Millennials Will be a "Great Generation," Wait and See

We might sometimes think Millennials are spoiled, flighty of attention or non-literate (in the older sense of reading lots of books). They also just might be the absolute right people to make American history. They have principles and values and will act on them, for example. And that might be just the thing America needs, sometime in this generation, when the wheels threaten to come off the car.

"Members of Gen Y strive to be awesome and distinctive. They make choices that are consistent with a set of personal values, even when they mean personal sacrifice," says Carol Phillips of Milennial Media.

"They are distinctive in the matter of face way they set audacious goals for themselves," Phillips says.

Says Alex Pearlman’s profile on The Next Great Generation Blog: "I’m a 23-year-old journalism and philosophy student, I love the John Adams miniseries, Aaron Sorkin, and reading Time magazine in bed with a glass of red wine. My interests range from libertarianism to beer bongs to the New York Times crossword puzzle. This box will one day read: Alex Pearlman, Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent."

Pearlman also is an editor at http://www.thenextgreatgeneration.com/. I very much am counting on Pearlman, and her Millennial cohorts, being absolutely, dead-on right. We will need another "Great Generation," and I am counting on Millennials to be just that generation.

For Millennials, Brands Are People, Too

No Wi-Fi Business Model? Hardly

The Wi-Fi hotspot market continues to experience strong growth in deployed venues and usage, driven largely by wireless and broadband providers embracing Wi-Fi both as a competitive differentiator and enhancement to core services, says In-Stat.

Despite the continued growth in hotspot deployments, the underlying business model remains uncertain, the firm say.

“We are a decade into the introduction of hotspot services and the market is still working out the revenue model,” says Amy Cravens, Market Analyst. That might not be the best way to put matters.

“Initially the market was based on pay-as-you-go revenues, with providers hoping it would evolve into ongoing subscriptions and corporate accounts," says Cravens. There is a business of that sort, but it arguably is much smaller than some initially had expected.

But that doesn't mean there is not a business model. The business model simply is largely indirect, rather than direct. For some hotspot operators, the revenue model is products sold. For service providers, the revenue model is subscriptions to fixed broadband services that offer metro Wi-Fi access as a feature. For others, such as some airline lounges, Wi-Fi is an amenity paid for through the annual membership fee.

Wi-Fi hotspots most certainly have a business model. It simply is not a direct model, in most cases.

In-Stat - Press Releases

Does Retransmission Consent Apply to Internet Relay?

"Retransmission consent" is a decades-old issue in the cable TV business. Basically, the issue is what entities must do if they relay a broadcast TV signal, without altering the contentof the transmission.

Ivi is a service that lets users watch live television on the Internet. But ivi has not sought permission to do so from over-the-air broadcasters, nor has it paid retransmission fees.

Ivi believes it can do so because ivi does not change the original signal in any way. For a premium, ivi offers DVR “time sifting” features such as pause, rewind, and fast forward, though.

Ivi currently streams programs from New York and Seattle affiliates of ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and a few other networks.

Broadcasters and copyright owners (including the major networks and Major League Baseball) have filed a lawsuit against ivi in New York federal court on September 28, as you might have expected.

Ivi has pegged its legal hopes on the “passive carrier exemption.”

The exemption makes it lawful to retransmit a transmission intended for the public so long as the retransmitter lacks control over the content of the original transmission or over the recipients of the retransmission.

Ivi believes that by retransmitting freely-available, over-the-air broadcasts and offering basic DVR-like services, it is nothing more than a passive carrier and exempt from copyright liability.

An unfavorable ruling will kill ivi; a favorable ruling would add just a bit more pressure on the rest of the video ecosystem. But most of the best programming these days is "cable only," and in a different legal and regulatory category.

After Ten Years, Round Two Of The Legal Battle Over Internet TV Is Here

Distimo's Latest App Store Analytics

Sometimes pictures are better than words, and I found that to be the case for Distimo's latest round of numbers on mobile app stores and applications. So rather than write it, here it is in pictures.

Enterprise Communications Still Relies on Email and Voice, Study Suggests

A new study of enterprise workers suggests that workers rely on more traditional forms of communication than social media to drive results, as you might expect. Some 83 percent of professionals say email is “critical” or "very important" to their overall success and productivity, and 81 percent said the same for phone calls.

