Apple Cuts Minimum iAd Price

Apple's iAd platfrom started out with a $1 million minimum advertiser commitment. Now iAd campaigns can be bought for $500,000. One can argue the move makes iAd available to smaller advertisers or campaigns. One might also argue that the move suggests some resistance to the original prices.

Apple Halves Minimum iAd Buy

Mobile Banking Gets Investment

Hannes van Rensburg, the CEO of Fundamo, a South African firm that has built 50 mobile payment systems for operators in Uganda, Pakistan and others, says margins on mobile payment projects are much more attractive in emerging markets.

"In the U.S. and Europe, you have to compete with the established credit card system, which is already very efficient," he said. "There is more money to be made in emerging economies."

Analysis: Telcos battle tech, banking titans in mobile payment | Reuters

Android's Indirect Business Model

In just one year, Android's share of the smartphone operating system market rocketed to 30 percent from five percent in late 2009. But the whole business model is indirect, as Google gives away Android for use by mobile handset suppliers, some of which clearly have benefited.

Android has returned Motorola and Sony Ericsson back to profitability. it can be argued. HTC, an early proponent of Android, is now considered a major handset player in the United States as well.

Millennial Media reported that in Android continued to lead in mobile ad impressions after overtaking iOS in December of 2010. Millennial, whose ads reach approximately 80 percent of U.S. mobile web users, reported that Android's ad impression increased by eight percent to 54 percent in January while iOS dropped four percent to 28 percent and RIM fell two percent to 14 percent.

Android applications have doubled since August 2010 as well.

Google makes money on advertising and app sales based on the popularity of Android devices, but nothing directly from Android itself, which is an open source product at this point.

Android: Google's Secret Weapon - Seeking Alpha

Nokia will be Volatile, Analyst Says

RBS analyst Didier Scemama believes Nokia's stock price will drop to 5.80 Euros. In a “base case” scenario the Nokia of 2013 will have 11 percent of the smartphone market and the stock price will drop by 15 percent, says RBS analyst Didier Scemama.

In the worst case scenario those figures change to 6.4 percent smartphone market share and 53 percent of the stocks value disappears. If Nokia manages to do everything perfectly, which it almost never does, then the best case scenario is 15 percent smartphone market share and share price goes up 54 percent.

RBS: Nokia will own 6.4% of the smartphone market in 2013

Mobile Payments Price War

New moves by mobile payments provider Square suggest competition is heating up in the small business mobile payments space.

Intuit's GoPayment system charges 2.7 percent, plus 15 cents per transaction, while Square now charges 2.75 percent, but no per-transaction fee.

The moves suggest that small business mobile payments now has become a serious business, with serious competition for customers.

Price war beckons for mobile payments • The Register:

What is a Book?

Average physical book prices are going up, and average units sold are going down, at the same time that ebook reader ownership also is growing.

Having seen this before, just about all of us would conclude that a shift to new formats, business models and delivery channels is inevitable.

The future of the book - O'Reilly Radar

40% of Facebook Users are Mobile

According to Facebook over 200 million of its active users now access the network from mobile devices, representing 40 percent of its 500 million total membership. Mobile users are also twice as active on Facebook than non-mobile users, the company says.

Facebook Grows Mobile Footprint, But Still No Ads | ClickZ

Mobile Music Revenues $5.5 billion in 2015

Music consumed on mobile handsets will generate $5.5 billion annually in 2015, representing growth of $3.1 billion from 2010 levels, according to Juniper Research.

Press Release: Mobile Music Revenues to reach $5.5 billion by 2015

Still Some Skepticism About LTE, In Some Quarters

Apparently some in Europe simply don't believe that fourth-generation LTE networks actually are going to be in commercial service this year, in the United States. And that isn't to argue about whether LTE-Advanced is that "only" LTE. Apparently there is some skepticism about the earlier, commercial versions as well.

Apparently there is some merit to being able to buy it, at a retail store, and use it in many cities, as an aid to belief.

Uncovering the U.S. LTE 'conspiracy'

Consumer, Business PC Markets Divergomg?

The latest round of earnings reports might suggest a divergence of consumer and business PC trends. Hewlett-Packard's consumer PC revenue was down 11 percent from last year for the quarter ended January 31, 2011. In contrast, sales of PCs to businesses were up 12 percent.

Dell consumer revenue was down eight percent from last year in the last quarter of 2010. The company appears have done adequately selling to large enterprises and businesses.

Microsoft: revenue from sales of Windows on new PCs was up three percent from last year in the last quarter of 2010. Microsoft says the business PC refresh cycle -- not consumers -- is driving growth in Windows.

One might conclude that consumers are flocking to tablets, while businesses are continuing to hold up Windows PC sales.

Apple sold 7.3 million iPads last quarter, while Mac unit sales were up 23 percent in the last quarter of 2010. Is it a permanent trend?

Tablets Are Hurting The Consumer PC Market

Sprint Selects BilltoMobile to Enable Subscribers to Charge Online Purchases to Their Wireless Bill - Barrons.com

BilltoMobile has reached a deal allowing Sprint customers to charge online purchases directly to their Sprint bill. Once implementation is complete in the coming months, merchants and payment resellers using BilltoMobile's mobile payment service will be able to offer this payment option to Sprint customers.

BilltoMobile already had signed deals with AT&T and Verizon Wireless, giving the firm access to about 85 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers.

https://www.billtomobile.com/about/press/news/BilltoMobile_SprintAnnouncement_021811_FINAL.pdf

Facebook Replacing Mobile Communications?

Mobile and fixed service providers face all sorts of competitors, most of them indirect. Email and instant messaging, for example, cannibalize some amount of voice traffic, as do over-the-top services such as Skype. In other cases, over-the-top applications simply "suck up all the oxygen in the room" by usurping the revenue created by those apps. In past years, telcos might have preferred to create the apps and keep the revenue themselves.

Some even think Facebook is in competition with mobile operators. Facebook has an integration deal with Skype for voice communications and in November 2010 unveiled an email offering.

In the Philippines, for example, the National Telecommunications Commission reports declining text message volumes as more people communicate with each other through the web and web-based apps.

The agency said that in 2009, the average Filipino user sent about 30 text messages per day, or a total of well over two billion messages. If the volume of those messages declines, there will be revenue implications for mobile service providers.

Business - Social network sites threaten to topple telco titans - INQUIRER.net

Square Drops 15-Cent Fee for Credit Card Purchases

Square says it is dropping the 15-cent transaction fee when merchants use its mobile payment system, and instead will take what is an interchange fee of of 2.75 percent of the gross sales amount.

The change is helpful for many of the small merchants who use Square, namely high-volume, low amount transactions.

Square Drops $0.15 Fee for Credit Card Purchases

U.S. Cable Operators Will Lose 6 Million Households by 2015

U.S. cable operators will lose six million more customers by 2015, predicts Jonathan Doran, Ovum analyst, down from 60 million households in 2010 to 54 million households.

Doran estimates that U.S. households subscribing to cable dropped by four million between 2007 and 2010. The losses will come from a combination of share losses to satellite and telco competitors, plus some amount of replacement by online services.

Datamonitor | Media Center | New generation of TV services begin to close gap on cable

Dwolla Promises Retailers Lower Transaction Costs

Much of the original premise behind mobile payments was that it could lead to lower merchant transaction fees. That has not always proven to be the case, but Dwolla claims it does deliver on the promise.