by Brooke Crothers   March 28, 2012 9:54 PM PDT

Windows PCs to decline as Android, Apple devices rise

The PC will become a much less popular device by 2016 relative to mobile devices.

(Credit: Dell)

The venerable Windows-Intel PC will see a sharp decline by 2016 while devices running Android and Apple's iOS are on the rise, market researcher IDC said today.

There will be a "dramatic shift" between 2011 and 2016, with the "once-dominant" Windows-Intel (aka, x86) PCs dropping from a market-dominating 35.9 percent share in 2011 to 25.1 percent in 2016," IDC said.

Mobile devices like Android phones and tablets and Apple iPhones and iPads will step into the void and begin to dominate. Android devices (using ARM chips) will grow from 29.4 percent share in 2011 to a leading 31.1 percent share in 2016. And Apple's iOS-based devices will grow from a 14.6 percent share in 2011 to 17.3 percent in 2016.

The once-dominant Windows-x86 PCs will drop from a market-leading 35.9 percent share in 2011 to 25.1 percent in 2016, IDC said. Android and iOS market share will continue to rise, eventually eclipsing Windows.

(Credit: IDC)

"Smart, connected, compute-capable [phones and tablets] are playing an increasingly important role in nearly every individual's life," Bob O'Donnell, vice president of clients and displays at IDC, said in a statement.

This year, unit shipments for smart connected devices should top 1.1 billion worldwide, IDC said. By 2016, IDC predicts shipments will jump to 1.84 billion units, more than double the 2011 figure.

This works out to a compound annual growth rate of 15.4 percent for the five-year forecast period, IDC said.

Android: But it's not all good news for all players in the Android market. "Android's growth is tied directly to the propagation of lower-priced devices," Tom Mainelli, research director of mobile connected devices at IDC, said in a statement. "So, while we expect dozens of hardware vendors to own some share in the Android market, many will find profitability difficult to sustain."

iOS: And IDC expects a large percentage of application developers to focus their efforts on iOS because iOS users are willing to pay for high-quality apps.

Are Your Ready for the iPad 3?

The rumors are growing. The leakers are leaking, the press is getting excited and geeks everywhere are dusting off their sleeping bags and how early they will need to get in line to beat the scalpers. Apple is expected to announce a new iPad on March 7^th.

Social media marketers might shrug at that news. It means that for a few days in March, Twitter will be buzzing about the new device. That might not be a good time to try to build interest in a product launch but once the excitement dies down, things should go back to normal, right? At least until the device actually comes out and the iPad 3 becomes the hot giveaway item in social media promotions.

Not exactly, because there is no normal any more. According to one report, Apple has ordered as many as 65 million retina displays for the new iPad. That is a phenomenal figure and it says much about the way that people are connecting to the Internet and using social media now and in the future.

They are connecting less at their desks and more on the sofa, on the bus, in cafés and in restaurants.

And they are buying in those places too!

Shopping Online… and on the Sofa

This is new. In the past, online shopping might have meant skipping the mall and heading to the study. Now it does not even have to mean climbing the stairs. According to one report, mobile purchases over the 2011 holiday season saw a rise of 172.9 percent over the same period last year. Another study estimates that 18.3 percent of all online purchases made on Christmas Day were made on a mobile device, 13.4 percent of them on either an iPhone or iPad.

Clearly, your website should be optimized for mobile users.  (see Mobile Marketing Guide)  You should be looking now at the percentage of your customers who made a purchase on your website using a mobile device. (It is information that is easily available on your analytics page.) And you will need to check that at the very least your conversion rate for mobile visitors is no lower than your conversion rate for your regular visitors. If it is lower, as more people switch to surfing on tablets and phones, your overall conversion rate will hit a downward trend.

But you will also want to think about how and when you post your social media updates. If you now know that people are more likely to buy your products when they are sitting at home with their iPads than when they are sitting in the office with their laptops, then that will affect how you tweet and post. You will want to send tweets and updates during the day that build interest and create trust but only send the link to the landing page in the evening or at the weekend when your followers are relaxing on the sofa and ready to buy.

