According to a recent Nielsen survey, the majority of Netflix users report watching on a TV screen.
Also, half of all Netflix users connect via a game console (Wii, PS3 or Xbox Live).
Conversely for Hulu, watching directly on a computer is the dominant way consumers connect.
Eighty-nine percent of Hulu users watch directly on a computer, while 42 percent of Netflix users report watching on their computers.
One-fifth of Hulu users and 14 percent of Netflix users also report that they stream by connecting their computer to the TV. Other over-the-top, Internet-enabled devices, such as Roku Box, Google TV and Apple TV, were also cited as means for connecting with Hulu and Netflix. Respondents were able to select more than one viewing method to best reflect their viewing habits.
Facebook is in talks to let developers sell virtual goods within mobile Web browsers, part of an effort to generate more revenue from smartphones and tablet computers, Bloomberg reports.
Facebook’s currency, called Credits, would be a feature developers could add to their mobile apps. That means Facebook could get about 30 percent of revenue generated by the sale of virtual goods.
While telcos are well-placed to take advantage of the burgeoning cloud computing market, they face considerable challenges when it comes to supporting and selling cloud services, according to Ovum.
Telcos can leverage existing assets, such as their communications networks, data centers, OSS and BSS systems and existing customer relationships, to offer cloud services to enterprises.
However, while telcos’ assets do provide them with some key advantages over other cloud providers, there are a number of significant challenges that they face.
“Aside from a perceived lack of brand identity in the supply of IT services, obstacles such as bringing internal network and IT teams together, enabling sales teams, and ensuring that OSS and BSS systems can deliver on cloud’s on-demand nature, must be overcome," says Mark Giles, Ovum analyst.
A number of Taiwan-based integrated circuit design houses are expected to see their sales move up vigorously in the third quarter of 2011 due to their shipments of IC parts to the supply chain for Amazon's 7- and 10-inch tablet PCs to be launched in the third quarter, according to DigiTimes.
With Amazon targeting to ship four million tablet PCs in 2011, IC orders from Amazon have become the second largest order from the tablet PC sector, trailing only the iPad, DigiTimes reports.
Consumers would purchase a tablet device running Android if it just had the right price tag. Nearly 50 percent of respondents said they’d get an Android tablet if it had all the features of the iPad, but cost less than $300, according to Retrevo.
The survey of 1,000 people finds demand jumps up to 79 percent if the price falls below $250. Asked which brands consumers would consider purchasing a tablet from, 55 percent said "Amazon."
Walmart has integrated its movie streaming service, VUDU, on Walmart.com. Customers can now shop for thousands of digital VUDU titles, including the hottest new releases, and purchase and/or rent them directly on Walmart.com at www.walmart.com/vudu.
As customers shop for movies at Walmart.com, they now have the option to select the digital VUDU title or the physical title (DVD or Blu-ray Disc). Those who select the digital title complete their transaction through Walmart.com’s checkout, and then can easily stream the movie directly from Walmart.com, VUDU.com, or from one of more than 300 VUDU-enabled devices, including select HDTVs, Blu-ray Disc players and the PlayStation 3.
Though near field communications continues to get legitimate attention as the communications method "of the future" for mobile payments, there are lots of ways to handle the communications.
Jumio thinks "webcams" can do the job. And, in fact, Jumio continues to believe that payments made by plastic cards still will be relevant in the future, especially for growing volumes of online commerce.
Jumio, an online payments start-up created by Jajah founder Daniel Mattes, thinks it makes sense to read online credit card payments made by scanning a card with a webcam.
"Netswipe" is designed to support online retailers, not physical retailers. the technology allows online retailers to easily process a debit or credit card payment by having a user just hold up their card to their webcam. The video is encrypted and streamed to Jumio’s servers, which extract the card number and information and processes the payment.
Card.io. also thinks visual verification methods using cameras will continue to make sense, while AisleBuyer thinks bar codes are a reasonable approach.
Jumio uses a computer vision approach to authenticate cards. For example, by analyzing the video stream, Jumio can confirm that it’s an actual card and not just a copy of a credit card. It can detect the raised lettering and can determine if it is plastic, or whether it appears to have metal inside.
