Apple’s eagerly awaited wearable is due to ship next month but preorders could possibly begin as early as next week.

Chances are, we’ll find out during the Monday, March 9th event. For now, Apple is divulging much. The company’s press invite merely says it’s time to “Spring Forward.”

“The spring forward connotation of time has many believing that the event will feature a home-stretch push for the Apple Watch,” says Greg Madsen of NativeMobile. “Nonetheless, we’ve heard very little about what Apple has planned for the next media event beyond a handful of rumors suggesting we may see an enterprise targeted ‘iPad Pro’ and possibly a new MacBook Air featuring Intel Broadwell chips.”

By most accounts, next Monday’s event isn’t really about new products (by new, we mean products that haven’t been announced). Instead, the occasion will be used to hype the already most-hyped smartwatch in the product category’s history. But with Apple pinning much of its future hopes on wearables, it’s critically important for the company to get off on the right foot — or wrist — with Apple Watch.

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But with less than a week to go before the rumored February 24th media event, Apple is yet to distribute invites to the press — something Apple always does at least one week in advance of a public product showcase.

So what’s behind the delay? Sources close to Apple cite a myriad of factors.

First, Apple’s purportedly enterprise-targeted iPad — the “iPad Pro” — might not yet be ready for prime time. The same may also be true of the next MacBook that’s been in the works for some time now.

More realistically, however, Apple just isn’t ready for preorders of Apple Watch to commence.

We’re told Apple wants to use its next media event as a launch pad for preorders. And with the device not shipping for another 6 to 8 weeks, it’s likely Apple is going to hold its next event two weeks prior to the first wave of shipments so that preorders can effectively commence the day following Apple’s media presentation.

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That’s the bottom line, according to a new “State of Mobile Advertising” report from Opera Mediaworks.

“Apple’s favorable position in Western markets, such as the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom, helped it retain the lead,” noted the report summary. “The report, which lays out quarterly trends and insights from the company’s mobile ad platform, notes that, in these markets, high-value rich-media and video-advertising campaigns are more common. Since iOS dominates in these markets, monetization levels are highest, with over 51 percent of revenue.”

Best monetization potential? Most likely the iPad, which accounted for about 13 percent of revenue on a mere 5 percent of impressions.

“The high volume of mobile app usage vs. mobile browsing in Western markets also drives a healthy user-acquisition market,” according Digital Journal. “To acquire more users, publishers and app developers use direct response, or performance, mobile ads to drive app downloads.”

The report also shows that the games category surged ahead in both traffic and revenue in the past year.

“The Games category … was the big success story of the year,” it noted. “In 2013, it represented just 5 percent of impressions, but in Q4 2014 it captured a 14 percent traffic share. Revenue numbers were even more impressive, as the category grew year-over-year from 3 percent of revenue to 21.4 percent of revenue in Q4 2014.”

To see the full report, click here.

The post Opera Mediaworks Report: Apple Has Highest Core of Ad Revenue, But Android’s Growing Traffic Has A-Peel appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The L.A. Times is out with a new report highlighting what Federal investigators have uncovered. All signs point to the program having launched without adequate planning or resources. There was no real understanding, the research shows, with regard to how the devices would really be put to good use for students in the classroom. The program almost seemed to prioritize getting the iPads to students rather than fashioning a plan to make the devices integral to their education.

Per the findings of the U.S. Education Department, the L.A. Times explains that the iPad distribution program at 47 schools in 2013 was plagued out of the gates. “Teachers were ill-trained, schools had spotty Internet connections and students quickly bypassed security filters,” today’s report notes.

Perhaps even more embarrassing is that there was never any framework in place to subsequently evaluate how iPads were aiding in the learning experience, which would have made it virtually impossible to tell if there were any real benefits to the program, and if so, what those benefits specifically were.

To read the full L.A. Times coverage of the utterly-disheartening new federal report, click here.

The post Why Did the iPad Program Fail Students in Los Angeles? appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The plan in question calls for equipping every student in the district with an iPad.

