Canadians love daily deals. Even more than Americans, a new study suggests.
According to Epsilon, Canadians are more engaged with the online group buying trend than their US counterparts. While Canadians tend to view Americans as more materialistic, the results of this survey may make sense, considering it's a web-based trend and Canadians are always online.
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I suppose it was inevitable. As Android and iOS devoured RIM's marketshare in the US, Canadians maintained their patriotic loyalty to the Waterloo-based Research In Motion. On home soil, RIM's BlackBerry smartphones held their ground—yes, marketshare was dwindling, but RIM always retained its top spot.
However, times have changed. New data reveals that RIM, a pioneer of smartphones in the early 2000s, no longer holds the crown in Canada.
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Tablet gaming generated nearly $500 million in revenue last year—not bad for a newly emerging market. But being in infancy, there's plenty of room for growth, and Juniper Research is predicting intense momentum through 2014.
According to the research firm, tablet gaming will become a $3-billion-plus market within two years, as tablets continue to land in more consumers' hands and developers craft bigger and better games for the devices. As Juniper notes, tablets have been going to higher-income households, where the demographics tend to buy more games and also buy more in-game items.
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More than 8 in 10 Canadian households now have internet access, according to Statistics Canada. Even in rural areas, more than two-thirds have Canadians have internet. However, internet access penetration is just one side of the coin.
The other side is how good, and how costly, our internet is. And that's where things go dim. See, while we all may have internet, we're overpaying for it, and the stuff we're getting is far from cutting-edge.
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Worldwide developer interest in RIM's current BlackBerry platform has plunged to a low of just 16%, down a steep 20% in just three months. For comparison, almost 90% of developers are "very interested" in developing for Apple's iOS platform, while about 80% are interested in Google's Android platform for smartphones (though it's an interesting sidenote that far fewer developers show any interest in Android tablets).
This grim finding comes from a report published by Appcelerator in conjunction with research firm IDC. According to their study, developers appear to be waiting for Research In Motion to release BlackBerry 10, the QNX-based operating system for its smartphones.
read moreLess than one-third of Canadian small business owners are using social media, a new BMO Bank of Montreal survey reveals. And this comes despite the fact that half of Canadian business believe social media can increase profitability—not to mention it's free, when cost is often the only obstacle for a small business trying something new.
29% of Canadian small businesses don't believe that social media is a valuable tool, the survey found. 19% haven't tried because they lack knowledge.
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The British Columbia Lottery Corporation, the Atlantic Lottery Corporation, and Loto-Québec have all got their feet wet in online gaming, where you can purchase 6/49 lotto tickets through their websites. While Ontario will roll out some online options later in 2012, online gambling continues to be very popular outside the provincial websites.
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Unprepared for the mobile revolution, Canadian business are having their private data compromised. A new "Global Study on Mobility Risks" reveals that corporate mobile devices and the bring-your-own-device phenomenon are "rapidly circumventing enterprise security and policies in Canada."
71% of Canadians agree that using mobile devices is now necessary in business, but 72% also believe these devices put organizations at risk. Worse, just half of Canadian business have the necessary security controls to address the associated risks.
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We know that Canadians lead the world in online engagement. So it's a bit of a surprise to learn that we're not yet comfortable with online commerce.
As it turns out, Canadians still prefer shopping at bricks-and-mortar stores, according to a new research report from The Boston Consulting Group. The report, which was commissioned by Google, compared the internet economies of several major countries, including France, Australia, and Germany.
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Everyone knows that Research In Motion has seen better days. It's easy to remember the tremendous publicity a then-beloved RIM got when U.S. president Barack Obama confessed an addiction to his BlackBerry smartphone. You don't hear him clacking away on those Qwerty keys much anymore, though.
If politicans' and executives' smartphone of choice offers any insight into mobile trends—and considering key factors like security play major roles in these decisions, the answer to that question is yes—then RIM is in deep trouble. A recent National Journal survey revealed that workers on Capitol Hill and executives in the private sector still use BlackBerrys—but that an overwhelming amount never plan to use one again. And these are the types that RIM's products were built for.
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