Global Service Provider Capex Will Grow Through 2014

Global capital investment by telecom and other service providers is growing, but nearly all the growth is found in markets other than the United States, a new forecast by Yankee Group suggests.

• Capital spending will increase 2.9 percent from 2010 levels, from U.S.$267.9 billion to U.S.$275.7 billion. Stabilization of the macroeconomic environment will lead to overall capital spending growth after two straight years of decline. In fact, we now forecast global telecom capital spending will continue to rise through 2014 (see Exhibit 1).
• EMEA and Latin America will grow capex the most. EMEA will grow by 5.1 percent, while Latin America—buoyed by strong demand for mobile broadband and value-added services (VAS) and aggressive investment by multi-national operators such as Telefónica—will grow by 6.2 percent.
• Asia-Pacific will remain resilient. The Asia-Pacific region, where last year we predicted a dramatic drop in spending among Tier 1 operators in China (in particular, China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom), proved to be remarkably resilient in their spending levels for 2010 and came in roughly flat (we had expected a drop of more than 10 percent). We expect to see a continuation of this investment cycle in 2011, with capex growing 4.4 percent year over year.
• North American capex will decline by 3 percent. North American operators will decrease spending slightly, from $70.8 billion in 2010 to $68.7 billion in 2011, making North America the only region reducing capex in 2011.

Enterprise Tablet Users Seem to Use More Collaboration Tools

A recent survey by the Yankee Group of enterprise tablet users suggests tablet users work out of the office much more than other workers. The survey also suggests the tablet is encouraging them to use more collaboration tools.

Tablet users are more likely to use blogs, consumer VoIP, podcasts, online backup an storage, wikis and content aggregators.

Business Tablet Owners Work Outside the Office

Tablet owners do most of their work outside their primary office, a survey by the Yankee Group suggests. Researcher Denise Lund says 55 percent spend less than 25 percent of their weekly working hours at their primary business office (exclusive of a home office). Tablet users are the classic "remote workers" or "traveling workers."

Tablet owners often work from hotels. Some 10 percent spend between eight percent and 35 percent of their time at a hotel.

More than half work from a customer site or office during the week. About 54 percent spend at least a portion of their weekly working hours at a customer site or office.

In a very condensed time frame (roughly a year), tablets have achieved one-quarter of smartphones’ presence in the enterprise, and one might argue that the computing functionality a tablet represents is sufficient for many remote workers, especially business or technology consultants.

The percentage of employees bringing tablets to work grew 120 percent in 2010, whereas enterprise-provisioned tablets grew only 64 percent.

Employees provided with tablets see an average uplift in productivity of 40 percent across all locations. As a comparison, workers provided with smartphones see just a 16 percent average uplift. It is important to note that we ask respondents to estimate their productivity before we ask which devices they use, so their responses are not skewed by their device usage.

Google’s Economic Impact: $64 Billion

Google's search and advertising tools provided $64 billion of economic activity in 2010, the company says.

Google derives that estimate by looking at business activity in each of the U.S. states and then estimating the economic value provided by Google Search and AdWords, Google AdSense and Google Grants.

To estimate the economic impact of Google Search and AdWords, Google uses two assumptions. First, that businesses make an average of $2 in revenue for every $1 they spend on AdWords. Google Chief Economist Hal Varian, developed this estimate based on observed cost-per-click activity across a large sample of Google advertisers.

The second assumption is that businesses receive an average of 5 clicks on their search results for every 1 click on their ads.

Google’s Economic Impact | 2010

How 20% of Social Network Actions or Actors Determine 80% of Results

"If you wanted to nudge people on a social network into trying a new product or get a biochemical system to turn compound A into compound B, you could just push your product or compound into every entry point in the network. But that’s sort of a silly approach, says Jean-Jacques Slotine of MIT. A much more efficient tactic would be to target just the nodes needed to get the desired outcome.

So, along with colleagues Albert-László Barabási and Yang-Yu Liu of Northeastern University in Boston, Slotine developed an algorithm that calculates the minimum number of these driver nodes and finds them. 'Dense networks, on the other hand, such as many social networks, were much easier to control: Influence roughly 20 percent of the nodes and the whole network responds.

Those findings suggest that very-large networks are not chaotic, but rather structured, in terms of how influence and impact works across the network.

How 20% of Social Network Actions or Actors Determine 80% of Results

Two Thirds Of Moms Shop With Their Smart Phones

In a survey of 239 mothers, whom Greystripe recruited using mobile banner ads in its network, 66 percent said that their smartphones play a role in their shopping trips.

Around 45 percent of shoppers surveyed by Greystripe said they use their phones to locate the nearest store.

The next most common use of smartphones was to compare prices.

About 15 percent of the women surveyed said they actually made purchases using their phones.Most smartphone-wielding mothers put their phones to work while they shop, according to Greystripe.

