U.S. Television Ownership Drops

For the first time in 20 years, the number of homes in the United States with television sets has dropped. In its latest estimate, 96.7 percent of American households now own sets, down from 98.9 percent previously. That works out to 114.7 million TV households, down from 115.9 million in 2010.

There are a few potential reasons for the downward trend. The transition to digital TV. TV penetration first dipped after this transition and continued in 2010. Nielsen also says the cost of owning a TV is a factor. Lower-income and rural homes were particularly affected.

But new platforms might be having an affect as well. Nielsen data demonstrates that consumers are viewing more video content across all platforms.

However, a small subset of younger, urban consumers are going without paid TV subscriptions. The long-term effects of this are unclear. One might argue that the "no TV" behavior is temporary, reflecting a stage of life where discretionary income is more limited. Or, more disturbingly for some providers, younger consumers might value multichannel TV less than older age cohorts.

The issue is whether linear multichannel television is a product like any other, with a product lifecycle that now is past its peak, and starting to decline. It might once have seemed inconceivable that voice service was a normal product, with a lifecycle. But people have other communications alternatives, and some would say mobile voice is the preferred way of using voice communications.

The issue for the video entertainment ecosystem is whether a similar product lifecycle now is starting to assert itself in the TV business.

Television Ownership Drops in U.S., Nielsen Reports - NYTimes.com

Enterprises Looking to Managed WAN Services

A recent survey of executives and IT leaders at large U.S. companies by Boston-based market research firm, Chadwick Martin Bailey (CMB) indicates that enterprises are increasingly relying on managed network service providers.

For example, one large fast-food franchise wanted expertise in restaurant operations and the ability to deliver industry-specific solutions like managed PCI Wi-Fi security, digital signage, or employee video training over the WAN.

In large part, the desire for managed services is a resource issue. IT departments are stretched thin and need to free internal resources up from basic tasks to focus on more-strategic priorities.

Strong customer support is considered nearly four times as important as technical criteria such as the provider's network architecture), when evaluating suppliers, the study suggests.

Strong service level agreements, a provider's understanding of their unique business applications and related industry expertise also were considered important.

Combined, these top criteria account for nearly two thirds of all the weight in an enterprise's final supplier selection.

Improved IT security, simplified compliance and better application performance are among the reasons managed services increasingly are favored. Demand for managed services also benefits from a preference to avoid new full-time hires.

The survey also suggests enteprises increasingly favor specialty service roviders that have high-touch customer service, vertical market expertise, and offer managed applications specifically tailored to their business.

A  majority of respondents favor providers with managed WAN optimization technologies that overlay their existing slower WANs, providing WAN acceleration and Quality of Service (QoS) performance without the associated costs and complexities.

CMB surveyed 342 decision makers at large distributed enterprises with WANs ranging from 100 to more than 500 networked sites, and typically more than 5,000 employees. 

The study was commissioned by Hughes Network Systems.

read more here

Apple iPad Is Transforming Retail

About 41 percent of consumers who planned or were considering buying an iPad cited shopping as a primary reason for their interest, says eMarketer.

The iPad’s most dramatic impact for retailers might be its use in stores. Merchants are beginning to equip sales associates with iPads to aid customers with in-store purchasing decisions. Deloitte forecasts that in 2011, 25 percent of all tablets will be bought for business, and retailers will lead all industries in their adoption.

How the iPad Is Transforming Retail - eMarketer

Markets Morph as Local, Location, Social Converge

A decade ago, "location" and "local" were two very distinct product verticals for most Internet companies. "Local" developed out of the Yellow Pages market, while location was about maps and navigation. The obvious result was that application development was conducted in two different groups.

Today, there is a growing recognition that local, geo-location and mobile are not distinct product groups and technology stacks, but rather essential components of a unified toolset that better connects people with the world around them.

That's the genesis of the "local, social, mobile" theme, which now sees things people do in the real world, where they are, in a more collaborative way, as keys to developing compelling new applications and revenue streams. Location can be used to build apps that are monetized by shopping, for example. "Local" can be monetized by advertising or promotion activities.

"Social," meaning collaboration, or word of mouth referrals, can be monetized by commerce activities. In other words, the confluence of social, mobile and local creates revenue opportunities primarily focused on people spending money and shopping in the real world, not online commerce or online advertising, which have driven most existing online revenue streams.

Snap to the graph, not the grid - O'Reilly Radar

Harris Interactive Says Google Has Best Reputation

The 2011 Harris Interactive "RQ Study," which measures the reputations of the 60 Most Visible Companies in the United States, shows Google at the top, with Apple rising into the top ranks.

As typically is the case, service providers, including leading telcos and cable companies, did not fair that well, showing the middle to bottom of various metrics ranging from customer service to integrity. For whatever reason, and many will have clear opinions about those reasons, service providers tend never to rank too well in such reputation surveys. In fact, service providers often are lucky simply to avoid appearing in the bottom of the rankings.

