Analyst: Tablet Sales Will Triple in 2011

According to Caris & Co. analyst Robert Cihra, tablet sales will more than triple, rising 226 percent to 54 million units. And of those, Cihra believes Apple will claim 67 percent.

Which would spike iPad sales from 14 million this year to 36 million in 2011.

Analyst: Tablet Sales Will Triple in 2011, Apple Will Dominate | John Paczkowski | Digital Daily | AllThingsD

Craig McCaw to Resign as Clearwire Chairman - WSJ.com

Craig McCaw is leaving the board of Clearwire Corp., resigning his position as chairman of the company he founded. It isn't clear what significance the move might have.

McCaw has not be active at the company for some time, it appears. McCaw's Eagle River Holdings LLC still holds a four-percent stake in the company. But that is no longer very significant. Google owns about three percent. Clearwire owns about 14 percent.

Intel owns about 11 percent. Time Warner Cable, Comcast and Brighthouse own ab out 15 percent between them.

Sprint holding 57 percent ownership, though the terms of its ownership agreement deny it control.

Clearwire's national network plan remains less than fully funded, and the company has enough cash to get it through the year, but obviously additional capital will have to be raised. Some continue to believe that Sprint will ultimately wind up owning the whole company. Most probably have believed all along Clearwire would ultimately be sold, one way or the other.

Whether McCaw's departure means anything special is impossible to determine, at this point. But all three Sprint executives resigned their seats earlier in 2010, a move that most observers thought was an indication of change.

Most executives in the wireless business would agree that one fewer national providers of 4G service would not be a bad thing, given the wireless market's maturation, as well as the existence of no less than five national 4G or 4G-speed networks.

Just about any way one looks at it, the Clearwire-Sprint relationship is complicated and unstable.

http://investors.clearwire.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=198722&p=irol-sec

95% of Twitter Accounts Created Since January 2009

Fully 95 percent of the current Twitter accounts were created after January of 2009, according to an analysis by Sysomos. That is some serious scaling.

The other significant finding is that roughly 22 percent of users produce 90 percent of the tweets.

If you are familiar with the Pareto Principle, that is precisely what one would expect to find.

95% of Twitter Accounts Created Since January 2009

Why Are Twitter Users So Attractive To Marketers?

Marketers like active Tweeters for a couple of obvious reasons. They are heavily brand conscious.

More than 40 percent of those who use Twitter monthly or more frequently agree with that owning the best brand is important to them — twice the number of total U.S. online consumers.

They spend more money, as well. People who tweet monthly or more report that they spent almost $870 online in the past three months, almost $300 more than the average U.S. online consumer.

They post their opinions. Not only are people who tweet monthly or more tweeting about products and services; they are also sharing their opinions much more frequently than the average U.S. consumer, and through a variety of channels.

This in and of itself is reason to invest in additional human resources to respond to tweets directed at your brand. While their reach may not be solely through Twitter, you can be assured that what they say will carry great magnitude as they infiltrate other social networks (both offline and online).

The Data Digest: Why Are Twitter Users So Attractive To Marketers? | Forrester Blogs

Android: SMS Popup

"SMS Popup" for Android is a free app that provides more-prominent text message alerts.

Once installed users are given a series of options of how you can interact with incoming texts. You can select when the notification should appear, whether it should mark incoming texts as read so you don’t have to fiddle with the notification bar, have a delete button appear, reply button, quick reply button where you can set custom pre-typed text messages, and you can even opt to have your text spoken to you aloud thanks to Google’s built in text to speech capabilities.

Here is the download site. I'm not sure whether it is offered through the Android Market. http://code.google.com/p/android-smspopup/

Android: SMS Popup makes interacting with SMS easy

http://lifehacker.com/5719572/sms-popup-makes-quick-preset-sms-replies-easy-on-android

Chinese Bot Attacks Androids

A Trojan Horse app capable of stealing data from infected Android smartphones, and bundled with botnet-style functionality, has appeared in China, The Register reports.

The mobile malware, dubbed "Geinimi", which usually poses as gaming applications, has been uploaded onto third-party Chinese Android app markets. If installed, the malware sends personal data from compromised devices (specifically device identifiers, location information and list of installed applications) to a remote server.

Chinese bot will slurp your Droid • The Register

Has the Internet Moved Pricing Power to the Consumer? (comScore Voices)

"It’s clear that retailers have gone far beyond the use of paid online display advertising to cost-effectively communicate deal pricing information to consumers, while at the same time consumers have now become accustomed to using online tools to root out best prices," says Gian Fulgoni, comScore chairman. That statement is hard to argue with, most might agree.

In many ways, the aggressive acceptance and use of these tools by consumers means that they can easily find the most attractive price for any product and, as such, pricing power has surely moved from retailers to consumers, says Gian Fulgoni, comScore chairman.

Such observations, including the notion that "brands have lost control to consumers," are catchy, seem to resonate and capture something of the drift of the times. But the statements are not so accurate as statements of fact, one might argue. Consumers do not actually have pricing power, retailers do. Consumers do not define brands, brands do. That is not to say that in nearly every market, brands must deal with more powerful word of mouth than they used to, and that retailers have to respond more actively to price discovery mechanisms that make pricing more transparent than before.

But brands haven't lost control of their brands, or retailers control of their own pricing decisions. Markets simply are more transparent and "liquid" than they used to be, especially regarding pricing and information about alternate retail channels.

Has the Internet Moved Pricing Power to the Consumer?

Google as a Telco?

Google has assembled all the pieces it needs to be a mobile provider like Verizon, AT&T (T, Fortune 500) or Sprint (S, Fortune 500), CNN Money notes. It's an irresistible storyline. But as the story concludes, though Google has the funds and the resources to get it done, it probably would not want to.

