How Safe Is Verizon's Dividend?

Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett questions Verizon’s ability to maintain its current dividend level.

Verizon soon will be forced to start paying dividends to Vodafone which owns 45 percent of their Verizon Wireless joint venture.

That means diverting cash from present uses (Verizon dividends) to alternative uses (paying dividends to Vodafone).

None of that might seem too important to an end user of Verizon's services, but executives always have to balance investment in networks, marketing, dividend payments and lots of other potential uses of cash.

Less cash means harder choices, and some of those choices could reverberate in the network investment area.

How Safe Is Verizon's Dividend?

Social CEOs?

In a new study, global public relations firm Weber Shandwick found that the majority of CEOs from the world’s largest companies—64 percent—are not using social media to engage online with external stakeholders.

“Strong evidence exists that CEOs are not silent in these turbulent times. They are extensively quoted in the business press, frequently deliver keynote speeches at conferences and participate in business school forums. But when it comes to digital engagement externally, CEOs are not yet fully socialized, often with good reason,” said Leslie Gaines-Ross, Weber Shandwick’s chief reputation strategist and online reputation expert.

That probably makes sense. If you are the CEO of one of the world's largest 50 companies, you have lots of people who can handle those sorts of duties, while at the same time avoiding the risk of infringing some regulatory rule or another, or going "off message."

64 Percent of the World’s Largest Company CEOs are Not Social Online

Death of Forward-to-a-Friend | ClickZ

Marketers have for some years relied on email campaigns that arguably are shifting to social campaigns with a "share with your network" angle than a "forward this email" angle.

Privacy issues now make "sharing" in a social context" less risky than "forwarding email." Social networks also are more "viral," as shared items have the ability to propagate exponentially faster.

Death of Forward-to-a-Friend

The ROI of Social Media Is Zero

Some would say the return on investment from social media essentially is "zero," in the sense that social media is not "media" in the traditional sense, so social marketing is not really marketing.

Social media is not media - people's conversations cannot be purchased, nor should they be purchased. The volume and influence on these conversations are not known ahead of time.

Social marketing is not marketing - instead it is listening and learning from customers' genuine conversation among peers and earning the right to be part of the conversation by providing value and earning customers' trust.

Social amplification will enhance the value of your existing content and extend its reach; as more and more conversations happen online, their reach and influence will remain far after marketing campaigns end.

Does this mean spending on social media has no measurable value? To the contrary, many would say social media investments do have value, but need to be measured differently than traditional advertising and marketing have been measured.

There are a few good examples where marketing activities in social networks can drive quantifiable value. For example, Dell has built up a following on Twitter over time so it can now tweet last minute deals and clear out unsold outlet inventory very efficiently.

Netflix has built up a large fan base on Facebook and uses it to interact with fans, get feedback, and announce new features or content.

JetBlue and Best Buy use Twitter for customer service and have thus built up a large enough following to use Twitter as a launch or awareness channel which is free, compared to other channels like e-mail or direct marketing.

The value derived from the above examples is replacement value - in other words, it can sufficiently and efficiently replace traditional, costly tactics such as market research, direct marketing or email marketing.

The ROI of Social Media Is Still Zero

Digital Natives are Different

In an intensive, three-month study of the media and social habits of 100 consumers between the ages of 18 and 24, French marketing firm BVA found that “Digital Natives,” don’t trust authority, doesn’t want anyone telling them what to think and don’t like to pay full retail prices.

Digital Natives don’t trust politicians, social institutions, the media or corporations. Rather, they rely largely on themselves and their peers to decide what to think, what to do and what to buy.

Is it any wonder social media and social networking have gotten traction?

Digital Natives view life as a game of outsmarting authority to beat a system they disdain. Whether catching up on the news or shopping for a car, Digital Natives enjoy the challenge of acquiring and manipulating information as much as the outcome to which it leads.

