26% of Mobile Apps Get Used 11 or More Times

In a previous mobile application analytics study, Localytics found that while smartphone and tablet owners are very willing to give applications a try, 26 percent of the time they never use the same application again.

In its latest study, Localytics found that another 26 percent of people become very loyal, repeat customers, using a new application more than 10 times.

It is probably worth noting that both "loyalty" and "disinterest" have to be kept in some perspective. Some apps might intentionally be designed around a specific promotion or event, and might not be intended to have a long shelf life.

Some apps are games and users might tire of some games rather quickly. What the data seems to suggest is that a quarter or so of mobile apps are highly engaging or useful, another quarter are not, with half lying in between. But nearly half (48 percent get used three times or less), suggesting there also is a lot of experimentation going on.

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Netflix to Create Original TV Series

Netflix apparently has won the right to a nre original series to be produced byMedia Rights Capital. The drama series "House of Cards" will be executive produced and directed by David Fincher and executive produced by, and starring, Kevin Spacey.

Netflix reprtedly got rights to the series by offering a relatively unusual commitment of two seasons, or 26 episodes. Given that the price tag for a high-end drama is in the $4 million to $6 million an episode range and that a launch of a big original series commands tens of millions of dollars for promotion, the deal is believed involve an investment by Netflix of more than $100 million.

Such a move is traditional for premium cable networks trying to increase value and add uniqueness to their services, and Netflix clearly is aware that unique content not available elsewhere will be a draw for its streaming service and subscriptions.

Netflix To Enter Original Programming With Mega Deal For David Fincher-Kevin Spacey Series ‘House Of Cards’ – Deadline.com

Maybe 7% of People Use Twitter, 92% Know of It

If people aren't using Twitter at the moment, it certainly is not because they have never heard of it. According to Edison Research, more than 90 percent of people surveyed say they are aware of Twitter.

Marissa Mayer, Google VP, Keynote at South by Southwest.

Marissa Mayer, Google VP, making her keynote address at South by Southwest. Mobile is clearly her focus, and a focus for Google.

Home Based Business Grows 11% in 2010

Home-based businesses grew an estimated 11 percent in 2010, analysts at AMI-Partners say, based in large part on people finding themselves laid off from larger enterprises, the research company says.

“What’s interesting is that 80% of those who became HBBs because of downsizing from a larger company,” says Jessica Efta, AMI-Partners manager. “They do not plan to return to the corporate workforce."

That should have implications for sales of products and services to small business customers, since the number of such entities has grown significantly over the past year.

Home Based Business a Growth Sector in the U.S.

Cable Nets ProtestTime Warner iPad Streaming

Time Warner Cable now allows its customers to stream some of their TV content to iPads inside their homes. Comcast, Cablevision and DISH Network also allow streaming of some content to subscriber iPads. Apparently some of the rights holders do not believe Time Warner Cable has the right to do so, under its current contracts.

“Distribution via any sort of third-party app is not addressed in our carriage deals with Time Warner Cable or any other operator,” said one network. “There is going to be a messy dissection of what the rights are, but our position is that [this sort of distribution] is not authorized by our affiliate agreements.”

It isn't clear how serious the disagreement actually is. Time Warner Cable doubtlessly would not have proceeded if it thought there was an issue. Other distributors are doing similar things and haven't been blocked by the networks. This sounds like a precedent-setting effort to assert rights that could be useful in some later negotiating or legal context.

It's just one more bit of evidence of stress in the video entertainment ecosystem.

Cable Nets Riled Up by Time Warner App

Mobile Broadband Grows, Both to Support Mobile Devices and Home Access

Parks Associates forecasts more than 68 million of the 126 million tablets sold worldwide in 2015 will have 3G or greater technology.

The research firm predicts that 29 percent of the 16.5 million tablets sold in 2010 featured embedded 3G technology, while tablets with 3G or 4G technology will account for over half of all tablets sold in 2015.

At the same time, it appears that more consumers are using wireless as an at-home access technology as well. Possibly 16 percent of U.S. respondents to a Parks Associates survey suggested they presently use mobile broadband. That doesn't necessarily mean those consumers are substituting mobile for fixed access, though that certainly will be the case in some instances.

It does indicate that mobile access is becoming much more pervasive.

Google Has Grown Up: How Soon Does it Become "Legacy"

In the lifecycle of a technology company that goes from being a start-up to a large enterprise, growth comes in three phases, says Om Malik.

1. Early days when the company is almost entirely focused on developing technology and figuring out a business model.
2. Phase Two is when it revs up its engine and starts to bring in dollars, and goes on a hiring binge to support the growth of the business.
3. Phase Three is when it starts to seek newer areas of growth in order to sustain its growth engine, and keeps hiring more and more people.

