My notes from the Internet Trends 2012 Update

I find Mary Meeker's reports on internet trends very interesting. They're packed with interesting data and insights. I've been following her work closely. She recently published an updated overview of 2012 and I thought I'd share my highlights with you at the end of this year.

sheet 9: stunning slide showing shipment of iPads, iPhones and iPods over 10 years compared. This slides is old(er), but it just underlines the interesting times we live in
sheet 10: You thought the ramp up of Apple products is huge, well Android ramp up is 6 times that of iPhone
sheet 12: 30% of US adults own a tablet, less than 3 years ago that was 3%
sheet 17: mobile advertising is growing rapidly; $0.7 billion in 2008, $19 billion in 2012
sheet 18: 24% of online shopping was done via tablets on Black Saturday, versus 6% 2 years ago
sheet 20: we are in the midst of a huge change powered by new devices + connectivity + UI + beauty. Meeker highlights the effects for the pc, photography, phone, knowledge, navigation, news, note taking, content organization, magazines, cash registers, lending money, idea building/funding, recruiting, product design, etc. market (and we are still in "spring training", Meeker says [sheet 58])
sheet 24: very interesting overview of the market share of Microsoft compared to others. Used to be 96% and is now just 35%.
sheet 61: I like how Meeker digs deeper into the consequences of the internet by addressing what it means for our space, time and money and how we balance these
sheet 77: Meeker mentions markets that still can be opened, such as the time spent in cars and watching TV, education and healthcare.

And here's her complete slidedeck:

2012 KPCB Internet Trends Year-End Update from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

iPad experiences

I love my iPad! What a wonderful gadget it is! When we got it (with a newspaper subscription) I was wondering: Is it really worth it? I have an iPhone and a laptop, what do I need an iPad for then?

But, again I experienced that using is believing.The iPad (- I have the iPad1) fits perfectly between the iPhone and laptop. In lots of cases it takes over usage time from the iPhone and laptop.

For instance, reading email is great on the iPhone and the iPad. Instant-on is a killer. Even my wife hardly fires up the (Windows) laptop to process email. Although typing longer emails is still done on the iPad, most emails can be processed by a quick and short reply using the iPad.

Reading news and feeds is wonderful on the iPad as well. Apps like Flipboard are mindblowing. I'm amazed by how quickly I can go through feeds, tweets, etc. using Flipboard, compared to Google Reader or Twitter itself. And I love the way news is presented. It feels and looks right. And I'm sure we haven't seen the end of iPad app development yet. That's one of the things that really strikes me. The real app development for the iPad has only just started. There are some cool and innovative apps, but we're still figuring out what its real potential is.

I mentioned my wife. I must also mention my kids (2 and 4 years old). They love the iPad! They watch videos, play games and read interactive books on it. The user-interaction seems to be made for them. Flipping through pictures is completely obvious to them, for instance.

The size and weight are ideal. We took the iPad along on our trip to the US. Using a laptop in the car or on a plane is OK, not great. The iPad fits there perfectly. And it kept the kids satisfied the whole way... 

Reading on the iPad is great as well. For example, I've been reading Wired on the iPad for some time. Every Wired issue shows what the iPad means for publishing. I really like the way they are playing with the magazine navigation, interactive articles and infographics, etc.

My newspaper (NRC) is a strange one. They have a website optimized for mobile devices, especially the iPad. But the newspaper itself is currently not much more than an interactive pdf.

In short, the iPad is great for browsing, reading, processing and typing short notes/emails.

We haven't even seen 1% of the potential of the iPad, I think. (Just compare the number of iPhone apps that don't have an iPad counterpart yet...) Some things I'd like to see:

• It would be great if you could search through your iPad content. Most apps are closed and walled. Even within apps search is often poor. For instance, why can't I search through all my Wired magazines, as I can on the web?
• Adding notes, highlighting and underlining content, etc. could be easier. Sometimes you can type comments, but that's not as easy as scribbling some notes with a pen. I think we need something like a pen. This is definitely the case when using the iPad in business environments, I think. Or will voice control do the trick here?
• Sharing content from many apps is horrible. Again, I hope the walled feeling to the iPad and the apps will go away. Why can't I share a Wired article right from the app, like I can do on the web? Just to give one example. 

Does this relate to your iPad experiences? I'd love to hear them. Please, leave a comment or share a link to your post(s) about your experiences.

Mobile Intranet

Mobile and the mobile web is huge. Lots of the discussion about mobile and the mobile web is about mobile and the Internet. Until recently not much attention was paid to the implications of mobile for the intranet. But this is changing rapidly. More and more interesting posts and reports are being written about mobile intranet.
One of them was published not to long ago. It is written by Martin White and is titled 'Focus on Enterprise Information Mobility'. This is a first paper giving an overview of what's happening in this place. It summarizes and structures lots of information about mobile enterprise. So, if you want to get up to speed on this topic, I encourage you to read it.
But let me give you some highlights from the report:

