December last year, about ten percent of Pewin interviewed by U.S. owned some kind of tablet PC.

However, 25 percent of those surveyed owned a tablet PC. E-reader in turn, found 19 percent of those surveyed. Some of the interviewees had access to both devices.

Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/jo+joka+kolmannella+yhdysvaltalaisella+on+taulutietokone/a866983

I wouldn’t have an iPad if I didn’t have to do two things: Do interviews and cook. The first I have to do for work but the second I do for fun. Which is why I think that Snapguide’s bold and stylish move to the tablet is not only inevitable, but means that the service has finally landed in its true home.

For those of you who don’t know Snapguide, it is basically How-To guides for Generation Mobile, founded by former Yahoo Pipes PM Daniel Raffel and former Google Chrome engineer Steve Krulewitz.

“Invest in them if you can no matter what crazy ideas they have, because they are so smart and so driven that they’ll likely figure out a way to win big eventually.”

The iPad Mini appears to be on its way to eclipsing the Retina iPad, according to NPD DisplaySearch.

Apple had originally expected to sell 6 million iPad Minis in 2012. But that’s turning out to be a laughably low forecast, according to DisplaySearch analyst David Hsieh.

Now, Apple is asking display panel makers to “ship more than 12 million” iPad Mini displays in the fourth quarter, Hsieh said in a research note.

“It seems people especially like the size…[it's] lighter, slimmer and easier to carry.”

And that’s despite having a relatively low-resolution non-Retina display and older silicon than the iPad 4. So, it appears that price, starting at $329, and the chic, lightweight design are driving demand.

“In 2013, it is likely that Apple will adjust its product portfolio to meet the strong demand for the iPad Mini. We believe that Apple is targeting total iPad shipments of 100 million in 2013, half accounted for by the iPad Mini,” Hsieh wrote.

Viewing that Google and Amazon have launched 7-inch tablets at US$199, other vendors can offer 7-inch tablets at below US$150 only by adopting cheaper components, according to Taiwan-based TrendForce.

As panels and touch modules together account for 35-40% of the total material costs of a 7-inch tablet, replacing the commonly used 7-inch FFS panels with 7-inch TN LCD panels accompanied by additional wide-view angle compensation could save over 50% in panel costs, TrendForce indicated. In addition, replacing a G/G (glass/glass) or OGS (one glass solution) touch module with a G/F/F (glass/film/film) one, although inferior in terms of transmittance and touch sensitivity, can cut costs by about 70%. Thus, the adoption of a TN LCD panel and a G/F/F touch module for a 7-inch tablet could reduce material costs by about US$25, TrendForce said.

Given that the type of DRAM affects standby time only as far as user experience is concerned, costs can be reduced through replacing 1GB mobile DRAM priced at about US$10 with 1GB commodity DRAM priced at about US$3.50,

Advertisers are warming up to mobile advertising faster than expected, according to a new report released on Monday by eMarketer.

The research firm says it now expects U.S. mobile advertising to nearly triple this year to more than $4 billion, largely driven by stronger ad sales for Facebook Inc., Google Inc., and Twitter. In September, eMarketer predicted a more muted increase of 80%.

“For a long time advertisers have viewed the mobile marketplace as a very experimental medium,” said Clark Fredricksen, a vice president for communications at eMarketer. “That is steadily getting better.”

Mobile ad sales are improving as technology companies race to ramp up their offerings on smartphones to woo both consumers and advertisers.

Facebook
has now rolled out several new ad products for mobile, including ads that show users brands “liked” by friends.

For Google and Facebook, mobile is a must-win battleground. Though both companies still make the bulk of their money from the desktop, their consumers are spending more and more time on tablets and smartphones. As the migration from desktop to mobile continues, Google and Facebook must scramble to increase their mobile ad inventory– despite the limited real estate on smaller screens– and create new, compelling products for advertisers. The transition has been a tough one for Facebook, which highlighted the challenge in the run-up to its rocky initial public offering.

HTC Corp. (2498) scrapped plans to produce a large-screen smartphone using Microsoft Corp. (MSFT)’s operating system because the screen would have had lower resolution than competing models, according to a person familiar with the project.

The Windows software doesn’t support resolutions as high as that on Google Inc. (GOOG)’s Android platform, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the information isn’t public.

Windows Phone 8, released in October, supports screen resolution of 720 horizontal lines, lower than the 1,080 lines in displays available on Android phones and tablets. Microsoft also limits which processors can be used with manufacturers’ devices.

HTC concluded that a larger-screen Windows Phone 8 phone wouldn’t be competitive against Android devices from HTC, Samsung and others, the person said.

By releasing new versions of Google Maps and Gmail for iOS this month, Google helped make the iPhone the best mobile phone on the planet. Why is Google, the owner of Android and Motorola, helping its ostensible rival?

The answer boils down to advertising. Google’s smartphone operating system, Android, has always been incidental to Google’s ad business, the source of virtually all the company’s profits, and Google’s Motorola handset division is, for now, a similar sideshow.

Google doesn’t particularly care what operating system you use to view its ads or engage with its sites; it just wants to pull you in. Google pumps money into Android mainly to ensure that companies like Apple and Microsoft can’t push its properties off of smartphones.

“Google doesn’t make money off of Android which is open source; they make money when people use Google services,”

Understanding Google’s strategy is especially important now that a wide range of companies, including not only Apple and Google but also Facebook and Twitter, are carefully calibrating how they ship and host software.

Google Inc. (GOOG)’s Android is extending its lead over Apple Inc. (AAPL) in the mobile-software market at a rate that compares with Microsoft Corp. (MSFT)’s expansion in desktop software in the 1990s, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said.

Booming demand for Android-based smartphones is helping Google add share at the expense of other software providers, Schmidt said yesterday in an interview at Bloomberg’s headquarters in New York. Android snared 72 percent of the market in the third quarter, while Apple had 14 percent, according to Gartner Inc. Customers are activating more than 1.3 million Android devices a day, Schmidt said.

“This is a huge platform change; this is of the scale of 20 years ago — Microsoft versus Apple,” he said. “We’re winning that war pretty clearly now.”

Schmidt’s remarks reflect Google’s growing confidence in its ability to attract users and advertisers as more customers rely on handheld devices and shun traditional computers. By giving away Android, Google cedes revenue to hardware partners, such as Samsung Electronics Co. Schmidt is willing to make that sacrifice because it drives demand for ads and other Internet- based services that benefit Google over time.

“The core strategy is to make a bigger pie,” he said. “We will end up with a not perfectly controlled and not perfectly managed bigger pie by virtue of open systems.”