Communities Dominate Brands: TomiAhonen Almanac 2015 Edition Released: Here sample tables from around the eBook

So the TomiAhonen Almanac 2015 edition has been released. I celebrated that yesterday and on Twitter. Now lets dig a bit more into it.

The TomiAhonen Almanac for 2015 is once again longer than before, now at 209 pages. The number of tables and graphs keeps growing too, its now up to 105. The price stays the same, at 9.99 Euros. And for you here visiting my blog, for two weeks, I have a special half-price offer selling it for 5 Euros.

The format is the same as its been for years, intended for reading on small screens so you can have it on your smartphone or tablet or ebook reader and the print is not too small. Its an incredible value covering truly 'everything you ever wanted to know' about mobile, that can possibly fit into 200 pages. So it has everything from the subscribers to the handsets; from services to apps; from SMS to Whatsapp; from mobile ads to voice calls; and just about everything in between including smartphones, smartphone OS platforms, major forms of mobile content like music, gaming, social networking; even the most thorough statistical analysis of 'mobile internet' data by all major definitions. You want to know how many handsets support bluetooth or have a 5 megapixel camera or what proportion of consumers use the clock function or download apps, its all there. Half of the tables and charts show the past decade of that data so the trends can be seen. For many of the categories there are even some charts regional spits across 8 regions (so Asia is split into rich and emerging parts of the continent, and similarly Europe is split to East and West. Africa is not lumped in with Middle East or vice versa, they are both distinct regions). You want market shares, its there. You want to see 3G adoption, its there. There are even tables of major players, and 60 largest mobile countries are charted in the back with a bit more detail like the number of subscribers and national mobile penetration rate.

For those who buy these Almanacs regularly, the sequence of the tables is the same, the colors used is consistent across the Almanacs so its easy to compare data. And for those who also buy the companion volume the TomiAhonen Phone Book (about the handset industry) or who buy my Mobile Forecast 2014-2018, those are also using the same sequence for the data and the same colors for the tables with the same logic - that red is for revenues, blue is for customers, etc so the data is again, easy to compare (and to find, when scrolling through 100 charts on the smartphone in a hurry. Its easy to find when you remember its one of the red charts with the regional split..). But now, that the new Almanac is out, lets share some tables from it. That way you can see whats in it and the industry can have some data again for free, as I tend to do when I release new books.

CHAPTER 2 - SIZE OF INDUSTRY

So the first chapter is a brief Intro chapter that also discussed what changes we have from last time. The 'info' starts in Chapter 2: Size of the Industry. There are the typical 'big picture' stats about industry revenues and total subscribers and comparisons to other tech etc. It has 10 charts and tables. This is one good example:

So the handset sales are compared by annual sales to the other major tech sales like TVs and personal computers and tablet PCs. This chapter has also the discussion and table of the 'largest computer manufacturers when smartphones are included' which I will post about separately so that whole table will come here to the blog in coming days.

CHAPTER 3 - CONSUMERS

The next chapter digs in, and starts, of course as I tend to do with almost any book or presentation, with the consumers. It has 8 tables and charts of topics we often discuss here on the blog and I do in my presentations. For us now, I'll take the top-line graphic, a time line of how total mobile subscribers has grown, contrasting it to unique mobile users, and the total number of handsets in use:

This is one of the most popular graphs of my work and often people reference it and use it.

CHAPTER 4 - HANDSETS

This chapter is quite long because it looks at smartphones plus dumbphones, and includes the OS platforms for smarphones. It includes also the installed base of all phones with features discussed etc. For us today I'll add a table about smartphones, popular topic with readers of my blog..

So the total installed base of smartphones and the annual sales, illustrated on one graphic. Now lets move to the services side of mobile. First, the mammoth:

CHAPTER 5 MOBILE MESSAGING

So Messaging has its own chapter that deals with SMS, both person-to-person and 'premium SMS'. It also discusses MMS and yes, OTT services like Whatsapp. It has 12 charts and tables. For us today, I'll show a messaging detail slide that is typical of several of the chapters - how the phone installed base serves various messaging platforms. You won't find this kind of data on most general mobile reports.

And as we can see all phones can do SMS messaging and most can do MMS. eMail can be used on a bit over half of all phones sold and smartphones are obviously now at that 36% level out of the installed base, globally. Then lets move to 'VAS' data or non-messaging mobile data and content

CHAPTERS 6 MOBILE INTERNET AND 7, MOBILE MEDIA

Next come two related chapters, one on the mobile internet and its various metrics, and then the chapter on mobile media. These combined have 16 tables and charts. I'll share two with you here. First off, lets see my popular Venn diagram to show accurately the split of internet users, across mobile and PC, because many actually use both means.