It's an odd notion that Google has grown up to become a mid-life sort of company.

Can Google Save Itself From Google?

Twitter Activity: Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics

Twitter spokesman Ryan Sarver has argued that“90 percent of active Twitters users use official Twitter apps on a monthly basis.” Twitter defines “official” as applications it owns and operates for the Mac, iPad, Android and Windows Phone.

Sysomos was surprised by that assertion, as its data has suggested there were significantly more “non-official” users. In a June 2009 report, Sysomos found that TweetDeck had nearly 20 percent of the client market.

Sysomos then reviewed a sample of 25 million tweets on March 11, 2011. The data shows that 42 percent of tweets were made by non-officials apps, more than four times the amount claimed by Twitter.

One way of reconciling the data is to argue that power users who do more tweeting use the "unofficial" clients, while many Twitter client users are relatively inactive.

Non-Official Twitter Clients Still Widely Used, Sysomos Blog

Consumers lose 30% of broadband speed using home Wi-Fi : Epitiro

Wireless services, such as in-home or in-office Wi-Fi, are susceptible to significant drops in experienced connection speed, depending on signal strength. In that regard, Epitiro research suggests consumers can lose an average of 30 percent of their experiences downstream access speed, with increased latency of 10 percent to 20 percent, when using Wi-Fi connections in the home.

Basically, use of Wi-Fi reduces end user device "experienced speed" from about 7 Mbps to about 5 Mbps.

Consumers may find on-line game play, VoIP telephony and video streaming unsatisfactory when using Wi-Fi while downloading large files such as MP3s, videos and programs will take longer.

On the other hand, Epitiro also found that web page download times are virtually the same using Wi-Fi or wired connections, so quality of experience is not always directly related to speed. Web pages download times are less susceptible to changes in line speed.

In other words, real-time applications and services, including video, voice and gaming, are most susceptible to impairments related to poor signal strength and interference from other devices. That is one reason why quality of experience advocates generally advocate packet priorities for real-time services and applications. One way to cope with latency or congestion is to allow high-priority bits preference for immediate delivery.

Consumers lose 30% of broadband speed using home Wi-Fi : Epitiro

Google Launches Mobile Payment Test

Google plans to start testing a mobile-payment service at stores in New York and San Francisco within four months, letting shoppers use their phones to ring up purchases, Bloomberg reports.

The company is installing of thousands of cash-register systems from VeriFone Systems at merchant locations. The registers would accept payments from mobile phones equipped with near field communication capabilities.

Why Google wants to be in the business might not be so clear, but a look at other contenders will illustrate why mobile payments could be a strategic move, not just another mobile-enabled revenue stream.

It's probably quite obvious why Isis, the mobile payment system launched by AT&T, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile USA, with Discover Networks and Barclays, makes sense: it represents a brand-new revenue stream for the mobile providers that builds on their key role in the mobile ecosystem.

For online payment providers, the attraction is the ability to extend a payment business from "online shopping" to the broader realm of payments that occur at retail locations. The latter represents vastly more volume than the former.

For Google, the angle might be different. Google is a company that makes its money from advertising. And virtually everybody thinks the mobile segment of the total advertising business is growing fast, and will continue to shift activity from stationary modes (PCs at desktops).

But some closely-related businesses, such as direct marketing, also are morphing from a largely offline mode to an online and mobile mode. So Google would rightly see direct marketing and promotion (coupons, the equivalent of direct mail and other direct marketing channels) as an important extension of its current focus on search and display advertising.

Also, the ability to target messages and offers to end users on their mobiles, in real time, where they are, is nearly universally seen as an area of huge growth. In the background, of course, most providers of any type of application, service or product would prefer to "own the customer relationship."

If Google is able to tie the final retail payments capability to its advertising, marketing services, location and information capabilities, it plausibly can position as a company that "owns" a customer and user relationship in a profoundly new way.

Google Is Said to Plan Payment Test in New York, San Francisco - Bloomberg

Michael Powell Becomes NCTA CEO

Michael Powell, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission from 2001 to 2005 and a member of the FCC for eight years, has been appointed president and CEO of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association.

Media Center - NCTA.com

Mobile Broadband Speeds Up 300% Since March 2010

U.S. mobile broadband "typical" speeds have increased 300 percent from March 2010 to March 2011 in tests run by PCWorld.

Overall, average download speeds for laptop-modem users have grown more than 300 percent, as carriers have activated or extended their fourth generation networks.

