Visa CEO Says Mobile Service Providers Will Not Become Banks

Mobile service providers will not become full-fledged banks, Visa Chief Executive Joseph Saunders predicts, even though some are doing so, and others are looking at it.

At first blush, the notion that mobile service providers would think about becoming banks is not logical. But the burgeoning interest in mobile-facilitated commerce, with serious mobile wallet and mobile payment businesses, is the reason the idea is not far fetched.

If one assumes that large mobile service providers have to find sizable new businesses to enter as their voice, text messaging and broadband revenue streams mature, there is one over-riding concern.

Firms that earn scores of billions of dollars every year have a scale problem when considering new businesses to enter. If a firm seriously faces the challenge of replacing half its current revenue over a 10-year period, then a firm now earning $20 billion a year has to find replacement revenues of $10 billion a year.

Small business opportunities will not do the job. And most who have looked at the matter generally conclude that only a few opportunities actually have $1 billion a year potential for each and every firm that decides to participate. Among them are mobile banking, machine-to-machine services, mobile advertising and specialized services for business customers.

M2M services, including all sorts of telemetry services, could be a big and totally new business, with key utility and medical customers, for example. Specialized services for business customers, taking the form of embedding communications capabilities into key business applications, likewise is a logical and sizable opportunity.

Advertising already is a huge business, as is retail banking. Some will argue that some form of participation in payment transaction fees is interesting. Others will argue that business simply is not big enough. And that is why some believe mobile service providers, no matter what they now say, will have to consider banking, not just mobile payments.

In Africa, that already is happening. Mobile operators as banks

Keep in mind that Visa is a payments clearing network, not a "bank." Mobile service providers, if banks, would be customers for Visa, not competitors. That is not true of other participants in the mobile payments business.

Saunders also says Apple is a customer that could someday become a competitor, while PayPal already is a competitor, albeit one that also uses the Visa network to clear about half its transactions.

Visa Digital Wallet For Growth

Sprint Puts Investment in LightSquared on Hold

Sprint Nextel Corp. says it has put its investment in a partnership with LightSquared Inc. on hold, since LightSquared has not yet gotten approval from the Federal Communications Commission to redeploy its original satellite spectrum as the foundation for a terretrial Long Term Evolution mobile network.

“The companies have agreed to realigning our deployment timeline to coincide with potential FCC actions,” Scott Sloat, a spokesman for Overland Park, Kansas-based Sprint, said. Until approval is received, “both companies believe it is prudent to pull back on expenses,” he said. Sprint Puts Investment in LightSquared on Hold

LightSquared still has not managed to convince the GPS community or military users that its proposed use of former satellite frequencies can avoid interference with GPS receivers. Sprint deal hinges on spectrum approval

Tests continue to show interference issues, though. LightSquared is not the only entity proposing to re-purpose satellite spectrum to build new broadband Long Term Evolution fourth generation mobile networks. Dish Network also is asking the FCC for permission to build a network simialr to LightSquared.

The obvious potential here is the possibility that as many as three brand new LTE networks could be built in the U.S. market, in addition to the networks Sprint, Verizon Wireless and AT&T also are building. Some will argue that is too many 4G networks, but the business models and market segments might be different.

Dish Network will have a primary interest in providing mobile broadband services that augment its moves into new forms of TV distribution. Clearwire's LTE network, as will LightSquared's proposed network, are designed as wholesale platforms for other retail providers to use. 

Google TV Gets "Surprising" Traction

Google TV has many of the same goals as Apple TV, namely to provide a simpler interface, a new way to discover great web and TV content. Google TV wants to provide a more TV-like YouTube experience, while Apple TV aims to do the same for iTunes and other content.

Google says it now has more than 150 apps which developers have specifically built for TV. Up to this point, Apple TV and Google TV have used an "add a box" approach. Google TV appliances

But Google has been aiming to make Google TV capabilities a native feature of the TV set, and seems to be getting some traction in that regard. Google TV getting traction

Google TV partners appear to include LG, Samsung, Sony and Vizio, all of whom will be featuring built in Google TV features on at least some TVs. LG Google TV


Just how soon "many" makes and models will have embedded Google TV is not so clear. It might take several years. How long before Google TV is widely available?

Apple, on the other hand, might be planning to build and sell it own TVs. Apple might build its own TVs.

Mobile Wallet is an Ecosystem: You Can't "Own" It

The concept of an "ecosystem," though sometimes misused, is quite germane in the mobile wallet and mobile payments space, simply because no single entity can "own" the entire value chain.

"Both banks and telephone companies will slowly come to this realization: No one party can “own” the mobile wallet, and the winners will be those that collaborate and cooperate," notes Brett King at ABA Journal. How 2012 will change retail banking forever

The ecosystem has been necessary even in the arguably less-complex traditional credit card business. But mobile commerce, involving credentials, offers, marketing, advertising, in-store promotions, payment and content services, are much more complex.

