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As the above image shows, mobile marketing can be a bit confusing.

Advertising Age (@adage) columnist Steve Rubel (@steverubel) points to a report about the apparent shift to apps in the mobile environment.

“Flurry (@FlurryMobile), an analytics firm, reported that US consumers spend on average 94 minutes a day in their apps vs. 72 minutes a day in mobile browsers.” There is a less time being spent with PCs and more time being spent with mobile. And when people are on their mobile devices, they are using apps more than mobile browsers.

Read this in full.

But a difference of opinion is expressed on iMedia Connection (@iMediaTweet) by Eric Anderson (@unsettler), partner and VP of marketing at White Horse (@whitehorsepdx), who offers “10 Tech Trends You Can Ignore in 2012,” of which #7 is “Having a branded app for that.”

Having long been a loudmouthed proponent of prioritizing mobile sites over branded apps, I thought I might be in for another plate of crow when Flurry Analytics released a study showing that in 2011, smartphone users’ time spent on apps exceeded their time spent on the mobile web for the first time ever.

But does this trend indicate an overall preference for apps over the mobile Web? It does not. A whopping 80% of that app time was spent on gaming and the Facebook app, and the rest of the time was, sorry to say, not spent on your app. A separate study by Deloitte found that 80% of branded apps are downloaded fewer than 1000 times, which is not a piece of ROI analysis I'd enjoy presenting to a CMO. Branded mobile apps belong to a narrow but important set of use cases, based on activities your loyal customers engage in again and again.

Read this in full.

Over on Harvard Business Review (@HarvardBiz), David Armano (@armano) writes in his article, “The Future Isn't About Mobile; It's About Mobility”:

In the early days of digital, the core behavior we needed to understand was that people wanted information at their fingertips and the convenience that came with digital transactions. In the social era it was all these things plus social connectivity. Mobility means information, convenience, and social all served up on the go, across a variety of screen sizes and devices.

Mobility is radically different from the stationary “desktop” experience. In some cases, mobility is a “lean back” experience like sitting on a commuter train watching a video. In other cases it can be "lean forward" — like shopping for a gift while you take your lunch break at the park. And in many cases, it’s “lean free” when your body is in motion, or you're standing in line scanning news headlines or photos from friends while you wait for your turn to be called.

Mobility trumps mobile... don't put mobile tactics in front of strategy.

Read this in full.

And senior writer with GigaOM (@gigaom), Mathew Ingram (@mathewi), writes in “HuffPo, The Daily, and the flawed iPad content model”:

The dream that many publishers seemed to have was that the iPad would create a market for their individual apps, and that legions of readers would happily download and pay for them, creating a brand new stream of significant revenue. With a few exceptions, however — such as The New York Times and other publications that have strong brands or are targeted at a very specific market — that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Read this in full.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you know when it strategically makes sense to create a mobile app and to help you think with ‘mobility’ about your brand and your content.

Be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard. And use our mobile website as your link resource on the go.

Wired magazine’s (@wired) executive editor Thomas Goetz (@tgoetz) explains 7 rules to use when pinpointing trends that will help you prepare for tomorrow:

1. Look for cross-pollinators: the best ideas — the ones with the most impact and longevity — are transferable.

2. Surf the exponentials: catch the wave of smaller, cheaper, and faster; channel that steady improvement into business plans and research agendas.

3. Favor the liberators: look for ways to turn scarcity into plenty and turn static into flow, bringing motion where there was obstruction.

4. Give points for audacity: go beyond picayune problems and mere incremental solutions; get in over your head.

5. Bank on openness: forsake proprietary claims and avoid hierarchy; be agile, flexible, and poised to leap from opportunity to opportunity.

6. Demand deep design: good design is much more than a veneer; it’s essential and it intrinsically prioritizes; it’s irresistible.

7. Spend time with time wasters: culture is created where people are fiddling with tools, coining new lingo, swapping new techniques.

Read this in full.

Also see the articles, “8 Visionaries on How They Spot the Future” and “The Man Who Makes the Future.”

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you look around the corners, spot the future, and take advantage of where publishing is heading.

Be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard; especially the Future tab.

Philip Jones, editor of The Bookseller’s (@thebookseller) digital blog Futurebook (@TheFutureBook), interviewed Bob Stein, founder and co-director of the Institute for the Future of the Book, who insists publishers need to make books social and look for ways to “build the conversation around books.”

"The current system of publishing doesn't really support the shape publishing is taking on as it develops," says Stein, who founded The Voyager Company in 1985, the first commercial multimedia CD-ROM publisher. But publishers are chronically slow at recognising what is happening to them and grasping the opportunities before they emerge. Stein argues that the real innovation is happening left-of-centre in sectors such as gaming, where collaborative narratives have already taken root. "The future is being born outside their field of vision," he says.

