Ecommerce sales growth this holiday season will be similar to or even surpass last year, according to first-half 2011 online sales estimates and the consensus view of a panel of digital marketing experts interviewed by eMarketer. That would mean growth of at least 12% this year, according to comScore’s historical data. The firm reported that online spending grew 12% on volume of $32.8 billion for the 2010 holiday season, which it defines as the months of November and December.

“First-half ecommerce sales estimates are strong and industry experts have reasons to be optimistic about the 2011 online holiday shopping season, but the volatile global economy could cause consumers to cut back on spending,” said eMarketer principal analyst Jeffrey Grau. “Affluent consumers, who account for a high share of online sales, spend freely when their stock portfolios are healthy. But market downturns have historically undermined their sense of financial security, causing them to pull back on discretionary spending.”

A complete report, Online Holiday Shopping Preview: What Retailers Need to Know, is available for eMarketer Total Access subscribers. Learn more about Total Access.

BlackBerry owns a commanding 42% share of US smartphone subscribers (and a 9% share of the total subscriber population), according to July data from comScore, and globally, BlackBerry shipments rose 45% from Q1 2009 to Q1 2010. So why has the introduction of its newest smartphone, the Torch, and version 6 of its proprietary operating system been described as a make-or-break moment for BlackBerry?

First off, Research In Motion (RIM) may hold the lead among US smartphone subscribers, but it certainly isn’t gaining share. At best, RIM is managing to tread water while other platforms, most notably Android, surge ahead. Globally, Canalys projects 169% year-over-year growth in Android smartphone shipments in 2010 and 100% year-over-year growth in total market share. RIM, by contrast, is forecast to lose six points of market share.

Second, and perhaps more worrisome for RIM, is BlackBerry users’ lack of loyalty to the platform. In findings released this week, Nielsen revealed that only 42% of current BlackBerry owners would opt for another BlackBerry as their next smartphone, while 29% want an iPhone and 21% have their eyes on an Android device.

Now, had Nielsen’s survey sample included only dedicated business users, who constitute the core of the BlackBerry faithful, the results might have looked somewhat different. But that highlights the very challenge BlackBerry faces in the market today: with more mobile users, including both consumers and business users, consolidating their communication, media consumption and social networking activities on a single device, the line between business and personal is rapidly eroding. And that means smartphones need to be really good at many things, not just really good for e-mail, which has historically been BlackBerry’s strong suit.

When the competition includes the iPhone 4, HTC EVO 4G, Motorola Droid X, Samsung Galaxy S and others in the annoyingly termed “superphone” class, BlackBerry devices seem desperately short on the “wow” factor: good enough for the faithful, but not appealing enough to attract new users to the fold. That was the consensus among analysts polled by FierceWireless. Leading tech journalists had a mixed reaction, but at best, RIM seems to have caught up with its rivals. There are few voices to suggest this latest BlackBerry surpasses the other leading smartphones on the market.

It will be interesting to watch whether the Torch and OS6 light the way as a new direction for RIM or whether the BlackBerry platform will continue to suffer from the perception that it is stagnating in the face of increasingly fierce competition in the smartphone market.

As more consumers opt for smartphones, it’s becoming progressively harder for brand marketers to ignore the call for an app-based mobile experience, especially when comScore’s latest figures show that app usage now rivals, if not exceeds, browser-based Web access among iPhone and Android device owners.

It’s tough to turn your back on this kind of evident consumer demand. Fortunately, most marketers appear to be heeding the call: 65% of marketers and publishers responding to a December 2009 survey from DM2PRO and Quattro Wireless reported that they plan to invest in mobile apps this year.

Of course, where there is app-ortunity, there are also challenges. There is growing competition for mobile users’ attention, not only among app stores (which number more than 30 worldwide at this point) but also within each storefront.  According to recent analysis by Distimo, a Dutch app store analytics firm, there are nearly 200,000 apps in the six largest mobile device manufacturer/OS app stores alone.

What’s a marketer to do? In my latest column for iMediaConnection, I go into detail on some key steps marketers should take to make the most of the mobile
“app-opportunity.” Here’s a brief summary of the main points:

1) Ensure your app satisfies a consumer need, but does so in a way that also reinforces (and stays true to) your brand’s values. Ideally, strive to combine entertainment, social communication and utility into a single experience.

2) Promote your app like you would any other product using all available media, but pay especially close attention to social discovery. In other words, include apps in your brand’s social media strategy and include social media in your brand’s app strategy.

3) Keep your users engaged by keeping things fresh. Make an update schedule an integral part of your app strategy, much as it would be with any other product.

Getting consumers’ attention is increasingly challenging, but branded app experiences still have room to grow. According to Razorfish’s November 2009 “FEED: Digital Brand Experience Study,” only 24% US Internet users had downloaded a branded application. The right kinds of apps, backed by the right level of marketing support, can help drive those figures up.