On the other hand, having all the piece parts ready to go is a helpful negotiating position when dealing with its mobile service provider partners. "All that's left is the will to do it," the story suggests.

It's an intriguing line of speculation that has only gotten stronger foundations over the past couple of years, as Google has fostered the Android platform, for example.

But the story, with an intriguing headline, concludes with the thought that Google just likes to push at boundaries, sometimes, experimenting with things that might or might not prove fruitful. But as a headline, it works.

Google could compete head-on with Verizon, AT&T

Suddenlink Addresses Economics Of Bundling In Viacom Contract Renewal Dispute - 2010-12-30 22:09:52 | Multichannel News

Suddenlink says its program carriage dispute with Viacom (Nickelodeon, MTV and Comedy Central are among networks affected) is caused by Viacom's 20 percent price increase for its portfolio of networks and the continued inclusion of movie service Epix in its proposals.

Suddenlink Addresses Economics Of Bundling In Viacom Contract Renewal Dispute

Skype now illegal in China

Internet phone services other than those provided by China Telecom and China Unicom have been made illegal, which is expected to make services like Skype unavailable in the country, People's Daily reports.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said all voice over Internet protocol phone services are illegal on the Chinese mainland, except those provided by telecommunications carriers China Telecom and China Uniom. The ministry gave no timetable on when the ruling takes effect.

VoIP decision means Skype now illegal - People's Daily Online

Suddenlink, Viacom in Retransmission Consent Disputes

When content owners and distributors start having more public disputes about their business relationships, it is clear that financial stress is growing in the revenue ecosystem. And that is what is happening in the cable TV business (and in the satellite TV business and telco TV business to some extent).

Time Warner Cable and Sinclair Broadcasting have disagreed about financial terms for Time Warner to carry broadcast signals. Suddenlink is engaged in a similar retransmission consent dispute with Viacom, which could result in Suddenlink losing access to a large number of major channels.

Financial disputes between programmers and distributors are not unusual. But the inability to come to terms without risking service disruptions are more common these days, in part because distributors realize ever-growing retail prices are going to have a negative impact, at some point, as alternatives become available and linear video prices continue to climb.

It is significant that multichannel video subscriptions have declined for two consecutive quarters, something that never has happened before. If the trend continues, observers will be forced to admit that multichannel TV now is more than a mature product, but has become a "declining" product.

Suddenlink, Viacom Also Having Retrans Feud - Suddenlink promises to give users refund if blackouts occur

Near Field Communications Forecast

Worldwide shipments of mobile phones with built-in near field communications capability will rise to 220.1 million units in 2014, up by a factor of four from 52.6 million in 2010.

In 2014, 13 percent of cell phones shipped will integrate NFC, up from 4.1 percent in 2010, according to iSuppli. All of that is expected to lay the foundation for wider use of NFC for a variety of mobile payments and commerce applications.

Nokia has said it will support NFC in all new smart phone models introduced in 2011 while Google has made NFC a standard feature of its Android 2.3 operating system.

Cell Phone Mobile Payment Market Set for Take Off

What Impact on AT&T Revenue from Verizon iPhone?

Verizon Wireless is getting the right to sell the Apple iPhone, it seems clear enough. All of that has financial analysts modeling the potential impact on AT&T.

Estimates from industry analysts of the resulting number of defections to Verizon from AT&T range from one million to six million. John Hodulik, an analyst at UBS Securities comes in somewhere in the middle. He predicts that AT&T will sell 8.8 million iPhones in 2011, down from 15.6 million in 2010.

Of the 13.3 million Hodulik expects Verizon to sell in 2011, about 2.3 million will be to AT&T refugees, he predicts. An additional 10 million will be current Verizon subscribers who upgrade from other devices, and the rest will come from other carriers.

 If six million of its customers defect, the $6 billion in lost annual revenue would amount to about 10 percent of AT&T's wireless sales in 2011 and 4.8 percent of total revenues of $126 billion in 2011, according to UBS projections.

On the other hand, while AT&T has reason to worry about losing the lucrative iPhone arrangement it has enjoyed since Apple introduced the device in 2007, the damage may not be as severe as many anticipate, for a number of reasons, mostly related to financial barriers to switching.

Despite the well-reported call dropping and other service issues in some cities and neighborhoods, many iPhone users do not report unusual levels of call dropping beyond what might be expected from any carrier, at some times, and therefore presumably do not have overwhelming incentives to change carriers. Churn possibly will be highest in New York and San Francisco, for example.

There are financial barriers as well. Contract termination fees, though pro-rated, could run up to $325 for a consumer at the start of a new contract. About 15 million of 23 million iPhone customers appear to be on such contracts.

Devices used on Verizon's network will not multitask, supporting both a phone conversation and Web usage, for example. For many customers, the cost of service on the Verizon network might be more than they have been used to, on the AT&T network.

AT&T says its 3G network is faster than Verizon's 3G network, and one does not hear Verizon disputing that in public.

Perhaps most significantly, many iPhone users are on family plans. Switching every user on a plan because one or two iPhone users want to migrate could pose barriers as well. Also, many users might want to switch, but then discover that Verizon Wireless prices are higher than AT&T's, in many cases. Whether that makes a difference is tough to determine at the moment.

Rethinking the iPhone Threat to AT&T - BusinessWeek

VoIP | Telecom | Mobility | Blog

About 50 percent of respondents recently surveyed by Frost & Sullivan expect their communications and collaboration budgets to increase over the next 12 months, while 47 percent say their budgets are likely to remain the same.

Frost & Sullivan surveyed 200 North American C-level executives as part of the study.

VoIP | Telecom | Mobility | Blog