Can Smartphones Replace Credit Cards?

Forrester Research says one big question remains for transaction providers eager to equip smartphones with payment features. But are consumers ready to ditch their plastic?

According to Forrester analyst Emmet Higdon, the test is less one of the technology involved, but the user interface and whether or not 'consumers' current love affair with smartphones is enough to change card payment behaviors that date back more than 50 years.

Can Smartphones Replace Credit Cards?

Live Streaming Grows 648% Over Last Year

Over the past year, the amount of time American audiences spent watching video for the major live video publishers (Justin.tv, USTREAM, Livestream, LiveVideo, and Stickam) has grown 648 percent to more than 1.4 billion minutes.

By comparison, the amount of time American audiences spent watching YouTube and Hulu increased 68 percent and 75 percent, respectively, over the same time period.

Though the amount of time spent watching live video is still only a small fraction of the total time spent watching online video, its sharp growth indicates viewers’ growing comfort with the content.

comScore Voices - The comScore Blog

Android Grows Rapidly as Platform for Mobile Web Browsing

Android devices have gained about 17 or 18 percentage points of market share over the last year in the mobile Web browsing market, says Quantcast.

Apple's iOS has lost share.

Smaller Cable Networks at Risk of Being Squeezed Out?

More small "cable channels" are going to have incentives to seek carriage on Apple TV, Google TV, Amazon or Netflix if cable and telco networks start to bump them off line-ups in favor of more-popular channels.

AT&T allowed its contract with Crown Media to lapse, essentially dropping the Hallmark cable networks when the deal expired at midnight on Sept. 1. According to JP Morgan Chase analyst Imran Khan, “there has been no sign of progress toward reaching a deal,” suggesting that AT&T might not bring those stations back to its U-verse pay TV service.

Content owners ultimately will be the decisive factor in pushing more content to online distribution, and being dropped from multichannel video basic line-ups is the sort of thing that will drive the moves.

Smaller Cable Networks at Risk of Being Squeezed Out?

Angry Birds Lite for Android Now Available

Angry Birds Lite is now available at Android Market. It appears to require Froyo (version 2.2).

Google to Launch Own Music Service

Music industry interests unhappy with Apple's role in distribution might be cheering Google plans for a download store and a digital song locker that would allow its mobile users to play songs wherever they are.

Google's Andy Rubin, the brains behind Google's Android mobile operating system, has been leading conversations with the labels about what a new Google music service would look like, Reuters reports.

Rubin, Google's vice president of engineering, hopes to have the service up and running by Christmas, two of these people said.

Apple and Google to clash in music space by Christmas | Reuters

FCC Wants More Input on Wireless, Managed Services

The Federal Communications Commission's Wireline and Wireless Bureaus are seeking further public comment on issues related to specialized or ‘managed services and mobile broadband, at least partially, and perhaps largely, because Verizon and Google have reached their own agreement about how to implement network neutrality on Verizon's fixed networks, but have agreed not to apply the rules to wireless access.

The FCC wants further input on the exemption of new managed services from the "best effort only" Internet access agreement. In essence, Google and Verizon have agreed to what network neutrality advocates have asked for on the fixed networks. That virtually ends discussion about Internet access and network neutrality.

But the mobile network now emerges as the area where policy advocates will focus their energy, and many will not be happy with the exemption for managed services, though the policy foundation for prohibiting such services seems quite weak. Lots of services, such as private network services or cable TV or telco TV routinely use the same physical facilities, but represent different services from "Internet access" and in fact are regulated using entirely different rules.

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Apple Doubles iPad Production: Android is the Reason

Apple is manufacturing two million iPads each month, but production now is scheduled to ramp up to three million a month.

Android tablets may be the reason. Apple wants to make sure people can walk into an Apple store looking for an iPad and walk out purchase in hand.

