Consumption of Long-Form Video Grows Faster than Short-Form Content

It isn't yet clear whether long-form video or short-form video poses the bigger demand on mobile and fixed access networks. But both are increasing.

The number of US online video viewers has risen steadily for the past few years and is expected to continue climbing in moderate increments through 2014, according to eMarketer, which suggests that growth will slow from between eight percent and nine percent a year from 2010 through 2012 to about 5.2 percent in 2014, when 77 percent of US Internet users will be watching online video content at least monthly.

Growth in online video viewership was increasing more quickly between 2008 and 2009, by 11.3 percent.

But streaming and downloading of full-length movies increased much more dramatically. According to Ipsos OTX, the percentage of Web users who watched long-form online video more than doubled between September 2008 and Oct 2009.

Such rapid increases in downloading and streaming mean full-length movie—and, by likely extension, TV—content is on a faster growth track than online video viewing as a whole, eMarketer says.

One factor behind the turn toward long-form content is the success of Hulu, which The Nielsen Company ranked second to YouTube in overall video streams viewed in April 2010. But Internet-connected devices in use also will play a part.

In-Stat expects U.S. shipments of Web-enabled devices that support TV applications will increase from 14.6 million this year to 83.4 million by 2014.

The demographics of online video viewing also help to explain why Internet users have gone beyond snack-size clips to adopt full-length TV and movie viewing on the Web. The highest penetration of online video viewing is among users 18 to 24, with 25- to 34-year-olds and teens not far behind. By the middle of this decade, those age groups will be at saturation points of above 90 percent penetration for video consumption.

Not only do these demographics watch online video in massive numbers, but they are also the most receptive to TV content online. Retrevo found that 29 percent of under-25s get all or most of their TV online, compared with eight percent of the video viewing population as a whole.

“If the first iteration of online video was about silly pet tricks on YouTube, the next wave will be about professionally produced full-length content such as TV shows, movies and live sports,” says Paul Verna, eMarketer senior analyst.

Some Like Integrated Updates, Feeds and Messages; Some Don't

Apple is apparently "unimpressed" with the way that other mobile phones have integrated social networks into one feed, and prefers to keep its streams uncrossed.

HTC's FriendStream, MotoBlur from Motorola and Sony Ericsson's TimeScape have proven to be popular in the mobile phone market, combining Twitter, Facebook and other social networking into one place.

However, Phil Schiller, Apple SVP says Apple will not be looking to do something similar, except to unify email boxes.

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Hosted IP Telephony Surpasses Single-Line Revenue Among Business Users

Hosted IP Centrex finally has surpassed broadband IP Telephony (single lines) as the leading revenue-generating, carrier-based business VoIP solution. That's a significant shift, and long in coming, as up to this point carriers actually have made more money selling single voice lines to business users than they have hosted PBX or hosted Centrex.


IP telephony use by business customers also will double the 2009 numbers in just three years, says In-Stat, reaching 79 percent penetration by 2013.

Today about 33 percent of companies use IP telephony. And despite all the talk of new and enhanced features, cost savings will remain the adoption driver.

"VoIP adopters have a good understanding of the cost savings associated with VoIP, and have oriented their limited budgets to optimizing efficiency and savings by replacing legacy TDM voice solutions,” says David Lemelin, In-Stat analyst.

Broadband IP Telephony revenue will also double by 2013, In-Stat said, fueled by single user applications as well as mobile usage.

About 33 percent of businesses that have already deployed VoIP solutions report that recent economic conditions have caused them to slow additional deployment plans, compared to 30 percent reporting no change in plans.

Broadband IP Telephony revenues continue to grow and will more than double by 2013, compared to 2008. This growth will be fueled by single-user applications among increasingly distributed and mobile workforces.

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U.S. Small and Medium Businesses to Spend $32 Billion on Voice and Data in 2010

U.S. small and mid-sized businesses will be spending about $32 billion in 2010 on voice and data services, according to Analysys Mason.

Rural Wireless Carriers Get Ready for Fight

Rural cellular operators say they are prepared to lobby the Federal Communications Commission aggressively for mandatory data roaming, Steven Berry the CEO of the Rural Cellular Association says.

RCA members also will push for mobile broadband to be a bigger part of the National Broadband Plan and future Universal Service Fund funding, and will fight handset exclusivity.

Times of regulatory change always provoke such fights, and that is precisely where the industry finds itself these days.

