The Future of Social Shopping

For a retailer with the ability to mine data, social sign-ons, especially to sites such as Facebook and Twitter, offer quite a lot of additional data and context about customers and shoppers.

Social sign-on, which allows consumers to log in to their Facebook account instead of registering on an ecommerce site, has advantages for users as well, especially in terms of ease of use. Social sign-on is sort of the equivalent of a merchant storing your phone number so when you forget your affinity card while shopping, the retailer can still look up the information.

Social sign-on gives retailers access to much-richer profile information, presumably at a point in time when a shopper is going to make a purchase of some type.

The Future of Social Shopping - eMarketer

T-Mobile UK Says "Use Your Fixed Line for Video"

"If you want to download, stream and watch video clips, save that stuff for your home broadband," T-Mobile U.K. says. On February 1, 2011 T-Mobile U.K. will be realigning its fair use policies so that mobile internet service will have fair use of 500 MBytes a month.

That doesn't sound like much a bucket of usage, but most users, in most markets, consume something like 200 Mbytes a month on their mobile phones.

In fact, T-Mobile U.K. seems quite sure that level of fair usage will allow people to do all the things they normally do, such as using email or checking social media updates and using websites.

That level of usage, of course, does not cover watching of videos, downloading of big files or playing interactive Internet-based games. As often is the case, uses who exceed the 500 Mbyte usage cap will be limited in ability to download, stream and watch video clips, but will have normal use of email, web and other activities that are not so bandwidth intensive.

If you want to know what the long-term value of a fixed-line service is, it is broadband access. T-Mobile U.K.'s advice to "use video on your fixed connection" is just one bit of evidence.

T-Mobile - Help & Support

Programmers Signal Resistance to Streaming

With the caveat that enough revenue would fix any potential problems content owners have with Comcast’s streaming of video content to iPads and other tablets precipitated a flurry of legal correspondence in the first week of January 2011, as several cable network groups made it clear that they had not signed off on any such arrangement, Mediaweek reports.

The initial warning shots took the form of reminders that such distribution is not authorized by existing affiliate agreements, but apparently stopped short of threatening immediate legal action.

It is easy to imagine further conflict between rights holders and operators. There's just too much money at stake.

Apps Irk Cable Nets

Verizon to Offer iPhone Unlimited Plans?

Verizon Wireless will offer unlimited data-use plans when it starts selling the iPhone around the end of this month, the Wall Street Journal reports. Though Verizon has said in the past that some form of pricing that better matches usage and retail cost was going to be necessary, the possible move would offer differentiation from AT&T plans which are capped.

At one level the moves are simply part of the on-going chess match over customer acquisition and retention that all the mobile carriers must contend with on a daily basis. AT&T has taken steps to shore up its iPhone customer base from defection to Verizon, in part by offering recent attractive upgrade prices that come with two-year service contracts.

"Unlimited" or non-capped plans would provide existing AT&T iPhone customers a reason to switch providers, especially when such customers would have to buy new phones for the Verizon network.

At another level the move shows confidence about the network's ability to handle an expected surge of data traffic, as well as the ability to shift some existing demand from the 3G network to the new 4G network.

The customer benefit the Verizon unlimited service plan and AT&T device upgrade offer also suggest that despite occasional arguments about lack of competition, the mobile markets are more than workably competitive. It is a reasonable argument that AT&T "had" to offer $49 iPhone 4 handsets, and Verizon was "compelled" to offer unlimited service, even though both moves will hit earnings.

Verizon to Offer iPhone Users Unlimited Data Plans - WSJ.com: (subscription required)

Video Games Move to General Purpose Platforms

Dedicated game-playing units still are popular. But these days the biggest growth might be gaming on mobile and other devices.

T-Mobile USA Targets Lower End of Smartphone Market

T-Mobile USA appears to be planning an aggressive targeting of lower-cost smartphones as a way of securing its customer base.

Chief Executive Philipp Humm said many of his smartphones will eventually be made up of Google-powered phones costing less than $100, half as much as the smartphones typically available at U.S. carriers. In October, to lower the cost of monthly bills, Mr. Humm introduced a limited data plan that costs $10.

With Verizon and AT&T staking out the high-end device segment, and T-Mobile USA the lower end, Sprint has to figure out where it wants to play.

T-Mobile Smartphones to Head Down Market - WSJ.com (subscription required)

Dave Michels responds:

Gary, 

This doesn't make any sense to me. Networks are like roads (not cars) and staking our "high" or "low" end doesn't work. Even expensive toll roads have junkers. 

T-mobile is clearly accommodating the low end with some of their devices (Optimus T) and new data plan, but they also have their "4G" with a large footprint and some very highend phones from HTC and Samsung. 

A good carrier will have good solutions for the high-end, low-end, and business sectors - not one target. 

