ITV Gap?

You can always count on one thing: whatever the service or application happens to be, the United States always is lagging, getting left behind, behind the curve.

It was said about mobile usage, about text messaging usage, about mobile penetration, broadband penetration, broadband prices, broadband speeds, rural broadband and sometimes VoIP.

Now some observers lament the U.S. lag in interactive TV. That's funny, since the U.S. market is about the most video-involved in the world. A couple of observations. Sometimes people don't use an application or service because they just don't see the value, relative to the price. Interactive TV is one of those sorts of applications.

Ask about digital video recorders and consumers vote with their wallets. Ask about over the top video and people vote with their mouse clicks. If people aren't wild about interactive TV, it probably is because it isn't compelling yet. Give people a compelling application and they'll use it. People like to vote for their favorite amateur singers or dancers.

There is no interactive TV gap. If compelling apps get developed, people will adopt them, rapidly. It's always interesting when pundits criticize consumers for not liking some app they think people should like. Give people something interesting and valuable. You won't find any gaps there.

It's All About the Content

Only three things matter where it comes to video on demand: content, content and content. No matter what anybody thinks today, if popular content is accessible on a VOD basis, and is priced and packaged in ways consumers find fair, VOD takes off.

In some ways, digital video recorders provide something of a precursor. Time shifting is a form of VOD. And there's no question but that prime time and scheduled TV are losing their impact as consumers create their own entertainment lineups.

Why is time shifting more popular than VOD? For the same reason any form of media consumption is popular: people easily can get the content they want. Today, there's a fair amount of free VOD content, such as karaoke, music videos and programs for children.

The reason time-shifted multi-channel video content gets higher viewership is that viewers think "that's the good stuff."

eMarketer estimates that VOD is available in one third of TV households today, and will reach over 60 percent of households by 2012. The issue is how much "good" content will be available that way, as well as over the top on the Internet.

ChoiceStream data from December 2007 shows there would be greater viewership of VOD if there were "more content of interest." And pay little attention to what consumers say they will do. Even if they say they aren't much interested in VOD, that's just because the available content is not what they really want.

Mobile Saturation in China

My how things have changed. In urban China, 98 percent of people already own at least one mobile phone. In urban India, 85 percent own a mobile while in urban Brazil 79 percent own a mobile.

Nortel Touts Telecommuting Benefits

Nortel says 10 percent of its employees work from home on a full-time basis while 80 percent are equipped to work from home. Employees who work from home one day a week save an estimated $500 a year on fuel costs.

And though some enterprises worry about productivity, Nortel estimates it gains a 15 percent increase in productivity among teleworkers, with 94 percent reporting 15 percent to 20 percent greater productivity

Annual real estate savings represent $9,000 for each full-time teleworker, working out to about $22 million annually in energy use and real estate spending.

34% Buy Premium Features and Services

Social networking sometimes looks like a feature rather than a full business model, with the perhaps obvious exception of the leading portals. But affiliate advertising, virtual goods, micropayments, social network site merchandising, and data mining might emerge as viable alternatives to traditional revenue models, say researchers at In-Stat.

But there's some evidence the "give the base service away free, make money on upgrades" strategy does work. In-Stat notes that 66.6 percent of respondents to a recent consumer survey do not pay for premium services or features. But that leaves about 34 percent who do buy upgraded features.

Of course, much the same sort of analysis might be made of email or blogging. There are lots of business models of an indirect nature; some of a direct nature. About 16.7 percent of survey respondents use a mobile phone to participate in online social networking or video content sites. At the very least, that means more use of mobile data and mobile Web services.

In-Stat forecasts 92.2 million social networking users in the United States by 2012.

Verizon Wireless Adds Unlimited Music Downloads

Verizon Wireless has launched a new program that will let customers download as much music as they want from Rhapsody online music service for $15 per month, to seven handsets, with three additional handsets to be added as well.

The service will compete with MP3 downloads provided by other companies such as Apple's iTunes. Verizon has a similar deal with Napster.

Rhapsody is eliminating copy protection on all tracks bought from its online music store, which will enable them to be played on a variety of devices, including iPods.

Downloads do not seem to me to be a functional substitute for satellite radio, but one has to wonder how many other users think so.

3G iPhones Cost $256 to Manufacture

You might wonder how Apple can sell 3G iPhones at a subsidized price from AT&T of $200 or so. Well, according to iSuppli analysts, the phone costs about $265 to produce.

Apple gets $300 from AT&T for each device sold. After packaging, shipping and marketing costs, Apple will have to make its money elsewhere. Applications, music and movies would appear to be the "somewhere else."

As part of the new arrangement, Apple will not be getting recurring revenues from usage plans.

The company also forecasts 4.5 million iPhones sold this year, and over 30 million by 2011.