“The Digital Native enjoys using all tools available in his arsenal to outsmart the merchant system and to find the best deal,” research director Edouard Le Marechal says. “He doesn’t trust the brand. Like in a game, the brand is the enemy to defeat.”

Those are challenging ideas for most sellers of products and services, advertising, marketing and media, and would suggest marketing and media will be different in the future, more socially constructed, at the very least.

http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2010/10/digital-natives-more-different-than-you.html

Gartner Says Android to Become No. 2 Worldwide Mobile Operating System in 2010

The worldwide mobile operating system (OS) market will be dominated by Symbian and Android, as the two OSs will account for 59.8 percent of mobile OS sales by 2014, according to Gartner.

Symbian will remain at the top of Gartner's worldwide OS ranking due to Nokia's volume and the push into more mass market price points. However, by the end of the forecast period, the No. 1 spot will be contested with Android, which will be at a very similar share level.

Gartner Says Android to Become No. 2 Worldwide Mobile Operating System in 2010 and Challenge Symbian for No. 1 Position by 2014

Facebook Data to Enhance Bing Search

Microsoft Corp. and Facebook now have an agreement that will allow Bing to pull information from Facebook Inc. users into its Internet search results.

Under the terms of the partnership, Bing users signed into Facebook will be able to see search results instantly populated with information from their contacts on the social-networking service, including opinions and advice on restaurants, books and films.

In turn, Bing search results are to become available on Facebook users’ pages.

Microsoft has been partnering in different ways with Facebook since 2006, and purchased a small ownership stake in the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company in 2007.

Search gets used in many ways, but one usage mode is finding information to help people make decisions about what to buy, where to go or what to do. To the extent that Bing gets used that way, the new integration with Facebook will be helpful.

The new deal will allow Bing users to benefit from Facebook recommendations. When a user searches for something on Bing or in web results on Facebook (powered by Bing), users will be able to see your friends' faces next to web pages they've liked.

For some people, doing some things, some of the time, that probably will be quite useful.

Facebook | The Facebook Blog

Telecom New Zealand Tries Again for National Broadband Contracts

Telecom New Zealand has re-priced its bid for involvement in the national Ultra-Fast Broadband (UFB) initiative, after being largely shut out of the next round of contract negotiations, reports the New Zealand Herald.

The national telecom operator's plan to offer a nationwide rollout across all 33 regions was dismissed in favor of a region-by-region approach in September, significantly favoring other providers whose bids were deemed less expensive.

TNZ lost out to three regional bidders, led by electricity network companies in Timaru, Whangarei, and the Central North Islands, and apparently has decided to submit a lower bid in hopes of being reconsidered.

Telecom New Zealand breaks its silence on UFB bidding process

Twitter Really is a "Real Time" Media

Sysomos recently found that 29 percent of all tweets produced a reaction, in the form of a reply or a retweet. Of this group of tweets, 19.3 percent were retweets and the rest replies. This means that of the 1.2 billion tweets Sysomos examined, six percent, (or 72 million) were re-tweets.

Sysomos also discovered that 92.4 percent of all retweets happen within the first hour of the original tweet being published, while an additional 1.63 percent of retweets happen in the second hour, and 0.94 percent take place in the third hour.

The obvious take-aways are that Twitter really is a "real time" medium and that most people read, but don't write.

Replies and Retweets on Twitter

LTE Window Might Exist for Over-the-Top VoIP Providers

There's no telling how big a window might exist for over-the-top voice providers on some fourth-generation networks, but there is a window of some sort, as some operators have launched, or will launch, 4G networks in "data-only" mode at first, adding native 4G voice capability later.

Operators are not in a hurry to deliver voice services over LTE networks, says Robert Poe, Heavy Reading analyst, at least in part because they can use existing 3G or 2G networks to deliver voice services. Many, perhaps most customers, won't care. But some will, and that means Skype, fring, Nimbuzz and others have a shot at snagging some customers before the mobile operator can offer all-IP communications.

