While Yahoo Mail may not be the most popular email service in the world, it is widely preferred to all other services in Iran, according to a new study by Conovi.

Iran is an especially interesting place to look at digital trends, considering the country actively blocks its citizens from sites it doesn’t agree with. A previous surprising trend was that 58 percent of Iranians use Facebook despite some blocks by the government.

The latest study was conducted by Chimigi, an online reasearch panel owned by Conovi. It surveyed 800 respondents. One of the most interesting trends was that 63 percent of respondents preferred Yahoo mail to all other email services, including Gmail and Hotmail. Gmail is preferred by 32 percent while Hotmail has only a 2 percent preference.

“Iran remains one of Yahoo’s leading markets,” Conovi managing partner Amir‐Esmaeil Bozorgzadeh said in a statement. “Although the general idea is that the more tech-­savvy users prefer Gmail, and the trend we’re seeing is certainly moving in Google’s direction.”

A few other interesting points of note in the study:

• The most popular web security apps among respondents is ESET’s NOD32 (48%), Kapersky (18%), and Microsoft Security Essentials (9%)
• 69% of respondents spend between 30 minutes and 2 hours on email each day
• The most-used Google service among respondents is Google Translate at 53%

Check out the infographic below for surprising stats on digital Iran:

Photo illustration via Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat
Original Iran map image via Aleksandar Mijatovic/Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Time spent using mobile apps rose about 35 percent this year while TV viewing stayed stagnant and web browsing dropped slightly, according to a new report on U.S. trends by mobile analytics firm Flurry.

The study shows in greater detail what we’ve been seeing during the past few years: the rise of mobile devices as a competitor against TV, web browsing on PCs, video game consoles, and more.

Between Dec. 2011 and Dec. 2012, the average time spent inside mobile apps rose 35 percent from 94 minutes to 127 minutes a day. Comparably, TV viewing stayed the same at 168 minutes per day. Web browsing dropped 2.4 percent, from 72 minutes to 70 minutes per day.

Take a look at the stats in this chart to see how the numbers stack up against each other:

This appears to be a good sign for those who have invested in mobile. With consumers spending much more time on phones and tablets (and while also watching TV), there’s a large opportunity to develop compelling mobile apps and games.

“Mobile and apps are gobbling up the web and consumer Internet, and that’s where the opportunity is. And the opportunity has never been bigger,” Flurry CEO Simon Khalaf said in the report. “All around me, I see entrepreneurs living it, loving it and collecting it ’99 cents’ at a time.”

Of course, as bullish as Khalaf is, app stores revenues appear to be increasingly concentrated among a small number of companies. A report today said half of revenue generated by iOS and Android apps goes to just 25 developers.

Mother and daughter using tablet via Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Mobile operators across the globe lost more than $58 billion last year because of deficient billing systems, according to a new study from Juniper Research.

As carriers now support a wider array of devices than ever before, including iPhones, Android devices, BlackBerrys, and Windows Phones, and manage a crazy amount of traffic from these devices, the billing systems carriers use can’t keep up. With so many people with devices in hand and so many ways to process transactions, the scale of loss for operators has increased because there’s a much greater opportunity for fraudulent activity and bad debt.

“The systems in place now can’t identify accurately how this traffic is being processed,” study co-author Windsor Holden told VentureBeat.

The $58 billion in revenue lost last year equals out to more than 6 percent of the industry’s total revenue. Under a “nightmare scenario” presented by the report, in which operators fail to implement any serious reforms during the next five years, the losses could rise as much as five times by 2016.

So what can carriers do to help remedy this problem? Juniper says they need to implement automated system solutions to “minimize the outflows resulting from next-generation connectivity.” Carriers also need to create a single repository of data to better track customer activity and integrate applications that can better track data on devices. With key investments, the report says that leakage will decline to 4 percent of revenue in 2016 from today’s 6 percent.

