Of course, they would say that — more video over LTE is good for the carriers. It lines their pockets and it puts strain on the networks, which means they buy more gear from Ericsson. Okay, with that caveat out there, let us look at some of the salient data points from Ericsson’s report:

• Total global smartphone subscriptions hit the 1.2 billion mark in 2012. We will see 4.5 billion smartphone subscriptions by the end of 2018.
• Smartphones accounted for around half of all mobile-phone sales in Q1 2013, compared with roughly 40 percent for the whole of 2012.
• So it is no surprise that mobile-broadband subscriptions are growing really fast — during the the first three months of 2013, they grew 45 percent faster than the same period in 2012 and now stand at around 1.7 billion.
• More smartphones means more demand for data, ergo, data traffic volumes doubled between Q1 2012 and Q1 2013. Data traffic growth between Q4 2012 and Q1 2013 was 19 percent. Ericsson forecasts that the data traffic on mobile networks will grow 12-fold by 2018.
• During 2013, overall mobile data traffic is expected to continue the trend of doubling each year.
• Of course, a lot of this growth will come as a result of faster networks. Ericsson expects 60 percent of the world’s population to be covered by LTE in 2018.
• Across the world 20 million new LTE subscriptions were added in Q1 2013.
• In North America, driven by the U.S., LTE will account for majority of subscriptions in the region in 2016, growing to around 70 percent in 2018.
• In comparison, by 2018, LTE will penetrate around 35 percent of the subscriptions base in Western Europe.
• LTE subscriptions are expected to exceed 1 billion in 2017.
• So what do we with all that speed? Spend more time on social networking: an average of up to 85 minutes per day in some networks. Looks like that Facebook addiction of ours is going to become super expensive!
• And we don’t really spend that much time talking on the phone. Voice traffic growth between Q1 2012 and Q1 2013 was 4 percent. Ouch!
• Ericsson says that web browsing and social networking will each constitute around 10 percent of the total data traffic volume in 2018.
• Of course, we watch video — a lot of it.  According to Ericsson, the video traffic on mobile networks grew by 60 percent annually.
• On some networks, video consumption is on average 2.6GB per subscription per month. That should make the network operators break into evil grins — more of our money into their pockets.
• Of course, worried about its carrier overlords, Ericsson makes no mention of over-the-air communication apps in this report.

Now for more details about the mobile world at large:

• Global mobile penetration was at 90 percent in first quarter of 2013 and mobile subscriptions now total around 6.4 billion. However, the actual number of subscribers is around 4.5 billion, since many people have multiple subscriptions.
• China alone accounted for around 25 percent of net additions, adding around 30 million subscriptions during first quarter of 2013.
• India added over 10 million, as did Indonesia. Brazil and Nigeria both added over 5 million subscriptions during the first quarter.

We will parse some of the data in separate posts later.

The report by Kantar Media also found that Samsung outspent the company it frequently mocked in its ads: Apple. The iPhone was the best-selling smartphone in the U.S. during the last three months of the year after the iPhone 5′s launch, but Apple didn’t increase its spending nearly as much in 2012 as its rival did. Kantar reported that Apple spent $333 million on iPhone ads in the U.S. last year, up from the $253 million the company spent the year before. HTC, which was third behind Samsung, spent $46 million, followed by BlackBerry, which spent $35 million, and Nokia, which spent $13 million on U.S. ads.

Samsung clearly has a lot of money to spend and it spreads it around too: The Wall Street Journal, in talking to unnamed wireless carrier executives, found that Samsung also helps to foot some bills for its strategic partners:

The heavy ad spending is only the most visible of Samsung’s investments. Some wireless carrier executives said the South Korean company also spends more on “below the line” marketing than any device maker. Those funds help pay for in-store advertising, promotions and training for carrier sales representatives that help close the sale.

The discrepancy in spending between the only two companies who are making any money at all in smartphone sales wasn’t just in quantity of dollars spent. In terms of quality, Samsung’s television advertising got people talking, especially “The Next Big Thing” ads that poked fun at Apple’s typically long lines on iPhone launch days and the people who wait in them.