More Evidence Text Message Market is Changing

There is growing evidence, largely from European markets, that people are starting to use messaging formats other than text messaging, with obvious implications for the perceived value and pricing for carrier-provided text messaging services.

Finland's largest carrier, Sonera, for example, recorded a 22 percent decline in texting on Christmas Eve in 2011, versus the same night in 2010.

It isn't that people are communicating less. They are just using different methods of communicating. Text Messaging Declines

Hong Kong also apparently saw a similar decrease on Christmas, dropping 14% from the same day in 2010. Netherlands service provider KPN provided an early warning when it announced significant declines in messaging volume earlier in 2010. KPN text message declines

Dutch telecoms regulator, OPTA, which shows a significant decline in the number of SMS sent in the Netherlands in first half of  2011 compared to the previous six-month period.

The country's largest operator, KPN, has also reported declining year-on-year messaging volumes over the last few quarters due to what it calls "changing customer behavior."

Wireless Intelligence says text messaging volumes are falling in France, Ireland, Spain and Portugal as well.

According to OPTA, the total number of SMS sent in the Netherlands stood at 5.7 billion for the first six months of the year, down 2.5 percent from 5.9 billion in the second half of  2010, even though total text messaging revenue rose slightly (0.6 percent) to EUR378 million during the period.

That should not come as a surprise. The number of over the top messaging alternatives has been growing for years. But there is a "network effect" for messaging, as there is for any other communications tool. Until a user is fairly sure that nearly everybody he or she wants to communicate with can be reached by a particular tool, adoption is slower.

But there always is a tipping point, where the expectation changes from "I doubt this person uses this tool" to "there is a good chance they use this tool." Finally, there is the point of ubiquity, when the assumption simply is that "everybody" uses the tool.

Also, the history of text messaging and email are instructive. Though most cannot remember a time when it was so, email and messaging services once upon a time ere not federated. In other words, you could not send messages across domains.

History also tells us what happens after federation: usage explodes. With alternative messaging platforms, we still are not in a "full federation" mode, where anybody can send messages to any other user, irrespective of what device, operating system, service provider or application they prefer to use. That day will come, though.

When it does, usage of text messaging is going to fall sharply, unless it is a feature people can use for no incremental charge.

Google Chrome Gets Faster, Safer

Google has released a Beta version of its Chrome browser that is supposed to be faster, and more secure, as well.


"One of the things people like best about Chrome is that it loads web pages quickly," Google's Chrome blog says. "To get you where you want to go even faster, Chrome will now start loading some web pages in the background, even before you’ve finished typing the URL in the omnibox." 

"If the URL auto-completes to a site you’re very likely to visit, Chrome will begin to prerender the page."

Pre-rendering reduces the time between when you hit Enter and when you see your fully-loaded web page--in some cases, the web page appears instantly.


On the security front, improvements to Chrome’s Safe Browsing technology should help protect you from additional types of malware attacks. Google Chrome Blog

Previously, Chrome focused primarily on protecting you from sites that would exploit your computer with no user interaction required. Now, we’re seeing an increase in malicious websites that try to convince you to download and run a file that will harm your computer. Some websites even pretend this malicious file is a free anti-virus product.


To help protect you against malicious downloads, Chrome now includes expanded functionality to analyze executable files (such as “.exe” and “.msi” files) that you download. If a file you download is known to be bad, or is hosted on a website that hosts a relatively high percentage of malicious downloads, Chrome will warn you that the file appears to be malicious and that you should discard it.


I've just loaded it and it does seem to execute faster. I'm amazed. 

Who Are the Top 10 Power Influencers in Mobile?

 

Thanks, Traackr. Hat tip to Forbes.

See this 10 most influential or Traacker

The Digital Living Room

Over the last several decades, virtually all changes in consumer use of television have shifted consumption in the direction of non-linear consumption.

You can argue about whether the shift to "interactive television" has happened, or what that actually means.

Does Social Messaging Displace Text Messaging?

The data is impressionistic, but one user has discovered that ability to send Apple iOS 5 "iMessages" does reduce the amount of text messaging.

Apple's iMessage is a service that seeks to replace text messaging, and in at least this case, seems to do precisely that.

The iMessage service sends messages (text, images or video) using any broadband access mechanism, defaulting to text messaging if the recipient cannot receive such messages. It probably is important to note that the biggest potential effects would be seen where one iOS 5 user sends lots of messages to other iOS 5 users.

 What iMessage cuts text messaging

Apps Consume Much More Bandwidth than Web Sessions

A recent test of app data consumption suggests that using a mobile app rather than a browser to view the same content has vastly different bandwidth consumption implications.

The test compared PC and tablet web browsers to view the Wall Street Journal home page, with an iPad Wall Street Journal app to reach the same home page.