"The idea of publishing is to move ideas around time and space," is how he sees it....His big idea now is "social reading", the concept that in the future texts will become one part of a much larger conversation that happens around them, with notes and context shared on a collaborative platform.

Stein is currently working on SocialBook — a reading platform that allows users to interact with texts, leave notes, and begin conversations around those books. The site will have free and paid-for areas, though the commercial model is not yet finalized. "It begins as YouTube for social documents in the free space, but then we'll build Amazon for publishing," says Stein.

Read this in full.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you build the conversation around your books.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard; especially the Book Discovery Sites and the Future tabs.

Erin Griffith (@eringriffith) writes on PandoDaily (@PandoDaily) about Macmillan Publishing’s resolve to embrace the disruption happening in the world of education publishing and to intentionally change its structure, business model, and processes to succeed in this Internet age.

Macmillan Publishing has taken an entirely different route altogether. It’s one that, until now, has remained relatively under the radar. The company hired Troy Williams, former CEO of early ebook company Questia Media, which sold to Cengage. Macmillan gave him a chunk of money and incredibly unusual mandate: “Build a business that will undermine our own.”

The publishing giant has given Williams a sum greater than $100 million (he won’t say exactly how much) to acquire ed-tech startups that will eventually be the future of Macmillan. The plan is to let them exist autonomously like startups within the organization, as Macmillan transitions out of the content business and into educational software and services. Through the entity, called Macmillan New Ventures, Williams plans to do five deals this year and 10 to 15 over the course of the next five years.

He’s buying companies that will help Macmillan survive as a business once textbooks go away completely.

This includes PrepU (@PrepUQuiz), a quizzing engine for classrooms, i>Clicker (@iclicker), a mobile classroom polling company, and most recently EBI (@EBIandMAPWorks), a data and evaluation startup.

Read this in full.

Troy Williams speaks about his objectives in this video (beginning at the 5:00 mark).

Look to Somersault (@smrsault) to help you scout the future of publishing and the continued convergence of technology and writing.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard, especially the Future tab.

In a column for BBC Business (@BBCBusiness), Coca-Cola (@CocaCola) CEO Muhtar Kent cites 5 global mega-trends from a Consumer Goods Forum report on the "Future Value Chain," and stresses how fundamentally important they are to the future of retail and consumer goods.

2020 Future Value Chain Webcast Presentation

1.    Mass Urbanization. The proportion of people living in cities has now surpassed 50% worldwide, and should reach 70% by 2050, necessitating new supply chain and logistical models.

2.    We're Getting Older. By 2047, the number of individuals over 60 years of age will be higher than those under 15 years of age, a shift presenting substantial possibilities for suitably adaptive organizations.

3.    The Middle Class Cometh. The world is experiencing the greatest economic shift in history as the global middle class grows by another billion people in the next 10 years. By 2030, over 90% of this audience are set to reside in emerging nations, compared with 50% today.

4.    Consumers in the Driving Seat. Evolving technologies are transforming customers’ expectations and ability to influence companies. By 2013, for example, there will be 2 billion mobile users, while a third of purchases are due to be completed online by 2020. Among the requirements on companies will be finding the right channels through which to converse with shoppers, alongside leveraging big data and embracing collaboration.

5.    What About the Planet? Sustainability will assume heightened importance. By 2030, the global population should hit 8.3 billion, while the demand for food and energy is anticipated to leap by 50%, an acceleration standing at 30% for fresh water.

Read this in full.

Coca-Cola also shares it’s branding vision:

How do the above mega-trends impact your publishing plans? Write your comments below.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you identify and maximize trends impacting your brand’s message.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.

</object><p style="font-size:11px; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #808080; margin-top: 5px; background: transparent; text-align: center; width: 500px;">Watch Digital Nation on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.</p>

In our Internet era, publishing houses are having to reinvent themselves as technology companies in order to adapt their business models and remain viable. But when does technology cease to be a value-add to the consumer experience?

“Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier,” a documentary that aired on PBS’ (@PBS) Frontline (@frontlinepbs) program, asks the question, “Is our 24/7 wired world causing us to lose as much as we've gained?”

Within a single generation, digital media and the World Wide Web have transformed virtually every aspect of modern culture, from the way we learn and work to the ways in which we socialize and even conduct war. But is the technology moving faster than we can adapt to it?

This video explores what it means to be human in a 21st-century digital world. It seeks to understand the implications of living in a world consumed by technology and the impact that this constant connectivity may have on future generations. "I'm amazed at the things my kids are able to do online, but I'm also a little bit panicked when I realize that no one seems to know where all this technology is taking us, or its long-term effects," says producer Rachel Dretzin.