You will need to create content that matches the platform on which your customers are consuming it — and you will want to show that you understand them by posting your content from your own mobile devices from the sofa (becoming a couch potentate?).

One thing that I have not mentioned and which may make you decide that you need to go forward with creating a mobile site is the iPad.  Remember that it, too, uses a difference rendering. 

Having said that, here is a list of great tools to use to validate whether your site old or new renders well on mobile devices:

www.ipadpeek.com – See how your site looks on an iPad.  Because flash works on this site, your need to disable the flash plug-in to be fully accurate.

www.iphonetester.com – See how your site looks on an iPhone.

www.iphoney.,com – same as above

http://validator.w3.org/mobile - Shows how mobile-friendly your site is and checks against W3C compliance.

http://www.google.com/gwt/n - Makes the page mobile-web-friendly by rimming the content down to its bare essentials.

http://www.gomez.com/mobile-rediness-instant-test - This mobile readiness test gives you a score between one and five based on an analysis of over thirty proven mobile web development techniques.

I hope you have enjoyed this series.  Please let me know if I can help more and let me know if you want more.

It seems everything has gone digital from TV channels to content material.  Internet users have a seemingly endless supply of expert resources awaiting their beckoning call.

Digital Media has proven to be a leader in marketing new products and services.  It is estimated that 90% of buyers first study companies and products online.

Digital Marketing has recently outpaced printed advertisements.    Digital Marketing offers many more avenues to market your product and services.  The continuing growth of Digital Marketing has been further enhanced with the utilization of mobile technology.

The growth of Digital Marketing has attracted competitors across the globe.  Digital Marketing has expanded in recent time to utilize various media sources including those that connect with mobile media sources.  Iphones and Ipads are opening new doors for marketing products and services using HTML5 code.

Video has also become a staple product in use along with other venues for marketing products and services.   Assigning the best keywords to the video presentation is critical for your online success. 

Digital Marketing has opened new doors for your business success.  Combine it with video marketing and you have a winning team for success.   The advantage of video marketing is that you can review the benefits and features of your products and services by way of video. 

Prospective customers can then access this information and make a request for an agent visit.
Our world today is centered on immediate access to information, products, and services.  To get the attention of your target market, you must be willing to step outside of the old box and make an attempt to connect with your target market.  

Internet Marketing without use of video is like having a car and failing to put gas into it.  Get your business to where you want it to go by connecting with your target market by way of video and mobile marketing opportunities.

We have found that marketing is a full-time consulting job.  Contact us to decide where and how to start.

Perhaps you have said to yourself in the past a blog is a blog is a blog.  I beg to differ with you.  There are blogs and then there are blogs.  If you want your blog to work effectively for your website, you will need produce blog post with some inspiration.

Inspiration comes from the heart, and whether you are blogging about the greatest kitchen gadget or how to save your marriage, if it is to be an effective tool for building traffic and customers to your website, it must be inspired.

Don’t wait to get the inspiration the day you need to post your blog.  Throughout your day, every day  you are doing business on your website or just going through your daily routine, you have ideas and thoughts that just seem to pop into your head.   That’s inspiration.  The problem most people have is that they fail to recognize these nuggets of golden thoughts as the inspiration for their next blog post and then others simply forget the thought or idea as quickly as it came.

To capitalize on these inspirational thoughts and moments, you should write them down as soon as they come to you.   Yes, even if you are busy with other things.  Keep a note pad and pen (or maybe something like an iPad?) available within reach throughout your day just for this purpose.   An inspired thought that never finds fertile ground will never produce what it was intended to produce. 

You can spend hours and days searching for blog content that will be ineffective when the highest quality blog content was at the tip of your tongue at one point but you failed to take it to the tip of your pen.

Perhaps you could benefit by recording your thoughts which can easily be done with your cell phone and other electronic gadgets if you desire.

Capture those fleeting inspired thoughts and watch them come alive on your blog.  Your well of quality blog content will never run dry when it is fed by the fountain of inspired thoughts throughout your day.

Oh, and one last point: a blog is the key to your Search Engine Marketing.