Jumio aims to make an online payment like a card-present, point-of-sale transaction. Users still need to enter in their credit card security code manually. But because the card information is entered through the camera and the code is typed with an onscreen keypad using a mouse or track pad, malicious key-loggers can’t detect the credit card information, Mattes argues.
Jumio plans to charge small merchants 2.75 percent per transaction or 50 cents a scan if they want to use their own payment processor. Medium-sized merchants can integrate Jumio’s payment modules without becoming PCI compliant, while large merchants can directly integrate into Jumio’s payment platform.
Fully 71 percent of online Americans use video-sharing sites such as YouTube and Vimeo, up from 66 percent a year earlier, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
The use of video-sharing sites on any given day also jumped five percentage points, from 23 percent of online Americans in May 2010 to 28 percent in May 2011.
“The rise of broadband and better mobile networks and devices has meant that video has become an increasingly popular part of users’ online experiences,” says Kathleen Moore, author of the report. “People use these sites for every imaginable reason."
Any way you look at it, YouTube is a big part of mobile application usage, at least as measured by bandwidth consumption and demand. YouTube seems to represent 22 percent of all consumed application bandwidth, according to Allot Communications.
YouTube also represents more than half of all streaming video as well.
Data published by Allot Communications shows high and growing mobile video bandwidth consumption over the last year, a finding that will surprise nobody.
A new study by Allot Communications suggests use of VoIP and instant messenger applications by mobile users increased 101 percent over the past six months.
"Consumers’ willingness to pay for voice calls has decreased over time," Allot says. It also is becoming more obvious that consumers’ appetite for paid SMS/MMS services also has also diminished, Allot says.
Made-for-mobile, operating system-agnostic IM applications like Viber are becoming increasingly popular, and it isn't simply carrier-provided messaging services that will start to feel increasing competition. Apple’s iMessage and Google Disco also will allow consumers to use messaging clients "over the top."
Twitter also grew by almost 300 percent in six months, providing enriched personal and multi-recipient messaging capabilities, which can easily replace SMS, Allot says. "In the past couple of months, we have also seen operators like KPN openly reporting their revenue loss to OTT applications like Skype," Allot says.
With the caveat that the market is in motion, it nevertheless remains true that notebooks are used in different ways that tablets or smart phones.
According to Akamai, tablet data consumption really is not all that different from the smart phone profile. PC devices are in a different category.
In the context of smart phone data plans, which tend these days to feature 2-Gbyte to 5 Gbyte plans, the plans do provide sufficient "headroom" for most users.
That might not be the case for notebook users, though.
Is the iPad is outselling Android tablets at a rate of over 24 to 1? Some think so. Strategy Analytics estimates iPad shipments at 61 percent of the market, with Android tablets garnering 30 percent of shipments. But shipment rates are not the same thing as sales rates, of course. Most observers expect the gap to close, over time. Until recently, there were no tablets to buy, other than Apple's devices.
Still, given the complete dominance Apple has in the MP3 player market, some have to wonder whether Apple can create an "iPad" market where others see a "tablet market."
The amount of money a firm has to spend on customer service often is directly related to the way it sells, and what it sells. Mobile phones, for example, can be complicated products for consumers to learn how to use. As any mobile retailer will attest, device complexity ("I can't get it to work") is a major cause of device returns in the first several weeks many users have new devices.
One way to reduce the volume of such returns is to design user interfaces so they are more intuitive. The other tactic is to conduct better in-store training for consumers, or to automate set-up processes. For some Android retailers, the processes haven't been optimized, with predictable results.
"Most manufacturers are facing: the return rate on some Android devices is between 30 and 40 percent, in comparison to the iPhone 4′s 1.7 percent return rate as of Antennagate in 2010," says John Biggs of TechCrunch. Returns cost money, because they require time taken away from other revenue-generating activities.
It appears many developers of Android devices, and their retailers, haven't quite gotten the "ease of use" and therefore "ease of sales" issues resolved.
According to a recent Nielsen survey, the majority of Netflix users report watching on a TV screen.
One-fifth of Hulu users and 14 percent of Netflix users also report that they stream by connecting their computer to the TV. Other over-the-top, Internet-enabled devices, such as Roku Box, Google TV and Apple TV, were also cited as means for connecting with Hulu and Netflix. Respondents were able to select more than one viewing method to best reflect their viewing habits.
