Google Voice CEO Craig Walker Launches Firespotter

When Google Voice (previously GrandCentral) co-founder and CEO Craig Walker is starting an incubator, with initial funding from Google Ventures of $3 million. GrandCentral itself was nurtured in an incubator, one might note. Most recently, Walker had been working at Google Ventures as entrepreneur in residence.

At Google Ventures, Walker has had a chance to see hundreds to thousands of startup pitches, likely of varying quality or novelty. Walker likely also has found that many of the pitches are in similar market spaces, and knows from experience that it is difficult to separate ultimate leaders from laggards, even in the same space, at inception.

An incubator provides a business model where Firespotter will be able to spread its bets, essentially, without having to make judgments upfront about which teams and ideas are most worthy.

Walker is working with former Google Voice engineers Brian Peterson, John Rector and Alex Cornell) at Firespotter Labs.

Google Voice CEO Craig Walker Launches Firespotter, A Google Ventures Funded Incubator

Verizon, HTC Mull Smart Phone Targeted at Women

Verizon and HTC have taken that into consideration and are testing a new smartphone that would target that female demographic. Right now, the code name for the phone is the Bliss and its said to hit Verizon before the end of this year.

The slate style Android device might feature a softer color hue, offer various preloaded calorie counting and shopping apps, a wireless dock, and even an LED charm notifier for easy access when the phone is in a pocket.

read more here

Facebook and Google mull Skype deals

Facebook and Google both seem to be considering a tie-up with Skype, Reuters reports. The postponement of Skype's IPO might have something to do with that activity.

Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg reportedly has suggested either a buyout of Skype by Facebook, or a joint venture. Google reportedly has also held early talks for a joint venture with Skype.

Facebook and Google mull Skype deals | Reuters

Isis Shifts Strategy: What Happens Next?

If there is any single issue that will drive any retailer away from a retail payments system it is higher cost per transaction. Forcing a retailer to spend $200 or so per payment terminal also is a huge barrier to adoption. Blocking a merchant’s ability to use a form of payment such as a branded credit card also is a disincentive, particularly since the merchant’s own branded vehicles potentially can provide more information about the customer, and the customer’s preferences, than any third party form of payment.

It appears Isis has stumbled with retailers because its proposed payment system provides all three barriers, says Richard Crone, Crone Consulting principal and payments consultant.

And Crone agrees that, as tough as it would have been to overcome those obstacles, any other revenue model Isis now might adopt could fight Isis facing both well-funded giants such as Google, Apple, PayPal and Amazon, or any number of startups, sufficiently well funded to pose a significant challenge to “near field communications” as the communication method for any number of payment-related systems and applications.

In fact, Crone believes a number of carrier-independent approaches from well-funded start-ups not requiring NFC “could make NFC obsolete.”

“Maybe you don’t need the NFC approach,” says Crone. “There are 16 different ways the communications function can be handled.”

Starbucks, for example, represents the “most successful new payment method, ever,” Crone says. Starbucks reached one million mobile payments  processed in 30 days. “Nobody else ever has received those kind of numbers in that short a period of time.” And all Starbucks did was build on the existing prepaid Starbucks card and 2D barcodes. Starbucks has signed up more than three million of their customers for the program, and they likely include some of the best customers Starbucks has.

Customer contact  is the real advantage, he argues. When a merchant accepts payment from a standard credit or debit card, the data the merchant can capture is slim. The Starbucks approach provides a clear contrast.

When a customer registers for the Starbucks mobile payment service, the customer states their preferences and supplies contact information. As a result, Starbucks can communicate with their customers, before and after any transaction.

Starbucks also enjoys lower transaction costs, as it is prepaid system where customers load credits into their accounts ahead of time.

It might not be incorrect, in essence, to argue that, if merchants were starting today with a payment technology system, they wouldn’t even buy point of sale terminals. They’d simply leverage the technology the customers pay for, including using the customer’s communication services, and process directly from a smart phone, Crone says.

Retailers need a payment strategy, and a a mobile strategy, that provides incentives for customers to use the forms of payment that build loyalty, make customers contactable and provide lower costs. That doesn’t mean abandoning a “portfolio” approach. After all, people still will want the freedom to pay using cash, credit card, debit card, check or gift card. But among those options, retailers benefit when they can use the payment system to build loyalty, knowledge of their customer preferences and gain the ability to add marketing services on top. When possible, transaction costs might also be lower taking that approach.

