HP TouchSmart Tries to Bridge PC and Tablet

Flip, BlackBerry Playbook and Kindle

Smart Phones Displacing Cameras, Flickr Data Indicates

Smart phones are displacing cameras as the devices used to take photos uploaded to Flickr, data from Flickr indicates. In fact, the iPhone 4 might soon become the single most-popular device used to take photos uploaded to the site.


The data in all likelihood understates use of smart phones, though. The graphs, Flickr says, are only accurate to the extent that Flickr can automatically detect the camera used to take the photo or shoot the video (something possible about two thirds of the time). Since that is not always possible with camera phones, therefore they are under-represented, Flickr says. In other words, the Apple iPhone 4 might already have become the most-used device.

There's another interesting angle here, namely the connection between social software and e-commerce. Since Flickr is tracking the devices used to take photos, it also can become a site where potential camera buyers can find out what devices other people are using, and get links to information, or buy those devices.

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Messaging Tops Smart Phone Usage

A recent three-week study of how 150 smart phone owners use their devices shows that the users spend an average of just over 94 minutes a day using their phones, and more than a third of that time, or as much as 28 minutes, is spent reading, writing and responding to email.

The aggregated time spent on all downloaded add-on apps, including Facebook, WordswithFriends and Pandora, is the second largest, totaling just under 11 minutes. Voice calls represent 13 minutes a day worth of usage.

Yankee Group Research Report

Smart Phone Users Consume 24 Mbytes a Day, 1/2 on Wi-Fi

A study of 150 smart phone users over a three-week period finds that panel members consume an average of 723 MBytes of data a month, an average of 24.1 MBytes of data a day. Of that, 21.5 MBytes is received, while only 2.6 MBytes is sent. Those figures include both wireless network and Wi-Fi consumption.

Looking only at data sent over cellular networks, the average data transfer is 12.1 MBytes a day, with Wi-Fi representing the remaining 12 MBytes of daily usage.

The data was gathered from Feb. 9, 2011 through March 2, 2011. Some 83 of the respondents use Android phones, 57 are iPhone users and 10 use RIM BlackBerry devices.

Yankee Group Research Report

Banks Cautious on Mobile Payments?

Thirteen of the 15 financial institutions surveyed by Forrester Research on behalf of Fiserv have a mobile banking offering of some sort.  In addition to account access, the most commonly offered services are transfers between accounts, ATM and branch locators and bill payment.

All of the 13 financial institutions with a mobile banking solution offer the service to retail banking customers. Just more than half offer some type of mobile service to small business customers.

But the majority of bank and credit union executives interviewed are struggling to build a business case to support mobile payments, and many are waiting for market changes to serve as a catalyst for additional investment.

So what would make mobile payments more interesting? The first, and most obvious motivator is competition from other providers, especially other financial institutions as well as technology and payments companies. Some more certain evidence of consumer demand also would prompt the executives to move faster.

Many of the survey participants would like to see another company provide more concrete evidence of the financial model for mobile payments, as well.

Device and process standards also continue ot develop, and most of the executives wanted more stability on the technology front before they would move faster.

Banks and credit unions view merchant enablement as key to the adoption and success of next generation mobile payments. Once merchants are actually set up to receive mobile payments, financial institutions will be more inclined to invest additional time and money in mobile payments.

When building a business case, respondents considered the impact mobile payments would have on multiple business processes and outcomes. Customer retention and profitability are lead concerns.  A study by Fiserv found the retention rates of Millennial consumers using a mobile channel improved from 85 percent to 93 percent.

In a separate study, Fiserv found that increased payment interactions deliver increased customer engagement and profitability. For example, consumers who routinely pay their bills electronically through their bank or credit union have almost twice the number of products (5.34 versus 3.21), deliver more than twice the annual profitability of the average retail customer and
are 3.5 times less likely to churn.

While costs associated with processing checks and cash payments vary, it is well understood that electronic payments – including those carried out through mobile phones – have a direct positive impact on the cost structures of payers, payees and financial
institutions, Fiserv says. By shifting customers away from more expensive payment forms such as cash and checks, banks and credit unions can reduce their cost to serve.

One of the big unknowns, though, is the degree to which new competitors will displace the current suppliers of credit, debit or bank accounts, or work with the established entities.

Still unknown is the extent that ultimately will be played by cross-selling and customer service aspects of mobile payments.
Banks and credit unions also envision unique opportunities (money and fraud management, authentication and customer service, for example) as possible benefits.

