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This year Apple looks to be the brand to beat for holiday gift giving, especially among kids.

A new Nielsen survey shows kids’ holiday gaming and electronics wishes are dominated by Apple devices – with the iPad on top, the same place it was last year on Nielsen’s wish list.

Tablet computers (not an iPad) also makes the Top 5.  Non-Apple Smartphones and other portable gaming devices show nicely as well.

Read the full details from Nielsen here

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Apple, Gadgets, Smartphones, Tablets, Technology

Would you have predicted that tablets would outpace Netbooks 2-to-1 if you were asked two years ago? According to a new study by ABI Research, due mostly to the iPad, tablet devices are now outselling netbooks by that amount. ABI also implies, that at least for now, the iPad essentially is the tablet market.

iPads make up 68 percent of the tablet market (although many reports show Android coming on strong over the last few quarters). Regardless, the iPad makes up at least more than two-thirds of the tablet market, so when that market sees 13.6 million sales during the 2011 summer, most of the benefit goes to Apple.

Netbooks, on the other hand, aren’t benefitting from the tablet’s rise. During the same period in which 13.6 million tablets were sold, only 7.3 million netbooks made their way into consumer hands.

Clearly, it’s time to start setting up your combined mobile & tablet strategies in as you move forward and taking into account that a tablet isn’t always the same as a mobile device.

Read more details at GigOM.com

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Future, Gadgets, Tablets, UI/UX

According to report from the trade group CTIA, for the first time in history cellphones and other mobile gadgets now outnumber humans in the U.S.

CTIA says there are some 327.6 million active phones, tablets and laptops on cellular networks. That compares to the 315 million women, men, girls, boys and infants populating the country (including Puerto Rico, Guam and the Virgin Islands).

So are humans now double-dipping with smartphones and other devices?  I many cases yes.  No small number of people have an iPhone or other mobile device along with an iPad or laptops with cellular cards.  Plus add in the fact that kids are getting cellphones at younger ages and you have a hockey stick-like  growth curve over the next few years.

Check out the full article here.

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Gadgets, Mobile, Smartphones, Youth

The long awaited launch of the Google Wallet app is finally here. It currently only works on the Nexus S 4G device. To announce the launch Google put together an ad that Seinfeld fans will truly enjoy.

Full Story Here

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Android, app development, Gadgets

A recent New York Times article underscores something that we saw loud and clear in “Goin’ Mobile” – smartphones are replacing other gadgets and changing our lives in the process.

At the Worldwide Radio Summit in Los Angeles next month, I’ll show a different radio-ized version of “Goin’ Mobile” and one of the new segments we’ve put together will address the ways in which other gadgets are being relegated to the background because of smartphone use.

This includes GPS units, alarm clocks, camcorders, and even iPods.  And then there are all those functional apps that have replaced many books, tools, gaddgets, and other resources, usually for a much lower cost.  The Times actually calculated how much money one might save by foregoing the purchase of these “ancillary devices” as a result of owning a great smartphone:

Here’s how they figured it:

• A mobile e-mail reader ($430: the Peek 9, an e-mail reader, is $70; two years of service costs $360).
• A music player (an iPod Nano is $149).
• A point-and-shoot camera (around $200).
• A camcorder (around $200).
• A GPS unit (they start at $80).
• A portable DVD player (they start at $60).
• A voice recorder (around $40).
• A watch (around $30).
• A calculator (around $10).
• Total cost: $1,999

Considering a smartphone and a solid data plan costs quite a bit less, you can see how much more efficient our lives have become as a result of the iPhone and similar devices.

To put it in perspective, we have long talked at Jacobs Media about if the iPhone was instead originally marketed as a Mini-Mac – a handheld computer that provided email, texting, a GPS, alarm clock, calculator, camera, camcorder, mp3 players, and yes, also a phone.

The fact that these devices started as phones, and then became all these other things perhaps explains their success. At the outset, we all needed a cell phone.  Marketing them as Swiss Army knives was the next step in their evolution.

And then I remembered that back in 2007 for “The Bedroom Project,” Tim Davis built this graphic that I’ve included here for the section we put together about cell phones.

It says a lot about how far we’ve come, and how the smartphone’s influence has magnified in our lives.  It is estimated that by the end of this year, half the population of the United States will have a smartphone.

And as consumers become more comfortable with all the things they do and the efficiencies they provide, it becomes critical that if you’re Garmin, Bulova, JVC, and other manufacturers whose devices are essentially incorporated in smartphones, perhaps you partner with smartphone manufacturers to possibly include your brands in their software packages.

Of course, I could have mentioned any number of radio companies here, too, because that’s essentially what Pandora is doing in as many gadgets as they can.  Clear Channel’s purchase of Thumbplay is a sign that broadcasters now have Pandora on their radar sreen.

As we said in the “Goin’ Mobile” presentation, the smartphone provides an opportunity for radio to be a part of the greatest gadgets of our lifetime.  But there is no entitlement.  We will have to earn our places on these devices.

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Apps, Future, Gadgets, Smartphones, Technology