mLearnCon News and Updates

Ambient Insight Reports Healthy US Mobile Learning Revenues 

The five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for Mobile Learning in the US is 13.7% and revenues will reach $1.8 billion by 2015 according to a new report by Ambient Insight called, "The US Market for Mobile Learning Products and Services: 2010-2015 Forecast and Analysis."

The report provides a detailed quantitative forecast and analysis of the US market that includes demand-side analyses, supply-side analyses, and the identification of revenue opportunities.

"Due to favorable market conditions, Ambient Insight has revised our US Mobile Learning revenue forecasts upward compared to our previous forecasts," reports Chief Research Officer, Sam S. Adkins. "In particular, we have revised the consumer, corporate, and healthcare forecasts significantly upward."

The demand-side analysis in this report forecasts the expenditures for mLearning in eight US buying segments: consumer, corporate, federal government, state/local government, PreK-12, higher education, non-profits/associations, and healthcare.

The free Executive Overview is available at: http://www.ambientinsight.com/Reports/MobileLearning.aspx

"Mobile Learning is now recognized as an integral component of the vibrant mHealth industry," comments CEO Tyson Greer.  "The more sophisticated products evolve around educational apps for children with disabilities and handheld decision support designed for clinical personnel."

Read the full press release here from PRNewswire

A shrinking percentage of total mobile users are coming to Business Insider via iPads and iPhones, according to our internal logs.

It looks like iPad visits spiked in December (Christmas?) and dropped until April (iPad 2?) before going on a slight rise.

Meanwhile, Android's share is rising much more quickly.

BlackBerry has an embarrassingly small share; smaller even than the Apple iPod. Microsoft Windows Phones did not register.

The original article appears here

The European Commission has ruled that member states open two radio frequencies to the newest generation of mobile devices to enable faster Internet use on the move.

EU member states must implement the new rule to allow 4th generation mobile devices access to 900 and 1,800 MHz radio frequencies by the end of the year.

Mobile wireless capability is central to the EU's Digital Agenda and it believes that an increase in Internet uptake will boost competitiveness of the EU's common market.

Neelie Kroes, Commissioner for the EU's Digital Agenda, said in a statement that the "the decision opens the way for the latest 4G mobile devices to gain access to the radio spectrum they need to operate."

The new rules will "stimulate high-speed broadband services and foster more competition," she said.

4G is the next generation of mobile phone wireless standards, which includes Long Term Evolution (LTE) and Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) and is more advanced as well as faster than 3G and 2G standards.

Read the full report here from Reuters.com, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/18/us-eu-telecoms-idUSTRE73H4PX20110418

Android leapfrogged BlackBerry in January to become the largest smartphone platform in the U.S., with 31.2% market share, according to the latest comScore data. Android's three-percentage-point gain from December was combined with a one-percentage-point drop by Research in Motion's BlackBerry OS to 30.4% to push the Google mobile operating system to the No. 1 spot at the start of 2011.

Apple's iOS remained the third-most-popular smartphone system, with 24.7% share in January, while Microsoft's Windows Phone platform trailed further back at 8%, and Palm at 3.2%. Separatefigures released by Nielsen last week also showed Android pulling into the lead for the first time, but in a tighter race in which the Google OS had 29% market share compared to 27% apiece for iOS and BlackBerry.

Read the full article here

ComputerWorld

Everybody always wants to know the big story out of a major conference like Mobile World Congress, which ended last week in Barcelona.  

I can't purport to be the sage who knows for certain the big story for an event where 50,000 visitors attended, with more than 1,500 vendors showing off wares amid numerous press conferences and interviews. But I'll give it a try.

My colleagues and I noted many new smartphones and tablets with a heavy emphasis on Android machines. For the most part, those new smartphones and tablets seemed little more than variations of earlier versions announced at CES in January or in recent weeks, all of them basically still being reactions to the Apple iPhone smartphone or the Apple iPad tablet.

Saying that doesn't mean that Apple does everything right, but the updates by Apple competitors focus mainly on multi-core processors or bigger or smaller screens.  To vastly generalize, most of the competing smartphones are pushing above 4-inch screens, while the tablets seem to be either about 7 inches or nearly the 9.7-inch iPad size, some going above 10 inches.  (For smartphones, I liked the Samsung Galaxy S II smartphone a lot, based on a quick look and feel, but confess that I didn't get to play with most of the others announced.)

Read more to get further insights to the meeting of the mobile giants, http://blogs.computerworld.com/17851/the_dark_side_of_mobile_world_congress_2011