Apple, meanwhile, had an ad campaign that got people talking in 2012 (remember the “Genius” ads?) — but for another reason: for how surprisingly un-Apple-like they seemed in quality of execution and tone.

Rhapsody will now be available as an a la carte service to any Metro smartphone customer regardless of which plan he or she subscribes to. But Metro customers will pay only $5 a month for unlimited music downloads, compared to the $10 Rhapsody typically charges for a single-device subscription.

Previously, MetroPCS included a Rhapsody subscription in its upper-tier data plans, along with other media services like its MetroStudio streaming portal. But the way the tiers worked, to get the music perk, a customer had to be willing to shell out $60 to $70 a month for 5 GB-or-more plan. When MetroPCS retooled its smartphone plans last month, it dropped prices across the board, but it sacrificed those bundled services in the process.

Now customers can get Rhapsody on a $40/500 MB smartphone plan (bringing the price to $45 a month). It’s important to note though that while song downloads are unlimited on Rhapsody, the bandwidth isn’t on Metro’s lower-tier plans. Rhapsody’s app will store music for offline playback, and you can make hefty use of Wi-Fi to keep your phone’s playlists updated. But if you’re out downloading or streaming music in the wild, Metro will start throttle back your speeds when you exceed your cap.

Nokia says that 150 playlists “that are curated and kept up to date by an expert team of US based musicologists” are available, comprised of a wide variety of music genres, from classical to house dance music. Additionally, playlists created by Lana Del Rey, Lady Gaga and Rihanna, as well as other well-known performers, are available. But Nokia Music isn’t just made up of the service-provided playlists. Personalized playlists can be built using the “create” function, which access millions of songs in Nokia’s music library.

The free service should appeal to music lovers that own a Lumia device in the US. Nokia Music doesn’t contain any advertising, so music will be uninterrupted. And the playlists can be accessed offline, so tunes can be enjoyed without using up precious mobile broadband. A “gig finder” feature also offers information on local music events and the app ties in to Nokia’s digital music store where users can purchase MP3 songs or albums.

Nokia Music is likely the first of many new announcements coming from the company. Tomorrow, Nokia has a scheduled press event in New York City, where it is widely expected to debut handsets designed to run Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8.

As my colleague Jeff Roberts has reported, this case was launched by Apple against Samsung last year, based on what Apple said was Samsung’s wilful infringement of software-related “utility” patents and four design-related patents it holds for the iPhone and iPad. According to Apple, the company’s smartphones — including the Nexus S, Epic 4G and Galaxy S 4G — copied elements of the design and functionality of Apple’s iPhone models, and the Samsung Galaxy Tab copied design and functional aspects of the iPad. In its statement of claim, which contained drawings that jurors relied on to decide the case, Apple said:

“Rather than innovate and develop its own technology and a unique Samsung style for its smart phone products and computer tablets, Samsung chose to copy Apple’s technology, user interface and innovative style in these infringing products.”

Did Apple really suffer because of another phone’s shape?

From a legal point of view, there appear to be a number of questionable factors involved in the jurors’ decision in this case, at least according to Groklaw, including a debate over whether the jury actually understood the specifics of what they were being asked to do, and whether they ignored certain aspects of the case in their desire to penalize Samsung. That could lead to the case being successfully appealed, but even if it isn’t, or if the appeal fails, the Apple-Samsung decision adds even more weight to the argument that software and design patents are evil and that the entire patent process is badly flawed — if not broken.

As part of the case, Apple obviously argued that it suffered irreparable harm from Samsung’s alleged copying of its design and functionality. But has it really suffered competitively? It’s hard to see how, considering the company is the world’s most valuable publicly-traded entity, with a market value of over $600 billion, and its mobile products are the market leaders in almost every category. How much more successful could it possibly be? And now, the legal ruling gives it even greater power to beat up on Google and Android — is that really a win for the technology industry or for society as a whole? It’s difficult to see how (and let’s not forget that Apple doesn’t need software patents to protect it from knock-offs — it has trademarks, trade dress and a series of other legal tools that will do that too).

