 RAIN 7/12: Mobile data use soars, but 1 in 4 smartphone owners use none ·Jul 12, 05:47 AM SMALL PERCENTAGE OF “SUPER USERS” CONSUME HALF OF DATA STREAMEDAlmost 25% of all cellphone users own a smartphone, but 25% of those smartphone users use less than 1 MB of data each month, according to a new Nielsen study. But that’s down from approximately 33% of smartphone users that didn’t use data services in Q1 of 2009.
Nielsen sees this as a call for educating consumers. “For some reason these customers have purchased a miracle in engineering and technology that has more computing power than what was used to get men safely to the moon and back and yet they only use their smartphone for phone calls and text messaging.” The study also found that 50% of all mobile data is used by the top 6% of smartphone users. That said, average monthly data usage (298 MB) increased 230% from early 2009 to early 2010. The New York Times has more coverage here. PANDORA HIRING 70 EMPLOYEES THIS YEARPandora hired 70 new employees last year and plans to bring another 70 on-board this year, Billboard reports. 80-90% of those new hires are in sales, perhaps indicative of the webcaster’s growing popularity and advertising success. The new staff occupy offices across the country: New York, Chicago, Dallas and Los Angeles, not to mention the “home base” in Oakland, CA.
Pandora founder Tim Westergren also revealed that Pandora is earning 2 cents per listener per hour. He wants at at least 8 cents per user per hour, which would allow Pandora to pay 25% of their revenues to SoundExchange, rather than the per-song, per-user structure that cost them 60% of their revenue in 2009. Find the full story, reprinted in Reuters, here. GOOGLE SAYS NEW PLATFORM WILL LET ANYONE DEVELOP ANDROID APPS Google is launching a new platform that aims to let anyone develop apps for Android mobile device, even people who have no programming experience. It’s a visual platform that apparently works through a series of “blocks,” according to DesignTaxi.com.
Though Google says that even 6th graders were able to build apps with the platform, DesignTaxi.com has doubts: “Early demos of the tool still look a tad too daunting to the average consumer.” Read more here.
RADIOTIME’S HALYBURTON JOINS MCVAY NEW MEDIADan Halyburton, recently president of RadioTime, is McVay New Media’s new VP/Innovation. Halyburton (pictured left) will continue to serve as a consultant at RadioTime. He also previously served as an executive with Susquehanna and Emmis. Halyburton launched Susquehanna’s digital platform in 1997. Radio Ink has more here.share: del.icio.us.  Reddit  Digg  Yahoo  Wink  Windows  Google  Newsvine 
CommentCommenting is closed for this article.  Other stories RAIN has upgraded (and moved)! RAIN 9/13: RAIN Summit Chicago takes place today! RAIN 9/12: First Summit in RAIN's hometown takes place tomorrow RAIN 9/9: Summer holidays, "doldrums" impact July Webcast Metrics, but audience up over last year RAIN 9/8: Clear Channel launches new customizable iHeartRadio beta; RAIN goes hands-on RAIN 9/7: Meet more speakers you'll hear at RAIN Summit Chicago in less than a week RAIN 9/6: Clear Channel taps The Echo Nest to take on Pandora RAIN 9/2: RAIN reviews Spotify's radio-like product Artist Radio RAIN 9/1: UK online radio aggregator Radioplayer campaigns b'dcasters to create "all radio" ratings RAIN 8/31: Execs from Merlin, Triton Digital, jacAPPS and more to appear at RAIN Summit Chicago |
