Aro Mobile Launches in Beta, Unifies Mobile Contact, Social, Email Information

Aro Mobile , a mobile application now in beta mode, aims to simplify mobile use by unifying information stored in the mobile that relate to people and contacts. It's another example of consumer "unified communications" that illustrates why it has been harder than many thought for business-oriented UC solutions to take root: there are lots of ways to unify specific parts of the communication environment, without unifying "everything."

Accelerating Hosted PBX Services

Steve Gleave talks about accelerating sales of hosted PBX services

Many service providers I talk to would often prefer their sales teams to sell hosted PBXs over premises based alternatives. But the reality is that market adoption for hosted business services can be hindered by sales strategies, pricing models and marketing pitches that don't stack up when compared next to premises-based solutions.

If this is your dilemma you may find that:

* your existing sales teams are too familiar with premises PBXs' familiar features, benefits, and pricing
* there is a much stronger organisational structure built to sell and support in-house PBXs than for hosted services
* individual salespeople have deep, field-level relationships with PBX vendors, many of which provide sales incentives
* general suspicion towards hosted PBX as an inferior product.

Read the full article here: Overheard: Water cooler talk from the Metaswitch office, July 2010

Verizon Business Adds Global Managed Ethernet Services

Verizon Business is expanding its Managed Services portfolio with the addition of "Global Managed Ethernet." Now, multinational organizations can use Verizon Ethernet services in a managed network environment containing just those services, or in combination with other network services for a complete end-to-end, global managed network solution.

New managed offerings include Ethernet Private Line Service, Ethernet Virtual Private Line Service and Virtual Private LAN Service. Customers who employ Private IP Layer 2 will also be able to choose a managed service.

'For the first time, our customers can combine the power of MPLS and Ethernet in a fully managed end-end-to-end global networking solution,' said Anthony Recine, vice president of networking and communications solutions for Verizon Business. 'Together our Private IP and Ethernet services deliver an ideal business communications platform to handle big-bandwidth applications in a similar fashion, no matter where they are located around the world.'

These managed services support a variety of applications including VoIP, storage and business continuity, large file transfers, distance learning, content delivery and unified communications.

Verizon | Verizon Business Adds Global Managed Ethernet to Managed Network Services Portfolio

10% of Mobile Users Check Social Network Status Daily

Social networking is a logical and growing activity for mobile phone users, especially those with smartphones, but also feature phone users to an extent. That said, 73 percent of respondents to a recent Forrester Research survey say they "never" use social networks on their phones, reflecting the relatively small percentage of smart phones in the installed base.

That's one reason about half of users say they never use mobile apps, either. Most phones being used today do not support app downloads.

Average Fixed Line Broadband Connection Represents 15 Gbytes a Month of Demand

The average fixed-line broadband connection generates 14.9 GBytes of Internet traffic per month, up from 11.4 GBytes per month in 2009, an increase of 31 percent, Cisco Systems says, in its latest "Visual Networking Index." As you might expect, video consumption is driving the growth.

In North America, nearly 60 percent of the top 100 sites for the last year were video and gaming sites. Video streaming and downloads (including gaming), social networking, and software updates dominate the top 10 sites in North America. Approximately 29 percent of the traffic from the top 100 sites in this region comes from the top 10 sites.

see the full results here

$1 Billion Mobile Video Calling Market in 2015

In-Stat projects mobile video calling revenue will exceed $1 billion by 2015, and also expects "Facetime," the iPhone 4 app for video calling, will be among the key drivers.

In-Stat predicts the number of mobile video calling users will grow at a 115 percent compound annual growth rate through 2015, with Asia/Pacific consumers representing 53 percent of the mobile video calling minutes used by 2015.

Apple, Fring, OoVoo, Qik and Skype are among firms In-Stat believes will be driving the usage. By 2015, mobile video calling will result in over 9 petabytes in data traffic in North America.

In-Stat - Press Releases

Tough Christmas Selling Season for Consumer Electronics is Forecast

The 2010 Christmas selling season for consumer electronics isn't looking so good, says Stephen Baker, NPD Group VP, at least from the retailer and manufacturer standpoint. Pricing levels continue to flatten, so average selling prices are flat.

Consumers have come to expect 20 percent to 25 percent price declines every year, so small movements of five percent or less are unlikely to inspire them to rush into the stores and buy.

The other issue is that consumers are in the midst of technology "refresh" cycles. Just half of all flat-panel TV purchases are now made by first-time buyers. And more than 80 percent of the notebook installed base was less than three years old at the time of NPD’s Household Penetration survey earlier in 2010.

With the possible exception of Apple's iPad and other new tablets, there does not seem to be some compelling new application or device to prompt a big upsurge in buying, Baker suggests.

Also, the 2010 Christmas selling season will face tough comparisons with the 2009 holiday season. In 2009, categories such as flat-panel TVs saw 25 percent sales increases, and notebooks were up twice that amount. It always is tougher to show current period growth when the comparison is to an earlier period with robust sales growth.

The exception will be the iPad and tablets, in all likelihood.

