Apple iPhone Share Growing, in Some Demographics?

It just makes sense that if a particular product is a run-away leader in market share, that buying intentions might match that share. Also, it often happens that market share dominance leads over time, to even more dominance.

Rivals to Apple know what happened in the MP3 player market. Many suppliers in the tablet market would be forgiven a fear that Apple is doing in the tablet market what it did in the MP3 market.

The smart phone market arguably has been more competitive, but a new survey by ChangeWave Research suggests Apple could be increasing its share of market, at least among the typically technology-sophisticated ChangeWave audience.

The latest ChangeWave Research survey of 4, 413 respondents suggests 56 percent of those who plan on replacing their phones in the next three months plan to get an iPhone. In a highly-fragmented market, that is a big number.

That might not be reflective of overall market trends, as other studies tend to show gradual market share gains by many rival Android models, with a dip in Apple's market share.

BlackBerry's woes also are clear from the survey. Where BlackBerry once had smart phone market share in the 30-percent to 40-percent range, it now has declined to two-percent to three-percent ranges.

Intuit acquires AisleBuyer: "Showrooming" Antidote?

Intuit has acquired AisleBuyer, which has a mobile application that allows merchants to support e-commerce operations by mobile phone.

Using AisleBuyer, users scan a product’s bar code in a store, see reviews and ratings, as well as pay for a product with a credit card, on the spot. The notion is that  Intuit's small business payment business benefits from extending merchant retail capabilities further in an online commerce direction.

The deal illustrates a key trend in recent months, namely a bigger emphasis in the mobile payments space on "commerce" than crosses the traditional in-store retailing and e-commerce sides of the retailing business.

In other words, retailers seem to be thinking in new ways about "brick and mortar" and online retail. Where it might once have been more common for store-based retailers to see online as the competition, thereby stifling their own online operations, many retailers seem to have shifted their thinking.

Now an online retailing effort is seen as competition with Amazon and other online outlets, not competition with the retailer's own online store. At the same time, there is a new understanding that "showrooming," where potential buyers check out online prices and delivery while in stores looking at merchandise, is a new problem to be solved.

Nobody can tell yet hot successful brick and mortar retailers will be at fending off showrooming, or how the balance between online and physical retailing will change in the future. The Intuit acquisition clearly is a bet on a future that has smaller retailers engaging in both online and traditional retail operations, supporting online shopping both in-store and at all other times.

Why Video Subscription Fees Are "So High"

Licensing fees paid by cable, satellite and telco distributors to program suppliers increased 8.2 percent in 2011 to around $33.5 billion, and likely will grow eight percent for each of the next several years going forward, surpassing $39 billion by 2013, according to Nomura Equity Research.
Just ffour media conglomerates account for 75 percent of this fees, with the Walt Disney Company representing 24 percent of all licensing fees, principally because of ESPN.

Notable: Disney distributes ESPN, which has far and away the highest carriage fees in the business, generating about $4.69 in licensing fees per subscriber, per month, the study shows.
Time Warner, which owns  HBO, TNT, TBS and CNN, represents 21 percent of affiliate fees; Comcast, owner of Bravo and the USA Network, accounts for 16 percent; and News Corp. represents 14 percent of fees.

Re-transmission fees paid to broadcast network affiliate stations totaled nearly $400 million in 2011 and should reach $750 million in 2012, as well.


Obviously, all those fees get passed along to consumers, as Paidcontent notes.

Why "Interactive TV" is Dead

Tablets are displacing PCs and smart phones as the “couch computer” of choice, according to Forrester Research. But even before tablets began to assume that role, it already was clear that "interactivity" with TV was an experience using the Internet. 


One might argue that answers the question about prospects for "interactive TV." Simply, users have voted for "interaction" with TV content using the Internet, mobile devices, Web and apps. There are therefore vastly limited opportunities to build "interaction" into TV content that do not lean on mobile devices, tablets and PCs as the vehicles for interaction. 


Some 85 percent of US tablet owners use their tablets while watching TV, and according to Nielsen, 30 percent of total tablet time is spent while watching TV. 


 Tablets also turn TV into a “dumb” device, Forrester argues.


About 18 percent of respondents surveyed by Forrester say they connect their tablets to their TVs. So much for "smart TVs."


Some 32 percent of tablet owners say they won’t buy a small (less than 24”) TV in the future, apparently because the tablet itself now displaces the small TV.


Consumers are using tablets as personal TVs where they had none before, such as in the kitchen, bathroom, and airports, for example.


The larger point is that "interactive TV" already has become a mass market activity, just not in the way its proponents originally had expected. 

How 4G is like 1G

In one crucial respect, fourth-generation mobile networks using Long Term Evolution represent a return to the global situation for first-generation mobile networks. Though global mobile networks were never completely identical, since multiple frequencies always have been used, LTE is the first generation of networks since the first to offer better prospects for global roaming.


In the second and third generations of technology, there were clear "islands" based on distinct air interfaces. LTE will unify the air interface to a greater extent than has been possible for some time, for example. Time division and frequency division interfaces still will exist, as well as a number of different global frequency bands. 


