Remember

Multichannel Video Providers Might Be in For a Tough Time

Bernstein Research says the cable and satellite industries face a "new normal" of years, perhaps decades, of reduced discretionary consumer spending, compared to the "boom" times that preceded the economic meltdown.

That is going to pose quite a management challenge, since the annual price increases service providers have been able to push through will be much more difficult.

Bernstein Research Senior Analyst Craig Moffett notes that video subscribers have recently declined for the first time in recorded history and said that it was likely more than just the downturn in new housing.

Some think a few more quarters of data will be needed to confirm a possible trend, but if the slowdown does continue, service providers and programmers alike are going to have to rethink their prospects.

Up to this point, programmers have said they need higher fees from distributors to fund the cost of more original programming. Fees paid to sports programmers have been a salient example of the trend, but not the only example.

If distributors cannot raise their prices, there will be new questions about whether the higher fees can be paid to the programmers, and new questions about whether the annual price increases can be counted on to fuel continued distributor revenue growth as well.

That will make the business case for broadband access investment more difficult, as entertainment video has become a significant part of the revenue mix for fiber-rich telco access networks.

To compensate, distributors might have to turn to higher broadband access prices, higher voice prices, or both. You can make your own guesses about what consumers might do if voice or fixed-line broadband access prices rise.

Moffett: Where Will Money Come From For Pay TV Price Increases?

Laptops are Most Common Mobility Tool

Laptops are the most widely provided enterprise worker mobility tool, but only 28 percent of employees have one provided to them by their employer.

Similarly, mobile phones, smartphones, PDAs, netbooks and tablets are reserved for only a small minority of the work force.

Click on image for a larger view.

Yankee Group :: Research Report

21% of Enterprise Employee Time is Away From Primary Location

Employees spend more time away from their primary office than you might think. While heavy business travel is restricted to a minority of employees (only 11 percent spend more than 20 percent of their work week traveling for business), employees have a host of other reasons to spend time away from their office and colleagues.

Click on image for a larger view.

On average, 21 percent of employees’ work week is spent away from their primary work location (not including the daily commute), and that number rises to 37 percent for executives.

Whether taking a business trip, using public Wi-Fi in Internet cafes and libraries or working remotely from home, employees are spending an increasing amount of time working in mobile and indeed multiple locations.

Yankee Group :: Research Report

JPMorgan to Test iPhone, Androids as Alternatives to BlackBerry

JPMorgan Chase & Co. may soon let employees use iPhones for corporate e-mail, making it an alternative to Research in Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry at the bank for the first time.

JPMorgan is testing the Apple Inc. device and smartphones based on Google Inc.’s Android software. The bank is the second-largest in the U.S. by assets and has about 220,000 employees worldwide.

It's just another sign of changing times in the smartphone business.

JPMorgan Said to Test IPhone, BlackBerry Alternatives

People Want Behaviorally-Targeted E-mails

Few consumers ever say they "like" advertising. But most are willing to put up with it if there is some tangible reward for doing so.

Email marketing, for example, can be "spam."

But consumers say they want emails that are relevant to them. Information on sales and promotions for products the customer is interested in has been one of the most popular and easily-implemented solutions.

Click on image for a larger view.

Based on research e-Dialog recently completed, consumers also ranked behaviorally-targeted or 'task-based' e-mails as something they want to receive. These range from abandoned shopping cart messages to alerts from financial services companies about account balances or even reminders.

People Want Behaviorally-Targeted E-mails

iPad And iPhone App Buying Patterns

The iPhone and iPod touch are for games. The iPad is for a lot more. And people are spending a lot more, per app, on iPad apps than iPhone apps.

About 82 percent of the top 50 iPhone or iPod touch apps are games, compared to 36 percent of the top 50 iPad apps.

The top iPad app categories among the top 50 are Games (36%), Content (28%, includes news, video), Productivity (20%), and Utilities (16%, includes weather).

The top iPhone app categories among the top 50 are Games (82%, includes gag apps) and Utilities (18%, includes weather, social networking).

The average top-25 paid iPhone app was $1.51, versus $5.79 on the iPad (almost 4X difference).

Apple App Store Analysis: Here's The Difference Between The iPad And The iPhone

Consumers Show Interest In Tablet PCs

The iPad has been a huge hit with consumers, says Forrester Research. Only a couple of months after the launch, 1.3 percent, or 2.5 million, U.S. online consumers report that they already own an Apple iPad, and an additional 3.8 percent (7.4 million) say they intend to buy one.