Comcast Adds Global Calling

Comcast has struck a deal with some IP voice provider, as it is launching calling to Western Europe, Latin America and Mexico. I'd guess it is Jajah underneath the hood, given the amount of activity Jajah is pouring into relationships with telcos and cable companies, as well as the spare capacity it has built into its global backbone network. Whomever the deal is with, the move by Comcast shows that telcos and cable companies can leverage over-the-top or Web activated forms of IP voice for out-of-territory calling.

SMS Packaging Like Long Distance

Text messaging packaging is starting to look like long distance used to, in some ways. In other ways, the packaging is starting to resemble voice usage packaging.

As per-message fees rise to the 20 cents a message rate for casual use, it makes sense to buy a bucket of minutes. That's a concept similar to the "presubscribed carrier" system for long distance calling in the U.S. wired telephony market. If users didn't pick a carrier, and use long distance on a "casual" basis, those users got socked with fairly expensive charges for used minutes.

Picking a carrier of record for long distance typically meant lower per-minute prices. With the rise of VoIP unlimited calling plans and "buckets of minutes" in the mobile market, that is less an issue than it used to be.

Text messaging, though, is moving that way. Carriers want users to upgrade to buckets, so pricing casual use at a high rate is one way to encourage that behavior.

In another sense, the new packaging also is similar to the voice bucket plans now used in the mobile industry. Usage above the bucketed amount incurs hefty additional usage fees. So people have incentive to buy bigger buckets than they think they will need as insurance against payment of those usage fees.

Text message pricing now has moved that way as well. The other effect is to increase the value of any unlimited texting plans.

One thing is clear enough: the highest revenue-per-bit service in the U.S. market is text messaging.

C Titles Prefer Web

According to an online study from Forbes.com and Gartner, the Internet continues to be the most influential and important source of business information for C-Level executives around the world, at 67%.

This number has increased 37% since 2004. At the same time, C-Level executives, citing newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal as their main source of business information, has decreased 36% since 2004.

The number of C-Level executives who prefer the Internet first thing in the morning has increased 22% since 2004, while those who prefer to read the newspaper first thing in the morning has declined 11% over the same time  period, the survey suggests.

HTTP is the Long Term Issue, Not P2P

Though it is peer to peer traffic that currently has network engineers concerned, HTTP traffic rapidly is surpassing P2P in volume, driven by the amount of video being viewed in a Web context.

Open Road for Open Source

Open source now is mainstream in the enterprise environment and in the Web environment. So it is not too surprising that open source now is emerging in a big way in the mobile market.

It isn't simply Android or Linux. It also with a couple years will include Symbian.

If one is looking for innovation, the mobile market is among the best places to watch. No devices or experiences are as customizable as mobiles are. No devices get replaced quite so often. No devices are so well adapted to applications that are "always on."

A Dramatic Change in Core Functionality

What is the core value of enterprise application? What is the core value for any PC application used by consumers? In times past, one might have answered "productivity" for an enterprise. In the consumer space, entertainment probably rivals productivity.

And though those might still be the right answers going forward, there's something new afoot. How are productivity and entertainment realized?

Increasingly by use of social and communications mechanisms, ranging from email, messaging, downloads, uploads, managed and hosted services, cloud computing and social networking.

Software increasingly works because it is connected to other software and other people. In some real sense, even when productivity or entertainment is the "value," value is realized only in the form of communications and connected computing.

As Bill Gates steps from history's computing stage, that's the observation that occurs. Bill Gates deserves thanks for personifying the "PC era." Maybe we don't have a name yet for what is coming, or any single person, company or application to define it.

Who could forget Time magazine naming the "PC" the person of the year? Who thinks it will be so easy to tag what is coming?

Why People Miss 30-50% of Calls

According to studies sponsored by Nokia, people who carry their mobile in their pockets sometimes or always miss 30 percent of inbound calls.

People who carry mobiles in their handbags sometimes or always miss half of all their inbound calls. That's reason enough for mobile providers and device manufacturers to investigate other ways of distributing the inbound call function.

It's hard enough to connect with a person when busy and unavailable to speak immediately. It's even harder now that so much voice traffic has shifted to mobile methods. Now, even when a person is available, calls are missed simply because the "alert" function has failed.

Some of us try to get around this problem by putting devices into "vibrate" mode. That works well enough until the phone is out of the pocket and sitting on a desk someplace. Then we forget that there won't be an audible tone--and we miss calls that way.

Three Screen Ads: Heat More than Light

At least some tier one service providers have high hopes for advertising spend based on targeting techniques and availability on three screens (TV, PC, mobile).

You see huge numbers around online ad spending, mobile ad spending or targeted ad spending. Nobody knows what will happen, except that share will continue to shift from existing media to online and mobile.

It doesn't seem so clear to me that new ad revenues will be transforming for either cable or telco providers, though.

Cable has been at the ad game for quite some time, and the overwhelming amount of money made by ca cable operators comes from recurring services.

In fact, cable modem and voice services already surpass total ad revenues. As a new revenue stream, it's important, to be sure.

The issue is how significant targeted advertising can be, when location and other attributes are easy to assimilate as part of the placement decision. If history provides any guidance, the answer will be "far less than you think."