Read and see this in full.

Let Somersault (@smrsault) help you leverage technology to effectively communicate your brand’s message.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.

In The New York Times Media & Advertising section (@NYTimesAd), David Carr (@carr2n) says “the velocity of transformation is growing” in this digital publishing era.

Technology has altered the media business more than most, not in one big surge, but in a series of waves, each one shifting the ground that traditional businesses were built on.

He recounts how David Carey, the president of Hearst Magazines (@HearstCorp), had The Huffington Post (@HuffingtonPost) on his mind when he addressed a group of employees last week.

“I am telling them to beware of digital upstarts that don’t follow any of the rules of big companies like ours,” he said. “Huffington Post has gone down paths that others scoffed at and they have emerged with a string of very strong products.”

Read this in full.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you identify blue ocean strategy for your brand in this fast-changing publishing climate.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.

At a media event today in Los Angeles, Microsoft announced its new tablet, Surface (@surface) (#Surface), which, when it debuts (a release date was not announced) will feature a 10.6-inch wide display with Gorilla Glass, its own kickstand, Bluetooth, front & rear camera, a full-size USB port, dual Wi-Fi antennae, a multitouch full-size keyboard, a stylus which writes freehand on the screen, a trackpad, and presumably Microsoft Office software (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) — and yet is only about a half-inch thick. Models will come with either 64 gigabytes or 128 GB of storage.

Its capacity as an e-reading device was left unexplained. Microsoft has invested $300 million investment in Barnes & Noble's Nook e-reader, though B&N was not part of today’s announcement.

Read coverage by USA TODAY, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Sun-Times, VentureBeat, and The Verge.

Somersault (@smrsault) helps you stay abreast of new technology and its impact on publishing.

Be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.

The above film, EPILOGUE: the future of print (@EPILOGUEdoc) (vimeo channel) by Hanah Ryu Chung, is a documentary that explores the world of print books, scratching the surface of its future. Chung says:

The act of reading a “tangible tome” has evolved, devolved, and changed many times over, especially in recent years. I hope for the film to stir thought and elicit discussion about the immersive reading experience and the lost craft of the book arts, from the people who are still passionate about reading on paper as well as those who are not.

Also see our previous blogposts:

• "Paper is Stronger than Tech and Now its Aroma Comes Bottled"
• "Home Libraries Despite the Ebook Era"
• "Birth of a Book: The Handmade Bookbinding Process"
• "Book Seller Believes in Video's Marketing Power"
• "A Video About a Poster Masks a Bookstore's Promotion"
• "Video: What Books Do After Hours"
• "The Technology of Storytelling"
• "Photos: The 20 Coolest Bookstores in the World"
• "Introducing the New Book"
• "Even E-reader Owners Still Like Printed Books, Survey Finds"
• "In a Flood Tide of Digital Data, an Ark Full of Books"
• "The 'End' of Print and TV."

If you love books like we (@smrsault) do, we invite you to make our SomersaultNOW online dashboard your personal computer homepage (see instructions).

New data from Pricewaterhouse Coopers’ (@PwC_LLP & @pwc_press) Global Entertainment and Media Outlook predicts ebooks will constitute 50% of the US trade book market by 2016.

Reporter Laura Hazard Owen (@laurahazardowen) writes in paidContent (@paidContent) that PwC expects total book spending in North America to remain relatively flat; “1.1% compound annual rate” of increase between 2011 and 2016.

PwC thinks that while total spending on print trade books will decline, the ebook market will be growing fast enough by 2013 to offset those declines. In the US, the company estimates that “around 30% of adults had at least one portable reading device [an e-reader or tablet] in the first quarter of 2012.”

By 2016, PwC expects, “ebooks will account for half of total spending on consumer books” in the US and the total US consumer book market (print + digital) will be worth $21 billion, up from $19.5 billion in 2011.

Read this in full.

According to PwC’s blog, the E&M Outlook says 3 behavioral changes are driving global shifts in industry structure and value:

1.    From print to digital: Electronic books’ share of total global spending on consumer and educational books will rise from 5% in 2011 to 18% by 2016.

2.    From fixed to mobile consumption: Global mobile Internet access increased from 26% of total Internet access spending in 2007 to 40% in 2011 – and will grow to 46% by 2016.

3.    From West to East, and North to South: Total revenue growth to 2016 in Central and Eastern Europe/Asia Pacific will be almost double that of North America/Western Europe. And growth in the southern Latin America/Middle East/Africa market will average more than twice that of North America/Europe by 2016.

Read the news release.

In the video below, Marcel Fenez, Global Leader, Entertainment & Media at PwC, explains how PwC sees this time period as being “the end of the digital beginning.”

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you take advantage of publishing’s digital growth for your content.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.