Facebook Phone Might Not be a False Rumor

Facebook developers are said to be working on a secret project, and that project may be a Facebook phone, despite the company's denial.

Two well-known developers at Facebook, Joe Hewitt and Matthew Papakipos, are said to be holed up working on a project that few people have knowledge of, including other Facebook staff. Hewitt is known for his work on Firefox and a web-based 'OS' known as Parakey before working for Facebook. There he worked on a mobile version of the website for the iPhone, as well as creating the native iOS client.

Facebook denies phone rumors, but possibility still exists

Is Apple Working on a 7-Inch Screen iPad?

Apple might be looking to develop a new version of iPad, this one with a 7-inch screen and bring it to market sometime in 2011, according to a research note put out by Rodman & Renshaw analyst Ashok Kumar.

Some of us think that is a smart idea. The current iPad is too large to be a device normally carried everywhere, at least for some of us who have to use a notebook or netbook.

The Samsung Galaxy is available in a 7-inch form factor already, for example. 

Some smartphones, meanwhile, now feature 4-inch screens with very good "full web" access. In fact, some of us prefer to use the full web browser rather than apps for many tasks.

But content creation on a 4-inch smartphone still is too difficult. A 7-inch form factor is where the gap is, for a couple of reasons. It might just be small enough and light enough to lug around with a netbook. And it might be workable as a content creation platform for some tasks.

Is Apple Working on a 7-Inch Screen iPad?

In Case You Were Wondering Why Air Travel is No Fun

This chart pretty much tells the story about why air travel is not fun anymore.

Though one can make a good argument that it is better for the nation when more people can fly routinely, airline pricing has not kept up with the costs of operating airlines.

It is a business that in most years does not actually make money, for those reasons.

Despite "Good Intentions," Regulatory Reform Ultimately Fails

It is tempting to think that the government can "do something" to prevent consumer gouging, financial fraud or other ills. Certainly regulations and laws can be crafted.

The problem is that when the stakes are high enough, businesses always will have incentives to comply with the new regulations or rules and then simply shift effort elsewhere to recoup their losses.

Banks, like almost every other business that works under any federal regulations, are like water seeping through cracks in the rock.

The financial reform bill will ultimately fail. When there are huge financial stakes, smart people will find ways to evade the rules and strike out in new areas. That observation is simply a matter of historical record. Sarbanes Oxley rules designed to prevent Enron style failures have not prevented any of the current wave of failures. As nearly as anybody can determine, Sarbanes Oxley, despite imposing huge costs on public companies, prevented nothing and protected nobody.

Every set of regulations essentially fights the last war. But that never seems to deter people from thinking they can prevent the next problem by protecting against the last one. That's virtually never the case.

Banks Find Ways Around Reform Costs - 24/7 Wall St.:

Facebook Building Its Own Phone???

Facebook denies the rumor, but is said to be planning on building and distributing its own mobile device.

You might wonder, if the rumor is true, why it might do so. Some speculate that Facebook might believe it cannot have as much impact on the mobile world as it has on the web without one.

Having its own device helps Facebook become a mobile platform, not just an app running on a platform.

Here's Why Facebook Is Secretly Building A Phone: It Needs To Be A Platform, Not Just A Service:

Will Verizon Launch Apple iPhone on its LTE Network?

It is questionable whether a faster mobile network automatically leads to consumer demand. "Hot" devices or lead applications tend to be required as well. All of which might suggest the best way for Verizon Wireless to stoke demand for its coming Long Term Evolution network is to launch the Apple iPhone directly on 4G, rather than its 3G network.

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Short Mobile App Shelf Life Isn't Necessarily a Bad Thing

Today the average smartphone has 22 apps on it, but the half-life of an app is about a month. In six months only five percent of them have been retained, according to Borrell Assoiciates.

That isn't necessarily a bad thing. The most-popular type of mobile app downloaded to smartphones is "games." People play them for a while, then move on.

Other types of content, such as movie or other content apps, will have a similar short shelf life. People watch TV shows or movies and then do not necessarily return to using them in the future. That's not a problem; it's an opportunity.

But the general observation still holds: few developers are likely to make much incremental revenue from their mobile apps. But that might not be the primary purpose for producing an app.

Promotion always has been a leading reason for advertising, and apps with short lifespan that promote purchases of movie tickets, content, games and other products still are worth doing, from that perspective.

Preference for In-App Advertising Strong Across Platforms

In-App Advertising Works

In-app advertising appears to work, according to Nielsen.

In-App Advertising Preferred by End Users

Mobile advertising is increasingly finding its way into mobile apps, with teenagers being much more receptive than their elders, says Nielsen.

Fifty-eight percent of teens say they “always” or “sometimes” look at mobile ads. In general, men of all ages are more receptive to mobile ads than women. Only 37 percent of men say they are not at all likely to respond to an ad on a mobile device, compared to 44 percent of women.

Across all operating systems, apps users would prefer to view mobile ads within an app. Android users are more likely to click on an advertisement within an application, while iPhone users are the least interested in having ads take them outside of their application.

Mobile Advertising Will Be Indistinguishable from Online Advertising by 2015

About one online marketing dollar in every five spent in 2010 will go to a mobile campaign, says Borrell Associates. By 2015, the mobile share will have grown to almost two of every three dollars spent. Part of the reason for this heady forecast is the expected growth in the number of smartphones, Borrell Associates says.