Email and phone ranked the highest above all other forms of communication with audio conferences third at 61 percent.  Sending or receiving an instant message rated as critical for only 38 percent of respondents while social media ranked last at 19 percent.

If a conversation is about closing a deal or making a mission-critical decision, 77 percent of those polled said they would prefer to do it in person. And of those polled, 65 percent said they preferred talking in person when discussing complicated technical concepts and
64 percent would rather do their brainstorming in person.

In fact, 53 percent of all respondents said that they spend 10 or more hours on the phone each week. How can that be if one-to-one phone calls have declined? It appears that more phone time is spent in audio conferences rather than one-to-one conversations.

About 83 percent of respondents said that they dial into an audio conference “frequently" or "all the time” for work. About 56 percent
said that most calls were made from a desk phone, followed by amobile phone (39 percent) and softphone (five percent).

The survey also suggests enterprise workers are making more use of virtually every form of communications with the possible exception of traditional phone calls.

Plantronics surveyed 1,800 enterprise employees in the US, UK, Germany, China, India and Australia. All work in medium or large size companies (100+ employees) and identified themselves as knowledge workers (people whose work centers on developing or working primarily with ideas and information) who use a variety of communications technologies to stay in touch with colleagues, partners and clients. The research was conducted in May and June of 2010.

Vinod Khosla Offers Some Serious Advice for Entrepreneurs

 According to investor Vinod Khosla, too many companies who want to think big are doomed to remain small because they pick the wrong investors.


“Any investor who looks at exit strategies, or multiples of investment or even does an IRR calculation, a rate of return calculation, probably is the wrong partner for you,” says Khosla. 

“I think the single, most important fact about doing a startup is being clear about your vision and not let it get distorted by what pundits and experts tell you," Khosla says. "But the second most important thing is finding the right team, and that’s really, really hard."

Khosla says he spent well over 50 percent of his time recruiting, and he encourages all entrepreneurs to try and do that.

Vinod Khosla: New CEOs Should Spend More Than 50% Of Their Time Recruiting (TCTV)

AT&T Voicemail Viewer App Delivers Home Phone Messages to Smartphone

AT&T has announced the launch of the "AT&T Voicemail Viewer" app, which lets AT&T U-verse voice customers easily check and manage their home phone messages with visual voicemail on their smartphone. It isn't immediately clear whether the app works only on AT&T mobile devices or with any smartphone with a mobile broadband plan, but the absence of any language to the contrary would tend to suggest the mobile has to be using AT&T service.

The Voicemail Viewer app lists a user's home voicemail messages and allows you to choose the order in which you wish to listen to them. The app also provides a notification when a new voicemail arrives on your home phone, plus the ability to delete voicemails remotely.

New AT&T Voicemail Viewer App Delivers Home Phone Messages to Smartphone

Smartphone Subscribers Now Drive Mobile Browser Use

The number of Smartphone users accessing mobile content through browsers and applications now surpasses that of non-smartphone users, says comScore. In the three-month period ending August 2010, smartphone subscribers made up 60 percent of those who used a downloaded application and 55 percent of those who used a browser.

In August 2010, 75.6 million mobile subscribers ages 13 and older used downloaded applications, with smartphone users representing 60.4 percent, up from 43.6 percent in August 2009. For the same period, 80.8 million mobile subscribers used their browser, with smartphone subscribers comprising 55.5 percent, up from 41.4 percent a year ago.

Smartphone Subscribers Now Comprise Majority of Mobile Browser and Application Users in U.S.

North American Mobile App Revenues will Reach $10 Billion in 2015

North American mobile revenues from mobile content and applications will total $10 billion in 2015, according to Juniper Research.

Juniper predicts 150 percent growth from $4 billion in mobile content and mobile apps revenue earned in 2009.

North American Mobile Revenues will Reach $10B in 2015:

Windows Mobile 7 is Important for Microsoft,Gets AT&T Help

 Microsoft Corp. will formally unveil a lineup of smartphones using the revamped version of its mobile operating system on Oct. 11, and AT&T will begin offering them four weeks later, on an exclusive basis at least initially, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Samsung Abandons Symbian

Samsung has decided it will no longer be supporting the Symbian mobile operating system, as of the end of this year.

Sony Ericsson last month announced it would be dropping Symbian as well.

Fujitsu, Sharp, and Nokia seem to be the remaining firms still building and selling Symbian devices, at least over the last 12-month period.

