The Financial Times was one of the first publishers to embrace HTML5 this year

Industry experts agree that HTML5 will play a prominent role in mobile development in 2012 and will be used to try to overcome fragmentation issues that the industry has consistently battled.

With the expected increase in HTML5 development, brands and retailers need to reevaluate their mobile strategy to fit a cross-platform solution. HTML5 also has broader implications for handset manufacturers, which need to be considered when creating mobile applications and Web sites.

“Right now there is a lot of hype with HMTL5, but there is a question about the value that it adds,” said Patrick Emmons, director of professional services at Adage Technologies, Chicago.

“Adobe’s decision to give up on Flash was abrupt but also signals how HTML5 will have to play a role in the future because it was one of the most successful Web add-ins,” he said. click here for the complete story

During the “Digiday Debates: HTML5 vs. Apps” panel, executives discussed whether or not apps will continue to rule the roost. The panel also talked about whether the advent of HTML5 will mean the application of digital media will have a short shelf life.

“People want to have content when they want it and how they want it,” said Adam Broitman, partner and ringleader at Circ.us, New York. “Companies are having to conform to go where the people are because they want the money.” (see the rest of the story)

Finland-based mobile analytics provider, CEM4Mobile Solutions, has published new survey results detailing consumer preference in regards to mobile apps vs. the mobile Web in terms of engagement, unique users and mobile ad impressions.

The company completed its research by using a sample of over 56 million mobile impressions from devices where both apps and mobile Web browsing were supported.  The results show that while the mobile Web sees more traffic and unique users as opposed to native apps, the engagement is much higher with native mobile apps.  In looking at the survey respondents, 90.15% of all unique users used the mobile Web, while just 9.85% used apps.  The sum of all visits was similar, with the mobile Web seeing 81.66% of all respondents while apps saw just 18.34%.

In looking at mobile ad impressions, 65.39% were shown via the mobile Web while 34.61% came from mobile apps.  While these results clearly indicate a preference for the mobile Web in terms of sheer users, it can’t compete in terms of keeping users engaged.  CEM4Mobile broke down the time spent within a mobile app vs. the mobile Web on three leading mobile OSs — Android, Apple iOS and Symbian.  Here’s the breakdown: (click here)

If you’re anything like me, it’s hard to imagine how the internet is going to top sites like Twitter and Facebook. But it’s bound to happen and when you research  Web 3.0, you find out it is going to be synonymous with the user’s interaction with the web. In Web 2.0 we focused on the users’ interaction with others, now we are going to focus more on the users themselves, which is always a plus. But how is this going to happen?

Web 3.0 is being referred to by experts as the semantic web; semantic meaning data driven. The data will come from the user and the web will essentially adjust to meet the needs of the user. For example, if you do a lot of searching for ‘design blogs’, you’ll receive more advertisements related to design. Also, when you search for other things, for example, ‘computers’, the web will keep in mind that you often search for design and may pull up search queries that combine ‘design’ and ‘computers’. (get the rest now)

In an infographic that’s bound to cause arguments and perhaps fistfights, researchers at Hunch placed data from about 700,000 of its website visitors onto a deep illustration that shows just how different users of Macs and PCs are.

They came up with interesting correlations between users’ chosen computing platforms and their demographics and personalities, as well as tastes in food, fashion and media.

Did it sort out like a comparison between Tea Party members and liberals? Are PC users geeks and Mac users hipsters, in keeping with common stereotypes? Almost. Mac users are more educated, eat more hummus, prefer modern art over impressionist art, and are 21% more likely than PC users to say that two random people are more alike than different.

Dive into the infographic below (feel free to click the graphic for an enlargement), full of insights and data, drawn from a huge sample. Of course, there are exceptions to every trend. Please let us know in the comments if you think its data is accurate or not. (check out the INFOGRAPHIC)

Mobile applications have boomed. Above, an attendee at the International CTIA Wireless conference last month tested a Galaxy Tab.

This year, magazine publisher Hearst Corp. intends to add five software engineers to its mobile development staff. Social-networking company Ning Inc. plans to nearly double its mobile development team. And Web start-up Where Inc. is on track to double its mobile staff this year after quadrupling it in 2010.

The problem: The talent pool isn’t growing nearly that fast.

“The demand is constant,” said Dan Gilmartin, Where’s vice president of marketing. “Every company is looking for these people.”

