I won’t wait until the 1st April to post this!
March was a big month for UMPCPortal. We hit 1 million page views across the news, forums, gallery, river of links, product database and RSS feeds which is a major accomplishment for a single month. Of course, CeBIT helped a lot but there does seem to be an underlying swell of UMPC activity as people begin to realise that while Origami-style UMPCs might not have been their bag, the cheap 7″ laptop and 5″ pocketable devices are! Confidence by manufacturers and advances in technology have enabled both of those sub segments and as the world starts to go 3, 3.5 and 4G mobile, the sub 1KG productivity and consumer pocketable categories will become more and more important. The MacBook Air also played a role too. While it appeared as an underpowered styling exercise to early commentators, owners have unanimously voted that the mobility factor has to be experienced to be understood. [more stats after the jump...]
The HP2133 and Eee PC 900 were the most popular devices in the product database in March with the HP getting an all-time record 24000 views on its specification page. VIA must be extremely excited about this one! The HTC Shift was knocked off the top by quite a few devices during March but overall, it retains a third-place position which is quite amazing for a device that has been knocking-around in the news for over a year. Over 130,000 individuals showed an interest in it over the last year which, incidentally, seems to be the amount of individual people that visit the portal every month. (Each viewing 3.5 pages and with some of you visiting an obscene 50+ times per month!!) Over 100,000 different people visited the forums where the HTC Shift sub-forum is the most popular. 172 of you posted 300 new forum entries too. Thanks for contributing and helping out all the visitors there!
Its worth taking a look at the visitor numbers over the year as an indicator of how the UMPC segment is growing. Around 6000 people visit per day which, while much much less than other computing websites, is more than three times the amount of people that visited a year ago. I didn’t do anything but write about UMPCs on UMPCPortal and my search engine positioning remained fairly stable so at least some of this growth must be attributable to segment growth.
So thanks to everyone who’s visiting, linking in, and contributing to the forums here. My interest in mobile computing is stronger than ever and as the market grows, new products appear and other blogs and websites pop up, my job becomes more interesting and exciting. It gets becomes more difficult to keep up with everything too so now seems like a good time to put the word out that I’m looking for a few good people to join the UMPCPortal team as it moves forward. If you enjoy tracking and researching the ultra mobile segment and want to help me improve on what’s already happening here, please contact me with some details. If you want more than just a piece of the writing action and are interested in investing so that we can improve the design and enhance the product portal to make buying decisions easier for the growing number of people, contact me for more information on how the portal is really helping buyers make their final decisions.
Finally, thanks to Kornel, The_Niles and Pdiddy for their help around the forums. Without these guys, the forum just wouldn’t be possible.