Eight of the 15 financial institutions surveyed now enable access by mobile browser (WAP) and six enable SMS (text) banking.

The majority of banks and credit unions surveyed support smartphones today. Notably, support for Google Android is the top priority moving forward.

In contrast to mobile banking, though, very few of the surveyed financial institutions have clear mobile payment strategies in place, Fiserv says.  And while all of the respondents currently offer or plan to offer mobile payments, they are split between being a driver (seven of those surveyed) or a facilitator (six of those surveyed) of mobile payments.

Mobile payments are seen to include bill payment, person-to-person (P2P), remote retail (including social media) and point-of-sale (POS) or contactless payments. When asked how they have prioritized each of these mobile payment methods, banks and credit unions indicated they are most focused on bill payment and P2P with the other methods receiving less focus, Fiserv says.

Read the white paper here.

Personalized Billboards? Well, at Least Customized

Billboards that change messages based on environmental factors, such as who is looking at the billboard and the level of ambient noise, are coming, one company hopes.

FCC Chairman Talks About Need for More Mobile Spectrum

Domino’s Pizza Claims Check-In Grows Revenue 29%

Domino's Pizza says a number of different mobile initiatives are helping the company grow sales. Domino's says its check-in program, based on Foursquare, has grown the company’s online revenue in Britain 28.6 percent increase to $17.5 million Euros. "We offered a specific offer both for anyone who checked in and the mayor of each store, says James Millett, Domino's U.K. multimedia manager.

Mobile ordering also has grown to nearly 10 percent of all e-commerce sales through the Domino's mobile website, web app and iPhone app.

Domino's also recently launched PayPal payments capability on its web and iPhone app platforms. That means customers can order a pizza with an e-mail address or telephone number and PIN on mobile.

Domino’s Pizza Foursquare

TelChina and China Mobile to Create Mobile Payment System

Telnic Limited, the registry operator for the .tel top level domain says its regional partner TelChina and China Mobile, one of the world's largest mobile phone companies, have entered into a strategic relationship to develop mobile payment services.

TelChina and China Mobile to Build Mobile Payment Solution

TechNet Wants Debit Card Rule Delay

TechNet, a group representing executives at major technology companies, sent a letter to senators late last week urging support of legislation by Sen. Jon Tester (D., Mont.) to delay the start-date of the Dodd-Frank law that mandates limits on interchange fees, the volume-related part of debit card fees. The limit on interchange fees, touted as a consumer protection measure, actually is leading debit card issuers to raise fees and charges on all sorts of other banking services to compensate for lost revenue from interchange fees.

The net result will an end to free checking services and higher fees for lots of other services banking customers now use. TechNet wants a delay of implementation for two years so the economic impact can be studied.

TechNet includes Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Craigstlist, Netflix and Yahoo! among other high-tech companies, along with financial companies such as card-processor Visa, which has long fought against the debit-fee proposal.

The limit on interchange revenue is important for any number of reasons. The cost of financial services will rise for consumers across a wide range of economic levels, say analysts at the Mercator Advisory Group. See http://www.mercatoradvisorygroup.com/images/durbin_analysis.pdf.

The largest card issuers will have less of an incentive to promote debit related products and services and will either shift activities toward credit-based services or will cover their costs differently by fee-based approaches to debit

accounts.

Also unknown is how consumer behavior might change if debit cards are harder to get and more expensive to use, and how retailers might react to supporting cards of various types, issued by institutions of different sizes. If small institutions, exempted from the mandatory interchange revenue caps, charge higher fees, retailers won't want to accept the cards, for example.

Merchants empowered to set minimum and maximum transaction amounts may act to increase consumer usage of cash and checks for pay-now purchasing, which are less efficient and therefore more costly to process, or will lose sales to merchants who chose not to set minimums and maximums, Mercator argues.

An overall decrease in electronic payments may lead debit card issuers to increase the cost of their products to recoup an interchange income shortfall, motivating consumers to choose other forms of payment including cash and

paper checks.

Smaller financial institutions may be faced with higher operating costs should their customers’ debit card usage decline. Any decline in transaction volumes or debit user accounts will drive small banks’ debit operations costs

higher per account and per transaction, again making it likely that consumer end-user fees will need to be increased to pay for operations.

Other prepaid programs that will likely be impacted include payroll cards, which depend on float and interchange fees to offset costs. Due to various laws, both state and federal, payroll cardholders typically do not pay upfront

fees on the cards and despite the fact ATM access is costly to the issuer, cardholders always get some ATM access for free.