That doesn’t mean NFC won’t find applications, or that Isis cannot ensure itself some role in the mobile payments business. NFC requires a secure element that carriers want embedded in the subscriber information module. Carriers control the SIM, so they would still be gatekeepers when NFC is used.

“So even if they open up to card associations, they control the loading of credentials,” says Crone. But various players in the ecosystem will contest the location of that loadable data, arguing that it should not be in the SIM, but elsewhere in the device. Device manufacturers, for example, would prefer that approach, as it makes their devices more valuable.

With Isis apparently withdrawing from an effort to compete directly with Visa and MasterCard, it will obviously have to find some other role. But competitors who do not necessarily want to be limited by using NFC, the SIM or getting the carrier’s permission now will have new incentives to push their rival systems in the marketplace.

In a way, Isis had been casting a bit of a shadow over rival approaches. Now, it appears we are headed for a period of wider experimentation, with many participants looking at ways to create payment systems providing higher marketing value, advertising or promotion platforms or customer niches, such as mobile merchants, smaller merchants or merchants primarily seeking loyalty program advantages.

Nor is it entirely clear that the “best” strategy is the “most ubiquitous, most widely used” approach. Large retailers might well conclude that they are best served by their own branded programs, using forms of payment limited to their own establishments and venues. They still will accept all the other popular forms of payment, so they give up nothing to gain the advantages of approaches such as that taken by Starbucks, which is to create a program usable only at Starbucks.

With the shade apparently removed, lots of smaller plants will get sunlight.

Mobile Broadband Revenues will Double by 2015

Some "problems" likely are opportunities. Ovum, for example, forecasts that mobile broadband revenues will more than double from $100.5 billion in 2010 to $223 billion in 2015, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 17 per cent. So how is that a "problem"?

Mobile broadband connections will grow at a CAGR of 28 per cent, reaching three billion in 2015, up from 899 million in 2010. The "problem" is that revenue is growing more slowly than "connections."

Of those three billion connections, 82 per cent will use small-screen devices such as smartphones and feature phones, Ovum predicts.

Big-screen mobile broadband connections used to connect laptops, netbooks and tablets will grow at a CAGR of 28 per cent from 2010 to 2015, leading to 554 million connections by 2015.

In terms of revenues, small-screen devices will represent $120 billion worth of revenue in 2015.

So is the growth gap really a problem? It is debatable. One issue is simply that average revenue for a smartphone plan is less than for a large-screen device plan, generally speaking. To the extent that more of the growth is coming from small screen devices. So obviously ARPU is going to be smaller than it would be if most of the growth was driven by higher-ARPU large-screen subscriptions.

Is it a problem that connections are growing at a 28-percent clip, while revenue is growing at 17 percent? Not necessarily. Growth at 17 percent likely outstrips growth for other existing products, hands down, at least in developed markets.

And later adopters typically do not spend as much as early adopters, for any product. Early mobile broadband adoption was boosted by business users, who normally will invest more heavily in productivity tools than consumer users. As the need for mobile broadband increasingly is driven by consumers, ARPU will be lower.

Datamonitor | Media Center | Small-screen devices drive mobile broadband market to revenues of $223 billion

Use and Misuse of "Like" Functions

Marketing strategists now have the ability to increase the number of people that "Like" their companies or products. Brands can offer Facebook users some sort of value, but require that the user "Like" the brand before the offer can be consumed.

That's one way to increase a brand's "Likes," of course. That might have some value. But the trade off is whether it really does anything at all to increase engagement with a user.

Part of the purpose of such "like-gating" is to get consumers engaged and involved. If you ask them to do something for you and they agree to do it, the theory is that you’ve already taken one step in the engagement process with them.

Other companies are trying to drive up their number of Facebook fans because that bumps them up on ranking charts and search engines.

But some us might be quite skeptical that engagement can be driven this way.

Here We are Now, Entertain Us: Like-Gating on Facebook | Social Media | ideaLaunch

56% Say They Have Seen a Product Bar Code

“Mobile barcodes hold promise for marketers as a mechanism for activating other media and providing a bridge between the physical and digital worlds,” said Noah Elkin, eMarketer principal analyst.

In other words, they are an easy way to create an online experience from an offline source.

“But they also present challenges, including fragmentation between open and proprietary barcode formats and the requirement that consumers download a dedicated application to read the codes.”