Apple Doubles iPad Production As Android Tablet Threat Looms

Apple TV Deal with Disney, Fox Not Exclusive

Apple TV's plan to stream some Fox and Disney content for 99 cents does not have universal support, judged by the content companies that are not participating.

However well the offer is received, it will not be exclusive to Apple. The same content could be offered by Google, who supply the broadcast networks with content, hate Google, Amazon, Netflix or others.

Apple TV

YouTube Becoming an Ad Venue for Copyrighted Videos

YouTube complies with requests by video copyright owners to remove copyrighted material uploaded without permission.

But more than a third of the two billion views of YouTube videos with ads each week are uploaded without the copyright owner’s permission but left up by the owner’s choice.

Advertising revenue is the explanation for the benign approach.

Those two billion views, a 50 percent increase over last year, according to the company, are just 14 percent of the videos viewed each week on the Google-owned site. But that’s enough to turn YouTube profitable this year, and enough incremental revenue for content owners to cause the new relaxed attitude.

YouTube Deal Turns Copyright Videos Into Revenue

Mobile Phone Sales: Something Has to Give

Samsung, one of the five largest mobile phone manufacturers in the world, recently raised its forecast for 2010 unit sales to 25 million. The South Korean company also expects to sell 50 million handsets next year.

No one believes that the mobile phone market will double in 2011, so the Samsung statement suggests it expects to take a significant amount of market share.

If the company is right, the only real question who loses. It won't be Apple, as Samsung is stronger in the feature phone market. For similar reasons, it shouldn't be Android devices.

That leaves the other big players in feature phones, or the weaker players in smartphones. Either that, or Samsung is just wrong.

Too Many Cell Phone Companies Expect Huge Unit Growth - 24/7 Wall St

Social Networking, Gaming Key for Tweens, Teens

Social networking and gaming increasingly are prevalent in children's lives. Facebook is now the favorite website among tween (8 to 11) boys and teen (12 to 15) girls.

Online games dominate for boys and girls ages 8 to 11. 91 percent of tween boys and 93 percent of tween girls play games online.

M2 Research - Tracking entertainment technology and trends

Google TV Today

It's hard to tell what Google TV, or similar initiatives, will look like and feature in the future. But here's what it offers today.

Teens Text 5x More than Adults

Teens ages 12 to 17 send and receive a median of five times more texts per day than adult texters, according to new data from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

But that's probably not the most-important finding. The data also show that use of texting is growing in every age demographic.

Slightly more than half (51 percent) of adults who text send one to 10 texts per day, compared to 22 percent of teens.

The percentages of texting adults and teens who send 11 to 20 and 21 to 50 average daily texts are fairly similar. Where teens begin to outpace adults is in the percentage who send 51 to 100 average texts daily (18 percent of teens, seven percent of adults) and more notably in the percentage who send 101-plus average texts daily (29 percent of teens, eight percent of adults).

Teens Text 5x More than Adults

Angry Bird Creators on Why Such Games are So Compelling

If you like games, "Angry Birds" is worth a try. If you fear wasting too much time, don't go there.

Why Apple Hasn't Signed More Studios

Though Disney and News Corp. have agreed to allow Apple to sell content at 99 cents per episode or show, other studios are balking.

As typically is the case for changing rights arrangements in the TV content ecosystem, the issue for studios is the disruption of other parts of the revenue ecosystem.

The 99-cent price tag that represents a steep discount from the TV episodes already offered on iTunes for about $3.

Apparently some executives are worried about devaluation of the content, not just for online consumption, but also "downstream" release windows such as DVD and syndication.

As typically is the case, content owners are trying to protect existing big revenue streams while slowly growing the new channels. But the bigger risk right now is cannibalizing the big revenue channels in favor of much-smaller ancillary channels.

Why Apple rental plan alienated most studios

Prepaid Market Cracks With Verizon Smartphone Offerings

Prepaid customers traditionally have had to live with a selection of devices that intentionally did not include the top devices sold in the postpaid market. But that has taken a huge change with Verizon's new willingness to sell even its leading devices on a prepaid basis.