Of course, at least some early 4G networks launched fully in data-only mode, aiming at the mobile PC user rather than the mobile handset user.

Light Reading Mobile - 4G/LTE - LTE Voice Lag Leaves Operators Vulnerable

Internet Ad Revenues Break Records

Internet advertising revenues in the United States were at $12.1 billion in that period, setting a new half-year record that represents an 11.3 percent increase over the first half of 2009, the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PwC.

This is also the highest second-quarter revenue on record, up 13.9 percent over the same period of 2009.

Display-related advertising—which includes banner ads, rich media, digital video and sponsorships—totaled more than $4.4 billion in the first six months of 2010, showing a significant increase of close to 16 percent over the same period in 2009.

Digital video continues to experience record growth, this year achieving the highest half-year performance ever and up 31 percent over first half 2009.

Search advertising remains the largest percentage of overall interactive spend at 47 percent, representing more than $5.7 billion for the first six months of 2010, up 11.6 percent from the same period in 2009.

Internet Ad Revenues Break Records, Climb to More Than $12 Billion for First Half of ’10

Android Leads Smart Phone Sales in 2Q

Makers of Android handsets were among the fastest-growing firms among the top-10 smart phone brands in the second quarter, according to the mobile and wireless research firm iSuppli Corp.

Droid phone specialist HTC Corp. achieved industry-leading growth, with its smart phone shipments rising by a stunning 63.1 percent in the second quarter compared to the first.

On the strength of its Android-based Galaxy line of smart phones, Samsung Electronics posted the second strongest performance, with a 55.6 percent sequential growth.

New Android licensee Sony Ericsson came in fourth in terms of growth, with shipments rising by 15.4 percent. Also, Droid-focused Motorola Inc. ranked fifth, with an increase of 12.5 percent.

Android Becomes Smart Phone Market’s Secret Sauce for Success in Q2

So What are Businesses Doing with Their Ad Budgets?

There's a question we ought to be asking about what businesses might be doing with their ad budgets. Though overall advertising in the U.S. market appears to be up about four percent, business-to-business advertising is down about 19 percent. One suspects portions of those budgets have shifted to social media, websites, online and other channels.

Securities Analyst Evaluation of Windows Phone 7

Financial analyst reaction to Microsoft Windows Phone 7 operating system, as reported by the Wall Street Journal:

Bank of America Merrill Lynch: With WP7, [Microsoft] intends to gain customer mindshare which it hopes to translate to higher unit sales and smartphone OS market share. The momentum it can garner in the mobile space remains to be seen but MSFT appears to have a good start.

Morgan Stanley: While there is risk that MSFT is too late to the market, with positive reviews and ~$400M in marketing spend, MSFT may be able to curb or reverse share losses next year, which would be positive for the stock given extremely low expectations.

Wells Fargo Securities: While it has become fairly fashionable to kick MSFT, we think it is fair to say that the new phone looks pretty good. In our view, this isn’t going to move the market share needle in the short term and the absence of Sprint and Verizon at the launch is notable (2011 launches). We are the first to admit that Microsoft is fighting for 3rd place not 1st or even 2nd at this point, but we believe this is a key step toward rebuilding confidence in their ability to innovate in mobile and eventually restoring their earnings multiple.

Cross Research: We think the advantage that the company has is its ability to integrate deeply into its own popular apps like Word, Excel and Powerpoint, but also with Outlook email and calendar content.

Barclays Capital: While a credible offering, we believe Microsoft faces uphill climb in quest for market share given its late entrance to an already crowded field, an already weak reputation in the smartphone market and a lack of developer and application support which may limit consumer acceptance, at least initially.

Windows Mobile 7 Tries to Make Phone Use Easier

In a bit of a twist, it is Microsoft that now wants to offer consumers an "easy to use" smartphone, much as Apple once promised an "easy to use" PC.