The growing mobile payment divide

"Mobile payments and the mobile wallet are turning out to be completely different things," says David Schropfer, consultant and author of "The SmartPhone Wallet."

The mobile wallet, which allows a user to store and access a number of accounts and credit cards linked to loyalty programs and offers, all from a mobile device, is developing in the U.S. mainly as a way to attract consumers with plenty of other payment options. "I don't think there will be much market adoption of the mobile wallet without it being attached to other options."

In the developing world, the focus is more directly on enabling people to send money to each other, and other institutions, directly from a mobile phone, because the banking infrastructure is undeveloped.

Mobile payment analyst Bruce Burke argues that a variety of "front ends" will develop, using multiple brand ecosystems, devices and mobile service providers, typically using established transactions networks.

Mobile wallet and mobile payment

Global mobile revenues will be $1.1 Trillion in 2012

Wireless Intelligence now forecasts that global wireless service provider revenue will hit $1.1 trillion in 2012. Why is that significant? Over the last decade, global fixed-line revenue was about $1 trillion. So the new forecast suggests that mobile service revenue will surpass fixed-line revenue on a global basis by 2012, if not before. Global mobile revenues will be $1.1 Trillion in 2012

It long has been the case that mobile revenues have outstripped fixed-line revenue in developed markets.

What is new is that revenue in developing markets, the new global revenue engine of growth, also will shift to wireless. As recently as 2007, wireline revenues still were more than 50 percent of total industry revenues.

http://ipcarrier.blogspot.com/2010/01/how-will-global-telecom-revenue-sources.html 

Verizon Tops Customer Care Rankings in Latest JD Power Survey

The latest JD Power survey of customer service performance shows that Verizon Wireless is now at the top of the mobile service provider rankings. Verizon Wireless scored a 770 (out of a total 1,000 points) which was the highest score in “JD Power & Associates 2011 Wireless Customer Care Performance Study – Volume 2″.

Until the announcement of the T-Mobile AT&T merger, the top spot in the Wirelss Customer Care Performance Study was T-Mobile USA. The last survey before the latest survey had Sprint at the top.

Verizon Tops JD Power Rankings for Customer Care

That doesn't necessarily mean mobile or other service providers generally score all that well in broader surveys of customer satisfaction. See http://ipcarrier.blogspot.com/2011/04/service-providers-do-not-rank-high-on.html.

Typically, service providers score in the middle of the pack, across industry verticals. 

Android Now Controls 39% Of The U.S. Smart Phone Market

Android now owns 39 percent of the smart phone market in the U.S. up three percent from the previous period measured by Nielsen. Apple controls 28 percent, which is up two percent from the prior quarter.

Research in Motion is at 20 percent, down by three percent. Microsoft's combined mobile OS share is at nine percent, which is down seven percent.

Android Now Controls 39% Of The U.S. Smartphone Market

Sprint Nextel and LightSquared Announce Spectrum Hosting and Network Services Agreement | Business Wire

LightSquared, now building a new wholesale-only Long Term Evolution network, has signed a 15-year deal with Sprint that expedites LightSquared's construction timetable by allowing it to co-locate on existing Sprint towers. The deal also will save LightSquared a significant amount of capital investment as well.

Under the agreement, LightSquared will pay Sprint to deploy and operate a nationwide LTE network that hosts L-Band spectrum licensed to or available to LightSquared. Also, for the first 11 years, LightSquared will make payments to Sprint of approximately $9 billion in cash for spectrum hosting and network services, as well as LTE and satellite purchase credits Sprint can use which are currently estimated to be valued at approximately $4.5 billion.

The agreement also provides Sprint the opportunity to purchase up to 50 percent of LightSquared’s expected L-Band 4G capacity. The wholesale purchase credits will provide Sprint the option to obtain lower cost wholesale access to LTE capacity by offsetting Sprint’s purchases of 4G capacity from LightSquared, should Sprint elect to incorporate the L-Band LTE capability as part of its 4G offering. Virtually all observers believe Sprint will do so.