Holden suggests that as the mobile industry moves aggressively to deploy 4G LTE networks, carriers risk undermining revenue from value-added services by not investing in solutions to track data in real-time. However, regardless of how many reforms are put in place, revenue leakages will almost certainly continue to be higher in Africa and the Middle East more so that the rest of the world.

“In emerging markets, the emphasis has been on rapid expansion and not on things like preventing leakage,” Holden said.

Money burning image: bioraven/Shutterstock

VentureBeat is holding its second annual MobileSummit this April 2-3 in Sausalito, Calif. The invitation-only event will debate the five key business and technology challenges facing the mobile industry today, and participants — 180 mobile executives, investors, and policymakers — will develop concrete, actionable solutions that will shape the future of themobile industry. You can find out more at our Mobile Summit site.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

In what might be the least surprising study ever conducted, Pew Research Center reports that teens are texting an enormous amount, with older teens now sending 100 texts a day.

Pew talked with 799 teens between the ages of 12 and 17 and found that teens are forgoing phone calls in favor of texts. Between 2009 and 2011, the average amount of texts teens sent increased from 50 to 60 texts per day. Teens in the older segment between 14 and 17 years old text even more, and now send an average of 100 texts per day, up from 60 in 2009. Teen girls text far more than boys and in the older segment girls sent twice as many texts as the boys.

Cell phone and smartphone ownership among U.S. teens is also on the rise. 77 percent of this group now owns at least a basic cell phone, which is up 2 percent from 2009. As you might expect (and hope), teens are more likely to have just a basic cell phone. Just 23 percent of the teens surveyed own smartphones, compared with 54 percent who are slumming it. In this case, gender does not matter as much, with boys and girls basically having the same ownership rates.

Interestingly enough, Pew’s study indicates that race, ethnicity, and income had little-to-no bearing on whether a teen owns a smartphone. However, the education level of their parents did have an impact. 26 percent of teens whose parents were college educated had smartphones versus 19 percent of those whose parents were without it.

Teens texting photo: Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

About 30 percent of mobile web users plan to purchase the much-anticipated Apple iPad 3 upon its release, according to a just-released study by independent mobile ad network inMobi.

Apple’s iPad 3 event is scheduled for Wednesday, March 7, and it promises to be a much-watched event for the company. The rumor mill has been in full force concerning the new device, with reports suggesting the iPad 3 will be slightly thicker and will include a higher-resolution Retina Display, better cameras, and the inclusion of LTE 4G chips. Other rumors suggest that the unit will offer a new quad-core A6 processor to replace the iPad 2′s dual-core A5 chip, which will make processing high-end games and apps much smoother.

inMobi’s report polled 689 regular mobile data users in the U.S. and found that 29 percent of respondents planned to buy the iPad 3. A notable number from that sub-section indicates that 54 percent of those who plan to buy have never owned a tablet.

Anne Frisbie, inMobi’s Vice President and Managing Director of North America, said that just having an iPad 3 event, with all its hype and media coverage, will help convince people in grabbing an iPad. So not only will people be interested in the iPad 3, they will also be considered the iPad or iPad 2 at a reduced price.

“Interestingly, 65% of those who intend to buy an iPad 3 would consider buying an iPad or iPad 2 at a reduced price instead, indicating that whether or not consumers purchase an iPad 3 versus an older model, the excitement around the iPad 3 release will likely increase iPad penetration in the tablet market,” Frisbie said in a statement.

Among specific features respondents were asked about, the three most wanted additions to the iPad 3 were: faster processor speed, better battery life, and higher-quality screen.

Will you be picking up an iPad 3? Or perhaps a less-expensive iPad 2 might be more your style?

Cat with iPad photo: Rick Weiss/Flickr

VentureBeat is holding its second annual Mobile Summit this April 2-3 in Sausalito, Calif. The invitation-only event will debate the five key business and technology challenges facing the mobile industry today, and participants — 180 mobile executives, investors, and policymakers — will develop concrete, actionable solutions that will shape the future of the mobile industry. You can find out more at our Mobile Summit site.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Apple has moved up two spots in the world phone manufacturer rankings, with LG and ZTE dropping down a rank and Nokia and Samsung taking the top two slots, according to new IDC research.