Light Reading - 4G/LTE - Rural Wireless Carriers Ready for a Fight - Telecom News Analysis

Mobile Internet Gets Used As PC Internet Does, In One Respect

In the month of April, 32 percent of mobile daily page views occurred between 7 p.m. and midnight, with the highest volume occurring at 9:00 p.m., according to an analysis by Ground Truth. If you are familiar with uage patterns for how consumers use the PC-based Internet, the results are similar, as usage starts to rise after people get home and builds until 9 p.m. or so before declining.

Ground Truth’s April census of 4.24 million Americans show that from 4 a.m. onwards, mobile Internet usage, as measured in page view consumption, climbs steadily throughout the day, with usage intensifying after 6 p.m. and peaking at 9  p.m., when 7.2 percent of all page views occurred.

Throughout the workday (9 a.m. until 5 p.m.), an average of 54 percent of Mobile Internet users browse content, with workday usage heaviest around 4 p.m.

“This data proves that mobile is, indeed, an ‘always-on’ medium,” says Evan Neufeld, Ground Truth VP. “On an average day, more than half of all Mobile Internet users are accessing the mobile Internet from the moment they wake up until they put their phone down on their bedside tables."

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Social Networks More Popular than Search Engines in UK

Social networks were visited more often than search engines by users in the United Kingdom, says hitwise.

About 55 percent of social network and forum traffic goes to Facebook, hitwise says. YouTube got 16 percent of traffic. Twitter leapt over Bebo and MySpace in May to land a distant third, with only two percent of UK social traffic.

Social networks more popular than search engines in UK, says Hitwise | VentureBeat

Twitter Has 190 Million Users Tweeting 65 Million Times A Day

Twitter is now attracting 190 million visitors per month and generating 65 million Tweets a day. Those numbers are up slightly from 180 million self-reported unique visitors per month back in April, and 50 million Tweets per day in February.

The number of visitors to Twitter.com is not the same as the number of registered users. Most users don’t Tweet at all, but rather use Twitter as a media source.

Costolo: Twitter Now Has 190 Million Users Tweeting 65 Million Times A Day

Verizon Launches Group Communications

Verizon Wireless is launching "Group Communication," a way of simply handling one-to-many communications to members of a group.

Family Group Contact provides a toll-free number 888-894-7687 that automatically connects up to 20 members of an account with a call, text or voice message.

Businesses that have more than 20 lines can select up to 20 account contacts and connect with them using the toll-free number.

Members of a Family Group may include anyone on an account, plus one non-Verizon Wireless number or any wireline number not associated with that account.

Family Group Contact is $4.99 per month per account, and once subscribed, any member of the group with a Verizon Wireless number has the ability to initiate communication with the others.

"Group Contact" allows a customer to create up to seven customized groups, each with up to 20 different wireline, wireless or international phone numbers. Group owners can initiate communication with a call, text or voice message by dialing a unique phone number assigned to the group when it is created. Group Contact is $6.99 per month per line and includes Quick Contact, which allows users to ring all members of a Quick Contact group simultaneously.

Latest Voice 2.0 IMS 2.0 news: Verizon Launches Group Communication for Family,Friends and Business

Steve Jobs Speech Introducing iPhone 4: Watch the Video

You can watch the entire speech and demonstration by Steve Jobs, introducing the iPhone 4, here.

Steve Jobs Speech Introducing iPhone 4

Will Apple Be First to Make the Video Calling Breakthrough?

Lots of people will point out that person-to-person video calling appliances and features have been available for a while. Most of us would point to Skype, while others would point to the capabiltiies Nokia has been offering on its high-end phones, or the specialized video telephony products now on the market.

Apple's new  iPhone 4 "FaceTime" video calling feature might be notable, though. People will have different opinions about the ease of use for Skype video telephony, but the big snag for most consumer video telephony appliances has been the need to buy them in pairs.

The iPhone 4 might be the first "appliance" supporting video telephony that does not actually have to be "bought in pairs," given the huge installed base the device is likely to have, globally. The other angle is that video telephony could become a "mere feature" of the most-widely-used communications appliance on the planet, though of course for the moment only on Apple iPhones from version 4 and forward.

Video calling might be a social function and therefore there is a network effect not possible when the units are deployed pair by pair.

Some significant sub-set of the mobile user population uses iPhones. In my own family, for example, all four of my children use iPhones, and it appears iPhone use among their peers is just about that high.

By confining FaceTime sessions to Wi-Fi connections, Apple avoids the almost-certain uneven quality of experience users would experience on AT&T's 3G network.

