Ovum Survey Indicates Major Cloud Services Uptake; Telecom Providers Rated as Trusted Partners

A survey for Cable & Wireless Worldwide by Ovum suggests enterprises are adopting cloud services. The survey of more than 100 global multinational corporations throughout North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific showed that cloud services adoption is up 61 percent from April 2010, with 45 percent of MNCs already utilizing cloud sourcing for at least some IT services.

Telecommunication providers were rated as trusted partners and credible suppliers of cloud services according to 49 percent of respondents, up from 37 percent in 2010.

Ovum Survey Indicates Major Cloud Services Uptake; Telecom Providers Rated as Trusted Partners

Group Gift Buying Illustrates Trend

The importance of group shopping, group payment or group gifting applications can be easy to miss. Mobile coupons, mobile bill splitting and shopping can seem relatively trivial applications.

Companies like the Gifts Project and Friendfund are working to integrate into retail sites either through widgets or white label services, giving businesses an easy way to enable group gifting.

EBay in November launched its Group Gifts service in November, which is powered by the Gifts Project.

The importance is that such applications are part of a broader trend to use online and mobile tools to enable doing things in the real and physical world where most economic activity occurs.

Is Group Gift Buying Poised for Take-Off?

Set-Top Transition is a Business Issue

Cable operators are moving to support streaming subscription video services to IP-connected iPads and TVs, and also looking at ways to replace the traditional set-top box with the tablet and smart phone. That's a double-edged sword.

Though the capital investment has been a significant issue, along with the "truck rolls," the decoder also provides the conditional access that protects and enables the service and revenues. In dispensing with the decoder hardware, cable still has to preserve the access control function.

Once users become accustomed to the idea that the smart phone and tablet are the remote controls, and represent the conditional access gateway, it is going to be logical that they start wondering what other alternatives are available.

Bridging Cable's Tablet Gap

Sprint LTE Announcement Possibly in the Summer of 2011

Sprint Nextel CEO Dan Hesse says the company will provide more details about its fourth generation network plans in the middle of 2011. Most observers think that announcement will involve a move into Long Term Evolution, one way or the other.

Hesse: Sprint has talked to Clearwire about hosting network traffic

Apple Wants Smaller SIMs

Apple has proposed an even-tinier Subscriber Information Module format to the European standards body ETSI. If adopted it will mean the SIM taking up less space in the phone. But Apple also wants less operator control.

Apple's iPad and iPhone 4 both already use micro SIMs, which lose a lot of the plastic from the traditional SIM. But a newer format might help Apple move gradually away from operator-controlled SIMs altogether, allowing iTunes to become the data loading gatekeeper.

This is not just a struggle over real estate, it is a fight for control of the customer.

Apple proposes even tinier SIMs for future iPhones, iPad

Chrome Web Store Will Give Developers 95% of App Revenue

One tool device manufacturers can use to boost interest in their associated app stores is to change the share of revenue given to developers. Google has decided to give developers of apps sold in its Chrome Web Store 95 percent of sales revenue, not 70 percent as is common at other app stores.

In-app purchases will be supported, allowing developers to sell products inside their apps. The store will also launch in 41 new languages and will be available to the entire Chrome installed user base.

Chrome OS

Sprint: LTE in iDEN Spectrum?

Few observers think Sprint will not adopt Long Term Evolution as one of its fourth generation network strategies, though most expect it also will continue to use Clearwire's WiMAX as well. If Sprint decides to switch to LTE, the company must find spectrum to do so.

"There is a high likelihood that LTE is in our future in one flavor or another," said Geoff Martin, who heads up the U.S. operator's M2M collaboration center. http://www.totaltele.com/view.aspx?ID=464629

The logical candidate is the 14 MHz of 800 MHz spectrum now used to support the iDEN network and Nextel devices. Sprint has announced plans to decommission iDEN in 2013.

Sprint switching to LTE

Parks Associates forecasts over two billion people worldwide will own at least one smart phone in 2015, with unit sales growing over 175 percent from 2010. Smart phone shipments grew 70 percent in 2010, with approximately 500 million users.

Paradoxical Web Econonics

The social web’s economics are paradoxical: The more it blossoms, the more it destroys value. Those of you in the telecom or Internet Service Provider industry might well agree. So might many in the bookstore, music or video industries, not to mention other retail businesses.

One might argue that IP telephony adds lots of value, and creates new higher-value businesses based on new unified communications features. One might also observe that IP telephony and VoIP cannibalize the service provider's basic voice business. That's the paradox: the web, the Internet and IP-based services both create new revenue potential and destroy existing value.