So you can see how many ways one can argue the users split across PC and mobile. Also please note, that tablets are counted consistently in this ebook as ultraportable PCs, and only smartphones and dumbphones are counted as 'mobiles' - as I originally argued, and as the tablet and PC industry is now starting to accept as well. So tablets are not 'mobile' even as they are ultraportable. They do not pass the mobility test of a service and they actually 'immobilize' users the moment a tablet is taken into use... but lets not argue that here, just wanting to point out, the 'mobile' data throughout the Almanac is indeed 'pure' and tablets are not mixed in, as they shouldn't be. Now from the Media chapter, I'll share one of the revenue slides.

This table is typical of several in the ebook that show a regional split of the data. The regional split where its used, is always these same 8 regions which do indicate distinctive characteristics that warrant a split. So Australia/Oceania is not warranted to split apart from the affluent part of Asia, thus its grouped iwth Singapore, Japan, South Korea etc among 'APAC advanced'. But China, India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Vietnam etc are more similar to each other - in mobile - than to Japan, South Korea, Australia etc - so I use a separate category of 'Asia developing' . Then there are several media category chapters that are a bit shorter

MEDIA CATEGORY CHAPTERS 8 THROUGH 12

There are four major media type chapters, Music, Videogaming, TV and Video, and Social Media. Then there is an 'other' content chapter. They have a total of 18 graphs and tables. The exact tables per chapter differ by type, as the chapter warrants but all four have the users and revenues for each type and at least one more detail slide. So lets do a mix-and-match of the slides to illustrate various graphic types used and getting some data from the four major content types:

First up is number of mobile consumers. I have this graphics from music because the (paid) music consumer population has peaked on mobile, as the ringing tone fad has passed. Many who now do listen to music on a phone, do so with the FM radio built in, and the consumption of paid music services or even ad-funded 'free' music streaming services is in decline.

Then lets take a revenue slide. This is from mobile gaming.

Then I have a content type pie graph. This is for Video and TV related mobile content and services and shows the split of its revenues by type. Those are indicative of the type of information the Almanac has for the four content chapters and the one 'other content' chapter. Now lets look at..

CHAPTER 13 SMARTPHONE APPS

The readers of this blog know the despairs about app development well. But for the random visitor, lets share one slide from that chapter, and perhaps the millionaire slide is best. This is how rotten your chances are to make any worthwhile money with apps:

There are 5 charts and tables in the apps developer chapter. Now lets do..

CHAPTER 15 MOBILE ADVERTISING

A very popular topic for me to speak and write about and provide seminars and workshops around the world, lets look a bit more closely at mobile advertising and marketing. This chapter has 8 charts and tables, here is one of them for you:

Yes the TomiAhonen Almanac goes at times to this level of detail, a time-line of the average revenues earned by that given content type, in this case mobile advertising. So 105 tables and charts of this kind of content and mix, but lets not yet end here. I have one more for you.

MORE CHAPTERS

After mobile advertising there is a chapter on voice calls (also talks about VOIP services like Skype) and has a chapter on enterprise/business phones and services. It has a chapter on networking infrastructure. And it has a chapter on 'other' parts of the industry. Those chapters have three more charts and tables. Then there is one more aspect of how I think of my work. I also give focus across the Digital Divide

CHAPTER 19 DIGITAL DIVIDE

This has also been a hallmark of my consulting and writing work right from the start and much of my consulting work now is spent in the Emerging World markets. So lets do one table from this chapter (it has three tables and charts).

MORE TABLES IN THE BACK

There is more information in the back of the book covering 12 pages and 4 tables.Thats a sampling of the type of content that is in the TomiAhonen Almanac 2015 edition. All this for 9.99 Euros as a pdf ebook you can have stored on your smartphone and in your pocket from today. All the tables in this sample can be freely used, so go ahead and refer to these if you want. Now about that Almanac, where can you get it?

Normally I sell my ebooks at my website www.tomiahonen.com and you can go there and order the Almanac from the website. But for readers of this blog (and to my Twitter followers) for two weeks from the launch of the Almanac 2015 edition, I will make a half-price offer. Now the Almanac 2015 costs only 5 Euros, at this link. If you liked the above charts, imagine getting 105 of them at the average cost of yes, 5 cents per chart. Follow this link for the offer: TomiAhonen Almanac 2015 Half Price Introductionary Offer.

For those who have the Almanac but may want more information, if you want the companion volume that only looks at the phones side of our industry, the TomiAhonen Phone Book 2014 (its the latest edition) costs 9.99 Euros and is available here.

And for those who like the data but want to see how does it project forward into the future, on the same format, I have the TomiAhonen Mobile Forecast 2014-2018 which came out earlier this year. It costs 99 Euros and is available here.