The success of the Apple iPad has created a halo around tablets in general: About 14 percent, or 27 million, U.S. online consumers say they intend to buy some kind of tablet in the next 12 months, more than any other type of device.

The Data Digest: Consumers Show Interest In Tablet PCs | Forrester Blogs

Video Game Sales Hit Lowest Level Since 2006

August 2010 console video game sales fell to their lowest level in four years, according to NPD Group. The belief that sales had begun to recover, based on numbers from late spring and early summer, has proved to be wrong.

U.S. video game sales dropped 10 percent to $1.6 billion compared with August of 2009, according to NPD Group.

One has to wonder whether mobile and online gaming is starting to displace some amount of demand for console games. It would be easy to blame the recession, which undoubtedly has had some effect. But the popularity of games in the Apple App Store, if any indication, suggests people now are spending more time with simpler games they can play on the go.


According to the NPD Group, 20 percent of the U.S. population ages six and older reports having played a game on a social network in the past three months.  That suggests 56.8 million U.S. consumers were social gamers in the quarter.

About 35 percent of social network gamers say they are new to gaming, never having  participated in any other type of gaming before they started playing games on social networks. Females and older age groups are more likely to be new gamers than other groups measured in the study.

Interestingly, despite the perception that social network gamers are primarily females, the study finds that social network gamers are fairly evenly divided between genders, at 47 percent male, and 53 percent female.

"Although 35 percent of social network gamers are new to gaming, it's clear that a lot of existing gamers have been drawn into the social network gaming arena as well," said Anita Frazier, Industry Analyst, The NPD Group. "This impacts both the time they spend with other types of gaming, as well as the amount of money they’re spending on gaming. As more players are drawn into these games, the entire games industry is going to feel, and have to adjust to, the impact."

While you can play these games for free, it is worth noting that 10 percent of social network gamers have spent real money playing these games and 11 percent indicate that they are likely to make a future purchase.  Social network games are also impacting spending on other types of gaming activities as gamers report spending 20 percent less on gaming overall since they started playing social network games.

Video Game Sales Hit Lowest Level Since 2006

Europeans Want Android Tablets

What would the average eWEEK Europe reader want for leisure time? The answer, it turns out is an Android-based tablet along the lines of the recently announced Samsung Galaxy Tab.

Twenty-six percent of the people responding to eWEEK Europe’s gadget poll said they’d love an Android tablet like the Galaxy, while another 18 percent said their next personal-use gadget would be an Android phone.

Apple did poorly in the poll, even though the short list held three Apple devices, including the massively-hyped iPad, the recently re-launched iPod and the Apple TV, which is sure to spark another Apple frenzy.

eWEEK Europe Readers Want Android

Google: Mobile Search grew 4x This Year

Google director of product management Nick Fox says Google has seen a 400 percent increase in mobile queries from fully featured mobile browsers in one year.

Google: Mobile Search grew 4x this year

Google Maps With Street View

I'd have to say, of all the features I like about Droids and my Evo, the navigation application has been the most significant.

Google Adds Walking Directions for Android Google Maps

Google has added "Walking Navigation", a marriage of walking directions, turn-by-turn GPS navigation and satellite imagery, to the newest version of Google Maps for Android. The Street View is visually appealing, though often I prefer the more-basic "map-like" directions.

The latest addition comes as a part of Google Maps for mobile 4.5 for Android. It takes walking directions, which takes advantage of pedestrian pathways, overpasses and other such things, and pairs them with turn-by-turn GPS directions and satellite imagery.

Amazon Simplifies Checkout

Amazon has made it easier for merchants to use Amazon checkout without leaving the shopping context.

Cloud Computing Market is Bifurcated

Newer enterprises founded within the last 10 years are twice as likely to use cloud computing as are older firms, says the Yankee Group.

On the other hand, though cloud usage is significantly rarer among older enterprises, which hold a conservative view of the technology, those firms are most likely to choose more established names for their cloud needs, especially service providers and vendors such as AT&T, IBM and Microsoft, than newer cloud upstarts.

As often is the case in the communications and technology businesses, there is a natural bifurcation of supply and demand. Enterprises may prefer to work with other substantial companies, while small businesses will be more comfortable using smaller suppliers.

The smaller and newer firms seem to be optimistic that the cloud will evolve into a primary IT platform over the next several years and are willing to buy services from newer cloud companies coming from outside the traditional IT market, such as Amazon, Google or Terremark.

Yankee Group :: Research Report: