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NEWSREADERS: The top four newsreader apps — Flipboard, Pulse, News360, and Zite — drove over 320,000 visits to publisher websites between November 13, 2013 to January 13, 2014, according to new data from Onswipe, which can track whenever an affiliate website on the Onswipe network is loaded into a newsreader app. Flipboard drove home the most site visits, with a 44% share of total visits from among the top four. Pulse pulled into second with about 30% of traffic and Zite trailed by a longshot, generating only 2% of site visits over the period.
But it was Pulse that registered the highest engagement. Pulse readers spent an average of just over three minutes per site visit compared to about a minute and a half for readers on Flipboard. Among all four, the top website categories were entertainment and technology.
But given that Onswipe tracked a total of 60 million visits over the two-month period, that means newsreader apps drove less than 1% of all Onswipe site visits. That's essentially a nonexistent share of traffic. In releasing this data, Onswipe was looking to inform website publishers which of these supposedly popular newsreaders were driving the most traffic. But with such little traffic being driven altogether, perhaps publishers need not concern themselves with any of these apps at all. (OnSwipe, TechCrunch)
iOS In The Car: Apple will be launching its first in-car system, CarPlay, next week at the Geneva Auto Show, with automakers Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz, and Volvo. Reports indicate that iOS in the car will have Apple Maps, music, videos, Siri, voice calls, and texting features all available from the car console. (Apple)
QUOTE OF THE DAY— "What we found was that none of the apps can guarantee anonymity. Instead, there are trade-offs in privacy and safety. It can be hard to know which apps to trust, but there are three factors to keep in mind: what information you're comfortable sharing, which company might best protect your data, and which acts the most responsibly when users are in trouble."— Jeffery Fowler of the Wall Street Journal describing the results he received after enlisting a white-hat hacker to see if a user is truly anonymous on anonymous social apps like Secret and Whisper. (Wall Street Journal)
ANDROID TABLETS BEAT IPAD: For the first time, Android has grabbed more tablet sales market share than Apple, according to the latest estimates from Gartner. Android's shares ticked up to 62% for full-year 2013, up from 46% in 2012. Apple's share dropped from 53% in 2012 down to 36% last year. In total, tablet sales were up 68% over 2012, for 195 million tablets sold worldwide. (ZDNet)
INDIA AND CHINA PHONES: These two markets will account for 500 million new smartphone purchases during 2014, which is almost half of the expected 1.3 billion new smartphones to be sold this year. Mobile rewards company Jana has a breakdown of the leading countries for smartphone use based on their expected new smartphone sales for 2014. China will account for about 283 million and India about 225 million. The next largest country is the U.S., which will only see 89 million new smartphone sales for the year. This will be the first year in which India overtakes the U.S. for total smartphone users, both old and new. (Jana)
OSCARS ONLINE: The U.S. Academy Awards was streamed online last night for the first time ever, but only on the Watch ABC mobile app on smartphones, tablets, and streaming TV devices. This limits the potential viewership only to those with compatible cable TV subscriptions. The Super Bowl, on the other hand, was streamed live over the Internet for all. Viewers did not need a cable TV subscription. (Entertainment Weekly)
CONFUSING COURT RULING: Another story on mobile in the car — a California appeals court reversed a driving ticket a man received for looking at the maps app on his iPhone while driving his car in slow traffic. Under current California law, drivers cannot talk or text while driving. The man argued the law shouldn't apply because he was not communicating with anyone on his iPhone, simply looking at maps. The laws for mobile phone use in the car are equally unclear in the 49 other U.S. states. Inconsistencies in the current legislation across the U.S. about mobile devices in the car are only making matters worse as more new mobile devices like smartwatches and Google Glass-like smart eyewear start to become more common. (GigaOm)
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