Innovations sometimes, perhaps ever, solely or primarily dependent on development of new technology. More commonly, it is a combination of ease of use, user installed base, price and the face that lots of other people seem to be doing it. Up to this point, almost no users had to worry about "everybody else doing it." That could change, beginning with the iPhone 4.

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What iPhone 4 Means For Google, Microsoft, Netflix, And Amazon

Apple's new iPhone 4, announced yesterday and on sale June 24, has wide ranging implications for big Internet players like Google, Microsoft, Netflix, and Amazon, Barclays analyst Doug Anmuth believes. For starters, the "mobile Internet" will be more platform-based and less URL-driven than the traditional Internet.

What does that mean? Mobile platforms and app stores, as well as "apps," will be more important than platforms or app stores tend to be for the PC-based Internet use case. People are simply not going to "search" as intensively, or interact as much, as they do when using the Internet in a PC mode.

Google remains the default search engine on the iPhone, which helps Google. But Apple seems to be highly optimistic about its prospects in the mobile display ad market.

Anmuth does not believe Amazon Kindle sales will be hurt much. He expects the iPad to take some share, but not much, from Kindle.

What iPhone 4 Means For Google, Microsoft, Netflix, And Amazon:

Amazon CloudFront: HTTPS Access

Amazon CloudFront, the firm's content delivery network, has reduced pricing 25 percent. CloudFront HTTP requests now start at $0.0075 per 10,000 requests.

Amazon also now supports delivery of content over an HTTPS connection, by replacing the 'http:' with 'https:' in the links to CloudFront content.

Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is a combination of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol with theSSL/TLS protocol to provide encryption and secure (website security testing) identification of the server.

HTTPS connections are often used for payment transactions on the World Wide Web and for sensitive transactions in corporate information systems.

Amazon also has added a new edge location in New York City. This location will provide even better performance to users requesting content from New York and the northeastern United States.

Amazon Web Services Blog: Amazon CloudFront: HTTPS Access, Another Edge Location, Price Reduction:

Apple's Curse of Success

Oddly enough, time, it's own success, the inescapable logic of public company valuation and the firm's ability to churn out products it can convince people they have to own, are going to cause Apple problems, despite the launch of version four of its iPhone, the iAd network or the iPad.

Apple likely will execute well enough on all those fronts. Still, as it keeps getting bigger, friction is going to increase. The simple fact for any large company is that growth is hard to sustain because of the law of large numbers: Apple simply has to climb a bigger wall every quarter as its market capitalization and sales revenue grows, quarter over quarter.

Also, as every equity analyst has said, or thought, Steve Jobs, a singularly important executive in the technology business, will not live forever. No matter how capable his successors, he has proven to be an unusually effective chief executive, not for his management prowess but for his driving vision. Most companies produce products. Apple creates emotional needs.

So Apple will start to become the victim of its own success. No company can create an endless string of hit products quarter-after-quarter and year-after-year, though it is hard to argue with what Apple has achieved since 2001. The iPod began the streak.

But then Apple discovered iTunes was something more than a distribution system for music, leading to the App Store and the mobile apps trend. The iPhone arguably changed not only mobile phone design but the business ecosystem. The iPad might be the start of another wholly-new mass market. And Apple seems destined to be a player in mobile advertising as well.

Keep in mind that Apple shares were selling for about $8 in 2001. They are up around $250 or so today.

Nor will even these challenges prevent Apple from bidding to be among the dominant firms of the coming mobile computing era. It has a shot at such success. But success, for a firm that is getting to be as large as Apple, increasingly gets difficult, no matter how visionary it is.

The targets keep getting bigger. And, at some point, reversion to the mean will occur. Some future executive will start to worry about the numbers too much, become shy about destroying existing product lines in favor of new and untested product lines. Apple will lose that "magical" quality Jobs talks about so much.

Will Apple Get 48% of All U.S. Mobile Advertising by End of 2010?

Apple CEO Steve Jobs predicts the Apple iAd network will get 48 percent of spending on mobile advertising in the United States from July through December of 2010.

That's a stunning prediction, given that total U.S. mobile advertising for 2010 is estimated to be about $593 million. Apple has about six months to get that done, starting from zero. Well, not zero.

Apple says it already has gotten commitments for about $60 milliion from  Nissan, Citi, Unilever, AT&T, Chanel, GE, Liberty Mutual, State Farm, Geico, Campbells, Sears, JC Penny, Target, Best Buy, Direct TV, TBS, and Disney.