Only 20% of iPhone Apps are actively used

"Today the App Store has passed the 100k apps available on the App Store (sept was officially announced 85k). This is a great news and the pace keeps growing.
But there is a bad news. Very few apps are enjoying the ride.
We have found out that actually 20k apps are actually used (meaning installed and kept on people's iPhone). This number may grow with our user base, but it is a clear indicator that only 20% of all apps are actually raising interest.
The second number which is more dramatic is that there is a very very very long tail of apps: The graph below gives you an indication of the rank of each app we scan (based on the number of installation) and the % of users that own them.

Click to expand

A very little number of apps makes it above 50% of iphone owners (easy to guess which one: facebook, shazam,...) it goes down VERY fast. The app rank 1000 is owned by less than 2% of the iPhone owners (1.76%) and it goes down very fast also."
Source: Blog post by AppsFire, 27th October 2009

Operating income for News Corp's newspapers division fell by 81% in the year to September 2009

"The Newspapers and Information Services segment reported first quarter operating income of $25 million, a decrease of $109 million compared with the same period a year ago. The decline was driven by lower advertising revenues, partially offset by lower operating expenses.
The U.K. newspaper group reported lower first quarter operating income contributions compared to the year ago quarter due to a 15% reduction in advertising revenues and a 6% decline in circulation revenues in local currency terms.
The Australian newspaper group reported lower first quarter operating income versus a strong first quarter of fiscal 2009, primarily due to a 17% decline in local currency advertising revenues, reflecting reduced classified, national and real estate advertising. Circulation revenues were in line with the prior year quarter. The reduced revenue contribution was partially offset by lower operating expenses.
Dow Jones’ first quarter operating results declined from the same period a year ago, due to lower advertising revenue at The Wall Street Journal and lower information services revenue. These declines were partially offset by reduced operating expenses and increased circulation revenues which were driven by price increases at The Wall Street Journal. The Wall Street Journal now has the largest circulation of any newspaper in the U.S."
Source: Page 4 of News Corporation Earnings Release, 4th November 2009

People who illegally download music spend more on music than people who don't

"People who illegally download music from the internet also spend more money on music than anyone else, according to a new study. The survey, published today, found that those who admit illegally downloading music spent an average of £77 a year on music – £33 more than those who claim that they never download music dishonestly.
[...]
The poll, which surveyed 1,000 16- to 50-year-olds with internet access, found that one in 10 people admit to downloading music illegally."
Surce: Poll conducted in the UK by Ipsos Mori, commissioned by Demos, reported by The Independent, 1st November 2009

There are an estimated 4 million 'Jailbroken' iPhones in circulation

"It’s been months since we introduced jailbroken detection to our library, and we’ve begun to get a better understanding of the jailbroken ecosystem, which has remained reasonably steady. To date, Pinch Analytics has received data from approximately 4.0 million jailbroken devices. About 38%, or around a million and a half of those, have used a pirated application. This estimate is low – application pirates take steps to avoid detection – but it’s worth pointing out that an individual who jailbreaks their phone is not necessarily an individual that steals applications."
Source: Pinch Analytics, 12th October 2009

1.27 billion people (31% of all mobile users) access the web through mobile devices

"Then I found finally the first analyst to give an update for 2009 for mobile web/mobile internet/mobile browsing usage. Note that this is not "the real internet" on a phone, this is any kind of browsing use, both the "real internet" like say on an iPhone or email on a Blackberry; as well as the "mobile internet" ie WAP usage of what is often operator/carrier portals. Yet, if you accss Google on a phone, regardless of whether via web in the traditional HTML and WWW basis, or via WAP, it is still a browser-based service. Same for Ebay or Yahoo or Twitter or Facebook. Any browser based access on a phone, that is "equivalent" to accessing that same internet service and its (usually mobile-optimimized) mobile site.
So Yankee Group reports that we now have 31% of all mobile phone owners using the mobile web, If you feel that it cannot be, that you don't see that many users around you in your world, remember these are global numbers, so they include of course all those countries where mobile web use is far greater than PC based internet use, such as South Africa or Japan or India etc. And yes, previously it was me and my consultancy saying so, now we have a major analyst house, Yankee Group, giving us the number.
31%? how many users is that worldwide? at the start of the year we had 4.1 billion mobile phone subscriptions on the planet, so at the start of 2009, we had reached the level of 1.27 billion mobile browsing users."
Source: Yankee Group, reported by Tomi Ahonen, 30th October 2009

Total annual revenues generated by SMS now exceed $100 billion

"We have now heard from Portio Research, who do report that SMS total global user base has passed 3 billion users. Portion also reports on the total revenues earned by SMS, and yes, that number has now officially passed 100 billion dollars. Yes, as we told you here before, as of now, the service that is only 16 years old, has grown to such a giant, it is as big as the global music industry, plus the total worldwide movie industry, and the total worldwide videogaming industry - added together. That is 100 billlion dollars. Or to put it another way, its bigger than global radio, or bigger than worldwide book publishing,.. Not bad for a messaging platform that allows only 160 characters per message..."
Source: Portio Research, reported by Tomi Ahonen, 30th October 2009

Facebook accounts for 6% of all US internet visits (Hitwise data)

(& twitter only 0.14%)

Click to enlarge

Source: Bill Tancer of Hitwise, writing in his blog, 29th Ocober 2009