Software incompatibilities can be a problem, though that is less a problem as time passes. The bigger issue is the value of the information the bar code triggers.

Among the more-interesting applications are ways to engage shoppers while they actually are in a store, shopping. But that means doing something more than pointing a user to a generic website.

Mobile Barcodes Can Be a Powerful Tool Provided Marketers Add Value - eMarketer

A Sampling of "Communications-Enabled Business Processes"

Lots of attention has been given over the last decade or so to the notion of "communications enabled business processes," the integration of various IP telephony features directly into line of business and other enterprise applications.

Some such applications developed in 2010 as part of the BroadSoft "Xtended Incubator Program" include the "InGenius Connector for Salesforce," an application that enables enterprise users to search, dial and view incoming callers when using Salesforce.com.

The "Mobiso Speech Assistant" is a speech enabled dialer. "RemoteOffice for iPhone" allows a user to leverage their mobile phone as an extension of their enterprise phone system.

"Mondago's Go Integrator" provides BroadSoft integration with over a dozen small and medium business personal information manager and customer relationship  packages such as ACT!, GoldMine, Microsoft Access, Lotus Notes, NetSuite, and Sage.

The "FonGenie" web-based IVR service acts as a web-enhanced virtual receptionist and sales representative for small businesses handling all incoming calls.

BroadSoft believes the Xtended Incubator Program enables global service providers to differentiate and more quickly monetize their communications offerings by leveraging BroadSoft's community of 4,500 developers and open APIs.

Isis Decides Not to Challenge Visa, MasterCard

In a major shift, Isis, the mobile payments venture headed by AT&T, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile USA, which originally intended to compete with card issuers, now appears to have abandoned that tack, opting instead for a scaled-back effort that essentially amounts to data mining and revenues that might be built on sharing access to such data in some way.

The shift means an end to the "clash of giants" theme that had AT&T and Verizon challenging Visa and MasterCard directly as a payment processor. What new "story" might emerge remains unclear, for the moment, as Isis now will embark on a search for a new narrative.

Some will note that the shift in strategy solves one problem, but creates others. Isis no longer has to spend the time and capital to create a new retail payments brand, a prospect many had pointed out would be time-consuming and expensive. But the new model also must define and then create a viable new revenue model of some size and scope.

There are huge new uncertainties. Despite the obstacles, the original plan had the advantage of a clearly-defined source of revenue, primarily based on per-transaction fees. Now Isis has to search for both a sustainable role and viable revenue streams to match.

It still is possible that Visa and MasterCard might agree to share some part of transaction revenue with Isis, in exchange for support Isis might provide, but that remains to be seen. It also remains to be seen how significant a revenue stream that could provide.

The change also throws into question the future roles for original partners Barclays Bank and Discover Financial Services. Under the original plan, which would have required Isis to create its own functional equivalent of the branded credit or debit card, Barclays would have been an obvious brand to use. Likewise, Discover Financial would have provided the payments clearinghouse functions.

Under the new plan, it isn't clear what role Barclays or Discover Financial might play. The Wall Street Journal reports that Isis concluded that creating a new branded payment network would take too long, given the level of competition in the market. The Journal also reports that retailers were not keen on adding yet one more provider.

Perhaps intriguingly, the shift of Isis strategy means other players in the ecosystem, especially the many smaller providers plumbing some specific roles within the broader "payments" ecosystem, gain attention.

If Isis has to look for new roles and revenue streams, the many smaller providers of various solutions will become more valuable, at least potentially, if they can provide distinct features and revenue streams, either for the actual payments function, the venues where payment is required or helpful, or in related businesses related in some logical way to people shopping.

Isis isn't planning to launch its first payments trial until 2012, as a provider of mobile payment for transit services in Salt Lake City. What isn't so clear now is how relevant that experiment will be for Isis, long term. It still remains possible that Isis will get some small share of transaction revenue, but some will argue that never will be enough to justify Isis as a business proposition.

Lots of thinking now likely is going into ways mobile data and back office capabilities, such as billing, location and other details about devices, operating systems and so forth might be exposed to third parties. But that sort of thinking has been going on for years, and is not new.

Perhaps a key challenge for Isis now is to avoid exchanging one set of difficult competitors with another set of equally-talented competitors. And Isis will face plenty of those.

Wireless Carriers Scrap Plans for Their Own Mobile-Payment Network, Look to Big Credit Card Companies - WSJ.com

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