Two Thirds Of Moms Shop With Their Smartphones

Axvoice Launches $99 a year VoIP Plan

"Value" isn't necessarily "price." Many people cannot put an actual monetary figure on the value of their email, instant messaging, social network or other services. But there is a fair amount of value there. But prices sometimes send signals about value.

This summer Axvoice offers $99/year plan which includes unlimited calling in the U.S. and Canada for the whole year. That's a bit more than $8 a month. Again, value is not the same thing as price. But it is hard to argue with the notion that some voice services are setting a very-real retail price on calling value, at least in terms of fixed line calling in North America.

Axvoice Summer Special - Beat the Phone Bill Heat with $99 Per Year Plan

Tips for Developing a Mobile Content Strategy

Developing a Mobile Strategy

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Mobile Search Leads to Retail Shopping

Search is becoming more important for mobile marketing, in large part because mobile search leads to actions, ranging from talking to other people, visiting social networks and recommending brands to other people.

More important is the growing evidence that mobile search leads to retail store visits and purchasing of products.

IPhone 4S coming to Sprint, T-Mobile?

Analyst Peter Misek at Jefferies & Co. says the next iPhone that Apple comes out with will be dubbed the 4S and that Sprint and T-Mobile will be added as U.S. carriers.

IPhone 4S coming to Sprint, T-Mobile?

Small Businesses Turning to Apps

Businesses now are using mobile apps software for a variety of business processes. The market for these apps was $3.21 billion last year and is expected to nearly double to $6.12 billion by 2014, according to research firm Compass Intelligence, and reported by the Wall Street Journal.

"Apps are no longer exotic," says Abhi Ingle, an AT&T Inc. executive who deals with small-business applications.

One might speculate that the trend will continue, increasingly offering many ecosystem participants an ability to sell business software where it would have been prohibitive in the past, not the least because of sales staff training issues.

read more here (subscription required)

Google to Raise More Cash?

Google has filed a required shelf registration (Form S-3) with the Securities and Exchange Commission that authorizes the potential sale of stock or borrowing.

Google doesn't have to do so, but the filing gives it the ability to do so if it chooses. There is some speculation Google might want to borrow as much as $3 billion, rather than issue new shares. Firms sometimes take on new lines of credit simply because they can do so at favorable rates, not necessarily because the cash has some immediate and obvious purpose beyond increasing liquidity.

Google has about $25 billion cash on hand, already.

Form S-3ASR

"Dumb Pipe" Makes the New York Times

It is not news to communications industry professionals, but the New York Times writes about the issues for mobile service providers as "eventually, everything migrates to a data channel,” as Brian Higgins, an executive at Verizon Wireless, says.

"Much of the value in communication now sits above basic connectivity,” says Charles S. Golvin, Forrester Research analyst. Applications such as instant messaging, video calling and web conferencing can be delivered to consumers by companies like Google, Apple and Cisco, not just the carriers, he notes.

The problem is that the enduring service of the future is "access" to the web and Internet. Everything else at the application level is going to be competitive. Anyway you look at it, the unique role for a mobile service provider is access. On top of that service providers obviously sell voice apps, text messaging and other apps as well.

In that sense, the argument about "dumb pipe" is a bit misleading. A mobile service provider cannot fail to offer "access" or it no longer is a mobile service provider. But up to this point, that access always has come bundled directly with applications. The new challenges exists in that applications and access increasingly are loosely coupled in the data world. As voice and other applications become apps delivered over a data connection, the terrain upon which apps and access are loosely associated will continue to grow.

Data Networks Force Wireless to Find New Income - NYTimes.com

South African mobile banking Up 17% Since 2010

Mobile banking in South Africa now is used by 44 percent of urban mobile phone users, up from 27 percent in 2010, according to a study by World Wide Worx.

In smaller towns, 27 percent now use cellphone banking, suggesting that rural areas lag urban users by about a year in take-up of these services. In total, 37 percent of South Africans in urban and rural areas aged 16 and above now use mobile banking.

The vast majority of mobile banking customers still use the basic services, such as balance enquiries (78 percent) and notifications (58 percent).

However, transactional services are for the first time major components of use, with half of respondents buying airtime, 24 percent paying accounts, and 17 percent transferring funds between accounts. Some 12 percent of users sendmoney to other individuals and 11 percent make purchases using their mobile phones.

Cellphone banking surges | World Wide Worx

Shopkick Illustates Online Plus Offline Trend

Shopkick’s location-aware smart phone app allows shoppers use their smartphones not just to shop online, but also to interact with stores in the real world. That's an illustration of the big trend that includes mobile payments, namely the effort to span the space between "online" and "physical" shopping and commerce.

Shopkick (iPhone, Android, Free) gives users points (called “kickbucks”) when they walk into participating stores (partners include Macys, Crate & Barrel, Best Buy, Macy’s, American Eagle and Target), pick up merchandise by scanning the barcodes with their smartphone cameras and make purchases. Kickbucks can then be redeemed for rewards like gift cards and merchandise.

Shopkick - location based service which bridges the worlds of mobile and physical retail