What Makes a Smart Phone Different From a PC?

It is common these days to hear it said that, for many people, the phone will be the computer they use. In many areas, that will mean the phone is the only device available to provide application support that might elsewhere be provided by a PC.

But smart phones increasingly are becoming "different" from PCs, as well. Smart phones are, in essence, sensors. Unlike PCs, smart phones can provide location information. Sometimes they can use the camera to identify and annotate the objects around a person. In other cases, the mobile device will be used to create pictures and video.

Increasingly, accelerometers are available to monitor changes in device orientation, speed and direction. By extension, that can provide telemetry about the person carrying the device, or the vehicle the person is inside.

So smart phones are starting to differentiate from PCs. Think of them as sensors, not just computers.

What will happen next, as we sort through the obvious privacy issues, is that application developers will start to think about all those millions of sensors moving about, and start creating apps that build on the sensor features.

And developers will not necessarily be restricted by the native sensor functions of smart phones, either. As long as there are USB ports, one can imagine peripherals that support various sensing modes not native to the smart phone, such as temperature, chemical composition of the air, wind velocity, humidity, air pressure and so forth.

Developers already have created plug-in peripherals that turn an iPhone into a cash register for purposes of swiping credit cards and accepting payments. The same sort of thing might be done when other sorts of sensors are required.

Thinking about what might be done requires starting from a different vantage point, though. One has to imagine first the hundreds of millions of general purpose computing devices in daily use, physically correlated with people in space and time, each with native communications capability. What sorts of problems can be solved if those capabilities are applied?

Will We Define or Limit the Future?

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings Predicts 1 Gbps to the Home in 10 Years

Back when modems operated at 56 kbps, Netflix took a look at Moore's Law and plotted what that would mean for bandwidth, over time.

“We took out our spreadsheets and we figured we’d get 14 megabits per second to the home by 2012, which turns out is about what we will get,” says Reed Hastings, Netflix CEO.“If you drag it out to 2021, we will all have a gigabit to the home."

Of course, Moore's Law applies to a part of the access business, and not the bigger part of it. If the access business were primarily subject to Moore's Law, bandwidth would be doubling every 18 months, and most would say access bandwidth keeps growing, but not that fast.

Of course, Netflix also is betting its business on continued bandwidth growth, as is Google, and both businesses benefit directly if bandwidth grows fast, and stays highly affordable.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings: In Ten Years, We Will All Have A Gigabit To The Home

Social Media, Mobile Marketing Top Emerging Channels Used by Enterprise Marketers

Social media remains a key area of activity among enterprise marketing executives using emerging marketing channels, the latest survey of enterprise marketing execurtives by Unica has found.

About 53 percent of respondents are using social media now. But marketers’ enthusiasm is less intense than in 2010, suggesting that many have passed the peak of inflated expectations caused by the hype around social media, and that practitioners now are focused on finding the value that social channels can yield.

Mobile marketing is the other emerging channel.

Some 43 percent of respondents say they currently use the tactic, with another 23 percent planning to do so within a year.

Adoption of emerging channels increased over 2010, in large part because marketers are under intense pressure to accomplish more with less, and the new channels are viewed as lower cost ways to achieve objectives.

More importantly, when the emerging channels are backed with systems for capturing, managing and distributing crucial data regarding customer and prospect behavior, they become golden opportunities for personalizing marketing campaigns and reaching individual customers with more timely, more relevant messages.

The online and direct marketers who responded to the survey represent a wide range of industries, 60 percent from from North America and 40 percent from Europe.

The report is based on a survey of about 300 respondents All responding companies report more than $100 million in annual revenue; the largest block (54 percent) reporting $1 billion or more per year.

read the study here

68% of Global Organizations Will Use Cloud Computing

About 28 percent of respondents to a survey conducted by Axios Systems say that their organizations have already adopted a cloud strategy in one or more areas. Regarding future plans for cloud-based services, five percent of respondents have plans to implement cloud services in the next three months.

Another 16 percent also have short-term plans to adopt cloud strategies in three-to-six months. With an additional 20 percent of respondents planning to roll out cloud services in six months or beyond, the market shows very clear signs of wide-spread cloud adoption.

Only 32 percent expressed no current plans to adopt a cloud strategy.

Survey Reveals 68 Percent of Global Organizations Planning to Adopt Cloud Strategy

France Telecom Considers Options as Growth Slows

France Telecom may sell some of its smaller European operations as growth slows on the continent, Gervais Pellissier, chief financial officer said.

Aside from France, Poland and Spain, “all the other countries are involved in this review,” which will examine opportunities for consolidation as well as possible sales of operations, he said.

The obvious story is that growth in Africa and the Middle East is much more robust than in European markets.

Smaller European markets rose 1.2 percent in the first quarter, compared with a 5.8 percent rise in Africa and the Middle East excluding Egypt.

France Telecom Reviews European Assets as Growth Slows - Businessweek

Amazon Tablet Seems to be on the Way

Many have speculated about whether Amazon might build its own tablet device. DigiTimes reports suggest such a device is on the way.

Taiwan-based notebook maker Quanta Computer reportedly has recently received orders from Amazon to build a tablet.

The device's monthly orders during the peak season are expected to reach about 700,000 to 800,000 units with shipping as soon as the second half of 2011.

Quanta receives tablet PC orders from Amazon, say upstream sources

PlayBook Runs Android Apps

Apparently the RIM PlayBook has an emulator that allows it to run Android apps. A wise move, one might suggest.

Gaming Market Revenue Models Now Must Change

There is no denying the value the Internet represents for users. There also is no denying the disruption the Internet brings to virtually every business it touches. It now appears the console gaming business is about to be disrupted.

"We as VC’s love when a market is undergrowing great change and that industry is shifting from packaged console-based gaming and going to a free-to-play model," says venture capitalist William Quigley, managing director of Clearstone Venture Partners.

"We also need new monetization models," he says, an obvious understatement when a category moves from selling products to enabling "free" usage. Payment and virtual goods seem good candidates for necessary innovation as the transition occurs.

Also, a lot of the dollars currently spent on traditional advertising are migrating to gaming, he notes.

In addition to cloud services and mobile applications, Quigley sees a decade-long wave of innovation ahead for gaming.

Here Come the Cloud and Gaming Funds

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.