The data consumed using the Web browser on the iPad and on a PC to access the WSJ home page was similar, both averaging around 2.2 megabytes in total consumption (sent and received).  The same test was run accessing the The Weather Channel site, which revealed similar results (around .9MB in total consumption).

Although the iPad Web browser consumed slightly more data than the PC web browser for TWC, the difference was not enough to warrant further investigation, says Greg Wolf, a principal with NetForecast who conducted the test. However, using the iPad apps to read the WSJ and TWC tells is a very different story.

The WSJ on average consumed 47MB of data when downloading a daily issue, while TWC consumed on average 7MB just to display the main menu.

 In other words, the WSJ iPad app consumed 21 times more data than accessing the WSJ homepage using a Web browser, and the TWC app consumed over 7 times more data than accessing the TWC main menu using a Web browser.

Putting aside the obvious fact that the experience of using a native iPad app is designed to deliver a richer, multimedia experience, the point here is that this experience comes at a price. App data consumption much higher than web sessions

Video and Cloud Killer Apps for 4G?

Some observers do not believe there will be any "killer app" for Long Term Evolution and 4G networks. But in a survey of 150 mobile industry executives, "video" and "cloud computing" are candidates for such status, if there are any consensus candidates.

About half of the respondents seem to think 4G mobile service is just "faster" access.

2012 in mobile

Apple TV: a Content Device Needs Content

Content businesses use technology, but are not fundamentally about technology. Back in the days of analog television, three decades ago, a couple of delivery systems, such as laser discs, provided much-better image quality. Laser disc lost out in the market to VCRs, which offered visibly-worse image quality.

But there were two distinct advantages: lower device cost and much-greater content selection. All other things being equal, consumers will tend to choose wide content choices over video quality, and lower-cost devices over higher-cost devices.

But all would-be video providers have to convince content owners to license content. And that will remain a key challenge for any would-be developers of new TVs and video playback and purchasing systems.

An Apple television foray makes sense. People could use any Apple device to buy TV shows, movies, music or games through iTunes and then play their purchases across all Apple's products.

But, so far, it does not appear that Apple has been notably successful at convincing content owners to license TV programming for sale through iTunes. Apple television

9% of U.S. Consumers Have Abandoned Video Service

About nine percent of U.S. respondents to a Deloitte survey say they have stopped buying video entertainment subscriptions from cable, telco or satellite providers, while another 11 percent report they are considering doing so.

Perhaps the important finding is why people are considering doing so. The 11 percent who report they are considering abandoning subscription TV services say they now can watch almost all of their favorite shows online.

One would guess that, as typically is the case when product substitution occurs, that the first “switchers” are users for whom the existing solutions have low value, compared to product price.

The classic example is the person who doesn’t watch much television in the first place and does not have children or other family members who do enjoy television, making a $100 a month fee “high” in relationship to value.

In the case of the "typical end user," video cord cutting seems to be more of a barrier than some might think. Highly-motivated end users might put up with quite a lot of hassle to avoid buying video. For most, such efforts will be too much bother. 9% of U.S. Consumers Have Abandoned Video Service - Carrier Evolution

Mobile Payments, Commerce Big in 2012?

There's an unusual finding in Chetan Sharma's most-recent survey of 150 mobile service provider and suppler executives looking at what will be hot in mobile in 2012. The respondents believe mobile payments and mobile commerce will be more popular consumer applications than location services and music, and will be only modestly less popular than messaging.

That is almost shocking. The only way to make sense of the findings is that "commerce" is broadly defined to include checking product availability and prices from a mobile, browsing shopping sites on a mobile device, or looking for a particular store.

The clue is that there appear to have been separate questions asked about use of near field communications, for example. Still, the fact that mobile payments and mobile commerce are considered the second most popular consumer application of 2012 is instructive, even if most observers might agree that the bulk of that activity will take the form of commerce rather than payments.

The other noteworthy finding is that many of the executives expect Amazon will enter the mobile market in a more-direct way in 2012. Mobile executives views on 2012

Western Europe Mobile Churn Will Grow in 2012

Mobile customer churn will increase in many European Union markets in 2012, analysts at Yankee Group now predict. “Value” is expected to be a key driver for much of that churn, one might conclude, with potential winners among the ranks of service providers with a “value” orientation.

During 2012, several European Union countries will slide into recession and governments will press ahead with tough austerity measures, Yankee Group believes. The most affected countries will include Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland, but others, including the U.K. and France, will also be impacted.

“As they did during the last recession, customers will optimize their mobile consumption behavior in an attempt to minimize monthly spend,” say Yankee Group researchers.

During the first year of the recession between the fourth quarter of 2008 and the fourth quarter of 2009, monthly churn increased by 0.14 percentage points. That might not sound like much, but leads to about a 17-percent increase in churn rate over a year’s time.

During 2012, similar switching behavior will contribute to another increase in churn rates. Western Europe Mobile Churn Will Grow in 2012 - Carrier Evolution