Cisco In, GM Out

Cisco on June 8 will be part of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, General Motors will not. It sort of tells you something about what "industrial" now means.

I think Apple was a sentimental favorite for some, but congratulations to Cisco. Perhaps the thinking is that digital "infrastructure" makes more sense at the moment than "applications." One wonders how much longer that distinction will be important.

BT Says Wholesale Rates Threaten Broadband Upgrades

BT says new price caps on wholesale services provided to competitors could hamper its ability to invest in the next generation of super-fast broadband networks.

Normally, when competitors squawk about wholesale prices, it is because they have determined those prices are too high to allow making of a profit. When the wholesaler complains, it normally means the facilities provider doesn't think it can make enough money. If both buyers and sellers complain, regulators probably have got the prices just about right.

Some observers will say that such a response by an incumbent is nothing more than typical posturing to get a better deal. That's an apt observation. Still, some note that there are unusual stresses.

Ofcom is refusing to allow the company to include costs of funding its Openreach pension obligations in the rate base. Openreach is the entity that provides wholesale voice and broadband access to competitors.

BT has to contribute an annual £525m into its pension fund over the next three years, one way or the other.

Last year BT announced plans to spend £1.5bn putting a fibre-optic network capable of delivering broadband at almost five times the speed of BT's copper network within the reach of 10m homes by 2012. Since then, not only has the economy hit a wall, but BT Global Services also has suffered significant losses, leading to major layoffs.

Some think that means the broadband upgrade will be slowed, in the absence of a rethinking of wholesale rates.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/may/22/ofcom-british-telecom-warning

Why 2013 is an Important Year for Market Forecasts

Ever wonder why so many market forecasts you read these days are for where a particular market will be in 2013?

The rapidly mobile M2M (machine-to-machine) market, for example, suffered a setback in 2008 with growth in cellular module shipments stalling overall compared with 2007, according to Beecham Research.

The decline was caused by projects being cancelled or postponed, particularly in the second half of 2008, Beecham says.

Nevertheless, Beecham sees growth returning by 2010 and reaching annual module sales of over $2 billion by 2013.

The reason is that five years is about as far as any rational forecaster dares see into the future. And the last year for which full-year data are available is 2008. Go out five years and you reach 2013.

Next year you'll be reading about where markets for specific products and services will be in 2014. Same reason.

Green Shoots or Grasping at Straws?

With the caveat that nearly all financial information is backward looking, corporate earnings performance of companies in the S&P 500 for the first quarter of 2009 has been "less bad than expected," according to Thomson Reuters.

With 91 percent of companies having reported first quarter earnings, the blended growth rate for the broad market stands at -35.6 percent.  As of April 1, 2009, analysts were forecasting a first quarter growth rate of -36 percent.

That noted, the first quarter marked the first time the S&P 500 has recorded seven straight quarters of negative growth since Thomson Reuters began tracking the data in 1998.

And, though companies are beating expectations, the fact remains that all ten sectors that comprise the S&P 500 index are expecting earnings to decline in the second quarter.

Telecom companies in the S&P 500 index had a minus three percent growth rate in the first quarter. While discouraging, telecom companies experienced nothing like the negative 95.5 percent decline for consumer discretionary companies or the negative 59 percent showing for energy firms or the negative 60.8 rate of financial companies.

Strategy Implications of Long Tail

Telecommunications is a business of scale, requiring huge capital investments. So it should not be surprising that the number of contestants is limited.

In the legacy wired voice markets, it once was an ironclad rule that the Regional Bell operating companies represented about 90 percent of lines in service.

In the U.S. wireless market, just four providers have about 90 percent market share.

As discrete video, wireless, broadband and voice markets start to merge, different names will start to appear. And it is conceivable that the share held by the few providers with the most share will broaden. Something more like a classic "80/20" distribution could occur, where 20 percent of providers hold 80 percent share.

What seems unlikely is that the roughly "L" shaped curve will change. You would be hard pressed to name a single business category (subscribers, profit, profit margin, revenue) where such a distribution is absent.

The obvious strategy inference is that if one is not likely to be found among the ranks of the 20 percent with 80 percent share, one had better have a clear niche. Geography, packaging, price, lead application, user interface, device, channels, customer segment or intangibles are typical ways providers differentiate.

In a service provider business spinning off more than $1 trillion annually in revenue, even small niches, fairly far out on the "tail" of market share, can be big businesses.

Is TV Advertising Permanently Broken?

TV networks typically get orders for $9 billion or so (nearly half of total annual advertising) in advertising commitments during the "upfront season," and, as you might suspect, expectations are somewhere between shockingly low to dangerously low. Some estimate the major broadcast networks might wind up getting $7.5 billion, a slide of between 13 to 20 percent.

New media is part of the reason; new ad targeting capabilities another. Anticipated dips in consumer spending likely are another reason. People aren't buying cars or financial products at the moment, so some advertisers seem to be scaling back their expectations for what advertising can accomplish, at least in the network TV channel.

So the issue, stated or unstated, is whether the change is temporary or secular (permanent). Certainly supporters of online or other targeted advertising channels would hope for the latter.

Some would argue that even if economic deterioration abates, there is no evidence that consumers and advertisers will revert to their previous spending habits.

So the issue is: is spending for network TV advertising on the cusp of a permanent, negative change, in large part because Web, targeted, mobile and online alternatives are becoming viable?

http://seekingalpha.com/article/139815-advertising-buy-audiences-not-media-brands?source=feed

Add Email Contact Info on a BlackBerry With One Click

BlackBerry users now can add contact information embedded in emails directly to their contact managers, with a single click, using "gwabbit for BlackBerry," now available a BlackBerry App World, Research in Motion's app store.

The app also can be downloaded from www.gwabbit.com. The app can add and update information in the BlackBerry Contacts or Microsoft Outlook directories.

Gwabbit costs $9.99 annually.

The "gwabbit for Outlook" app, released earlier, automatically identifies signatures in incoming emails and creates them as new or updated contacts on a desktop or notebook PC.  gwabbit for Outlook is available for a single, one-time fee of $19.95.  The two products together deliver complete email contact management for any professional on the road or at their desk.

Gwabbit is now available for all BlackBerry smartphones including the BlackBerry Bold, BlackBerry Storm, BlackBerry Curve series and BlackBerry Pearl series of smartphones.

Nearly Half of Consumers Say Lack of Advertising a Sign of Trouble

More than 48 percent of U.S. adults believe that a lack of advertising by a retail store, bank or auto dealership during a recession indicates the business must be struggling says Ad-ology Research.

Likewise, a vast majority perceives businesses that continue to advertise as being competitive or committed to doing business, a recent survey suggests.

The study finds advertising appears to play a key role in consumers’ view of how a business is doing, and by not advertising, businesses may be sending a warning signal to current and potential customers.

“It is critical to advertise in the current economic climate, to maintain long-term positive consumer perception of your brand,” says C. Lee Smith, president and CEO of Ad-ology Research. “Advertising not only assures consumers of a business’ reliability in a soft economy, but it can influence where and what they buy, especially when the ads address concerns about value,” Smith says.

http://www.marketinginsightstoday.com/archives/1223

"Easy to Use" Mobiles a New Niche

"Easy to use" mobile phones are a demographic "evergreen" market segment, Swedish consumer electronics company Doro believes.

In some cases it’s not a matter of whether customers are actually able to use a device, but rather they resonate with the image that the product conveys.

But there are some important design considerations. Larger characters on the phone screen and bigger buttons for dialing numbers are examples. Those with hearing loss can be provided devices that sync hearing aids using Bluetooth and have high quality speakers.

Though nobody can predict what will happen when today's BlackBerry and iPhone users age, they might not someday be able to view screens as well as they do today and might need better audio.

Maybe the buttons on a BlackBerry will be too small. And later in life, users might not be so busy. In that case, always-available email might not be so important, especially when users are paying for their own service and devices, rather than using company-supplied technology.

For today's seniors who have not used iPhones before, it is very likely that many such persons would reject the iPhone simply because of the device’s youth-centric branding.

Doro says it has been working with carrier partners both in Europe and undisclosed partners in the U.S. to investigate wireless health applications and other services that could leverage Doro’s easy to use phones.

As the wireless market becomes saturated, serving such niches will be more important.

http://mobihealthnews.com/2336/designing-mobiles-for-seniors-lessons-from-doro/

Hybrid Mobile Plans Gain Traction

MetroPCS and Leap Wireless both reported annual double-digit connections growth in the first quarter of 2009 and in some geographic areas are claiming a greater share of net additions than the big four mobile providers. 

Both are doing so on the strength of  unlimited prepaid plans, a strategy Sprint’s prepaid affiliate Boost Mobile also has adopted. Boost offers a $50 per month unlimited usage plan. 

MetroPCS and Leap Wireless also are pioneers of the "hybrid" mobile plans that offer a monthly allowance of voice and data but is paid for upfront and does not require a contract. 

"In the current economic climate, customers are finding their unlimited hybrid plans attractive, particularly as the plans are free from any long-term contract or credit checks," says Will Croft, Wireless Intelligence analyst. 

Video Consumption Climbs on All Screens

Online video consumption grew 13 percent in the first quarter while mobile video viewing grew 52 percent year over year. So you might think linear TV viewing decreased. Not so, says Nielsen.

(click image to expand chart)

In fact, linear TV viewing grew 1.2 percent year over year, even as consumption of other forms of video, on different platforms, grew.

The average American watches approximately 153 hours of TV every month at home. In addition, the 131 million Americans who watch video on the Internet watch on average about 3 hours of video online each month at home and work.

The 13.4 million Americans who watch video on mobile phones watch on average about 3.5 hours of mobile video each month.

Out of all different age groups, 18-24 year olds show signs of watching DVR and online video the same amount of time - timeshifting 5 hrs, 47 minutes per month, and watching video online 5 hrs, 3 minutes each month.

http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/nielsen-news/americans-watching-more-tv-than-ever/

Videoconferencing as Lead Unified Communications App

Video-based conferencing services are not the only unified communications service business customers are looking to buy, but they seem to assumed a "lead" application status recently.

That, at least, is what respondents to a recent Yankee Group survey indicate.

Carrier Ethernet will be Driven by Consumer Services

You might think the carrier Ethernet market is a product category driven by business customers.

But Yankee Group analysts predict that most of the market will be driven by services sold to consumers, not businesses, beginning this year.

That is evidence of the new role for Ethernet used to support broadband access and digital video services.

TIA Forecasts "Unprecedented" ICT Industry Revenue

For the first time in its 23 years of forecasting for the information and communications technology industry, the Telecommunications Industry Association is projecting a 3.1 percent decline in revenue for the overall global ICT market in 2009. In the United States, revenue will suffer a 5.5 percent decline in 2009.

Some will read the numbers and translate that into a dip in telecommunications spending, but that is not what the headline number indicates.

The TIA is talking about the ICT industry, not the telecom service provider industry. In fact, roughly 70 percent of the ICT data refers to things such as sales of computers, information technology consulting, PC and other software and services related to creating, modifying or maintaining data networks, on the premises.

For example, the TIA forecasts a dip in U.S. revenue from about $1.1 trillion in 2008, dipping to about $1 trillion in 2009, falling to $990 billion in 2010.

But according to the Federal Communications Commission, total U.S. communications service provider revenue in 2008 was about $300 billion. So roughly $700 billion of total ICT revenue is from hardware, software and services related to computing.

The data I have access to does not break out forecasts for the U.S. communications service provider industry. But I would be very surprised if industry revenues failed to grow in 2009, compared to 2008.

VoIP, WANs, IPTV, Mobility Will be Supplier Bright Spots in 2009 and 2010

It now appears 2009 and 2010 will not be happy years for suppliers of equipment and software to many segments of the global telecom industry, though investments in backbone capacity, IPTV, mobility and VoIP will be salient exceptions. 

Releasing its latest market forecast, the Telecommunications Industry Association predicts U.S. carrier capex spending will be down 13 percent in 2009, compared to 2008. 

Global capex spending will dip about 3.1 percent, TIA says. 

A recovery in spending will occur in 2010 and 2011, TIA now projects, and U.S. capex will climb about 14.4 percent when the rebound happens. 

As you might expect, spending will vary by segment and by growth prospects in each segment. U.S. landline infrastructure spending will decline about 11 percent in 2009, but there also will be a 15 percent growth in backbone spending. Operators will spend about 27 percent less on access. 

Spending on wireless infrastructure and broadband will climb, however. Indeed, spending on IPTV and VoIP will grow 42 percent in 2009. 

None of these projections address service provider revenues, though, and are limited to capital spending programs by service providers. So far, first quarter 2009 service provider reports suggest service providers, as an industry, are on track to grow revenue in 2009, compared to 2008.