IDC’s latest report on the state of the worldwide phone market says it grew by 6.1 percent year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2011. But that growth is actually quite a bit weaker than the 9.3 percent year-over-year gain for Q3, indicating that feature phones are falling out of favor fast.

“The mobile phone market exhibited unusually low growth last quarter, which shows it is not immune to weaker macroeconomic conditions worldwide,” said Kevin Restivo, senior research analyst with IDC, in a statement. “The introduction of high-growth products such as the iPhone 4S, which shipped in the fourth quarter, bolstered smartphone growth. Yet overall market growth fell to its lowest point since Q3 2009 when the global economic recession was in full bloom.”

The most interesting movement to happen this quarter was Apple blowing past LG and ZTE in shipments thanks to huge demand for the iPhone 4S, which is available in more than 90 countries. Apple now has the third place slot with a record-breaking 37 million iPhones moved in the fourth quarter. Apple is also now the largest smartphone maker in the world.

First place in total phone shipments is still Nokia, which has retained that position for some time by selling massive amounts of “dumb” feature phones. Nokia recently introduced several new Windows Phone smartphones like the Lumia 900, showing off a new direction for the company, which hopes to become a major smartphone player again. Nokia shipped 113.5 million phones total.

Second place went to Samsung, which offers a blend of powerful Android phones and cheap feature phones. Samsung was notable for breaking the 90 million phone mark for the first time in a single quarter and breaking the 300 million mark for the first time in a single year for 2011. The company shipped 97.6 million phones in the fourth quarter.

Rounding out the top five are LG and ZTE in fourth and fifth place, both dropping a slot because of Apple’s surge. LG’s phone shipments dropped a staggering amount, going from shipping 30.6 million phones in Q4 2010 to shipping 17.7 million in Q4 2011, a 42 percent decline. Chinese manufacturer ZTE boosted shipments 8.9 percent year-over-year in the fourth quarter with the shipping of 17.1 million phones.

Here’s the full chart of IDC’s top mobile vendor list:

Chart image: IDC

Apple Store photo: Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

More online American adults are using video-sharing sites than ever before, according to a new study from Pew Research Center.

In May 2011, 71 percent of online adults reported watching videos from a site like YouTube or Vimeo. On top of that, 28 percent of adults polled said they visited such a site on a typical day.

“Video is a much more integral part of the Internet experience than ever before,” Lee Rainie, director of Pew’s Internet & American Life Project, told VentureBeat. “It’s much easier to share video across all kinds of platforms too.”

Rainie said he thinks the rise of social media and powerful mobile technology have greatly increased the likelihood of being exposed to online video. “Not only are users being exposed to video on their social networks, but it’s also a lot of people sending video links via e-mail with a short message,” Rainie said.

The most surprising statistic in the report to Rainie was that rural internet consumers are now just as likely to use video-sharing sites as those from suburban and urban areas.

“Just a few years ago, it appeared rural users weren’t as open to online experiences but now they have caught up,” Rainie said.

One factor in this might be that there so many channels that the barriers to entry to uploading video have vanished. This has created a more diverse representation across all video channels. “Now that businesses, schools, non-profits and individuals can all post easily to these sites, that makes the offering more compelling,” Rainie said.

Another interesting statistic that came from the report is that African-American and Hispanic consumers are more likely to use video-sharing sites than white users.

The trend of increasing online video use isn’t likely to slow soon, and more users will seek out video as it becomes further integrated into the social fabric of the web. Add in the number of mobile devices – including smartphones and tablets – that support instant online video streaming and you’ve got yourself a recipe for ubiquitous video use.

Do you think our country is addicted to online video? Or are we simply embracing the format as a convenient way to get information and entertainment?