The Durbin amendment to the Dodd-Frank bill is yet another illustration of activity that benefits legislators, who get to claim they are protecting the public, while the public actually does not benefit.

For Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Craigslist, Netflix and Yahoo!, the interest is a bit less direct. TechNet is worried there might be less investment in technology, and a decrease in security. Security breaches will be a negative for application providers.

Tech Giants Weigh In on Debit-Fee Cap

Gawker Moves Highlight Value of Content in Marketing

Gawker founder Nick Denton might arguably have been known as a 'blogger' and 'blog business' entrepreneur in the past, serving up 'snarky' commentary on news.

These days, he seems to prefer the alternate strategy of becoming an actual provider of original news. For some people, that will represent a huge shift; for others simply an affirmation that the lines between blogging and journalism are porous.

Gizmodo, Gawker, IO9 and Lifehacker might be viewed as blogs. Some of us would disagree, in part. But the larger point might be that a Google-like attention to 'data driven' decision making has driven Denton to realize that 'news' drives readership.

'Duh!' you might say. Media outlets tend to complain that they are the source of most fodder for blog commentary. That's true. Denton now sees that the way to grow is to simply shift attention from commentary on news, to becoming a news outlet.

It's a shift that might be subtle on some levels, and more significant on others. Despite the debates of several years ago about the difference between blogging and journalism, there still is limited clarity about the differences and similarities, because both pursuits have changed, and are changing.

Observers might disagree about the ultimate success of AOL's "Huffington Post" makeover. But there is little disagreement about the fact that both content curation and content creation now are seen as important ports of the enterprise. The former is collecting and pointing to work already created by others, while the latter consists of more-traditional writing or journalism.

The Gawker moves also highlight a separate but related trend: more brands or companies are becoming "media" in their own right.

The way I would describe it is that buyers of products begin their search for solutions to problems, in both a business and consumer context, long before any supplier has any idea those potential customers actually have begun their buying process.

The key insight is that the end user buying process begins long before a supplier sales process can begin. In other words, people and companies start a buying process without letting the suppliers know. The obvious implication is that by the time some formal interest is expressed to a supplier, by a buyer, lots of the fundamental decisions already have been made.

Buyers already have rejected some approaches, and embraced others. They have culled the potential suppliers to a manageable and small list. Buyers have decided why certain approaches make sense for them, what they think they should be paying, and why.

If a supplier waits until this buyer process is finished, many suppliers already have been rejected. So the reason any brand needs to establish a credible, reliable presence in the content space is to be visible and relevant during the early "research" stages of any buying process, which, by definition, occur before any particular brand can start its own "selling" process.

Gawker Moves Highlight Value of Content in Marketing - Content Marketing News Blog - Content Marketing News

LG-Ericsson USA Launches PBX Family

LG-Ericsson USA is getting into the business phone system market, launching "iPECS-LIK" in North America. "iPECS-LIK" is said to be a full-featured business communications product family, enabling IP communications.

The family of systems is said to fit a wide range of organizations, from a small 10-user office to a 1000-user corporation.

LG-Ericsson USA

What LivingSocial is Doing with New Investment

LivingSocial recently raised $400 million in new venture capital funding, saying that the money would be used pursue "aggressive domestic and international growth and continued product innovation."

But half the money appears to be going to an early cash out of early investors and members of company management. That isn't illegal. But it might make other investors wonder whether the current valuations of social shopping companies are warranted.

Groupon used $573 million of a $950 million funding round for liquidity purposes, essentially allowing early backers to gain some liquidity from some of their holdings. Of course, in Groupon's case the board had just rejected a $6 billion buyout offer from Google, and some of its shareholders were upset about missing out on an early payday.

LivingSocial plans to repay early supporters

Online Video Usage Up 45%

Online video usage in the United States has grown considerably from the same time last year as time spent viewing video on PCs of all types from home and work locations increased by 45 percent, according to Nielsen.

The number of unique online video viewers only increased by three percent from last January 2010, though.

One might conclude from those statistics that most people who see value in online video already are watching it, and watching lots more, while people who do not see the value are not adopting the behavior.
Among viewers who do watch online video, users streamed 28 percent more video and spent 45 percent more time watching. Total video streams also saw significant year-over-year growth, up 31.5 percent to 14.5 billion streams.

Online video, as it turns out, is like any other application. Not everybody sees the value. But those who do find it valuable are increasing their consumption.

January 2011: Online Video Usage Up 45% | Nielsen Wire