Laptop modems sold by the leading four carriers have a collective average download speed of roughly 3.5 megabits per second in13 testing cities, compared to an average speed of about 1 Mbps a year ago.

But typical speeds depend on which device is used. In general, PC modems (dongles) run faster than smartphones. The T-Mobile HTC G2 PCWorld used for testing produced a 13-city average download speed of almost 2.3 Mbps; that's about 52 percent faster than the second-fastest phone, Sprint's HTC EVO 4G, which had an average download speed of 1.5 Mbps.

4G Wireless Speed Tests: Which Is Really the Fastest? - PCWorld

Apple Degrading Web Performance, Enhancing App Performance?

With all the recent talk about the merits and problems posed by network neutrality rules, specifically understood as preventing the optimization of end user experience using packet prioritization, there also has been some largely ignored talk about why Internet access providers could not optimize experience when application providers or even handset manufacturers are allowed to tweak their services and features to do precisely that sort of thing.

Some developers now say Apple's iOS mobile operating system runs web applications at significantly slower speeds when they're launched from the iPhone or iPad home screen as opposed to in the Apple Safari browser, and at the same time, the operating system hampers the performance of these apps in other ways. In other words, Apple might be tweaking the performance of Internet-delivered applications in ways that favor its app store products.

It's unclear whether these are accidental bugs or issues consciously introduced by Apple, observers say. But the end result is that, at least in some ways, the iOS platform makes it harder for web apps to replace native applications distributed through the Apple App Store, where the company takes a 30 per cent cut of all applications sold.

Whereas native apps can only run on Apple's operating system, web apps, built with standard web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript can potentially run on any device.

"Apple is basically using subtle defects to make web apps appear to be low quality, even when they claim HTML5 is a fully supported platform," says one mobile web app developer.

Apple handcuffs 'open' web apps on iPhone home screen

How Much is Facebook Worth, and Why?

Google has a market capitalization of $200 billion, roughly four times Facebook’s implied value, based on recent rounds of investment Facebook has raised.

Yet Facebook’s revenues in 2010 were 16 times lower than Google’s. All things being the same, the only way one can justify the current Facebook valuations is if the market expects higher growth of Facebook’s revenues than from Google, says Dr. Siddharth Shah, Efficient Frontier senior director, business analytics.

If the market expects Google’s revenues to grow at 20 percent a year for the next 10 years, Facebook’s revenues would have to grow at 46 percent a year to justify its valuation, relative to Google. Facebook would have to grow between three and five times faster than Google over 10 years to justify a $50 billion current valuation, for example, says Shah.

The other way of looking at matters is that the market is vastly underpricing Google's growth prospects. That's a harder argument to make as Google is a public company, and there is nothing "implied" or theoretical about its market valuation.

A rational person might argue that Facebook therefore is overvalued.

For many people, the more interesting thing at the moment is a wave of new companies now being founded. Some of us expect to see a couple to several giant new industry leaders formed, to lead the next great wave of Internet innovation after search and social networking. No matter how useful, and how big, any single company is, there is always another wave of innovation, with a new category leader.

Recall that Yahoo was founded in 1994, AOL in 1995, Amazon and eBay in 1996. Google was launched in 1998, Napster and MySpace in 1999.

Wikipedia and Wordpress were founded in 2001, YouTube was launched in 2005, Twitter and Facebook in 2006. Groupon was founded in 2008.

There always is a lag between "founding" and "segment leadership." That emergence could take three years, five years or more. That means firms now are being founded that will emerge as a big deal in three to five years. Facebook will not be the last "big thing" to come out of the Internet.

But in the startup space, one way to look at matters is that one or two firms may deserve a rich valuation because they will be huge, profitable, significant leaders of their industry segments. Some others will deserve significant to moderate valuations on a small revenue base, because they will be bought out before they become "too expensive." Many, if not most other contenders deserve valuations that are small, nil or unjustified, because most firms will not lead, become substantial revenue generators, or even survive.

Nobody can be sure what Facebook is "worth." Some argue it is overvalued. Others might say just about all emerging Internet firms are overvalued, and that a reset is coming. But that's the way markets work. If there is an expectation of huge reward, significant bets will be placed. If the size of the opportunity is big enough, lots of bets will be placed. A third will die, a third will never pan out and a third actually will be profitable, with truly-huge winners being few.

Some might argue the important thing for most people who do not have an actual stake in funding or leading a new company, but operate someplace else in the ecosystem, is to be on the lookout for the next emerging important segment. It surely is coming.

Efficient Frontier Insights: $50, $65 or $100 billion; Just how much is Facebook worth?