mobile-optimized sites.
It's worth noting that if we combine news and weather sites (3.3%) together with sites about world affairs (8.1%), this category would easily fall into Taptu's top 3.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
OLPC Developments
OLPC unveils slimline tablet PC
By Jonathan Fildes
Technology reporter, BBC News
OLPC XO-3
In Pictures: Designing the OLPC
The group behind the $100 laptop has revealed the design for its latest computer aimed at connecting children in the developing world.
The XO-3, as it is known, is a slim-line touchscreen tablet PC.
One Laptop per Child (OLPC) said it would be "available in 2012" and would cost "well below $100".
The new design replaces the proposed XO-2, a foldable e-book that was first shown off in 2008 but has since been scrapped by the organisation.
The XO-3 will eventually replace the original XO laptop that first went into production in 2007.
The innovative machines, which have been designed for use in remote and harsh environments, were designed for use by school children and featured a sunlight readable display and open source software.
'Bigger appeal'
OLPC originally aimed to sell the low-cost laptops in lots of one million to governments in developing countries for $100 each.
However, the non-profit organisation had difficulty getting governments to commit to bulk orders. The machines - which are able to run both Linux and Microsoft Windows - are now offered in single units and cost around $200.
the new xo-s laptop
The XO-2 has been scrapped in favour of the XO-3
So far the XO has been distributed to more than 1.4 million children in 35 countries.
The high-price has not however put off all governments. Uruguay has bought a computer for every one of their school children.
Walter de Brouwer, CEO of OLPC Europe said that these "saturation projects" were the future of the organisation both in the developed and the developing world.
"I'm talking to three four countries in the EU at the moment," he told BBC News. "Once one says yes, the others can't say no."
The organisation believes the new design will cost significantly less.
Mr Brouwer said that because of the pace of technological change and the ever decreasing prices of electronics he could imagine the design selling for "50, 60 or 70 euros".
He said governments could pay this back over a number of years, allowing pupils to have a laptop for less than one euro per month.
"This is very realistic," he said.
The concept shows a touchscreen, a camera, induction charger, and a carrying ring on one of its corners.
Its inner workings - including a chip from UK firm ARM - will come from an interim design - the XO 1.75 - set for launch in 2011.
The 1.75 will merge elements of the current machines with technologies - such as a touchscreen - intended to be included in the XO-3.
OLPC recently said that the organisation would just focus on promoting its concepts and educational aims, rather than manufacturing laptops.
"We are not a laptop company," said Mr Brouwer. "Manufacturing a laptop is not such a big deal. The bigger appeal for us is deploying them and integrating them with education systems to transform a society."
Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairman of the group, said that he hoped that industry would now copy the design for the XO-3.
By Jonathan Fildes
Technology reporter, BBC News
OLPC XO-3
In Pictures: Designing the OLPC
The group behind the $100 laptop has revealed the design for its latest computer aimed at connecting children in the developing world.
The XO-3, as it is known, is a slim-line touchscreen tablet PC.
One Laptop per Child (OLPC) said it would be "available in 2012" and would cost "well below $100".
The new design replaces the proposed XO-2, a foldable e-book that was first shown off in 2008 but has since been scrapped by the organisation.
The XO-3 will eventually replace the original XO laptop that first went into production in 2007.
The innovative machines, which have been designed for use in remote and harsh environments, were designed for use by school children and featured a sunlight readable display and open source software.
'Bigger appeal'
OLPC originally aimed to sell the low-cost laptops in lots of one million to governments in developing countries for $100 each.
However, the non-profit organisation had difficulty getting governments to commit to bulk orders. The machines - which are able to run both Linux and Microsoft Windows - are now offered in single units and cost around $200.
the new xo-s laptop
The XO-2 has been scrapped in favour of the XO-3
So far the XO has been distributed to more than 1.4 million children in 35 countries.
The high-price has not however put off all governments. Uruguay has bought a computer for every one of their school children.
Walter de Brouwer, CEO of OLPC Europe said that these "saturation projects" were the future of the organisation both in the developed and the developing world.
"I'm talking to three four countries in the EU at the moment," he told BBC News. "Once one says yes, the others can't say no."
The organisation believes the new design will cost significantly less.
Mr Brouwer said that because of the pace of technological change and the ever decreasing prices of electronics he could imagine the design selling for "50, 60 or 70 euros".
He said governments could pay this back over a number of years, allowing pupils to have a laptop for less than one euro per month.
"This is very realistic," he said.
The concept shows a touchscreen, a camera, induction charger, and a carrying ring on one of its corners.
Its inner workings - including a chip from UK firm ARM - will come from an interim design - the XO 1.75 - set for launch in 2011.
The 1.75 will merge elements of the current machines with technologies - such as a touchscreen - intended to be included in the XO-3.
OLPC recently said that the organisation would just focus on promoting its concepts and educational aims, rather than manufacturing laptops.
"We are not a laptop company," said Mr Brouwer. "Manufacturing a laptop is not such a big deal. The bigger appeal for us is deploying them and integrating them with education systems to transform a society."
Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairman of the group, said that he hoped that industry would now copy the design for the XO-3.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
How to backup and restore your netbook's storage Source
How to backup and restore your netbook's storage
Source
Mon, Mar 16th, 2009
Hands-on Having a small-capacity solid-state drive in your netbook may be limitation but it has one advantage: it's easy to back up. We don't mean copying a few files over to a safe place, but duplicating the entire drive, operating system and all, ready to drop it all back on if the worst comes to the worst.
PCs often come with recovery disks that you can use to place a fresh copy of the OS and pre-loaded apps back onto a freshly formatted drive. With some free, open source tools, you make one of your own, for your netbook. It'll work whether you use Linux or Windows XP, and whether your machine has a hard disk or a solid-state drive.
How to backup and restore your netbook's storage We use PING - which stands for Partition Image Not Ghost, a reference to Norton Ghost, a commercial disk duplication app - but it requires an external CD drive to boot from. So we've also included details of a second tool, which you can install on a USB Flash drive....
Source
Mon, Mar 16th, 2009
Hands-on Having a small-capacity solid-state drive in your netbook may be limitation but it has one advantage: it's easy to back up. We don't mean copying a few files over to a safe place, but duplicating the entire drive, operating system and all, ready to drop it all back on if the worst comes to the worst.
PCs often come with recovery disks that you can use to place a fresh copy of the OS and pre-loaded apps back onto a freshly formatted drive. With some free, open source tools, you make one of your own, for your netbook. It'll work whether you use Linux or Windows XP, and whether your machine has a hard disk or a solid-state drive.
How to backup and restore your netbook's storage We use PING - which stands for Partition Image Not Ghost, a reference to Norton Ghost, a commercial disk duplication app - but it requires an external CD drive to boot from. So we've also included details of a second tool, which you can install on a USB Flash drive....
Monday, March 16, 2009
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