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Globally, the speed for broadband connections is steadily on the rise: according to Akamai’s Q1 2012 State of the Internet report, it’s now at 2.6Mbps, compared to 2.3Mbps in the last quarter, and a rise of 25% on a year ago and a reversal of the 14% decline of last quarter. South Korea continues to remain the connection king, with an average connection speed of 15.7Mbps. The U.S., meanwhile, doesn’t make it into the top-10 countries (it’s ranked 12th) but at least it’s speeding up: it is now at 6.7Mbps, up by 29% on last year and 17% from the previous quarter.

But as broadband continues to improve, so do attacks. Akamai notes in its study that attack traffic is on the rise, concentrating in particular regions and ports, with Asia Pacific, led by China, accounting for 42 percent of attack traffic originating from Asia Pacific; and the top 10 ports for attack traffic accounting for 77% of all attacks (up from 62% last quarter).

After Asia Pacific, Europe accounted for 35% of all attack traffic originations, while North and South America accounted for 21%. Africa represented less than 1.5% of attacks. However, although the Americas appear to account for less attack traffic, in fact the U.S. ranked second to China on an individual country basis, with 11% of all attacks; China accounted for 16%.

Other notable figures:

The Internet continues to grow: Akamai notes that it registered 666 million unique IP addresses from 238 countries and regions connecting to the Akamai Intelligent Platform in Q1 2012, a six percent increase over Q4 2011 and 14 percent increase compared to Q1 last year. More growth is happening in smaller countries than in larger ones. In the wake of the global launch of IPv6, Akamai says that the number of unique IP addresses from the top 10 connecting countries was at 66%, but that this is down by about one percent on the quarter before. China, Brazil, Italy and Russia are all growing at rates of 20%.

Broadband high and low: Akamai’s seeing enough growth at higher broadband speeds that it’s now breaking out progress in this area. It notes the number of countries where people are using broadband at speeds of 10Mbps or higher is now at 10%, a rise of 19% on last quarter. South Korea, being the world’s broadband leader, has high-speed broadband penetration of 53%. Japan is at 37%, Hong Kong is at 28%, Latvia is at 26% and the Netherlands is at 24% penetration for high-speed broadband.  Overall, 125 countries are seeing increases in speed over last year, Akamai notes, with only 10 countries seeing declines. Given the speeds below, you can see why Google’s fiber project is so compelling and has so many people excited at what it might bring next.

Mobile broadband: Germany takes the crown for fastest mobile broadband at 6Mbps. Worldwide some 65 carriers had speeds greater than 1Mbps. Interestingly, only three carriers analysed had connection speeds below 500kbps, meaning those carriers that are upgrading to mobile broadband seem to be doing it in a largely unified mass, with less speed fragmentation than we’re seeing in the area of fixed broadband. Akamai doesn’t name and shame the slowest providers — or say who the best ones are.

As for how we are using mobile broadband, this graphic that Akamai presents of the last five years shows just how much data is growing with respect to voice usage:

Attack traffic by ports points to Conficker Worm rising again: Akamai notes that Port 445, used for Microsoft-DS, accounted for a disproportionate 42% of all attack traffic, up from 25% in the previous quarter. It notes that Port 445 is associated with the Conficker worm.

It appears that this increase was largely attributable to significant growth in the percentage of attacks targeting Port 445 (42 percent of observed attack traffic), after seeing declines over the prior several quarters. As has been noted in past reports, Port 445 is associated with the Conficker worm. It was the most attacked port in seven of the top 10 countries generating attack traffic, Akamai notes. Attacks on web-based applications, represented by Port 80, actually decreased by three percentage points globally, but that was the second-most targeted port in the U.S., Germany and Brazil, Akamai notes.

Apple’s market-leading iPad has great penetration globally at 68% market share. But it’s even bigger in China, where Analysys International says that iPad has almost 73 percent of the tablet market.

IDC’s latest numbers show that Apple owns the global tablet scene — 17 million shipped just in the second quarter of 2012. And selling almost seven out of ten tablets sold worldwide is impressive.

But selling more than seven out of ten in a market where the the cheapest retina iPad costs easily 10 percent of an average worker’s annual salary is unbelievable.

Source: Apple

iPad2 and new iPad sales rising in China

In fact, that’s a 20 percent increase from the first quarter, most likely due to price cuts on earlier models. But going down from 10 percent of an average salary to 7 or 8 percent is not terribly significant.

The Chinese iPad numbers contrast with home-grown Lenovo, which mustered up only just over 8 percent of tablet market share, and near-neighbor Samsung, which actually lost market share in China this quarter, coming down to 3.59 percent.

Perhaps the numbers should not be that shocking. With a middle class already as large as 250 million people, there will soon be almost as many well-off Chinese as there are Americans in total.

And the 33 percent of global iPads sales that are currently recognized in the U.S. could soon be 20 percent or fewer.

Image credit: Aleksandar Mijatovic/ShutterStock

Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat

Mobile is the technology with the highest audience penetration rate globally, and with smartphone ownership on the rise, mobile email marketing is going becoming increasingly important.