Defenders of the case, and of patent laws in general, would likely argue that it doesn’t matter how large or successful Apple is: the point is that Samsung did something wrong. But what exactly do we mean by this statement? Two of the design patents involved in the case describe the way in which the iPhone is rounded at the corners and flat on the top, and another refers to the way that icons appear on the screen. Among the utility patents involved are those related to the “bounce back” or “rubber band” feature in some of Apple’s apps — in which the screen rebounds after the user pulls it in one direction or another — and to the “pinch to zoom” functionality used for images.

One designer said that the pinch-too-zoom gesture has become so ubiquitous for mobile devices and apps of all kinds that it is like claiming ownership over the idea of a circular steering wheel. Would we be better off if one company controlled the rights to the steering wheel and could charge huge sums to all manufacturers for using that design element? Probably not. But Apple could now do this with pinch-to-zoom, as well as other design and utility features, giving it an even bigger lock on the mobile device business than it already has — despite the fact that there is evidence that similar gestures existed before Apple patented them.

Update: Nilay Patel at The Verge notes that none of the patents in the Apple-Samsung case specifically refers to the pinch-to-zoom process, although several cover related multi-touch elements of the interface and one covers the tap-to-zoom gesture.

Software patents are nuclear weapons, not defences

Even if you accept that Apple did something unique and revolutionary with the zoom feature that deserves to be protected by the full force of the law, should it have the same rights to a series of icons that are lined up in a specific way on a mobile device? Or to the fact that its device has a rounded screen, or that a window which pops up on top of another window fades away automatically over time? Or the fact that one of its iPhone icons happens to look like a gear, and another looks like a pad of paper? These are the kinds of things software and design patents can refer to.

The fact that software patents can apply to such obvious-looking or even trivial applications of design and usability is why some have described them as evil, and “a cancer” on the economy and society in general. Others have warned for several years about the coming of a software patent “apocalypse” created by multibillion-dollar technology giants accumulating software patents. And in the end, these cases do little to promote any kind of useful innovation — instead, they just tie up the courts and give some companies a nuclear arsenal they can use to attack competitors.

Even some judges — such as the one who recently ended Apple’s patent lawsuit against Google-owned Motorola — have questioned whether certain industries that already experience plenty of innovation (such as the mobile phone business) need to be protected by patents at all, including software and design patents. And research by Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society has shown that software patents have provided little or no net social benefit over the past decade, despite billions in lawsuits and various legal victories.

In the end, the important question isn’t whether Apple was right to sue Samsung, or whether the Korean manufacturer directly copied elements of Apple’s design for its phones — the question should be what is gained by allowing companies to launch multibillion-dollar cases involving the shape of icons or the swiping motion that users employ to switch pages.

Post and thumbnail images courtesy of Flickr user Stefan

In its Measuring Cup online poll, the cooking site found that 35 percent of online cooks used smartphones to look up recipes. While recipe research was by far the most common smartphone activity, cooks are using the handheld gadgets to do a lot more inside and outside the kitchen: 29 percent said they have used their phones to photograph finished dishes, 18 percent created digital shopping lists with apps like Grocery IQ and Ziplist, 16 percent redeemed digital coupons at the grocery store and 12 percent used the phone to share a recipe on a social media site.

The number of people using smartphones to watch cooking videos is still small at just 15 percent, but on the PC and tablet, streamed video has exploded among women (Many of the poll results only include women since not enough men responded to form a suitable statistical sample).  Allrecipe’s first Measuring Cup report in 1999 found that 45 percent of women watched cooking videos online. In 2012, that number increased to 74 percent. Furthermore, nearly half of respondent believed that in 15 years how-to videos would become the primary media for conveying culinary knowledge – replacing Mom.

