Mobile Statistics and Android Growth Point to a Mobile Landscape in Education

Welcome to this morning’s Daily Research Update. If you want more context for this research, take a look at our Education and Technology Trends for 2011. You may also be interested in our Weekly Research Index, or you can follow our live, daily research on our Current News page.

(Click here to see a simple listing of today’s suggested reading)

Some Interesting Numbers on Mobile in the U.S.

Much of the noise in mobile this week has been around Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobile, but there is also a new report from the PEW Internet and American Life Project, and I’d like to begin with that today. One of the numbers that should stick out for educators is that 83% of American adults now own a cell phone. That number is higher among the 18-25 age group. Here are some other interesting statistics.

Mobile phones are computers for real time information gathering — “Half of all adult cell owners (51%) had used their phone at least once to get information they needed right away. One quarter (27%) said that they experienced a situation in the previous month in which they had trouble doing something because they did not have their phone at hand.”
Mobile phones are an essential part of daily life — “42% have had trouble doing something because they did not have their phone nearby.”
Text messaging a photo taking rule — “Text messaging and picture taking continue to top the list of ways that Americans use their mobile phones—three quarters of all cell owners (73%) use their phones for each of these purposes. Other relatively common activities include sending photos or videos to others (54% of cell owners do this) as well as accessing the internet (44%).”

One other interesting tidbit from the report is that 22% of smartphone owners say they have difficulty reading on their devices. I think there are a couple of ways of look at this, but what I find interesting is that, evidently, an increasing number of users are indeed actually trying to read on their smartphones.

Also under the “mobile statistics” category, a new report from ComScore shows that a significant number of U.S. mobile users (6.2%) are scanning QR codes with their phones. This number supports the growing popularity of QR codes among advertisers, and underscores the potential value of QR codes in hybrid, print-digital book strategies.

Android Marches On

Like I said, the “big” news of the week has been Google’s decision to purchase Motorola Mobile. Google will pay $12.5 billion to Motorola and hopes to accomplish two goals. First, the acquisition launches Google directly into the handset business and helps provide a foundation for their big picture success strategy which is all about mobile. In addition, the move will shore up Google’s patent portfolio and help protect their Android OS from anti-competitive threats from Apple and Microsoft.

Android is a critical component of Google’s future and it’s no wonder the platform has come under attack from others. Android is the leading smartphone operating system and, according to ABI Research, may occupy some 20 percent of the market.

Speaking of Android-based tablets, an abundance of players in the space is leading to reduced product prices. Making things even more competitive for Apple, Nvidia will be supplying its new quad-core chips for Android tablets, and these faster models should show up for the holiday season.

Apple’s iPad continues to dominate the tablet market for now, but I expect the growth and improvement of the Android market to have a big impact on the education sector. It will lead to lower-cost solutions, and it will create the product diversity we need in order for tablets to continue expanding as must-have devices for students.

Finally, when it comes to smartphones, Android continues to grow its dominant market share, but there are some interesting differences between the users of Android phones and iPhones. Check out this infographic.