The main groups of frequencies will include:



700 MHz (US Digital Dividend, various bands) 170 devices
800 MHz (EU Digital Dividend, Band 20) 72 devices
1800 MHz (Band 3) 75 devices
2600 MHz (Band 7) 94 devices
800/1800/2600 MHz 57 devices
AWS (Band 4) 72 devices


But there are "backwards compatibility issues" of some magnitude, though. Some 217 existing  LTE devices also must operate on either HSPA, HSPA or 42 Mbps DC-HSPA networks. Also, 91 LTE devices support 42 Mbps HSPA technology, the Global Mobile Suppliers Association says. 



Some 108 LTE devices support EV-DO networks, as well. 

How Much Can be Done to Improve User Experience for Fixed Network Broadband Users?

Under current Federal Communications Commission rules, fixed network broadband providers cannot prioritize packets, even if such optimization would be beneficial for users of some applications, including any real-time services. That especially is true for users of online video, videoconferencing, voice and gaming, as well as business applications such as remote database access.


But an analysis of data aggregated from 45 U.S. rural communications service providers suggests that rural users behave in ways similar to urban users. There is no significant rural-urban divide in terms of how users behave.

Video streaming was the dominant broadband-enabled application among eight applications studied by Calix. Video streaming accounted for 67 percent of down stream Internet traffic and 13 percent of upstream traffic in the studied networks.

In terms of upstream traffic, business services generated the most, accounting for 53 percent of all upstream traffic.

As other reports consistently show, a small percentage of very-heavy users account for a disproportionate amount of usage. About five  percent of users account for 50 percent of Internet traffic, the Calix report found.

Many would argue that service providers use distinctive usage cases to create customized service packages, at least to the extent current Federal Communications Commission rules allow.

Video and real-time services arguably offer the most-logical opportunities for retail packaging and network management, consistent with existing FCC rules. “A package that targets a superior video streaming experience may offer the service provider the opportunity for an up-sell, and the subscriber with a better experience,” Calix argues.

But what cannot be done, at least on fixed networks, under FCC rules, is to offer a service that prioritizes video bits for such users, as useful as that would be, from an end-user perspective. Nor is it clear that service providers can create “carve outs” for heavy video entertainment users that allow consumption without affecting a usage cap. 


Mobile service providers have more leeway, at least for the moment, to create packages tailored to game users, users of video entertainment or possibly other users of real-time business services.
Report data was drawn from actual Internet traffic monitored in U.S. service provider networks from the fourth quarter (October through December) of 2011.

To download the report,click here

50 GBytes Consumer Per Person, in 5 Years

"In five years a consumer is moving toward a 50 Gigabyte per month usage level," says Leap CEO  Doug Hutcheson. That doesn't mean all, or most of that usage will occur over a wireless network, though.


That figure represents aggregate usage across all networks, using fixed, wireless and public or third-party Wi-Fi access. By way of comparison, AT&T estimated in 2011 that a typical household consumed about 18 Gbytes a month. 


Analysts at  iGR research suggest that by 2016 U.S. end users will, on average, consume about 2.6 GB of mobile data per month. 

If correct, that would imply wireless consumption would be about five percent of total bandwidth consumed by a "typical" user. 

Global Consumers' Distrust Advertising, Trust Word of Mouth

Some 92 percent of consumers around the world say they trust earned media, such as word-of-mouth and recommendations from friends and family, above all other forms of advertising, an increase of 18 percent since 2007, according to a new study from Nielsen. 


You might say such attitudes account for the greater interest in earned media (stories in mass media)  and owned media (sometimes called "brand publishing"). 


Online consumer reviews are the second most trusted form of advertising with 70 percent of global consumers surveyed online indicating they trust this platform, an increase of 15 percent in four years, Nielsen says. 


Nielsen’s survey of more than 28,000 Internet respondents in 56 countries shows that 47 percent of consumers around the world say they trust paid television, magazine and newspaper ads, confidence declined by 24 percent, 20 percent and 25 percent respectively since 2009. 


Still, the majority of advertising dollars are spent on traditional or paid media, such as television. In 2011, overall global ad spend saw a seven percent increase over 2010, according to Nielsen.

Amazon Appstore Gets In-App Purchasing

The Amazon Appstore has added in-app purchasing APIs, allowing developers to offer digital content and subscriptions, in-game currency, expansion packs, upgrades, and magazine issues for purchase within apps, Amazon says. 



In-app purchasing has become a primary way developers make money on their apps, and Amazon needs to keep pace with Apple and Google, which also support in-app purchases. 

Amazon Smart Phone on the Way?

Topeka Capital Markets analyst Brian White thinks Amazon will start selling its own phone later in 2012, and that it could prove to be “more sophisticated than many smart phones on the market,” Forbes reports.


The logical approach would be to optimize the device for content consumption, especially Amazon-provided content, the way the BlackBerry was optimized to support email. 


He adds that “longer term” it might also make sense for the company to make a move into the television business, as well. 


