Mortgage Origination Forecast

Housing is an important economic indicator. Mortgage issuance is related to housing purchases. So this forecast by the Mortgage Banking Association isn't pretty.

Mobile Users Warm Up to the Check-In

Checking in to location-based services on a mobile phone is still not a mainstream activity, but adoption is increasing, especially among smart phone users.

According to comScore, seven percent of all mobile users and 18 percent of smart phone users accessed check-in services in March 2011.

Users of check-in services were more likely than the overall smartphone population to be female, under 35 years old and full-time students.

Mobile Users Warm Up to the Check-In - eMarketer

NRF Finds Willingness to Use Social Commerce

The National Retail Federation reports that people are more willing to dabble in social commerce than many retailers realize, with 42 percent of those who shop online saying they at least occasionally "follow" a store on social media. More than 56 percent of Facebook users have clicked through to a retail site, while 67 percent of Twitter users have done so.

Perhaps the biggest finding is that these consumers are open to skipping brand sites entirely, with 35 percent saying they would be willing to make a purchase directly from Facebook, and 32 percent right from Twitter. Those findings obviously run counter to some sentiment that people on Facebook are in a socializing mood, not a shopping mood.

But other studies do suggest that social shopping is something users will do. Shoppers are willing to interact with retailers through a variety of social networks and retailers have limitless opportunities to capitalize on the momentum, according to the 2011 Social Commerce Study, a joint research project by Shop.org, comScore and Social Shopping Labs. The report, which evaluates shopping directly influenced by social media, polled 1787 adult online shoppers in April 2011. See New_study_evaluates_consumer_behaviors_attitudes_toward_social_commerce_.php.

According to the Shop.org survey, 42 percent of online consumers have "followed" a retailer proactively through Facebook, Twitter or a retailer's blog, and the average person follows about six retailers. While shoppers' reasoning for following a retailer varies, the majority of respondents (58 percent) said they follow companies to find deals, while nearly half (49 percent) say they want to keep up to date on products. More than one-third also follow retailers for information on contests and events (39 percent).

The NRF study, based on more than 1,700 online shoppers, found that those online shoppers who track retailers typically follow six stores, whether through Facebook, Twitter or a retailer's blog.

MediaPost Publications Online Shoppers 'Follow' Faves On Social Media 06/06/2011:

Facebook Accounts For 38% Of Sharing Traffic On The Web

Overall, sharing now produces an estimated 10 percent of all Internet traffic and 31 percent of referral traffic to sites from search and social.

Search is still about twice as big, according to ShareThis. Facebook appears to drive 38 percent of shared items, email about 17 percent and Twitter about 17 percent.

ShareThis Study: Facebook Accounts For 38 Percent Of Sharing Traffic On The Web

Ten Signs The Double-Dip Recession Has Begun - 24/7 Wall St.

In a technical sense, the U.S. economy left "recession" status and started growing again about July 2009. But the growth has been anemic. And consumers seem to think we never left the great recession of 2008 and 2009, and is again headed downward.

In other words, consumers think the second recession, or dreaded "double dip," already has begun. Economists say that the "Great Recession" began in December 2007 and lasted until July 2009. That may be the way that the economy was seen through the eyes of experts, but many Americans do not believe that the 2008 to 2009 downturn ever ended.

A Gallup poll released in April found that 29 percent of those queried thought the economy was in a “depression” and 26 percent said that the original recession had persisted into 2011.

This is a big problem since "expectations" drive behavior. Worse, there in all likelihood is no long-term hope of fixing the national deficit without a return to robust growth.

Ten Signs The Double-Dip Recession Has Begun - 24/7 Wall St.

65% of iPhone Data is Transferred by Wi-Fi

About 65 percent of Internet data consumed by Apple iPhone users in South Korea is transferred on a Wi-Fi network, South Korean researchers have found. By using Wi-Fi, users also saved 55 percent of battery power by doing so.

About 63 percent of the time, the mobile device can get a Wi-Fi signal, and users tend to stay within a single Wi-Fi zone for about two hours at a time.

http://research.csc.ncsu.edu/netsrv/sites/default/files/CoNEXT2010.pdf

Steve Jobs Had "iCloud" Idea in 1997

It's a good illustration that, sometimes, things developers want to do, cannot be done at a particular point in time. Sometimes it takes a decade or more for the all the background enablers to line up. Apple will announce "iCloud" today, June 6, 2011.

Whati isSocial CRM?

"A lot of people talk about social CRM, but few know what it means' Jan Sysmans, director of product marketing at Sugar CRM, says.

 There are three ways in which social can be introduced within customer relationship management Jan said, on top of the manual access to information from various sources.