Symbian takes another hit, loses support from Samsung

Health reform to worsen doctor shortage by 50% in 2015

Unfortunately, says a new report from the the Association of American Medical Colleges, the U.S. health insurance legislation will worsen a shortage of physicians as millions of newly insured patients seek care, Reuters reports.

The group's "Center for Workforce Studies" released new estimates that showed shortages would be 50 percent worse in 2015 than forecast.

'While previous projections showed a baseline shortage of 39,600 doctors in 2015, current estimates bring that number closer to 63,000, with a worsening of shortages through 2025,' the group says.

'The United States already was struggling with a critical physician shortage and the problem will only be exacerbated as 32 million Americans acquire health care coverage, and an additional 36 million people enter Medicare, the report says.

Other groups, such as the nonprofit Rand Corporation and the Institute of Medicine, have also projected various physician shortages.

Once might infer something else, as well. Since medical care is subject to laws of supply and demand, just as any other commodity would be, the effect of increasing demand without increasing supply will cause costs to go up. You might remember this very basic relationship from high school or college economics. 

It isn't exactly an "unintended consequence." Observers, not limited to medical practitioners, had been warning of just that problem before the health insurance reform was made law.

Health reform to worsen doctor shortage: group | Reuters

T-Mobile Says 4G Can Wait

It isn't clear whether the latest statements from T-Mobile USA about fourth-generation networks, its preference for air interface or its timetable for 4G migration necessarily add much new insight about what T-Mobile USA might do in the future about its own 4G choices.

Some will speculate that the firm's clear preference for LTE mean it would not invest in Clearwire under any circumstances.

That is among the inferences one could draw, but not by any means the only conclusion. It is correct that T-Mobile USA has some time to make a firm 4G decision, given its recent HSPA+ upgrade that will support bandwidth highly comparable to LTE.

As far as its ultimate migration to 4G, it remains unclear whether there is any path for gaining the needed 4G spectrum other than leasing it from a partner, or possibly investing in Clearwire or some other firm that does have spectrum assets.

Some will point to T-Mobile USA's preference for LTE, not WiMAX, as evidence an investment in Clearwire, or buying wholesale capacity from Clearwire, is not a likely option. But that assumes Clearwire will run WiMAX as its own protocol, and will not, in fact, light an LTE network that runs alongside its current WiMAX network.

Both Clearwire and Sprint Nextel executives (Sprint is the majority owner of Clearwire) have said there is no technological barrier to running LTE alongside WiMAX, or ultimately even in some mode that essentially replaces WiMAX.

“We’ll look towards LTE at the right point in time for us,” Neville Ray, T-Mobile USA’s chief network officer, told Bloomberg.

“That ecosystem is going to be much richer than the competing one from WiMax, which is really a niche play,” Ray said. Most observers now would agree with the general outlines of that position.

Fourth-generation LTE networks promise average download speeds of about 10 megabits per second, compared with 1.7 megabits per second for 3G. But HSPA+ boasts speeds comparable to the LTE speeds AT&T and Verizon Wireless have been saying would be available commercially.

T-Mobile Says 4G Can Wait, Clearwire WiMax Is ‘Niche’

Social Media Someday Will be as Foundational a Tool as Email

One day, the tools we call "social media" will be like the fax machine or email. We’ll wonder how business got done without them.

We aren't there yet, but it's coming. Social media will as routine as customer service and technical support groups, a routine part of the sales and marketing mix.

Mission Unaccomplished | jatiN mahindrA doT coM

Google on Display Ad Future

Looking forward, Google believes that what we today know as “display” advertising will just be “advertising,” a single platform that can coordinate an advertiser’s campaign across streaming audio ads in car stereos, interactive mobile experiences on smartphones, and high-definition video ads on set-top boxes, for example.

Of course, Google expects it will be well positioned to be the manager of campaigns using such diverse channels. Google expects it will provide a single platform to optimize such campaigns, automatically delivering the best-performing ads, best returns and best mix, across all those platforms.

Display advertising is about much more than ads in web browsers, Google now believes.

People are watching video, reading newspapers, magazines, books and listening to digital music at an ever-increasing rate, on a wider range of devices.

So Google intends to give publishers a single base that can deliver ads into this expanding world, including streaming video and mobile ad delivery.

Official Google Blog: Online publishers: growing the display advertising pie