Here Comes Google TV

It's difficult to know whether Google TV can stoke the market for Internet-aware TV viewing, but the company has assembled quite an ecosystem. It's difficult to know whether Google TV can stoke the market for Internet-aware TV viewing, but the company has assembled quite an ecosystem. 

Verizon To Add "Own" Operating System, Devices

A few mobile services providers are taking clear steps to insert themselves a bit more forcefully into the handset operating system and device business, as Verizon Wireless, Orange and Korea's SKT introducing LiMO-based handsets in 2010. .


For Verizon, LiMo is expected to help create sales volume for high-end mobile Web devices with a Verizon brand. As with the moves by carriers to create a carrier-centric applications community, the move represents an effort to gain more clout in the important device and application space where other partners now dominate.


The LiMO smartphone software platform, unlike the vendor controlled Android, Symbian and Windows, is largely driven by carriers. Therefore, it fits neatly with other operator initiatives to swing the balance of power in mobile services their own way, notably the new Wholesale Applications Community (WAC).

Three more carriers to support LiMO this year

Germany Allocates 4G Spectrum

The German spectrum auction has ended, raising about half the expected revenue. Observers think the credit crunch and huge overspending in the 3G auctions helped ratchet down amounts contestants were willing to spend.

A total of €4.38bn ($5.5bn) was spent on the new spectrum blocks, while analysts at KPMG had forecast income of €8bn for the government as a result of the sales.

As you might expect, the three largest mobile operators, O2, Vodafone and Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile, each won two paired 5 MHz chunks of spectrum in the 800MHz band, prized because of its propagation characteristics, allowing greater coverage at lower cost, including better signal strength inside buildings.

German spectrum auction ends but prices low - Rethink Wireless:

Sprint Might be Looking at LTE for its 3G Network

Sprint Nextel Corp. has issued a 'next generation network' request for proposal for its CDMA third-generation mobile network in the United States, and Long Term Evolution (LTE) has emerged as a potential technology choice.

The RFP does not appear to affect the Clearwire network presently using WiMAX, but the "legacy" CDMA network that underpins Sprints current 3G network that operates in the 800 MHz and 1900 MHz frequency bands.

Light Reading Mobile - 4G/LTE - Sprint RFP May Include LTE - Telecom News Analysis:

Will the "Bell System" Survive?

"Will the Bell system survive?" asks Allan Ramsay. He argues that a "massive transfer of wealth from Bell to VoIP is underway." We can disagree about how large the wealth transfer is, what VoIP is, or whether voice is on its way to becoming a feature, and not a revenue driver at all. 


It is not a question the Federal Communications Commission appears to think relevant, though. 

Will the Bell System Survive? A Massive Transfer of Wealth from Bell to VoIP is Underway - MumbaiHunGama Info Articles:

What Does "Effective Competition" Actually Look Like?

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission seems to be implying that U.S. wireless markets are "not competitive," though the inference is hard to glean from the FCC's own study on the U.S. wireless market. See the document at (http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-10-81A1.pdf)

What "effective competition" looks like varies from market to market, from economist to economist. How many competitors a market must have to be deemed "competitive" is in this case a political question, not an economist's question, though.

There are some businesses where there is no "effective competition" because the market has "natural monopoly" characteristics. You can think of electrical power, waste water, highways and roads (generally speaking), water systems and national defense as clear examples.

Telecommunications once was deemed to be a "natural monopoly," but most regulators around the world now agree that is true only in part. In triple-play markets, for example, effective competition, but not "perfect" competition can occur, in an economic sense, with as few as two players, even though the U.S. market has many more than that in major metro markets, and typically at least two providers even in the rural markets.

In the real world, there are very few examples of major facilities-based competition beyond two major players, although in a few markets there are three facilities-based fixed line providers. As researchers at the Phoenix Center have suggested, in the fixed line triple play markets, imperfect though workable competition does in fact exist with one one dominant telco and one dominant cable provider. 


See http://www.phoenix-center.org/FordWirelessTestimonyMay2009%20Final.pdf, or http://www.phoenix-center.org/pcpp/PCPP12.pdf or www.phoenix-center.org/PolicyBulletin/PCPB11Final.doc.

The problem is what the level of effective competition actually is in the communications market. Presumably the FCC believes three to five competitors in a single market is not enough.

U.S. fails to describe wireless industry as competitive - Yahoo! News

What People Do With Their iPads

A new survey by Changewave Research of iPad owners suggests that the device is being used just about as Apple expected it would: as a content consumption device able to support the types of "content creation" most people do, namely send emails.

It isn't clear whether this usage profile is much different from what most consumers would do with their netbooks, notebooks or desktop PCs, but so far the iPad is not being used as a "content creation" or "work" device, as most would have expected would be the case.
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Smartphones a New Mass Medium

Smartphone subscribers are still a small slice of the mobile handset market, about 20 percent, inching towards 25 percent, by some estimates, and as high as 30 percent, by other estimates.

By 2013, predictions are that smartphone penetration in the U.S. market will be more than 50 percent, most seem to believe.

It is worth noting that 10-percent penetration is the point in the consumer electronics business when a popular device really accelerates, in terms of penetration, and smartphones are well past that point.

Also, to the extent that smartphones represent a new medium, and that nearly every huge mass medium has been sustained by advertising, it takes no genius at all to predict that advertising and marketing will be a big business in the future (click on image for larger view). 

To the extent that smartphones increasingly will be venues for rich media (video and audio) as well as text, it isn't unfair to describe smartphones as a new "medium," as the Internet, TV, radio and other media are.