Comcast has spent much of the past two years maneuvering against Hulu. In January 2008, the cable giant pre-empted Hulu’s long-rumored debut by launching its own free, ad-supported online TV venture, Fancast. This year, Comcast and Time Warner partnered for a service they call TV Everywhere, which essentially means free online video content for current subscribers to either company’s cable package.

Now comes news of Comcast’s imminent purchase of 51% of NBC Universal, which is a 30% stakeholder in Hulu. This begs the question: What impact will the Comcast-NBCU deal have on Hulu?

Some bloggers have theorized that Comcast will try to kill Hulu. Read my lips: it won’t happen.

Comcast knows a good brand when it sees one, and Hulu has carved out a comfortable space as the go-to destination for online TV content (much as YouTube has dominated the user-generated video space pretty much since its inception). According to comScore, Hulu ranked second among US online video properties by videos viewed in October. The site was also in the top 10 as ranked by unique viewers. Not bad for a relatively new site. Fancast, by contrast, doesn’t show up on any credible lists of top video destinations.

It’s in Comcast’s best interest to nurture and shape the Hulu brand rather than abandon it and push a nonstarter (Fancast) in people’s faces.

It should also be noted that Comcast will have only a minority stake in Hulu. The other partners in the venture–News Corp. and Disney–will flex their muscle in any decision over what happens to the site. GE, which will still own 49% of NBC, won’t be muzzled, either.

That said, it’s likely that Comcast will nudge Hulu further in the direction it is already leaning: toward a paid-video experiment that will likely involve a portion of the content on the site.

News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch has been a strong proponent of paid models for his other online properties (notably the Wall Street Journal), and he and other Hulu principals have made noise about tinkering with transactional monetization on the popular video site. Having Comcast whisper over his shoulder will only embolden Murdoch to pull the trigger on this plan.

Look for 2010 to be the year when Hulu and YouTube start charging for some of the content they’ve been offering for free. Apple, too, is rumored to be shopping a TV subscription service that would carry premium content for $30 per month to the consumer.

How will consumers react to these experiments? Unless it’s ultra-premium content (live broadcasts of top-rated shows or feature films) consumers are likely to revolt against any plan that charges them for something they have been getting for free.

Update: Comcast CEO Brian Roberts and COO Steve Burke briefly discussed what the deal will mean for Hulu after the sale was officially announced this morning. From The Wall Street Journal:

“We see, with more distributors and more technologies, what consumers want. We want to be part of delivering to them,” Mr. Roberts said. “The reality is consumers want electronic distribution. Some of it, they want it for free. Some of it, they want it in subscription, and some of it, they want it pay-per-view.”

He said there are no plans to alter Hulu’s free model. “That is certainly not in the cards,” he said when an analyst asked if a “Hulu Premium” is a possibility.

Mr. Burke called Hulu and TV Everywhere — Comcast and Time Warner’s online-video initiative — complementary products, with broadcast TV shows appearing on Hulu and premium cable programs on TV Everywhere.

“Right now, NBC Universal is distributing a lot of their broadcast content on Hulu, and they have been quite careful not to put too much of their paid-for-cable content out for free over the Internet. We think both those strategies are smart and appropriate — not that they asked us,” he said. “I think right now, the way NBC Universal are managing those two ways of distributing are very similar to the way we would want to do it when the two companies come together.”

There you have it. Now let’s see if it turns out to be true.

Are more Twitter users going mobile? A recent TechCrunch article revealed that US Web traffic to Twitter dropped for the first time in October 2009. This story, backed by data from comScore, set off a new wave of speculation about Twitter’s future, including an excellent blog post by my colleague Debbie Williamson which looked beyond the traffic figures.

It’s worth adding a few points to that discussion. For starters, comScore wasn’t the first measurement firm to report a month-to-month drop in Twitter site traffic. Compete noted a slight drop in US traffic in September 2009, and another slight drop in October. The percentage decreases were minuscule, but what’s more interesting was the flattening trend since June 2009, following a period of sharp growth in the first half of the year.

Here’s what the graph looks like:

Even though the Compete data confirmed the drop noted by comScore (leaving aside discrepancies in the actual numbers), I agree with Debbie Williamson that there’s more to Twitter’s health than site stats.

As we’ve said before — and research from Crowd Science has confirmed — many users access Twitter on platforms other than the Web.

We’ve also noted a steep increase in smartphone sales and activity, and this is likely impacting how Twitter users access the service. According to Nielsen, Q3 2008 was the first quarter in which the majority (52%) of US mobile Internet users used smartphones to access the Web. A year earlier, only 41% of mobile Web users used smartphones.

Until we see more data about how people are accessing Twitter, we can’t know for sure whether the comScore and Compete traffic data are early indicators of waning interest in the service, or a sign that a migration is taking place from the wired Web to mobile devices. What do you think?