Some of us who have followed these things for a couple of decades can only note the pattern. Some industries just seem to be perceived more favorably than others, and it never seems entirely clear how much rests entirely within a firm's control. Airlines likewise rarely are likely to be ranked well.

Technology companies tend as a group to fare better, for example. In general, firms that are perceived to be so reliable that they are virtually invisible tend to score better, as well as firms that provide "delight" or "enrichment." One might infer that, for whatever reason, service providers are not consistently viewed as invisibly reliable, or providing clear life enrichment.

One can only speculate, but perhaps the difference, at some level, is that many consumer packaged goods or technology products are paid for only once. By definition, a service requires a recurring payment. How much that affects thinking is hard to say.

But one way of looking at matters is that a consumer gets reminded every 30 days of the cost of a service. Irritants are more irritating when a new payment has to be made repeatedly.

Google Ranks Highest on Corporate Reputation in 12th Annual Harris Interactive U.S. Reputation Quotient Survey

Android Market Withdraws Tethering Apps

Most free or low-cost tethering apps formerly available at the Android Market now have been removed from the Android Market, meaning that AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile Android smart phones will not be able to use them.

Easy Tether, Internet Sharer, Klink, PDAnet and Tether for Android are among the apps observers say no longer are available. Users can still install free tethering apps on rooted phones, or from another source other than the official Android Market.

The consumer interest in such apps is obvious: it allows them to use the smart phone data plan to connect other devices. Service providers of course sell service plans to connect PCs and other devices.

The perceived fairness of access plans has much to do with expectations. Even "capped" fixed-line plans offer 150 Gbps to 250 Gbps worth of monthly consumption, at a time when most users probably use several Gbps a month, across all PCs, tablets and other devices used inside a home. Wireless plans are sold differently, on a per-device basis, with varying caps and price plans that tend to top out at 5 Gbps a month for any single device.

Sprint is the exception, offering unlimited 4G usage plus 5 Gbps of 3G usage each month for HTC Evo and similar devices. Users seem to accept as fair an allotment of 150 Gbps to 250 Gbps at a fixed location, supporting multiple devices, for possibly $60 a month. Wireless plans often cost $60 for a 5-Gbps plan for a single smartphone.

That's a big difference, and so the interest in tethering is not surprising. Mobile executives often point out that the cost of delivering bandwidth over a mobile network is more costly than on a fixed network, and there is almost-complete agreement with that general principle.

How plans might change in the future is not clear, but it is clear that mobile users already have learned to use Wi-Fi connections for tablets and smart phones, instead of their mobile usage buckets, when Wi-Fi is available. Also, the typical mobile user simply does not consume as much data as when using a PC. These days, it remains an unusual smart phone user that actually consumes more than hundreds of megabytes a month from a smart phone. Tablets represent a mixed case.

And, of course, everyone expects usage to climb, over time. "Fairness" is a moving target.

Android Tethering Free Ride is Over | PCWorld

Browser Shares Stable

After a month of availability of Internet Explorer 9 and Firefox 4, it appears that the browser market remains stable.

Internet Explorer is down slightly, dropping 0.81 points to 55.11 percent. Firefox experienced a small drop of 0.17 points, to 21.63 percent. Chrome was up 0.37 points to 11.94 percent, and Safari was up 0.54 points to 7.15 percent.

The implication is that people adopting the latest versions are upgraders, and that little major change has occurred.

Apple Has 50% of Smartphone Market Profits

According to an analysis by Canaccord Genuity’s T. Michael Walkley, Apple now captures 50 percent of first quarter 2011 smart phone operating profits among the top 8 OEMs, despite having only 4.9 percent of global handset unit market share.

Apple Has 50% of Smartphone Market Profit Share

Wireless Carriers Say Their Use of Location Data is Opt-In

The four largest U.S. wireless carriers say they obtain customer permission before using a subscriber's physical location to provide driving directions, family-finder applications and other location-based services, and before sharing a subscriber's location with any outside mobile apps that provide such services.

But the wireless companies also say they have no power to require device makers like Apple or independent developers of location-based apps to get similar user consent if these apps don't rely on the carriers themselves to track a user's whereabouts.

Wireless Carriers Get Consent To Use Location Data

Is Telstra Getting Out of Fixed Line Consumer Voice?

In what might strike you as an odd statement, Telstra executives say that VoIP is not sufficiently reliable to sell to consumers.

While launching a new IP telephony services aimed at small business customers, Telstra CEO David Thodey said the company was only continuing to review consumer VoIP services.

“As we think the product is mature enough, and has enough technical backup, we’ll bring that product to market,”Thodey said. However, Thodey didn’t appear to believe a Telstra VoIP offering would appear soon, according to Australian content provider Delimiter.