At least at Verizon, the difference between prepaid and postpaid offerings is based more on payment options and subsidized or full price phones than anything else. That is a big change, indeed.

Verizon Wireless also has launched a new "3G Prepaid" data package that lets customers access unlimited data on select 3G smartphones and multimedia phones for $30 monthly access.

Multimedia phone customers also have the option of selecting a new $10 monthly data package for 25 MB per month ($.20/MB overage). These new prepaid data packages are available at Verizon Wireless stores already, and will be available online at www.verizonwireless.com beginning Sept. 28, 2010.

Supported smartphone devices include:

BlackBerry Curve 8330
BlackBerry Curve 8530
BlackBerry Storm 9530
BlackBerry Storm2 9550
BlackBerry Tour 9630
BlackBerry Bold 9650

Palm Pre Plus
Palm Pixi Plus

DROID by Motorola
Motorola DEVOUR
DROID X by Motorola
DROID 2 by Motorola
DROID Eris by HTC
DROID Incredible by HTC
LG Ally

3G Multimedia phones available include:

LG enV TOUCH
LG enV 3
LG Chocolate TOUCH
LG VX8360
Samsung Alias 2
Samsung Renown
Nokia Twist
Casio EXILIM

Will T-Mobile Invest in Clearwire?

Though Clearwire already has gotten about $5 billion in investment, but likely needs another $4 billion to complete its national network.

Credit Suisse analyst Jonathan Chaplin estimates Clearwire will need another $4 billion to extend coverage to the 200 million people they plan to reach by the end of 2011.

That is the biggest carrot for Clearwire: it needs cash, and T-Mobile could provide some of it.

Though Sprint might have qualms about enabling a competitor, Verizon and AT&T, not T-Mobile, is the big problem.

When Sprint and Clearwire merged their networks, Sprint invested $1.2 billion in the venture. Comcast and Time Warner invested a total of $1.6 billion, and they now market Clearwire's service under their own names.

Intel put in an additional $1 billion on top of the $660 million they had invested in Clearwire earlier.

Google invested $500 million and cable operator Bright House Networks kicked in $100 million.

Whether Clearwire gets T-Mobile USA as an investor or not, nothing is going to keep T-Mobile USA from finding some way to provide 4G services. The lesser of the two evils might be to allow T-Mobile USA to invest in, and use, the Clearwire network.

No Jitter | blog | T-Mobile May Invest in Clearwire

Heavy Texters are Heavy Callers, Study Finds

Want a clue about which consumers, of whatever age, will be heavy text message users? Just look for users who are heavy voice users, a new study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Heavy adult texters who send and receive more than 50 texts a day also tend to be heavy users of voice calling. Light texters, who exchange one to 10 texts a day, do not make up for less texting by calling more. Instead, they are light users of both calling and texting.

Texting by adults has increased over the past nine months from 65 percent of adults sending and receiving texts in September 2009 to 72 percent texting in May 2010. Still, adults do not send nearly the same number of texts per day as teens ages 12-17, who send and receive, on average, five times more texts per day than adult texters.

Adults who text typically send and receive a median of 10 texts a day; teens who text send and receive a median of 50 texts per day.

About five percent of all adult texters send more than 200 text messages a day or more than 6,000 texts a month. Fully 15 percent of teens ages 12 to 17, and 18 percent of adults ages 18 to 24 text message more than 200 messages a day, while just three percent of adults ages 25 to 29 do the same.

The average adult cell phone owner makes and receives around five voice calls a day. Women tend to make slightly fewer calls with their cell phones than men.

Men and women are equally likely to be represented at the extreme high end of callers, with eight percent of men and six percent of women making and taking more than 30 calls a day.

link to study

Gmail Adds "Priority Inbox" Feature

I'm just trying it, so nothing to report about how it changes, or helps, the email sifting process.