Augmented Reality for Navigation

The downside for video-assisted navigation services used by auto drivers is that they might be tempted to look at the screen, instead of keeping their eyes on the road. This is useful, but potentially also a source of distracted driving danger.

Mobile Payments Boosts Ecosystem Value

Mobile and fixed service providers these days continually face the challenge of adapting their services in ways that preserve or create significant roles in the Internet, application, broadband access and voice ecosystems. In that regard, mobile payments and banking are significant precisely because those sorts of services are amenable to leverage.

In other words, service providers have other assets they can bring to bear that offer a substantial role in the creation of value, and presumably, therefore, a substantial role in revenues and profit within the ecosystem. It isn't that mobile banking and mobile payments cannot be offered "over the top," as virtually all other applications now can. It is rather that mobile service providers have existing assets to leverage, typically described as including active billing relationships with hundreds of millions of customers.

“Google’s massive, but Google does not have a billing relationship with 99 percent of its customers,” Deutsche Telekom Chief Technology and Innovation Officer Ed Kozel said in an interview last week. “That’s our opportunity.”

Also, some ways of conducting mobile banking and payments make use of text messaging, a service mobile operators largely control. In principle, mobile service providers also have billing systems set up to handle micro-payments, a potentially significant part of the overall mobile payments business.

Tablets also represent an opportunity. Online or virtual goods payments are growing in volume, and tablets should provide a richer environment for that sort of activity, especially as tablets develop as significant platforms for gaming and content consumption.

By some estimates, the retail mobile payments business could account for a third of the $1.13 trillion global market in mobile transactions by 2014, according to IE Market Research. Note the obverse, that other transactions will represent two thirds of mobile activity.

`Mega' Payments Race Pits Google, Visa Against Phone Operators - Bloomberg

Amazon Streaming Video Service Has an Advantage

In business, it typically is advantageous when one competitor can afford to merchandise (give away) something of value that other competitors charge for.

Amazon, for example, now offers an instant video streaming service for its U.S. "Amazon Prime" customers. Amazon Prime is its $79 a year service which includes free two-day shipping for Amazon customers. The deal is that Amazon Prime members get access to Amazon's streaming service for no additional cost.

To be sure, Amazon's service currently offers unlimited, commercial-free and instant streaming of 5,000 movies and TV shows, where Netflix offers something on the order of 20,000 items. The Netflix streaming-only subscription costs $7.99 per month, which adds up to about $96 a year.

The point is that Amazon has another way to monetize its service, compared to Netflix.

AMAZON TAKES AIM AT NETFLIX: Instant Streaming Of 5,000 Movies And TV Shows Part Of Amazon Prime

VoIP Bandwidth Calculator

I recently ran into a cable TV executive who reported some issues with a recent business hosted IP telephony installation. The issue was the sizing of the upstream bandwidth. Apparently, the issue was that the hosted IP telephony system also was interacting with some premises gear that essentially required four call paths to set up a session.

Here's a table to estimate the bandwidth required to support a given number of lines (voice paths) across a broadband connection, using a variety of codecs, and assuming you do not have the aforementioned problem.

VoIP Bandwidth Calculator

Will Apple’s Subscription Plan Drive Developers to Android?

Google and Apple are in a building race for the loyalties of content providers and developers using their respective application stores.

While the iPhone has the largest app store, Google recently overtook Nokia and other phone manufacturers with the largest mobile operating system market share.

Google's "One Pass" will allow publishers to sell subscriptions with better terms than they can get with Apple. Google is only taking a 10 pecent share of the revenues, will Apple takes 30 percent.

Will Apple’s subscription plan spark a developer exodus? | VentureBeat

Why is NCR Renting DVDs?

You might have seen Blockbuster DVD rental kiosks in grocery stores. Those kiosks actually are owned by NCR. You might wonder why NCR is in that business. Basically, NCR is doing so as a way of increasing demand for its automated terminals, and to gain operating knowledge that could be helpful as NCR attempts to create new uses for automated terminals.

Today NCR makes most of its money from automated teller machines and retail checkout systems. Nobody knows yet how much more that might change in the future, but observers might point to substantial use of retail kiosks in Japan, for example, as pointing to the possibility that consumers might want to buy a broader array of products from kiosks in the future.

Who Should Buy Blockbuster? - Seeking Alpha

How Airlines Use Twitter

Social media is a two-edged sword, a tool brands can use, but also a tool consumers can use. Note that United Continental gets 57 percent negative tweets.

It's tough to control a brand message when that level of negative commentary is being posted.

France Could Outlaw Skype

Many executives in the telecommunications industry, a decade ago, thought it was unfair that VoIP services such as Skype did not have to abide by many of the rules that govern providers of public telecommunications service. Contributions to universal service funds and payment of taxes were sticking points.

Skype is not "registered" as a "telecommunications provider" in France. Skype also has been the subject of legal proceedings in France for that reason. So it appears the issues will be raised again.

France Could Outlaw Skype

Readability Tests Apple App Store In-App Fee Policy, Loses

Readability is a software development boutique whose reading functionality is part of the Apple Safari browser, but whose Apple App Store app (Readability iOS ) has been rejected, apparently because the app uses a non-Apple in-app purchase mechanism.

Readability says content providers get 70 percent of revenues when users buy content, but that Apple's 30-percent fee for app content sales then destroys the business model.

Which brings up an interesting question: as cloud-based software subscriptions start to proliferate, will Apple apply the same 30-percent fee? And, if so, will providers of all sorts of cloud-based apps avoid the App Store?

There are signs Apple already has thought about this, and does not plan to impose the same arrangements for cloud-based software apps. See http://www.macrumors.com/2011/02/21/steve-jobs-email-suggests-in-app-subscriptions-dont-apply-to-software-as-a-service/

An Open Letter to Apple

Mobiles are Most-Owned Gadget

Mobile phones are by far the most popular device among American adults, especially for adults under the age of 65. Some 85 percent of adults own cell phones overall. Taking pictures (done by 76 percent of cell owners) and text messaging (done by 72 percent of cell owners) are the two non-voice functions that are widely popular among all cell phone users.

Desktop computers are most popular with adults ages 35-65, with 69 percent of Millennials, 65 percent of "Younger Boomers" and 64 percent of "Older Boomers" owning these devices.

Millennials are the only generation that is more likely to own a laptop computer or netbook than a desktop: 70 percent own a laptop, compared with 57 percent who own a desktop.

While almost half of all adults own an mp3 player like an iPod, this device is by far the most popular with Millennials, the youngest generation. Some 74 percent of adults ages 18 to 34 own an mp3 player, compared with 56 percent of the next oldest generation, Gen X (roughly between the ages of 33 or 35 up to 43 or 46).

Game consoles are significantly more popular with adults ages 18 to 46, with 63% owning these devices.

Some five percent of all adults own an e-book reader.

Main findings | Pew Internet & American Life Project

Motorola Touts Zoom Tablet

Apple Dominates App Store Purchases

Apple dominates app store sales, with 93 percent of device-oriented app store revenue. Click on the image for a larger view.

HTC Thunderbolt Near Launch

Amazon Says Kindle Beats iPad

The thing about investment bubbles is that the irrational exuberance occurs because there is a genuine sense that big things are possible. Since 2010, there has been some sense that an Internet bubble is forming, that expectations are unrealistic. Of course, that is the excessive side of the belief that something big is afoot. We probably have both at the moment: a time when some truly new and big things are coming, and the near certainty that valuations are too rich and that too many firms will be funded.