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The percentage of Americans age 12 and older who have a smartphone has more than doubled in the past year, from 14% to 31% of the population according to the new national survey from Arbitron Inc. (@ArbitronInc) and Edison Research, The Infinite Dial 2011: Navigating Digital Platforms. Among the many other findings:

• Facebook is now being used by a majority of all Americans age 12 and over (51%); this number was only 8% in 2008.
• A majority of American households now have two or more computers (51%); as compared to 24% of households in 2002.
• Usage of online radio is up significantly, with weekly usage of all forms of online radio having doubled in the last 5 years; self-reported weekly time spent with online radio is now nearly 10 hours (9 hours 47 minutes).
• Daily time spent with TV, Radio, and the Internet combined has increased by 20% in the last 10 years, with self-reported daily usage now at 8 hours 11 minutes compared to 6 hours 50 minutes in 2001.
• Just under 1/3 of all Americans (31%) have plugged an MP3 player such as an Apple iPod into their car stereo systems.
• One in 10 Americans report listening to Pandora Internet Radio in the week before they were surveyed.
• Among the 81% of American households with Internet access, 2/3 now have a Wi-Fi network installed.
• More than 1/10 of all cellphone owners have listened to online radio streamed in their cars by connecting their phones to their car stereo system.

Read the research findings in full.

Also see Warc coverage of the research in the article "Digital change hits US."

What are the implications of this research for digital audiobook publishing and how should your brand take advantage of it?

Remember when? Reminisce about a time (the 1980s) when cell phones, weighing “only” 30 ounces, ushered in the era when “seeing people using cellular phones may seem as commonplace as someone checking time on an electronic watch, figuring on an electronic calculator, or programming on an electronic computer.” Also watch this brief BBC interview with Martin Cooper, the inventor of the first cell phone Apr. 3, 1973.

How will people in 2041 look back at our technology today? What technology will you embrace today to advance your brand? Let Somersault help you. And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.

Watch this video while thinking how publishing must adapt itself to a variety of changes coming our way. As Somersault says, these changes are a playground of possibilities!

The matrix barcode known as QR (Quick Response) code that’s scanned by QR readers in smartphones to take users to websites for more information may be on its way out. Bizmology reports the change could be coming because Google has decided to support another technology.

Until recently, Google widely supported QR codes, using them in its Google Places service to allow people to use their smartphones to find business addresses, URLs, hours of operations, and more. Businesses listed on Places would often put Google-supplied decals printed with QR codes in their windows for customers to scan. Google quietly stopped using the code last month, however, in favor of a new and dynamic technology known as Near Field Communication (NFC). If the technology takes off as Google predicts, NFC may quickly supplant QR codes as advertisement vehicles and send them to the technology graveyard just as fast as they hit US shores.

So what exactly is NFC? It’s is a new type of chip that can be embedded in 2-D items like posters or cards. Similar to QR codes, NFC chips can contain product information and other data. The chips can take the form of tags, stickers, or cards. A person with a NFC-enabled smartphone could wave their phone near a poster with a NFC tag to upload the information embedded in the tag.

Read this in full.

This is an interesting development, especially in light of the recent research that US consumers like QR codes.

What will this mean for publishers who have begun using QR codes in marketing material as well as individual products?

In short, this data shows that: (1) consumers are interested in interacting with advertising that bears a QR code – thus, the promise of additional benefits in the form of deals, coupons, videos, sweepstakes, social media interactions, etc.; and (2) QR codes can help an ad break through the clutter by increasing the chance it will be remembered, great news for advertisers who have already integrated a QR code strategy into a traditional advertising campaign or are looking to insert them in a future campaign.

View the full survey results in pdf form.

How should you be using QR codes in your marketing communications mix?

Update: The above research is interesting, especially in light of the article QR Codes May Be Going Away. 

Does “the cloud” pose another opportunity for book publishers? The chart above indicates that demand for wireless access to the Web is only going to grow in the coming years, as will the diversity of devices used for that function.

Book publishers, organizations, agents, and authors should be thinking now, not only how to profitably publish content for ereader consumption of complete downloaded books, but also ways of monetizing content that resides dynamically and virtually in the Internet cloud. One idea: paid subscriptions, taking a cue from the new paywall business model announced by The New York Times (by the way, here’s an analysis of the announcement by Bloomberg Businessweek and broad coverage links by paidContent).

The New York Times is banking on the strength of its brand, even though people may be able to get the (relatively) same news free elsewhere (see 10 Ways To Get Around Online News Subscriptions And Paywalls). But it may work better with book publishers, since each publishers’ content is (relatively) unique from others.

What do you think?

Chart of the Day (@chartoftheday) compares current tablet ownership with the world population. Two extremes, granted, but not so far-fetched when you compare with mobile subscribers.

The potential for growth in the tablet market for Apple, Google, RIM, and others is still massive. Only 0.3% of the Earth's inhabitants owned a tablet at the end of 2010, RBC analyst Mike Abramsky notes today in a detailed, 88-page report about the future of the tablet market. That means 99.7% of the people on Earth still haven't bought a tablet yet!

Read this in full.

What do you think the implications are for publishers, agents, ministries, organizations, and authors as you go about creating content?

Kevin Kelly at Technium plots out the sliding price of the Kindle (@AmazonKindle) and suggests we could see free Kindles by November. Could Amazon conceivably package the Kindle in its Prime service? How about if a buyer promises to buy, say, 20 books then he or she can get a free Kindle?

How should publishers prepare for this possibility?

Read more at Chart of the Day (@chartoftheday).

This article by Katherine Boehret (@kabster728) in The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) highlights the new ability to wirelessly download electronic books from your local library using the Apple iPad or an Android tablet. She writes, “OverDrive Inc. (@OverDriveLibs) released OverDrive Media Console for the iPad, a free app from Apple's App Store. With the app, you can now borrow eBooks for reading on the go with a tablet.” She goes on

You can already borrow an eBook from a library using an eReader, including the Sony Reader and Barnes & Noble Nook, but you'll need a PC and a USB cable for downloading and synching. Amazon's Kindle doesn't allow borrowing eBooks from libraries....

There's a major downside to borrowing digital books. If the book you want is checked out, you still have to wait until someone returns it to borrow it. OverDrive's licenses allow one book copy per person, so several people can't simultaneously borrow the same eBook. Libraries can buy several licenses for a title so they can have multiple copies of popular books for borrowing….

OverDrive serves more than 13,000 libraries with a catalog of 400,000 titles from 1,000 publishers

How do you see the free digital borrowing of ebooks from public libraries to be a positive development for book publishers?

Read this article in full.

Chart of the Day (@chartoftheday) displays the optimistic 5-year predictions by Morgan Stanley on the tablet market. Keep in mind that ALL the devices tracked in the forecast are able to be used to read and/or listen to books. The market is growing.

Read the story in full.