The rest of the spectacular gains are simply the growing "mobilization" of consumer devices. Within five years, the majority of phones, computers, game machines, e-readers, and GPS navigation devices will be true mobile devices, each capable of receiving mobile-targeted advertising.

In effect, there will no longer be any real distinction between mobile and online, says Borrell Associates.
The other big change is that mobile campaigns will assume greater prominence for local marketers as well.
Today less than seven cents of every mobile marketing dollar is spent locally, by locally owned businesses. About 93 percent of mobile advertising is "national" in focus.

This will change as the devices themselves improve and the tools available to local marketers become less expensive and easier to use. By 2015, a quarter of every mobile marketing dollar will be spent locally, Borrell Associates forecasts.

App Buyers Prefer Carrier or Credit Card Billing

There's an interesting bit of data in a recent Nielsen survey of users about smartphone and feature phone applications and behavior.

Specifically, users have clear preferences when it comes to how they want to pay for mobile apps, opening a wedge for service providers who want to increase the amount of commerce and payment services they can support and derive revenue from.

Given that users’ primary concerns are convenience and security, Nielsen found that users would prefer to have charges appear on their mobile service provider or credit card bills.

The immediate issue is that the most-popular app stores are not controlled or sponsored by mobile operators, but by the handset suppliers. Many think that is a good thing.

But the survey data also suggests a potential new role for mobile service providers as suppliers of third-party billing services. About 32 percent of both smartphone and feature phone users say they prefer to have payments billed on their mobile service statements.

About 31 percent say they currently pay by credit card, but only 24 percent they prefer to pay that way. About 20 percent say they use PayPal, and that's the same percentage of users who say they prefer to pay that way.

About 13 percent pay using iTunes, but just 11 percent say they prefer to pay that way.

Games Lead Mobile Apps

Games, weather, maps, navigation and search top the list of applications feature phone and smartphone users engage with most often, according to Nielsen.

Do Mobile Users Value Ability to Listen to Radio?

A new survey commissioned by the National Association of Broadcasters, and conducted by Harris Interactive, found that 76 percent of respondents would consider paying a one-time fee of 30 cents to gain access to their local radio stations through their mobile phone.

The results obviously are touted as evidence for embedding broadcast radio capability in every mobile phone. One might argue the reverse is true. A "one time fee of 30 cents" is tanamount to no demand, one might argue.

For many--perhaps most--people, that is far less than the amount of money repeatedly donated to strangers on the street, at stop lights, to animal adoption services when buying pet food or at grocery stores for various charity campaigns sponsored throughout the year.

Those amounts are given in return for nothing at all tangible. So to say respondents to a poll "might" consider paying 30 cents, one time, to listen to radio on their mobiles arguably means less than nothing. It means people really do not value the feature all that much.

About 66 percent of adult respondents indicated that they would listen to local radio stations on their cell phones if that feature was available. Among all adults, young adults are even more likely to use this feature. Seventy-one percent of adults age 18 to 34 say they would use a built-in radio to listen to local radio stations on their cell phone.

One wonders if the base of users who already have had such features for years actually behave that way. Do you know anybody who listens to the radio on their mobile phone?

To be sure, Nokia estimates that 77 percent its customers who use the radio feature tend to use it about once a week. What isn't so clear is what percentage of FM-radio-equipped mobiles Nokia has in service actually use the radio feature at all.

In Asia and Latin America, people prefer FM radio over texting, cameras and even the Web, so logically, so should Americans, one might argue. Those markets aren't the same as the U.S. market.

Do people in the United States really want to access FM radio using their mobiles? It's just anecdotal, but I've been able to do so, on multiple devices, for years. I've never done so, perhaps in part because I rarely listen to the radio, even in the car. I have no idea whether that is typical behavior.

Sirius XM? That's a different story. Sirius XM gets used.

The point is that, from one standpoint, consumer willingness to consider paying 30 cents, one time, to use a feature is not quite an endorsement of the value of the feature. That's less than the cost of one song purchase. And way less than much-larger amounts people just give away, every day, for virtually no tangible reward.

Opanga Offers Store-and-Forward Video Delivery

Opanga's "NetRover Mobile" offers a way for mobile service providers to optimize the delivery of video content in non-real time (essentially store and forward) to alleviate the strain streaming places on mobile network bandwidth.

The solution allows operators to cache content on a device, in order to avoid service degradation during busy times on the network, and to avoid adding to network congestion.

If you think about a consumer digital video recorder as a device that captures real-time video for non-real-time viewing, Opanga is a way of capturing non-real-time video for real-time viewing.

It would also seem to be using a "bandwidth management" technique that does not obviously run afoul of potential network neutrality regulations that would prohibit any bit prioritization. Using the Opanga approach, there is no "prioritization," simply delivery at times when the network is lightly used.

Opanga likely will encounter the typical issues that have limited the use of "store and forward" approaches historically. By definition, it doesn't help with real-time or on-demand video. The concept requires some amount of local storage, probably limiting the use of most phones, and even most smartphones.

That said, Netflix historically has proven that non-real-time video delivery can be successful.