Saturday, October 9, 2010

7% of Households Have Abandoned Video Service, Study Suggests

Wedbush Securities analyst James Dix says research suggests consumers are getting rid of their cable and satellite TV services to a greater extent than they're dumping their Internet connections. He thinks that means they are substituting Web video.

In a survey of 2,500 consumers, seven percent said they had stopped using basic cable service and 12 percent reported cutting their premium cable or satellite services. Two percent of respondents cancelled their Internet connections.

Dix also found that cord cutting was more related to income than age, despite the common view that younger consumers would be among the first to abandon traditional pay TV.

Homes with income under $50,000 cancelled basic cable at the highest rate, 8 percent, while only 3 percent of higher-income homes, those at $100,000 and above, axed basic cable, according to the survey.

Microsoft Closing In-Game Ad Unit

Microsoft reportedly is closing will its in-game advertising unit Massive. Microsoft acquired Massive in 2006.

At the time of the acquisition, the exuberance for dynamic in-game advertising was at a peak. Since then, Microsoft’s Xbox Live has become a more-compelling venue for Microsoft, in part because Microsoft keeps all ad revenue it earns from Xbox Live, while it must share Massive’s ad revenue with game providers.

more here

Google starts showing full page previews in search results

Google is testing a major new layout to their search results, which allows a user to see full page previews of target sites, when you hover over them.

Friday, October 8, 2010

3/4 of Americans Have Found a TV Commercial Confusing

Fully 75 percent of U.S. TV viewers surveyed by Harris Poll say they have found a commercial on TV confusing. One in five (21%) often find commercials on television confusing while 55 percent say they at least occasionally find commercials confusing.

Just 14 percent say they never find commercials on television confusing and 11 percent do not watch commercials on TV.

That apparently is what happens when advertising professionals try to be too clever, one suspects. It's good to be entertaining; it apparently is not so good to be obscure.

Windows Phone 7 to launch Oct. 11, 2010

Microsoft will introduce its new Windows Phone 7 operating system Oct. 11, 2011. Some experts predict will be a make-or-break product launch.

Analysts say Microsoft's success with Windows Phone 7 (WP7) is important to its mobile initiatives as well as to the overall future prowess of the software giant, which is best known for its desktop operating systems and office productivity software.

Competitors obviously will be watching to see whether WP7 gets traction.

Massive Shift of Software Development in Enterprise to Mobile

By 2015, software development in the enterprise space will have shifted "massively" to mobility, according to the 2010 IBM Corp. Tech Trends Survey. The online query of 2,000 IT developers and specialists across 87 countries highlights the need by enterprises to build applications that take advantage of mobile technologies.

Some 55 percent of respondents anticipate that development for mobile devices will eclipse development for PCs and servers. That includes devices such as the Apple iPhone and Google Android handsets, as well as tablet PCs like the Apple iPad and BlackBerry PlayBook made by Research In Motion.

Software, Hardware, Mobile Litigation

Litigation is a fact of business life. It isn't any different in the software, hardware or mobile businesses, either.

Hulu prepares IPO

Hulu is ready to raise $200 million to $300 million to build its business, and could file a prospectus with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission before the end of the year, Reuters reports.

Tapping public markets is one of several options under consideration as Hulu girds for battle against rivals Netflix, Google and Amazon.com.

Netflix Proved Lots of People Wrong

Hulu Blocks Google TV Access

Hulu apparently does not allow Google TV appliances to grab Hulu content.

Tablets, Cloud Computing are at Hype Cycle Peak

Media tablets, private cloud computing, and 3D flat-panel TVs and displays are some of the technologies that have moved into the Peak of Inflated Expectations, according to the 2010 Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle by Gartner.

Click on the image for a larger view. 

That virtually guarantees there will be a period of relative disillusionment coming for tablet devices and cloud computing. That is not to say they will not be important, only that the wave of hype now is cresting.

Top Mobile Behaviors Vary by Region

A cross-market analysis of mobile activities in Japan, the U.S. and Europe by comScore shows significant differences among consumers by geography. Mobile users in Japan were the “most connected” of the three markets, with more than 75 percent using connected media (browsed, accessed applications or downloaded content) in June, compared to 43.7 percent in the U.S. and 38.5 percent in Europe. I suspect nobody would be surprised by those findings.

About 59.3 percent of the Japanese users made use of their browsers in June and 42.3 percent accessing applications. Abou percent of mobile users in the U.S. and 25.8 percent in Europe used their mobile browsers, with 31.1 percent in the U.S. and 24.9 percent in Europe using applications.

Europeans were the heaviest text messaging users, with 81.7 percent sending a text message in June, compared to 66.8 percent in the U.S. and just 40.1 percent in Japan. Japanese users exhibited the highest reach in the email category at 54 percent, while consumers in the U.S. were most likely to use instant messaging services on their mobile (17.2 percent).

U.S. mobile users were the heaviest blog and social media users. About 21 percentr of users do so. Some 17 percent of Japanese users do so, while 15 percent of Europeans do so.

Japanese users were most likely to capture photos (63.0 percent) and watch TV/video (22.0 percent) on their mobiles, while Europeans were most likely to listen to music (24.2 percent) and play games (24.1 percent).

more detail here

Will amazon and bestbuy start app stores?

http://www.bizjournals.com/mobile/news/sanjose/2010/10/04/daily85?ana=from_rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%253A+industry_7+%2528Industry+Technology%2529&utm_content=Google+Reader

Thursday, October 7, 2010

DMA: Mobile marketing: UK users prefer browsers to apps

Browsers are better than apps for some operations.

http://www.dma.org.uk/news/nws-dmitem.asp?id=6067&t=Mobile+marketing%3A+UK+users+prefer+browsers+to+apps

How Do You Pitch an Angel Investor?

Basically, you pitch an angel investor in the same way you have to pitch anything: clearly, quickly and with obvious emphasis on value for the buyer.

Magnifica Humanitis: Balancing AI and its Human Ends

Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical Magnifica Humanitas , concerning artificial intelligence, already is widely compared to Rerum Novarum , iss...