Here are some other interesting tidbits from the report:

• The most popular digital culinary resources weren’t cooking portals like Allrecipes or Food Network, but search engines, according to 43 percent of online cooks. Recipe sites were a close second, though, at 42 percent. The number one search term, you guessed it, was “chicken”.
• Digital cuisine is a big business: citing eMarketer, Allrecipes said consumer packaged good advertising spend online is increasing from $134 million in 200 to a projected $3.6 billion in 2012.
• Allrecipes found that mindshare in online cooking is drifting to more general social media platforms like Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube and Twitter. One third of female cooks polled said it was important that cooking portals keep up by integrating with those big social networks.
• Expectations are high that more of the shopping and meal planning process will become digital: a majority of respondents stated that in 15 years the paper coupon will become extinct, the digital wallet will replace the leather billfold and that groceries will be ordered online and delivered to the home.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the report, however, is its more subtle findings on how the digital media have changed our views of the hallowed recipe and cookbook. Paradoxically the internet has made finding recipes far easier but it’s also destroyed our faith in the recipe itself.

Forty-four percent of men and women polled named Cooking websites as their preferred cooking resource, compared to 19 percent who said cookbooks and 9 percent who said their parents. However, confidence in the recipe has degraded. In 1999, Allrecipe’s poll found that 73 percent of online cooks said recipes made cooking easier. In 2012, only 35 percent returned the same response.

The Internet may be democratizing cooking – anyone can circulate a recipe widely and anyone can publish a cookbook. But let’s face it, there are a lot of bad recipes out there, and there’s growing trend to emphasize the aesthetics of food over the quality of the recipes behind them (The study found that the top reason for sharing recipes online was “attractive photos”). Sites like Pinterest have made cooking an artfully presented aspirational pursuit, but in many ways it’s turned the internet into a gigantic coffee table cookbook – a collection of pretty pictures and lush descriptions backed up by unvetted, incomplete and often awful recipes.

As always, though, the internet will adapt. Not only have sophisticated online review engines helped distinguish good recipes from bad, many sites such as Food52 have emerged that take crowdsourced approaches to testing and refining recipes. Allrecipes itself has long allowed its community to customize any recipe submitted to the site, and in many cases those customized recipes have become more popular than the originals, according to an Allrecipes spokesperson. Maybe we can have our democracy, but also a little bit of quality control as well.

Allrecipes, which was recently acquired by Meredith, polled roughly 2,200 people, about half of which were Allrecipes members and the other half online panelists taken from other, often non-cooking, sites. Very few men participated in the poll, so on questions where more than 200 men participated, their results were included, the spokesperson said.

All graphics courtesy of Allrecipes.com

The approach is similar to that of Pandora, which has long offered ad-supported online music tracks and subscription plans. And like Pandora, the updated Spotify for Android allows the creation of stations based on artist, album or playlist. You can skip a song if it’s one you’d rather not hear and Spotify will learn not to play it again. Give a “thumbs up” to a favorite song and Spotify will save it to a “Liked from Radio” playlist on the desktop.

Surely, Spotify hopes that a taste of the free version will entice subscriptions. But the company’s conversion rate isn’t too shabby; even before this move. Ken Parks, Spotify’s Chief Content Officer and Managing Director of Spotify N. America recently noted that Spotify has 15 million active users and over 4 million paid subscribers.

Aside from the ads, there’s no real limit to the free Spotify radio service, so it should appeal. Users have access to the millions of tracks in Spotify’s catalog on their Android smartphone or tablet. The updated app is available in the Google Play store and supports devices running Android 2.1 and up, which is nearly all active devices on Google’s platform.

While traditional television viewing is likely to rule the roost, I’m surprised by the very low estimates analysts are expecting for alternative viewing methods: Only nine and 16 percent in the U.S. and U.K. are expected to watch online coverage and mobile viewing will be even lower; seven and three percent respectively for the two countries. Maybe I’m in the minority, but I’ve already watched three early soccer matches on my computer and the games haven’t truly kicked off yet!