First is "what my customers are saying about themselves on various social media platforms." This is the listening component.

Click on the image for a larger view.

Second, there is "the way that your customers want to be talked to," a talking component. Finally, there is the way that your customers want to be engaged with, an engagement component.

View more presentations from Yann Gourvennec

Social CRM: 3 stages of Social integration within sales force automation - [En] Orange Business Live

Are the IT department's days numbered? - [En] Orange Business Live

It's the sort of question a proponent of cloud computing would ask, but Orange staffers speculate about whether enterprises will abandon their internal data centers completely for cloud alternatives in 10 years.

"It is looking increasingly likely that some organizations won't run any internal systems at all in their own enterprise data centers, but will instead source everything from the cloud," says
Anthony Plewes, of Orange Business Services.

Facebook is a case in point. The company was leasing its data centre services from third parties for years, until it decided to build its own.

It unveiled its Oregon-based facility in April 2011, and released the hardware specifications under an initiative called the "Open Compute Project," which Facebook hopes will create a standardized data center model.

Are the IT department's days numbered? - [En] Orange Business Live

Sprint to Sell HTC EVO 3D on June 24, 2011

Sprint will be selling the "HTC EVO 3D" and "HTC EVO View 4G" on the June 24, 2011, representing the first smart phone able to view and record full motion video in three dimensions, while the EVO View 4G will be the first tablet able to use the Sprint national 4G network.

The "glasses-free" 3D smart phone will be available for $199.99, and HTC EVO View 4G, the first 4G tablet in market, will be available for $399.99, with a new two-year service agreement or eligible upgrade.

Customers can pre-order HTC EVO 3D or HTC EVO View 4G at any participating Sprint Store with the purchase of a $50 Sprint gift card (per device).

On June 24, Sprint Stores nationwide will open doors at 8 a.m. local time for customers to get a jump-start on purchasing these hot new devices.

HTC EVO 3D and HTC EVO View 4G, Make Debut Exclusively from Sprint on June 24

Browser is Top Smart Phone App Used in 5 European Countries

Mobile Benchmark Data for the European Market 3 Month Avg. Ending March 2011 Total EU5 (UK, DE, FR, ES and IT), Age 13+ Source: comScore MobiLens
	Reach (%) of Mobile Subscribers
	EU5	France	Germany	Italy	Spain	UK
Sent Text Message	82.4%	82.8%	78.8%	79.7%	80.9%	90.0%
Used Application (excl. pre-installed)	30.3%	28.1%	26.5%	28.4%	29.6%	39.3%
Used Browser	31.0%	31.3%	24.6%	27.8%	28.7%	42.7%
Listened to Music	25.6%	22.7%	26.6%	23.4%	32.3%	24.4%
Accessed Social Networking Site or Blog	19.8%	19.5%	13.3%	18.3%	18.1%	30.2%
Accessed News	14.9%	14.1%	12.3%	13.9%	11.5%	22.0%
Played Games	25.6%	15.4%	24.2%	29.0%	27.7%	32.2%
Used Smartphone	34.5%	30.4%	27.6%	37.9%	39.8%	39.2%

Europe Sees 40 Percent Growth in Mobile Banking Through Smartphones - comScore, Inc:

Groupon has Issues, But not the Ones People Focus On

Since Groupon filed its notice of initial public offering (form S-1), there have been scores, perhaps hundreds of negative articles written about Groupon's business model and prospects. But though there are issues, the most-frequently-raised issues might not be the key concerns. Groupon is, of couse, in a "quiet period" and unable to respond.

But executives at Yipit as a daily deal aggregator of over 500 services, has a different view, after talking to hundreds of daily deal sites, big media companies, white label providers, local merchants, journalists, daily deal users and daily deal non-users. Local merchants do like the service, and the amount of discounts is not an issue for firms with high fixed costs.

Yipit Blog

EchoStar to Debut Small Cable Operator VOD

EchoStar Technologies will introduce a new video-on-demand solution aimed at smaller cable TV operators. The new "Aria" system features a high-definition digital video recorder with a high-resolution interactive program guide, a video-on-demand service.

The set-tops also will be "SlingLoaded," incorporating the ability to view at-home content at remote locations. The single-server solution supports Apple iOS, Google Android, BlackBerry and Windows mobile devices. The system also provides a remote DVR programming feature.