Smartphones are "phones," it is true. But they also are a new media format. And hence, the foundation for a new media business.

Your Customers Are Mobile, Are YOU?

Google's Views on How to Save the News Business

"Google is killing the news business," many say. Though that might overstate the case, there is no doubt but that the Internet is reshaping business ecosystems in many ways, typically altering not just distribution formats but also profit margins.

But some argue Google also depends on a vibrant "news" and "journalism" business for its own good, "is trying to bring it back to life."

The company’s chief economist, Hal Varian, likes to point out that perhaps the most important measure of the newspaper industry’s viability—the number of subscriptions per household—has headed straight down, not just since Google’s founding in the late 1990s but ever since World War II (click image for larger view). 

In other words, there are some trends in the "news" business that were in place long before the Internet, including a shift first to television news and now Internet news.

This Atlantic magazine piece is long, but it is the Atlantic's forte, after all. It also is authored by James Fallows, an engaging writer. It is worth a read.

How to Save the News - Magazine - The Atlantic

It's Inevitable: US is Going to be Greece

Structural financial problems at the state and local government level are inevitable, and have been for some time. Forget all the old arguments about the size of government or the appropriate level of taxes. There now are obvious structural problems that must be addressed, and are not matters of political preference. Local governments face similar problems as state governments do with unfunded pension obligations.

This can cannot be "kicked down the road."

Kellogg Management School analysis of State pension obligations

TeliaSonera: Slow uptake of LTE blamed on no handsets - FierceWireless:Europe

TeliaSonera is thought to have only attracted around 1,000 customers to sign up for its new fourth-generation "Long Term Evolution" network, and the company says lack of handsets are a major reason adoption has been so slow.

The LTE network is said to provide coverage to almost 400,000 residents in Stockholm and Oslo. Ridiculously low adoption is based in part on the fact that, up to this point, TeliaSonera has chosen to launch service with no voice handsets. That has meant that the only thing a 4G network could be used for was PC connections.

As important as that application is for some users, it apparently provides no incentive for most users to switch from 3G to 4G. It remains to be seen whether 4G networks wind up being mostly about "faster downloads" or whether there really are distinctive applications that come to be seen as providing the value of 4G service.

TeliaSonera: Slow uptake of LTE blamed on no handsets - FierceWireless:Europe:

LTE Adoption Will Take Some Time: It Always Does

It will take at least five years before Long Term Evolution devices represent 25 percent of mobile broadband device sales (PC dongles, not phones), once they are introduced, and it might take as long as 16 years before LTE device sales reach their peak, based on past experience with new mobile air interfaces and device sales, according to Keith Mallinson, founder of WiseHarbor Research.

Assuming the first LTE networks activate in early 2011, that implies it will be 2016 before dongles and aircards based on LTE will represent a quarter of broadband dongle and aircard sales.

Mallinson also predicts it will be 2019 before LTE device sales are equal to CDMA-based technology devices, such as those using EV-DO, and HSPA/HSPA+.

History suggests that new mobile technologies to peak demand takes far longer than the five years, and as much as 16 years for a mobile technology to mature.

That suggests today's third-generation networks will be dominant for quite some time. AT&T Mobility, for example, recently surprised observers when it decided that, instead of moving directly to LTE, it would upgrade its existing 3G network to HSPA+. That will prove a quick bandwidth boost from about 3.5 Mbps to 7.2 Mbps for a relatively small amount of capital investment, even as it plans to start building its 4G network in 2011.

But such plans also mean that AT&T can target its 4G build to the most-dense markets, and count on the faster 3G network in less-dense areas that the company might take some time to build out, as typically is the case when new mobile networks are constructed..

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Mobiles for E-Commerce: 12% of Users

According to the Mobile Marketing Association, about 12 percent of consumers recently surveyed report having used their mobiles to get coupons or other promotions, buy goods or services using the mobile device.

Some 17 percent say they have used their handsets to purchase applications or other digital content. Given current penetration of smartphones, somewhere above 30 percent of the installed base of all mobile phones, those are impressive statistics, since it implies more than half of all smartphone users have downloaded apps, while about 40 percent have used their mobiles for digitally-delivered coupons or promotions.

Digital Marketing Blog:

Twitter for iPhone: No Twitter Account Needed

Twitter for iPhone and iPod touch is available for free on the iTunes App Store and people can even use Twitter to read top tweets, browse trends, find people and read public tweets from users located nearby without actually having a Twitter account.

The whole idea is to make it real easy for people to use Twitter on their iPhones. Discovery and consumption of interesting, relevant information is a central focus.

Quick and easy signup exists within the application so new users won't need to visit the Twitter web site to create an account.

Twitter Blog: Twitter for iPhone

iPhone Users Want VoIP "Dialer"

Toktumi recently conducted asurvey of their Line2 iPhone users asking them if they would be interested inusing Line2 as their primary dialer instead of the built-in iPhone cell dialer.

Apparently, more than ver 82 percent (998 out of 1210) of respondents said they would be interested inswitching to Line2 VoIP as their primary mode of calling.

It isn't so clear whether that represents a desire for lower-cost mobile calling, a desire for a different "dialer" app, or better indoor signal reception. There is some indication it actually is signal reception that drives the results, rather than calling cost or dialer functionality.

The number one reason users gave for trying Line2 was to make calls over Wi-Fi VoIPdue to poor cell reception.

Hostreview.com New Line2 Survey Reveals 82.47% of iPhone Users Are Interested in Using VoIP as Their Primary Calling Platform