The intense competition for mobile engineers, which affects large companies and fast-growing start-ups alike, is emerging as a key bottleneck as companies scramble to capitalize on the fast growth of smartphones and other mobile devices.

Major media, tech, and social networking companies are looking to bulk up on mobile phone development staffers. The problem? The mobile app talent pool isnt very deep.

Mobile applications have boomed, working their way deeply into fields like retail, media, videogames and marketing. Market research firm Gartner Inc. expects revenue from Apple Inc.’s App Store, Google Inc.’s Android Market and other stores where mobile applications are sold to nearly triple to $15 billion this year.

The technologies are so new— Apple’s app store launched in 2008 —that few software engineers have mobile development experience, which requires new coding skills compared to a desktop computer.

That’s forcing companies to increase wages, retrain software engineers, outsource work to third-party developers and set up offshore development labs to meet demand.

In the last year, the number of online job listings with the keyword “iPhone” in the text has nearly tripled, while the number with “Android” has more than quadrupled, according to listings search engine Indeed Inc.

Read more from WSJ:

U.S. Media Universe

Nielson Wires Factsheet: The U.S. Media Universe

HTML5 is enabling open, cross-platform rich-media standards that will help brands’ and agencies’ display advertising achieve the compelling creative and reach across mobile devices they have been seeking.

Apple contributed significantly to the growth of HTML5—first by refusing to let its iOS devices support Adobe Flash, then by launching its own rich-media mobile ad network, iAd. However, HTML5 is an open standard, and it will do for mobile what Flash did for online.

“One of the real benefits of HTML5 is its potential, in the long run, to standardize the highly fragmented rich-media universe, making it easier and more efficient for advertisers to engage consumers with even more immersive advertising experiences – across both PC and mobile – at scale,” said Jamie Wells, director of global trade marketing, mobile, local and commerce at Microsoft, Redmond, WA.

Major players getting in the game

Viacom subsidiaries Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks used mobile rich-media advertising as part of the multichannel campaign to promote the summer blockbuster Shrek Forever After.

Timed to coincide with the film opening on May 21 last year, the Shrek Forever After campaign targeted iPhone on the Yahoo mobile homepage athttp://m.yahoo.com and the Yahoo Movies mobile portal at http://m.yahoo.com/movies from May 20 – May 22. (check out the rest of the story)

NEW YORK – While today mobile represents 15 percent of online advertising, by 2015 it will represent 64 percent of all digital ads, according to an executive at Borrell Associates Inc.’s Local Online Advertising Conference.

As mobile as a whole grows, local advertisers will drive much of that growth. Borrell projects that local mobile advertising will grow on a “wild trajectory,” from $500 million last year to $1.2 billion this year, $3.3 billion in 2012 and $6.6 billion in 2013.

“Today 15 percent of all of the online ads are generated for mobile devices, but by 2015 mobile will be 64 percent of all digital advertising,” said Kip Cassino, executive vice president at Borrell Associates, New York. “By then the devices will have changed—because of the iPod, iPhone and iPad, Apple is now the No. 1 computer manufacturer in the world.

“In the future, the purchase of laptops and tablet computers as well as smartphones will increase significantly,” he said. “The purchase of mobile devices will all but have replaced the desktop devices we currently look to.”

A Borrell survey found that 44 percent of local businesses plan to try mobile local advertising this year.

AT&T is ramping up its efforts in the mobile-local space

The MMA is bullish on mobile-local
The Mobile Marketing Association’s presentation underscored the value of a mobile local future.

As Mary Meeker said, mobile is moving faster than any medium ever before. Brands, retailers and publishers must keep up with consumer adoption and consumption trends.

(get the rest of the story)

Mobile augmented reality apps are on a rapid rise, according to the latest report from Juniper Research, which reveals that the increased interest will lead to nearly 1.4 billion worldwide downloads by 2015.

Mobile Marketer reported in February on Juniper’s research that global revenues in the space will reach $1.5 billion by 2015. Paired with the download data, the overall findings suggest that augmented reality is gearing up to have a solid place in the mobile sphere.

“Over the past 12 months the number of handsets that have the [mobile augmented reality] enabling technologies has risen from about 8 million to just over 100 million,” said Windsor Holden, principal analyst at Juniper Research, Basingstoke, England. “So there’s a significantly bigger potential audience for application developers to aim at.” (check out the rest of the story)