Where is this consumer attention being focused?

The biggest beneficiaries have been mobile apps. Time spent on apps dwarfs time spent on the mobile Web, and smartphone owners now spend 127 minutes per day in mobile apps.

In a recent report from BI Intelligence, we analyze the main mobile usage trends developers and publishers should consider to be successful in mobile, detail how users are consuming content on their mobile devices, take a look at the most popular mobile activities, and examine how mobile usage is an additive activity.

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Here’s an overview of the four usage trends developers and publishers should consider:

The rise of gaming: Games are the largest mobile app category and the biggest money-maker in the app stores, accounting for 70% of Apple’s top-grossing apps. However, even with the most addictive games, consumers’ attention is fleeting and companies run the risk of becoming “one-hit wonders.”
Mobile-social synergies: Social networking apps are the second largest time bucket for mobile users. 39% of mobile users access social networks. This includes mobile versions of desktop favorites, as well as mobile-first networks like Instagram. Mobile holds promise for the social category, but monetization is far from a sure thing.
The piggyback rule: The only tried-and-true way for a mobile success is to take a popular usage category and build a product that piggybacks on that activity to provide a unique mobile-native experience. Instagram did it with photos, “Angry Birds” with games, but other usage categories — news, weather, travel, video etc. — are waiting for a similar hit.
Portal erosion: Mobile is a fragmented space, and consumers seem to like it that way. No one has succeeded aggregating services via a single app or mobile website. The desktop portal is fading with the advent of mobile. Yahoo Mail Traffic declined 12% in the 12 months leading up to December 2012. Carrier attempts to build mobile portals have failed miserably.

Of course, there are tons of other Android tablets now, and the Tab has evolved into Samsung’s entry-level “consumption” tablets, leaving the high end to the company’s premium Note line, which adds more features and processing power (not to mention a stylus) for people interested in “productivity” from their tablets.

The Tab, on the other hand, is all about kicking back and enjoying some good old-fashioned content. All the models include an infrared blaster for controlling your TV as well as preloaded remote-control software.

Part of the package is Samsung’s WatchON app, which displays TV content visually, letting you browse shows as if they were Pinterest pins. The search function integrates with more than just your TV’s content, surfacing shows from digital video services as well.

All three models come in white or dark brown, which Samsung calls “Gold Brown.” If you see it in the dark, you’ll think it’s black.They’re all Wi-Fi models; any carrier partnerships for 3G or 4G connectivity will come later.

Here’s the rundown on the three models:

Galaxy Tab 3 7.0
The littlest of the Tab 3 line, the 7.0 sports a 7-inch LCD with 1,024 x 600 resolution. The chip inside is a Marvell dual-core 1.2GHz processor with 1GB of RAM. There’s only 8GB of storage, but you can augment that with a microSD card. Although it’s the lightest of the three at 10.6 ounces, its 0.39 inch thickness is actually thicker than the Tab 8.0. It runs Android 4.1 and costs $199.

Galaxy Tab 3 8.0
With its 8-inch screen and ultra-thin (0.29 inch) casing, the Tab 8.0 is clearly targeting the iPad mini. At least this model runs Android 4.2, backed by a Samsung 1.5GHz dual-core Exynos processor with 1.5GB of RAM. Screen resolution is 1,280 x 800, and there’s 16GB of built in storage, plus a microSD slot. Price is $299.

Galaxy Tab 3 10.1
The daddy of the line, the Tab 10.1 is notable for being the first mainstream Android tablet to pack an Intel processor, an 1.6GHz dual-core Atom chip with 1GB of RAM. It runs Android 4.2 and has 16GB of storage, plus a microSD slot. The 10.1 is also thinner than the 7.0 — just 0.31 inch — and weighs 1.1 pounds. Like the Tab8.0, the screen resolution is 1,280 x 800, and it costs $399.

After Eight
Although Samsung is offering three models in its new Tab line, it’s clear where the focus is: The 8.0 model is the thinnest, has the best camera and has the largest pixel density. It also happens to be $30 cheaper than the iPad mini, a tablet it actually bests with a couple of specs.

Watch for reviews of the Galaxy Tab 3 devices in the coming weeks, and let us know which one you like the best in the comments.

But when it comes to mobile, Amazon’s ambitions are anything but limited to ecommerce.

Recent reports from BI Intelligence detail Amazon’s mobile ambitions, analyzing everything from the potential impact of a rumored Amazon smartphone to Amazon’s ability to become a huge player in mobile advertising.

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Here’s a brief overview of Amazon’s mobile ambitions:

Tablet Sales: Amazon’s Kindle tablets and Android tablets had a big third quarter last year. Kindle shipments, including e-readers, jumped 104% in the quarter, likely helped by the early September launch of the new Kindle Fire tablet line and the fact that the 7-inch version began shipping that month. It’s tablets priced very competitively. With the release of the Nexus and the iPad mini, the competition has never been hotter.

Software sales: The Amazon Appstore has been a huge success on the Kindle Fire. Developers make almost as much revenue per active user as they do on iOS. Google Play has many more users, but it does not generate substantially more revenue in the U.S. than the Amazon Appstore. Apple executives reportedly worry that Amazon’s controlled, iTunes-like approach makes it more competitive than other app stores, including one operated by Google. Given strong early results, Amazon shouldn’t have a hard time convincing developers to bring their apps to an Amazon phone.

Media sales: The Kindle Fire is best understood as an interactive catalog which drives sales of all sorts of Amazon products. The Kindle ecosystem includes ebooks (Kindle app), music (Amazon MP3), movies and TV shows (Amazon Prime), and apps. Almost 50 million Americans visited an Amazon site on their smartphones in July. Over 86 million U.S. smartphone owners accessed a retailers’ app or mobile site, meaning 47% went to an Amazon property. The next largest smartphone draw was eBay, which had 33 million visitors with a reach of 31%.

Smartphone Sales: Amazon continues to push forward with the makings of a smartphone platform. The potential platform has been widely rumored but not yet confirmed. The beginnings of a platform strategy are coming together: a recent purchase of 3D mapping startup UpNext, last year’s acquisition of voice recognition software creator Yap, and the launch of a prepaid wireless service in Japan. However, big questions remain about its ability to build out and manage a software platform and design the hardware to deliver it.

Mobile ads: Amazon has the potential to be a huge force in mobile apps development and advertising. Data is the lifeblood of online advertising and Amazon has a unique data trove. It’s not just data on what people like to buy, but data on what recommendations work in getting people to buy things.

On Wednesday, Brian White of Topeka Capital Markets told investors that Apple will not only launch it’s iTV this year, the company will “revolutionize the TV experience forever” by introducing the iRing, which will control the connected HDTV.

White tells Apple Insider that the “iTV” will come with a “mini iTV” screen capable of letting users view content on the smaller 9.7-inch display.

This “secondary display” could provide iTV owners with an added resource to be used for everything from home security to video conferencing.

“Essentially, we believe the ‘mini iTV’ screens will be able to capture content from the 60-inch ‘iTV’ across a distance of up to 200 meters, allowing a user to view ‘iTV’ content in the kitchen, washroom, garage, bedroom, backyard, etc.,” White says. “We believe Apple will offer one ‘mini iTV’ per ‘iTV,’ but package options will include up to four screens (i.e., one screen is part of the standard package and pay extra for each additional.”