With that said, the term “mobile email campaign” is a misnomer. The first and foremost concept email marketers need to embrace is that there is really no such thing as a mobile email campaign in the strictest sense. Emails are sent to email addresses, and it is the recipients alone who decide whether to read those emails on their mobile phones or on their desktop computers. Consumers’ preferences can and will change based on what they are doing and what technologies they have at their disposal at any given moment. In other words, people are reading emails on mobile devices, right now, even if the marketer doesn’t know about it or plan for it.

In fact, it’s very likely that a high percentage of email marketers have no idea whether their emails are being read on mobile devices and, as a result, are missing the unique opportunity to communicate with their customers through emails that are both content- and design-appropriate for today’s on-the-go consumers.

Marketers can safely assume that a significant portion of their emails is being read on mobile phones. So therefore optimizing emails for cross-platform performance is a large but necessary labor.

Design sensitivities for mobile email readers

Designing for the mobile web is nothing particularly new. However, it seems that mobile style-sheets haven’t proven to be quite as popular in email, despite the advantages they provide to device-based viewing.

Keep in mind that some devices are better at handling HTML email. Apple and Android devices generally display HTML emails intact, making the optimization requirements minimal.

Overall though, viewing HTML email on a mobile device can be fiddly, and even on the iPhone it’s possible to have text automatically rescaled to a size that’s nearly unreadable or in a way that can break your design. The point is that regardless of device use, optimizing your emails for the mobile environment is essential.

A mobile screen is small — at first glance no one’s going to see much of your content, especially if it’s designed to fit a PC screen instead. Also, each and every mobile device has its own unique standard settings to take into account. BlackBerry devices, for example, don’t display images by default, whereas iPhones and Android devices normally do.

But how can you optimize for all these technical requirements and cater for device use across the board in one sweep?

Start by following a few straightforward, universal rules.

Here are key optimization practices that will help you produce mobile-friendly emails for most devices.

Keep it simple

A key element of mobile email design is simplicity. Most of your audience is in a hurry and needs to find relevant information to take actions on quickly. Make use of single column layouts, tighter subject lines, larger font sizes, bigger buttons for links, and an overall narrower message width. Wide emails often require horizontal scrolling, especially when there are large images involved. Keep it top-down, not left-right.

While iOS devices zoom to fit your email the width of the screen, most other mobile operating systems don’t — leaving users to resize the email or scroll left and right to view your message. Consider trimming your emails to between 320 and 550 pixels wide.

Also keep the HTML code of your email elementary — the simpler it is, the more likely it is to be interpreted correctly and rendered well on a mobile screen. Remember: Good design is always backed by responsible coding and a platform-appropriate layout.

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After being on the market for just 48 hours, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion is already accounting for 3.2 percent of all Mac web traffic and is on track to become one of the most quickly adopted operating systems in history.

Half of all mobile subscribers at Verizon Wireless, the largest cellular provider in the U.S., are now smartphone users, thanks in part to sales of 2.7 million iPhones in the second quarter.

Uh Oh, Facebook Is Losing Its Popularity – Technology – Rebecca Greenfield via The Atlantic Wire:

This is inevitable, because Facebook is the new AOL:

Rebecca Greenfield via The Atlantic Wire

Over the last month, Facebook has not only seen a 1.1 percent drop in U.S. users, but a decline in 14 of the 23 countries where it has 50 percent penetration, found an analyst using tracking software. Beyond numbers though, another metric, the American Consumer Satisfaction Index, found over the last year the users that have stayed are less satisfied. Facebook scored a 61, which not only represents over a 7 percent decrease from one year ago, but puts it well below Google+.

The end will be sooner that most imagine: in three years, Facebook will be a has been.

Nielsen released another of their periodic looks at the U.S. smartphone market today, and aside from the revelation that two-thirds of U.S. phone purchasers went for smartphones in Q2 2012, the results are as you’d expect.

Android still leads the pack in terms of pure penetration — as of this past June, it accounts for 51.8% of smartphones in use (up from 50.4% in Q1 2012) with Apple’s iOS right behind it at 34%. Don’t feel too bad for Apple though, as they still have the highest manufacturer share by far (34% in Q2), with Samsung at a distant second.

That those two platforms still hold first and second place shouldn’t come as surprise, and their slight gains come at a cost. Nielsen has RIM still clinging to third place despite another quarterly drop, as it now accounts for 8.1% of smartphones in use. Meanwhile, the rest of the competition languishes below 5% as of Q2 2012.

It’s that part of the market that seems the most interesting right now, as there’s still plenty of room in the market for a third strong mobile ecosystem to emerge while Apple and Google continue to slug it out. The question though is what that third platform will be, and there are no clear indicators to be found in Nielsen’s data.

RIM looks like a possibility, considering it has managed to hold on to a its tenuous third, though it’s tough to say how their recent performance will affect this figure going forward. CEO Thorsten Heins noted during the company’s somewhat contentious shareholders meeting that their current and forthcoming BlackBerry 7 devices would comprise the company’s low and mid-range product tiers until it can push out a full slate of BB10 hardware next year.