EchoStar Slings Over-the-Top Pitch - 2011-06-05 10:00:00 | Multichannel News

Samsung, LG, Motorola Top U.S. Device Share, comScore Reports

Whatever else you might say about developments in the smart phone market, it has to be noted that Android has succeeded in the marketplace, perhaps beyond what its detractors had hoped for. As recently as August 2010 you could still find some people suggesting Android would not threaten Research in Motion, for example. See http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/25/android_to_conquer_all_not/. Before that, people were arguing that little of the actual cost of a smart phone is driven by the cost of an OS license, so Android would not get much traction. Before that, some were arguing that mobile operating systems were more complicated than they seemed, and that Google would struggle to get it right.

In less than a year, those predictions seem to be catastrophically wrong, for RIM. And though the conventional wisdom now is that Apple and Android are the top-two smart phone operating systems to contend with, the conventional wisdom seems to be right. All of a sudden, it seems an arguable point that RIM and Nokia might not make it. Given RIM's historic dominance of the enterprise, and Nokia's prominence globally, both might have seemed unthinkable just a couple years ago.

Though some of us spend more time tracking smart phone developments than feature phones, Samsung had 24.5 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers in the three months ending in April 2011, says comScore. Samsung is followed by LG with 20.9 percent share and Motorola with 15.6 percent share.

Apple jumped to the fourth position with 8.3 percent share of mobile subscribers (up 1.3 percentage points), while RIM rounded out the top five with 8.2 percent share.

Google Android ranked as the top operating system with 36.4 percent of U.S. smartphone subscribers, up 5.2 percentage points. Apple also gained share, capturing the number-two position with 26 percent of the smartphone market. RIM ranked third with 25.7 percent share, followed by Microsoft (6.7 percent) and Palm (2.6 percent).

Considering that only 32 percent of U.S. subscribers appear to own a smart phone, it is perhaps significant that 39 percent of all phone owners say they use browsers, while 38 percent download apps. About 28 percent use mobile social networking or check out blogs from their mobiles, while 26 percent play games on their devices.

Mobile Content Usage 3 Month Avg. Ending Apr. 2011 vs. 3 Month Avg. Ending Jan. 2011 Total U.S. Mobile Subscribers Ages 13+ Source: comScore MobiLens
	Share (%) of Mobile Subscribers
	Jan-11	Apr-11	Point Change
Total Mobile Subscribers	100.0%	100.0%	N/A
Sent text message to another phone	68.1%	68.8%	0.7
Used browser	37.0%	39.1%	2.1
Used downloaded apps	35.4%	37.8%	2.4
Accessed social networking site or blog	25.3%	28.0%	2.7
Played Games	23.7%	26.2%	2.5
Listened to music on mobile phone	16.5%	18.0%	1.5

comScore Reports April 2011 U.S. Mobile Subscriber Market Share - comScore, Inc

U.S. and European SMBs Buying Cloud Services

U.S. and Western European small and medium business technology buyers are allocating a larger proportion of their spending to cloud-based services, according to AMI-Partners research.

About 15 percent of U.S. SMBs were buying cloud services in 2010, but that will grow to 15 percent in 2015, AMI-Partners predicts.

At the same time, spending by Western Europe’s 11 million small and medium businesses on cloud services is set to grow at a CAGR of 12.6 percent between now and 2015. See http://www.ami-partners.com/index.php?target=news&mode=details&news_id=205.

U.S. SMB buyers are showing a strong inclination to purchase bundled cloud offerings as opposed to a stand-alone application, AMI-Partners says.

“A significant segment of U.S. SMBs prefer to deploy multiple cloud services in order to achieve flexibility, ease of IT management, and lower CAPEX,” says Donald Best of AMI.

The AMI research shows that 38 percent of U.S. SMBs have a strong preference for obtaining software as a service as part of a package or bundle, versus only 11 percent who are interested in a single service. One third of U.S. SMBs are interested in bundling multiple hosted infrastructure and remotely managed services offerings, versus nine percent of firms who only want a single service.

In Western Europe, adoption of cloud services (SaaS, IaaS and Managed Services) will double by 2015. A key contributor to the impetus of the Cloud is the proliferation of mobile devices, AMI-Partners says.

Nearly two thirds of Western European SMBs surveyed by AMI-Partners equip their employees with smart phones for business purposes, and tablet computers are also experiencing very rapid uptake, according to the study. Some eight percent of SMBs plan to purchase over 1.5 million tablets for their businesses in the next 12 months, the study also found.

“The cloud model’s flexible payment model (pay per user per month) makes access to technology affordable for resource-constrained small and medium businesses,” says Hugh Gibbs, VP Research, EMEA.. “But equally important is that the cloud model eases and speeds up implementation of technology."

About 70 percent of European small businesses have no dedicated IT staff resources.

AMI-Partners - News :: U.S. SMBs show strong preference for cloud ?bundling?