“We don’t think the quality and reliability is there," Thodey said. "We could bring it to the market tomorrow, but we don’t want to."

That explanation might strike some as quite odd, given the success carriers are having with consumer VoIP.

In fact, some of us might speculate that something else is afoot, namely an unwillingness to invest in consumer VoIP because Telstra might not want to sell consumer VoIP when it starts to buy wholesale access services from the National Broadband Network.

When that happens, Telstra, like other retail service providers, will have a choice of customers to serve. Given Telstra's belief in 4G Long Term Evolution, Telstra might be planning to rely on wireless for consumer voice, staying out of the consumer fixed-line voice service.

That might strike you as odd, but keep in mind that Telstra also operates separate cable TV facilities, running on separate networks. While you might think Telstra is giving up a "triple play" opportunity, it isn't. Telstra can deliver broadband access using the NBN, video entertainment on its existing cable TV networks and voice and mobile broadband on its planned 4G network.

In principle, Telstar could deliver voice using its cable networks as well, but Telstra might simply have concluded that mobile is the best way to sell voice to consumers.

http://links.eqentia.com/520b2ad1536d771f/?dst=http://delimiter.com.au/2011/05/02/consumer-voip-not-reliable-says-telstra/&utm_campaign=visibli&utm_source=cisco&utm_medium=twitter

RIM Goes Multi-Platform, Losing Smartphone Battle?

In a move almost certain to be interpreted as a sign enterprises are migrating to iOS and Android devices and away from their past heavy reliance on BlackBerry devices, Research In Motion announced plans for a multi-platform BlackBerry Enterprise Solution for managing and securing mobile devices for enterprises and government organizations.

The solution is expected to incorporate secure device management for Android and iOS based devices and tablets, all managed from a single web-based console, RIM says.

Some might try to spin the announcement as an extension of BES features to other key enteprise operating systems, and that it is. But others will say the move suggests RIM already can see that enterprises and larger organizations are moving away from BlackBerry and towards Apple and Android devices.

In fact, some might already be ready to predict the possibility that RIM might someday be a provider of server solutions, not handsets.

RIM's business has traditionally been driven by IT departments at enterprises, as BES gave companies an easy way to do things like activate devices, manage passwords, push out software updates, and wipe lost or stolen devices clean.

That might be the future of the business, not handsets.

read more here

AT&T to Take On Groupon

AT&T will itself get into the social shopping business by launching its own service within the next several weeks in Los Angeles, Atlanta and Dallas-Fort Worth.

The service, apparently to be housed within AT&T's yellowpages.com subsidiary, confirms the potential of social shopping as a new part of the local advertising business, historically where directories have part a part of the business as well.

The U.S. social shopping or group shoppingmarket, offering discounts at local businesses, will grow to $3.93 billion in 2015, from $1.25 billion this year, according to BIA/Kelsey.

Some might not believe the business will last, and in that case AT&T is just chasing a mirage. But there is good reason many now are optimistic about what might be possible as mobile devices, location awareness and local advertising and promotion meet to create what some believe is a genuinely-new business capable of diverting spending from other existing channels at the very least.

AT&T to Take On Groupon With $10 Promotion for Daily Deal Site - Bloomberg

Facebook Dominates Display Advertising

It wasn't so long ago that observers speculated about whether Facebook could keep growing, much less find a viable, self-sustaining business model. Looking at Facebook's share of online display ads, the concern about business or revenue model is not relevant any longer.

The only question might be the scale of Facebook's ad operations. These days, it is Twitter that occasionally still faces questions about its own revenue model.

http://goo.gl/utliu

PdaNet 3.0 Hides Android Tethering

The game of cat-and-mouse between developers and others in the ecosystem never ends. The developer of PdaNet, an app for tethering mobile phones to computers, has released an updated Android app that PdaNet says will hide tethering use from a user's wireless carrier. Data usage will look like regular smartphone data usage and won’t be distinguishable from data being transferred through your phone to your computer.

Carriers will respond, no doubt.

PdaNet is available as a free download from the Android Market. Users also will need to install a desktop app on a Windows or Mac computer, presumably the device using the tethered connection. A full license for the software currently runs $15.95.

PdaNet 3.0 lets you hide Android tethering from your wireless carrier

Twitter Amplifies Other Media, Is Media

Some argue that Twitter is not in and of itself a "news source," though some will argue it sometimes is just that.

Some will point out, rightly, that Twitter is a channel for a source, or a channel for pointing to a source. But there might be cases, many cases, perhaps, where Twitter "acts" in its own right as a media channel, even when it amplifies other media.

One might argue about whether Drudge Report or Huffington Post, among many other outlets, is "media," or simply "points to" other media. In truth, it is hard to separate the roles.

But one suspects that more people every day are using Twitter precisely as any other news medium is used, to deliver "news."

Twitter Does Not Supplant Other Media, It Amplifies It