Still, RIM had best gird itself for a long(er) transition period, as its split focus between platforms may not do it any favors. The process of shifting users from older devices to new ones will take a considerable amount of time, especially as the company focuses on getting existing BlackBerry users to upgrade right now.

Of course, Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 is set to make its official debut this fall, putting it well ahead of RIM’s nascent “computing platform.” That’s not to say a head start is all that it takes to win in a race like this — there’s something to be said for how well a company can capture new customers (or upgrade older ones), and Microsoft seems to have had some issues with that. Nielsen’s data still puts Microsoft’s aging Windows Mobile platform (3% of the market as of Q2 2012) ahead of the much-newer Windows Phone (1.3%). With any luck, Microsoft has learned a few things and garnered enough developer support to put Windows Phone 8 higher up in the rankings, but only time will tell whether or not either of these companies has the savvy to make real contenders of their forthcoming mobile operating systems.

While the Android buzz is now firmly focused on the recently unveiled Jelly Bean, the previous major update, Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, has finally reached double-digit penetration in the market.

It’s a bittersweet victory though, as it took 8.5 months since Android 4.0′s release to scrape together 10.9 percent of the Android market. Meanwhile, the majority of Android users (64 percent) are running the 15-month old Gingerbread update.

The latest statistics, gathered at Google’s Android developers website, won’t do much to satisfy critics who say that Android is horribly fragmented. Google has historically avoided forcing Android updates on device manufacturers, who usually need several months to tweak the software for their products.

At least the adoption of Android 4.0 seems to be speeding up. Last month, Google reported that only 7.1 percent of devices were running Android 4.0.

Come next month, Google will add Android 4.1 Jelly Bean statistics to its market report. That update will officially hit Nexus devices later this month, and it’ll give us some idea if how well Google’s new Nexus 7 tablet sells.

Via Android Police

Design is determining the winners in everything mobile. The most successful players are focusing on one thing: How to make products, services, and devices as compelling and delightful as possible – visually, and experientially. MobileBeat 2012, July 10-11 in San Francisco , is assembling the most elite minds to debate how UI/UX is transforming every aspect of the mobile economy, and where the opportunities lie. Register here.

Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat

Despite the fact that the Galaxy S III supply is rather low at the moment, Samsung’s mobile boss JK Shin predicts that Galaxy S III sales will exceed 10 million in July.

Neither the Samsung Galaxy S II nor the Galaxy Note were able to achieve such fast market penetration, but neither the Galaxy S II nor the Galaxy Note were the most pre-ordered Android phone in history.

But that doesn’t change the fact that most users are unable to purchase or pre-order the 32GB version of the device, according to Reuters. In fact, Sprint has had to push back the launch of the device because of low supply from Samsung.

“Due to overwhelming demand for the Galaxy S III worldwide, Samsung has informed us they will not be able to deliver enough inventory of Galaxy S III for Sprint to begin selling the device on June 21. We are working closely with Samsung on a delivery schedule to support our launch,” reads Sprint’s site.

It’ll be interesting to see the convergence between short supply from Samsung and a brand new device from Apple. The iPhone is Samsung’s greatest threat in the mobile realm, and the company smartly gave itself a three-month (or so) head start before the next iPhone is unveiled. But with short supply surely slowing the momentum of sales, Samsung may not get everything it could out of the Galaxy S III.

In either case, the GSIII will still sell just fine and surely break some new records for Samsung. Plus, Samsung went out of its way to avoid any patent litigation with Apple this time around.

Enterprise cloud storage startup Box has opened its first international headquarters in London and laid out plans for a major European expansion, the company announced today.

Box has more than 11 million users across 120,000 businesses, with penetration in 82 percent of the Fortune 500. But the company has good reason to keep working on quick expansion and attracting more international customers. It faces a challenging roster of competitors, including Google’s Drive, Microsoft’s SkyDrive, and Egnyte, and it should be worried about how crowded the market is getting.

Getting troops on the ground outside the U.S. will help. Box says users outside the U.S. generate 50 percent of the company’s overall traffic. Those users include big-name customers like Ben Sherman, Proctor & Gamble, and O2.

The new HQ will be located in central London, and it will be used as a base for hiring 100 new European employees across Europe by the end of 2013. Box VP of business operations, Greg Strickland, will lead the London office and transition into the new role of VP of global operations.

“A tremendous shift is taking place in Europe,” Box CEO Aaron Levie (pictured) said in a statement. “Businesses are looking for solutions that help them move to the cloud and transition away from costly, inflexible legacy technologies. We’ve seen significant customer growth across Europe in the last year and are thrilled to be building out a local presence to support our customers.”

Along with the new European HQ, the company has also expanded a partnership with Hewlett-Packard to help drive cloud storage adoption. Box says the two companies will work together to give small and medium-sized HP customers who also use Box a mysterious “exclusive offer.”

Los Altos, Calif.-based Box has raised about $162 million to date and counts Andreessen Horowitz, Salesforce, SAP Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Emergence Capital Partners, New Enterprise Associates, and others as investors.

Aaron Levie (left) at DEMO conference: VentureBeat

Filed under: cloud