Superintendent Ed Wehrer said the donation, and a separate $69,921 gift from philanthropist William Campbell through his new Campbell Educational and Community Foundation, will be used to train teachers in how to use iPads in the classroom, and to buy the devices for every student.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that the iPads, customized to limit access to inappropriate content, will be distributed during the 2015-2016 school year.

“We’re excited to be working with Apple,” Wehrer told the paper.

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According to the data in question, only one conclusion can be reached: the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Once again, despite a flood of new competition in the tablet market, Apple still dominates tablet traffic across the continent.

iPad users were behind 79.9% of North American tablet-based Web traffic in the month of September 2014 (down slightly from 81% one year ago).

“Amazon and Samsung tablets are, respectively, still the second- and third-largest sources of tablet Web usage in the U.S. and Canada after both posted slight quarter-over-quarter share drops over the study period,” Chitika says.

To check out the full report, click here.

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After a record close on Tuesday, shares of AAPL drifted higher again Wednesday, seemingly bolstered by the unrelenting momentum of last week’s powerful and inspiring earnings report.

Although it remains to be seen if AAPL will move any higher than $107 this week, a growing number of industry analysts and market watchers now believe the next stop for AAPL is $120.

If Apple has the blockbuster holiday quarter investors are calling for, Apple will likely encounter very few issues excelling well beyond current projections early in the new year.

“Since May 20,” Apple Insider reports, “Apple’s share have appreciated 23.57 percent and have paid out a one-half percent dividend. IBM, in contrast, has consistently trailed Apple’s upward climb throughout the year and is currently down 12.55 percent. The company is gearing up for additional growth in 2015, having reported an all time high $1.7 billion investment in research & development in the last quarter, contributing toward $6 billion in R&D spending for fiscal 2014.”

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In the weeks that preceded Apple’s introduction of new iPhones, iPads, and the forthcoming Apple Watch, quarterly spending on research and development hit a new all-time high for Apple.

Revealed this week in the company’s 10-K filing with the SEC, Apple spent a staggering $1.7 billion on research & development last quarter.

All told, Apple’s total expenditure on R&D in fiscal 2014 stands at $6 billion.

In the filing, Apple noted that it “continues to believe that focused investments in R&D are critical to its future growth and competition in the marketplace and are directly related to timely development of new and enhanced products that are central to the Company’s core business strategy.”

Apple, of course, didn’t reveal how much it plans to spend on R&D this quarter, but the company says it expects “to make further investments in R&D to remain competitive.”

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The company introduced iPad Air 2, hyping it as the thinnest and most powerful iPad ever.

And Apple isn’t joking.

6.1 mm thin and weighing less than a pound, iPad Air 2 features an improved Retina display, better cameras, Touch ID fingerprint sensor, improved processor and more.

Similarly, the iPad mini line has been updated to bring Touch ID to iPad mini 3.

Other than a few minor bells and whistles, however, the refreshed iPad mini was hardly the talk of Cupertino yesterday. Even Apple opted not to discuss the new pint-sized iPad for more than just a few fleeting moments.

The real star of yesterday’s show was iPad Air 2.

“iPad is a magical piece of glass that runs more than 675,000 apps specifically designed for it, and is thin and light enough that you can comfortably hold it all day; the new iPad Air 2 is packed with amazing new innovations, weighs less than a pound, and at just 6.1 mm is the thinnest tablet in the world,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing.

What did you think of Apple’s iPad announcements yesterday?

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If you are a parent or anyone who is around toddlers, then you are familiar with the multitude of e-books, electronic games, and learning apps available for kids of all ages on iOS and Android smartphones and tablets.

Since kids ages 2 to 5 are likely to spend more of their time at home, their early learning skills for essentials such as the alphabet, colors, shapes, animals, animal sounds, and counting are not honed merely through print books but via mobile devices.

Tablets are also easy to pack, making them ideal way for this age group to kill time while in the car or traveling.

Owners or not, 2- to 17-year-olds want tablets. While it’s unsurprising that 51% of those without such a device reported pestering their parents for one, the same percentage of owners were asking as well—never wanting to miss out on the hottest new model.

To learn more, check out the full report from eMarketer here.

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