NPD’s research also indicates worsening consumer sentiment. "Consumers who were considering just cutting back on  purchases are now not planning to buy anything at all," says Baker.

read more here

US Companies Have $1 Trillion, But Won’t Spend It

U.S. enterprises are hoarding cash, Moody's reports. Enterprises now collectively hold about $1 trillion in cash, and 20 firms hold about a third of the amount. These include Cisco, Microsoft, Oracle and Apple. Enterprises are hanging onto their cash in case another economic downturn is in the offing, and in part because economic growth is so sluggish at the moment.

The size of those cash hoards also partly explains why job creation has been so sluggish. Smaller companies can't get credit and large companies have cash but won't invest it.

US Companies Have $1 Trillion, But Won’t Spend It, At Least Not On Jobs - 24/7 Wall St

Gadgets Account for 15% of Home Energy Use

According to the International Energy Agency, electronic devices currently account for 15 percent of household electricity consumption.

Energy consumed by information and communications technologies as well as consumer electronics will double by 2022 and triple by 2030 to 1 700 Terawatt hours, equal to entire total residential electricity consumption of the United States and Japan in 2009, the IEA predicts.

IBM Helps To Create A Cellphone Battery That Will Last Forever

Europe has 4.5 Million "Fiber to Home" Customers

Europe now has reached 3.2 million Fiber-to-the-Home) or Fiber-to-the-Building subscribers (nearly 4.5 million if Russia is included) with around 18 million home being passed (26 million including Russia).

That works out to penetration of about 17 percent (percentage of users who buy, compared to the number who can buy). For those of you who think "fiber sells itself," those statistics are sobering. Less than one in five potential FTTH customers actually buys the service, when it is available.

Eastern Europe makes up a large number of these connections with Lithuania still leading, and Slovenia and Slovakia now making up part of the top five countries.

thinkbroadband :: European fibre penetration reaches 4.5 million subscribers

Intel Gets into the "News" Business

Intel now is a content publisher. Intel has launched what it calls the "Free Press," a beta news section on its website that hopes to generate articles that are good enough for professional media outlets to republish. The subject matter is generally related to Intel, or technology generally.

“We are Intel geeks at heart, taking an editorial approach to producing stories with journalistic style and integrity, and doing it as objectively as possible while being transparent about who we work for,” according to a mission statement on the site.

If you think about it, this was always inevitable. The Web now democratizes publishing, music and video. But where most people focus on how this makes "user-generated" content possible, that usually refers to citizens and consumers adding their content.

But in a world where any Web portal is highly accessible to people and companies that want to use them, there is no reason why any single company cannot become the equivalent of its own "media." Where firms used to rely on third parties ("media") to aggregate audiences, and then spend money on advertising to reach those audiences, in today's world firms can simply aggregate audiences directly.

Efforts such as Intel's will be routine, in the future.

Intel Establishes Its Own Free Press - Digits - WSJ (link will open properly if you have a subscription to the Wall Street Journal electronic edition)

iPad is Fastest-Selling Gadget, Ever

According to Bernstein Research financial analyst Colin McGranahan, the iPad has now sold an estimate 8.5 million units and is a "runaway success," perhaps the consumer electronics gadget that has shown the fastest adoption, ever.

Information Week writer Paul McDougall also notes that the iPad is starting to have a measurable effect on PC sales. A recent research study by NPD found that 13 percent of iPad users would have purchased a PC if they hadn't been able to buy an iPad.

It's official: iPad now the all-time fastest-selling gadget

Brands Don't Necessarily Benefit From "Lots" of Followers or Fans

The sheer number of "followers" or "fans" a brand has does not seem to impress most users as much as the quality of the interactions, a study finds.

Brands Don't Necessarily Benefit From "Lots" of Followers or Fans

Invoke Live Social Commerce Report

View more presentations from Invoke Solutions.

Users Save $2 Billion Each Month by Using Opera?

Use of the Opera Mini browser, which compresses Web data by 90 percent, saves lots of bandwidth, and therefore costs for users of mobile broadband services who pay "by the byte."

Based on the costs of browsing the Web on a mobile phone (on a per MB basis), users in a representative sample of 10 countries save over $802 million per month, or over $9.6 billion per year, Opera says, though it is possible to question that estimate.

Of course, that estimate does not take into account pricing for users who have unlimited-use data plans, though. If you have a flat-rate plan, the compression makes no difference, cost-wise.

Using estimates from typical usage in its sample of 10 countries, Opera estimates that the global cost of browsing is 47 cents per MByte. Based on that figure and the amount of data transferred by Opera Mini users each month, we calculate that Opera Mini users around the world save over $2.2 billion per month, or over $27.4 billion per year.

One can quarrel with the savings estimates, though. Opera assumes a cost of $2 per megabyte for users in the United States. That works out to a cost of $2048 a month for use of 1 gigabyte worth of data. Most users quickly can figure out that they can benefit from an unlimited data plan costing $30 to $60 a month.

At $30 a month, a gigabyte nominally costs just three cents. Perhaps a better way to view the data is that if users purchased their mobile broadband bandwidth using the most-expensive a la carte plans, they might save the money Opera claims. In practice, most users can figure out they need to buy "wholesale rather than retail."

Opera: State of the Mobile Web, September 2010