Apple's move into the smart phone business might have seemed dangerous at the time, but at least Apple always has been a manufacturer of computing devices, and a smart phone is a computing device that handles voice communications. 


Google's move into mobility was less logical, it can be argued, except as a key platform for mobile advertising, and is the mirror opposite of Apple's strategy, which is to merchandise content to sell devices. Google wants to "give away" or merchandise mobile software and phones to sell advertising.


Amazon's move into the e-reader and tablet businesses was a similar "make devices to grow the market for our content" strategy. A smart phone would make sense for similar reasons, as smart phones have become major content consumption platforms. 

Many Emerging Market Social Networks are Indigenous

Around half of the world’s top ten mobile social networks don’t have developed countries as their home bases, Tomi Ahonen says. 

97% Growth of Mobile Payments, Through 2015?

Global mobile payment transactions are expected to grow 97 percent per year, over the next three years, reaching a value of £591 billion by 2015, according to a report by KPMG. 
That forecast is based, in part, on KPMG’s view that near field communications will be adopted at significant rates, both by consumers and retailers.

But KPMG still believes other methods will have wider use. “Today, premium text messaging dominates mobile payments, but by tomorrow contactless and cloud-based services will dominate, with an expected market share for contactless of 37 percent by 2015," says David Hodgkinson, senior manager in KPMG's customer and channel consulting team.

"TV's Still Going to Look a Lot Like TV Five Years from Now"

Bismarck Lepe, Ooyala president of products, apparently does not believe the television medium will be all that different in five years, especially as related to the way television is produced, namely that TV is about storytelling. Whether the business will change is a separate question. 


TV still is primarily "storytelling," he argues, and lots of observers would say all the "interactive features" once touted for television have failed to take hold for several reasons, among them the key insight that storytelling is not necessarily "improved" by allowing viewers or listeners to change plot lines, for example. 


A couple of decades ago, there was much more interest in interactive television features that might allow such changes, as well as more advertising and multimedia features. But those efforts failed. 


Even arguably "less ambitious" efforts to create standards for interactive TV ads likewise have failed. 


As it turns out, at least so far, television remains a "lean back" consuming experience. Consumers do not, at least not yet, have much interest in "lean forward" television, a stark contrast with much use of the Web or video gaming, for example.


That's one reason why many believe the big changes to come might not be about the television format (linear storytelling), but more about the way television is purchased, packaged or delivered, the big change being a shift to online delivery using the Internet. 

What is less clear are the business models and retail packaging of video content. There will gradually be additional ways to consume video paid for as part of a subscription, typically on PCs, tablets or smart phones, though the geographic coverage might well be restricted (within the home, in some cases). But that capability will be a feature of a video subscription, not an alternative.

New payment methods, on the other hand, might play a bigger role, some argue. But that doesn't change the fundamental nature of the experience, the way the product is designed, or necessarily the delivery channel. 

Verizon Ends "Naked DSL" Sales

Verizon Communications in early May 2012 will stop offering "naked DSL," (high-speed Internet without landline phone service). Starting May 6, 2012, new customers won't be able to sign up for DSL without also getting a wired voice service, which adds about $5 to the monthly bill before taxes.


That change, in itself, might not be a huge deal. Only about 10 percent of Verizon's DSL subscribers use the stand-alone service, Verizon says. So the overwhelming percentage (90 percent)  of Verizon customers already buy broadband with voice service.


True, the change will affect packaging for all new broadband access customers, as well as customers making changes to their existing broadband service, such as migrating to higher speeds. Over time, that should shrink the percentage and number of naked DSL customers. 


You might ask " what's the point?


The incremental revenue shift would appear to be relatively slight.


The larger point, though, is the huge importance legacy voice revenue holds for Verizon, and other incumbent telcos.


Circuit-switched voice will in 2012 represent fully $132 billion in fixed network revenues for U.S. telcos, the Telecommunications Industry Association estimates.


Total fixed network revenue will be about $176 billion.


So circuit-switched voice will represent 75 percent of total fixed network revenue. In any business, the best results often are obtained when executives focus on the few activities that deliver the biggest returns.


Voice drives 75 percent of current revenue, even if slowly declining. So anything Verizon can do to protect that specific revenue stream affects total results more than any other single revenue source.

Social Sharing as Helpful as Google Search in Shopping

A new study suggests social sharing of information and opinions about products on Facebook is both a mainstream activity and a significant influence on shopping behavior. The study, conducted by Sociable Labs, found that 62 percent of online shoppers have read product-related comments from their friends on Facebook. 


The top value to shoppers in reading social sharing is that it “helps them discover a product they might want to buy, the study suggests. 


About 75 percent of shoppers who read social sharing comments have clicked on the product link in their friends’ Facebook posts, taking them to the product page on a retailer’s website. Some 53 percent of the shoppers who have clicked through to the retailer’s site have made a purchase, the study found. 


A core reason for these actions is that shoppers see social sharing as one of the most helpful tools for finding the right product to buy, the study suggests. 


Some might say a key finding is that Google search and Facebook comments by friends are far and away the "most helpful" sources of information by respondents, rated about twice as helpful as advertising.