• The GMSA Mobile Congress has a Mobile Enterprise track for the first time this year (March).
• "Enterprise mobiliy" usually refered to some employees using their cell phone and/or connected devices remotely. This has changed. Enterprise mobility now presents itself as "a pervasive and ubiquitous mesh of software, middleware and hardware requiring seamless integration, state-of-the-art user interface and pristine security." Security is "the elephant in the room".
• "A mobile strategy is not the equivalent of making your web applications accessible via a mobile device."
• Surveys show that more than 50% of the companies are working on or planning mobile deployments. Many based on the iPhone or iPad. The biggest reason not to deploy just yet is security. Business Intelligence is a big driver for enterprise mobility. Other reasons are: productivity/speed, and the real-time enterprise.
• White shows that most are not strategic about mobility. The intiatives are hardly tied to business goals and processes. This is surprising, I find.
• Employees give their employers very low marks for their mobile strategy. Most don't have a strategy and/or guidelines.
• Intranet information architectures will change drastically. There is little point "in providing access to all sections of the intranet." Also the mobile intranet challenges us to think about our user. White gives an overview of the user segmentation VDC provides: road warriors and executives, mobile office professionl, etc. Don't give them all the information, but the information they need to get their job done.

This is a first release by White about making the internal company information mobile. I'm looking forward to White's future publications about this topic!

But for now I'm wondering: is your intranet ready for mobile? If not, are you getting ready for mobile? Please share your thoughts!

The 2015 intranet - Anywhen, Anywhere by Martin White @intranetfocus #intra11

I still have one more post from the Intranet Conference (Congres Intranet) for you! Martin White closed the conference with a talk about The 2015 Intranet - Anywhen, Anywhere.

White's talk can be easily summarized: Mobile First.
The internet is moving to mobile, the intranet is as well.

White has been researching this topic and has interesting (upcoming) reports about this topic. The number of users with mobile web access is astounding (refer to picture).

White also doesn't not believe in a future for mobile apps. He says develop for the mobile web, not apps. It's way too expensive to develop apps for all the different platforms.

The real value of mobile intranet will be in the area of business intelligence, says White. Mobile intranet supports the real-time enterprise.

IT needs to address this trend. Also with respect to security (lots of devices are left behind/lost).

Usability and mobile: speech, typing. Don't push you're whole intranet through the mobile. Your intranet may even turn out to be much smaller if you think mobile first.

Final thought: When reviewing the intranet, think information not content, think apps not pages.

That wraps up my posts/notes about the Intranet Conference. I hope they were useful. Comments and corrections are more than welcome.

Moved by the Mobile Web

For some time now I've been following the mobile web with fascination. How quickly this market has grown and is still growing! I can remember getting my first (Prepaid!) mobile phone about 9 years ago. Even then a mobile phone was something not everyone had. Some people were even very irritated by "all the people calling in public (on the street) and sitting in the train". I don't hear that complaint very often anymore...

Then slowly but steadily the mobile web popped up. Actually it was already there but just way too expensive for mainstream use.

I don't think the mobile web is mainstream now, but it definitely is getting there. Recently I bought an iPhone 3GS (I know I'm slow...) and now have my own real experiences with it. And I must say I was impressed without having a smartphone. But I'm even more surprised and fascinated by it now.

Like with many technologies, after you start using it, you really feel it. You suddenly actually experience the power it has and what it's pushing. My experience in short is: the Web is clearly moving to Mobile, or maybe I should say it is Mobile. This may seem to be common-sense to you. Good for you! To me it wasn't. And after showing lots of friends and colleagues how the iPhone works, which Internet apps you get and can use, they are continuously fascinated by its possibilities.

What I find is that the Mobile web is great for lots of things. It pulls to the Internet to your fingertips. I find myself using my laptop less, for instance. My smartphone is great for keeping up with email. Reading email, deleting emails right away if your not going to read them, writing back short emails, archiving and forwarding them. Writing back long emails is not very easy though. I usually save that for when I'm working at my pc. This is something I'm struggling with. As you know I apply GTD to my life. This also implies touching an email once. When I decide not to answer an email using my iPhone, I'll have to keep that email in my inbox and come back to it again. I don't like this. What I am doing know is typing in some snibbits of the email I want to send back and saving that in draft mode. (If you also apply GTD, how do you handle this issue or isn't it an issue for you?)

It's also great for browsing through my feeds and reading the shorter ones. The longer posts will be saved to be printed or read at my computer.

I've been tweeting for some time. One thing I didn't like about my tweet reading behavior is that I would have to be at my computer to read them. This is OK, but I now find that reading tweets is done much better and easier from the iPhone. I look at them between meetings, at times and places I find handy. It's much easier to keep up with them in this way and also to engage in conversations.

The neat thing about the mobile web is it's developing quickly. The number of useful new apps is astounding. I just feel it grow every time I pick up my phone and go to the App store. A direction I think will be big is the potential for product innovation and development. Just think of the direct feedback you can get from users in the field (we're seeing this already via Twitter), using the camera to project all kinds of information on products with augmented reality for customer of service reasons, etc.

For this to happen I do think the mobile web needs to speed up. Internet access is OK via wifi and it's reasonable if there's a 3G network. But the 3G network is not fast enough (- although sometimes this also has to do with the apps themselves...).

What are your experiences with the mobile web? Do you have a smartphone? Are your experiences comparable to mine? I'd love to hear from you.