Read, Share and Destroy | Monday Note

18% in U.S. Access Location-Based Smartphone Services | ClickZ

Some 17.6 percent of U.S. smart phone users accessed at least one "check-in"-oriented mobile platform during the month of March, 2011 representing 7.1 percent of the nation's entire mobile population, according to comScore.

Location-based service users are more likely to interact with other forms of mobile media and content than non LBS-using smart phone owners. They demonstrated a higher propensity for consuming news content through their handsets, as well as accessing restaurant information and online retail sites, based on data collected in the three-month period ending March 31, 2011

LBS users were also more likely to own a tablet, and a higher percentage recalled seeing ads on their mobile devices. In terms of demographics, 13 to 34 year olds accounted for the majority of users for location services, representing 66.8 percent of users.

18% in U.S. Access Location-Based Smartphone Services | ClickZ

App Providers Control Too Much Personal Information, U.S. Adults Say

When American adults were asked if they agree or disagree that some online companies, such as Google or Facebook, control too much of our personal information and know too much about our browsing habits, 76 percent agree. Only 16 percent disagree, according to a new survey by Adweek and the Harris Poll.

While majorities of both men and women agree that these companies control too much and have too much information about us, women are somewhat more likely to say this than men are (79 percent of women,  74 percent of men).

Yet, despite a large majority of Americans agreeing that these companies know and control too much, Americans are more likely to say they oppose government intervention to regulate large online companies like Google or Facebook (46 percent) rather than support it (36 percent) .

http://www.harrisinteractive.com/NewsRoom.aspx

33x Mobile Traffic Growth Next 10 Years

Mobile traffic will grow 33 times over 2010 levels in the next decade, the UMTS Forum predicts.

The report also predicts that growth will be stronger still in Europe. During the same period, the UMTS Forum estimates that mobile traffic in a typical Western European country will grow by 67 times from 2010 levels.

33x growth in mobile traffic over next decade, predicts UMTS Forum

Will Apple be King of Payments?

"Apple has revolutionized how we consume music, mobile applications, and media, in general. I fully expect them to revolutionize the retail experience, too," says Michael Koploy, Software Advice ERP market analyst.

"If Apple can revolutionize the point of sale, consumers will use their iPhone for retail checkout." That is the trick, isn't it?

"In the process, I think they will come to own a huge chunk of the payments industry," says Koploy. "We think Apple has a chance to own the later opportunity by acting as a merchant services provider."

"Consumers won’t care who’s processing the transaction or earning fees," he argues. It's true that consumers won't care. But retailers will care, as well the existing issuers of credit cards and debit cards, as well as the card associations, especially Visa and MasterCard.

From the outside, it always seems to be logical that a new provider, offering a new experience, ought to be able to change the payments experience. Starbucks perhaps is the best current example of that, in a retail setting.

But consumer desire, though necessary, is not sufficient to drive a change, as it is the retailers who also have to decide such a change in technology and experience benefits them as well. In the past, modifications of the point of service terminals have run as much as $200 per terminal, a capital investment retailers would rather not make.

The other issue is whether any new payment scheme can offer lower transaction costs for retailers. Apple might hope to do so, but has to be aware that the issuing banks and payment networks are not going to stand idly by and allow Apple to erode current industry revenues.

Apple has to be considered one of the more fearsome potential disruptors. But disruption in the payments industry is far harder than it typically appears.

Some of us might guess that Apple could play a bigger role not in the actual payments revenue stream, but as a provider of new value to ecosystem participants. In other words, Apple's biggest success could come not as a replacement for current methods, but as a partner to most of the ecosystem, including end users, retailers, banks and settlement networks.

Why Apple is Poised to Become the Future King of Payments

Chrome Now Has 160 Million Users

Google’s Chrome web browser now counts 160 million users in 41 nations, the company says. That’s more than double the 70 million users of the web browser Google reported at last year’s conference.

Chrome Now Has 160 Million Users

Sprint’s Likely Buyer May Be CenturyLink

Sprint Nextel Corp. might end up being acquired if AT&T successfully acquires T-Mobile USA, and the most likely buyer is CenturyLink, the biggest company in telecommunications without a wireless unit, analysts speculate.

CenturyLink, based in Monroe, Louisiana, is the most logical acquirer because it has the financial resources, it’s shown an appetite for big deals and it needs a wireless business, say analysts including Chris Larsen of Piper Jaffray Cos.

Sprint’s Likely Buyer May Be CenturyLink After AT&T Deal - Bloomberg