This agreement is expected to lower network capital and operating expenses for LightSquared by more than $13 billion over the next eight years in comparison with the cost of a stand-alone network build. LightSquared expects the deployment of the nationwide 4G-LTE network to be completed more than one year ahead of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) mandate to cover 260 million Americans by 2015.

LightSquared has also entered into a 3G nationwide roaming agreement with Sprint. With access to Sprint’s 3G nationwide network, LightSquared’s wholesale customers will be able to offer combined 4G/3G data services as soon as LightSquared launches its first 4G markets in 2012. That typically is an important capability, as there will be locations where the 4G signal, for any number of reasons, is not available. Though users will default to the 3G network, coverage will be significantly enhanced.

The move does not mean Sprint is abandoning its WiMAX 4G network or services, only that it also is adding LTE capabilities in a significant way. That is expected to be important as it will allow Sprint to take advantage of LTE economies of scale in the handset area. Given the universal switch to LTE by the world's GSM carriers, handset manufacturers will have much more incentive to innovate in the LTE handset area, compared to the more-limited WiMAX space.

Sprint Nextel and LightSquared Announce Spectrum Hosting and Network Services Agreement

BT Says "Very High Speed" Customers Triple

"Our super-fast broadband network has now passed over  five million premises and the customer base has almost trebled in the last six months," says BT CEO Ian Livingston. That network can provide speeds up to 100 Mbps.

But BT didn't say precisely how many subscribers that tripling represented. So far, service providers offering very-high-speed services (50 Mbps or 100 Mbps) have gotten very low penetration, and do not provide actual subscriber figures. BT seems to be in that camp as well.

Jon Stewart on Twitter

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Google to Launch Page Speed Service

Google is preparing to launch "Page Speed Service," which promises to speed up any website's page-loading performance by as much as 25 percent to 60 percent. Page Speed Service

To use the service, webmasters need to sign up and point your site’s DNS entry to Google. Page Speed Service fetches content from your servers, rewrites your pages by applying web performance best practices, and serves them to end users via Google's servers across the globe. Your users will continue to access your site just as they did before, only with faster load times. Now you don’t have to worry about concatenating CSS, compressing images, caching, gzipping resources or other web performance best practices.

Presumably the service will be offered without charge initially, then as a subscription service. See an example of test results here https://code.google.com/speed/pss/docs/tryit.html

UK Contactless to Reach a Tipping Point in 2011?

As the European country with the most contactless payment terminals in place, along with high-profile near field communications commercial rollouts either already launched or planned this year, what happens in the United Kingdom offers a sign for how contactless payment might fare in the rest of Europe and beyond, NFC Times believes.

There will be about 25 million contactless cards on issue and roughly 10 percent of the country’s merchants will be equipped to accept them by the end of 2011, predicted James McDonald, who heads contactless payments for Barclaycard Global Payment Acceptance, the merchant acquiring arm for Barclays bank and the bank’s Barclaycard credit card unit.

UK Contactless to Reach a Tipping Point in 2011?

PayPal Readies Retail Payments Push

"Being in the payments business is harder than saying you're in the payments business," says Sam Shrauger, PayPal VP. PayPal clearly is gearing up for an extension of its online payments business to retail and physical settings.

Shrauger says PayPal plans to hold trials with stores by the end of the year, and hopes to be operational at stores run by 20 large retailers by the end of 2012.

Much of the industry is focusing on near field communications, but PayPal seems to prefer a communications-agnostic approach. "Relying on a single technology makes it very difficult for the consumer," Shrauger says.

Read more.

What Netflix and Hulu Users are Watching

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.

What Netflix and Hulu Users are Watching… and How

Facebook Credits for Mobile Apps?

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.

Facebook Said to Be in Talks to Bring Credits to Mobile Browsers

Telcos Face Cloud Obstacles

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.

Significant operational hurdles for telco cloud services

Amazon Tablet in Third Quarter?

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.

Taiwan shipping ICs for Amazon tablets

Square Talks about Mobile Payments