To truly embrace the low-end, there is much more work to be done. Tmo is still requiring a 2 year contract with data (albeit $10 data) on their entry level smartphones. Two years on a sub $100 device is robbery and the run away success of the Apple Touch shows these smartphones can be very useful (games and other apps that don't require a connection) without a data plan (wifi only). 

I was thinking recently that the carriers are really over complicating things - so this headline caught my attention.' 


--Dave Michels


Good insight, as always. I think the point has to do with customer segmentation, not the actual networks or devices. Most observers would say Verizon Wireless always has tried to occupy the "high end" of the mobile market, while Cricket has tried to dominate the "local voice line substitution" market, for example. Virgin Mobile has targeted the "younger, hipper user." T-Mobile USA in recent years has targeted a younger demographic. 


It is true that the networks, per se, are not highly differentiated. But the customer segments can be. 

Explaining Value of Business IP Telephony in 4 Minutes

Tablets are the New Gaming and Video Platform

Any brand-new consumer electronics category will feature some new lead app, feature and use case. For the iPod it was music, for the iPod Touch it arguably has been games and web apps. For the new category of tablets, it appears games and video consumption actually are emerging as the lead apps, even though tablets continue to be used for some business applications and light consumer computing tasks as well.

Wi-Fi remains the connection of choice. AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson says half a million tablets on the AT&T network had active 3G connections. But something on the order of three million tablets get sold each quarter.

For most consumer products, price remains the single most important factor in consumers’ purchase decisions. But tablets appear to have been somewhat different in the early going, largely because of the early adopter profile of most Apple iPad buyers. 

Price ranks fourth among purchase considerations in one survey by NPD Group. Only 77 percent of potential tablet buyers say price factors very highly in their purchase decision. Click images for a larger view. 

Yankee Group : Research Report

Verizon Could Bring Apple Millions of iPhone Users

Opinions are split on how many iPhone customers Verizon could take away from AT&T. Charles Golvin, an analyst at Forrester Research said he believes initial sales will mostly involve Existing Verizon customers who want to upgrade to the iPhone and Sprint Nextel Corp. and T-Mobile USA customers who weren't willing to switch to AT&T because of its poor network reputation might drive most of Verizon Wireless iPhone sales, some believe.

AT&T also has launched promotions to lock in existing iPhone customers on its network in advance of the Verizon iPhone launch. AT&T recently launched a promotion offering $49 3GS phones as well as easier upgrades to the iPhone 4. Many other iPhone owners are on the carrier's family or business plans, making it trickier to switch.

Many observers predict sales of nine million to 12 million iPhones on the Verizon network in 2011.

Verizon Could Bring Apple Millions of iPhone Users - WSJ.com (subscription required)

IPv6 Tutorial

Get Ready for "Twitter Phones"

A year ago, Twitter mobile devices were used to create around 20 percent to 25 percent of tweets , but now this has risen to nearly 40 percent of all tweets, Twitter says. So watch for the company to optimize Twitter use on mobiles even more. That might mean pre-loaded Twitter or even the ability to "Twitter optimize" a device.

CES 2011: Get Ready for Twitter-Embedded Phones

Jajah "Dynamic Buttons" for In-App Communications

Jajah Buttons add communications functionality to any website.

Sprint as Wal-Mart?

“Sprint is at a crossroads,” said Craig Moffett, a New York-based analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein. “Their time-to- market advantage is now largely gone for 4G.”

That's true enough. What isn't so clear is how Sprint's positioning will evolve, now that the 4G platform does not offer such uniqueness.

Some might argue that Sprint will have emphasize its lower cost plans for unlimited wireless data use. "Unlimited," assuming the other carriers do not offer it, will offer some uniqueness.

I suspect Sprint will do more than that. Whether Sprint would agree with the Wal-Mart analogy is not clear. That Sprint would base its strategy on that seems unlikely. We'll see.

Sprint May Become Wal-Mart of Mobile as Rivals Move to `4G' - Bloomberg

Verizon Finally Lands the iPhone

The Apple iPhone is finally coming to Verizon Wireless, and among the big questions are whether the move leads to a significant exodus of customers from AT&T to Verizon Wireless, or not. We have five iPhones in use in the immediate family so I will be anxious to see what happens. It already appears that half the accounts are in no danger of any provider shifts. But three of the devices are used mostly in New York and Los Angeles, and there are significant reliability issues for at least one or two of those accounts, fairly regularly.

If I had to guess, I'd say two of the lines could shift. If that is replicated across the whole iPhone user base, it would be a big deal. I think I'd be surprised if three of five shifted to Verizon. That would be a really big deal.

Verizon Finally Lands the iPhone - WSJ.com (subscription required)

Cloud Computing: Less Adoption Near Term; More Than You Think Long Term

It would be entirely within historical precedents for cloud-based enterprise software to achieve less near-term revenue success than analysts expect, but more success than anticipated long term. That, in fact, is a common experience for truly-important and successful innovations.