There’s simply too much coverage — and not enough space on our DVRs — to watch every aspect of the Olympics you might want to watch, which is part of the reason I think the analysts will be proven wrong in the next two weeks. We’re becoming a world of shifting everything about media: Where we watch, when we watch and on what screen we watch. I know I’m thankful that 3,500 hours will be available online — here’s how YouTube and NBC are making that happen.

Perhaps I’m spoiled by my home and mobile broadband, however, and the analysts are right. Given our broadband-centric audience, let’s see what you think. Let us know in our poll all the ways you plan to view the Olympic Games — you can select all that apply — so we can compare the numbers to some of the data analysts are suggesting, which is TV first, PC second and mobile being an afterthought.

Here’s the viewing expectations by device and screen per the Perform Group’s Global Sports Media Consumption Report 2012 to give our poll results a related baseline to compare to.

Rumors of Amazon pushing harder into the mobile device space have cropped up since late last year, following the September introduction of the Kindle Fire tablet. Earlier this month, the company was reportedly testing its own smartphone, likely to be built upon Google’s Android operating system, just like the Kindle Fire is. You’d never know that however: Amazon doesn’t use any Google-specific applications on the Fire and hides the Android look-and-feel with an Amazon-branded user interface.

So why consider multiple tablet sizes? Amazon has a multitude of shopping and consumption data from laptops and desktops with various screens. It also has information on consumer behavior through its mobile website from iPads and other tablets plus similar data from its Amazon Mobile app and, of course, its own Kindle Fire. And it can use that information to create a range of products that appeal to many, regardless of their personal preference for a small screen, large screen or one sized in between.

We’ve already seen that a 7-inch slate can be popular and in high demand: Initially with the Fire and more recently, the Google Nexus 7, which Google reportedly underestimated demand. Considering that point, combined with the iPad’s popularity and Amazon’s own data, it shouldn’t surprise anyone if the company outs a 10-inch slate while also improving the 7-inch version with better hardware.

But I wouldn’t rule out other screen sizes as well. Just as there’s no one-size fits all for television sets, there isn’t one for the personalized experience a mobile device brings either. You might want to watch Amazon Instant Video title on that 7-inch screen when on the road, for example, but pick up playback on a larger device at home. Amazon is more than willing to sell you both the content and the devices for that experience and it will even keep your place in the movie to make the device switch seamless, no matter what size the screen is. And who pioneered content synchronization? Amazon’s WhisperSync was rightfully touted as a differentiating feature when the first Kindle devices arrived in 2007.

The screen size question is one I’ve been interested in for years because I’ve either tested or bought devices in a wide range of sizes. A unique 4-inch VGA personal digital assistant was my “take everywhere” device in 2003, for example, because the screen was massive by comparison to any other pocketable computer at that time. What did I do with that large screen? Most of the same things I do today with my tablets: I read e-books, browsed the web over Wi-Fi, ran mobile apps, and watched videos, although it was much more difficult to do that back then. I had to convert packaged physical media to digital files.

Fast forward to today and instead of very few screen size choices for mobile devices, it now seems like we have a size for every hand, pocket and messenger bag. In the past five years alone, we’ve gone from Apple’s groundbreaking 3.5-inch touchscreen to hot selling phones with 5.3-inch displays and tablets as large as 21-inches. Apple again set a standard with its 9.7-inch iPad, but is expected by many to announce a smaller slate, possibly within the next six months.

After testing the Kindle Fire and watching it become a holiday sales hit in the last quarter of 2011 — the tablet still shows as no.1 best selling product on Amazon’s website — I’ve long suspected Amazon’s tablet and phone rumors are true. Amazon has watched the shift to mobile activities; both buying items and consuming content are mobile activities. It simply makes sense for the company to expand its line of connected mobile terminals in every form factor consumers are willing to buy. And with a treasure trove of data, Amazon can optimize both the content consumption and online sales experience for tablets and phones, regardless of the screen size consumers choose.