U.S. Smartphone Battle Heats Up: Which is the “Most Desired” Operating System? | Nielsen Wire

According to October 2010 data from The Nielsen Company, 29.7 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers now own smartphones that run full operating systems.

The most popular smartphones are the Apple iPhone and RIM Blackberry, which are caught in a statistical dead heat with 27 percent of smartphone market share in the U.S. Twenty-two percent of smartphone owners have devices with the Android operating system.

U.S. Smartphone Battle Heats Up: Which is the “Most Desired” Operating System? | Nielsen Wire

F.C.C. Chairman Has Plan to Regulate Internet Broadband Providers

"Thwarted by the courts, by lawmakers on Capitol Hill and by some of his fellow commissioners, the Federal Communications Commission chairman will try again on Wednesday to devise a new strategy for regulating broadband Internet service providers," the New York Times reports.

But think about the statement: "Thwarted by the courts, the Congress and even fellow FCC commissioners." The FCC's authority is delegated to it by the Congress, which has not expressly done so. The courts supposedly only "interpret" the laws passed by Congress, and do not "make" law. Many would say the courts overstep their bounds, but for the moment just consider that the courts have ruled that the FCC has no authority to regulate broadband access.

Beyond those issues, which one might argue represent an unconstitutional overstepping of delegated authority, 37 Senators and 171 members of the House of Representatives already have sent the FCC a letter saying that the decision rests with Congress, not the agency.

Some would argue the key issue here is not disagreement over the specific proposals; it is that the FCC has no authority to act, administratively, to make law that is the province of the Congress.

F.C.C. Chairman Has Plan to Regulate Internet Broadband Providers - NYTimes.com

Vodafone and T-Mobile Germany Plans:Alot Like Clearwire

In some ways, Vodafone and T-Mobile are planning on attacking the 4G consumer in much the same way Clearwire did in the United States. Both firms will start in rural areas before tackling metro markets, and both are focusing on dongle sales for connecting PCs, rather than voice services.

Vodafone plans to offer a Samsung dongle with tiered monthly plans costing between 42.50 and 72.50 EUR. The top rate provides users with up to 30 GBytes of data and peak download speeds of up to 50 Mbps. That’s starting with the small city of Rammenau, east of Dresden, where Vodafone hopes to get subscribers who still can’t get fast broadband access at home.

Moreover, the plan is to initially cover several hundred towns in rural areas and then expand the network to 1,500 locations by next spring.

T-Mobile has a similar strategy. It is aiming at rural users first and then expand to cities. The T-Mobile offer will be called Call & Surf via Funk and will start selling from next April. For 39.95 EUR per month, users get a fixed-line access alongside the LTE connection.

In all three cases--Clearwire, Vodafone and T-Mobile--4G is seen as a product competing with fixed-line broadband for PCs, not a product competing for mobile or smartphone customers.

Germany: Vodafone and T-Mobile unveil LTE pricing

Shai Berger Pitches Fonolo to Investors

http://www.shaiberger.com/2010/11/video-pitching-fonolo-on-the-pitch/ You have less than 10 minutes to convince three potential investment groups your idea is among those they should fund. This is how Shai Berger, Fonolo founder, handles the task.

In-Game Micro-Payments To Fuel Mobile Gaming Revenues To $11B In 2015

Juniper Research estimates mobile gaming revenue will grow to $11 billion in 2015 on the strength of in-game micro-payments and Apple’s in-app billing mechanism.

Juniper also estimates in-game purchases will overtake the traditional pay-per-download model as the primary source of monetizing mobile games by 2013.

In-Game Micro-Payments To Fuel Mobile Gaming Revenues To $11B In 2015

Mobile Payments Will Move Inside Apps

Peering Dispute Between Comcast and Level 3 is Not Unusual

Despite the colorful nature of the Level 3 Communications dispute with Comcast over interconnection arrangements, the dispute is a rather typical commercial dispute between interconnection partners.

In the past, when traffic exchanged between the Comcast network and Level 3 was roughly equal, it made sense to peer the networks on a "settlement-free" basis. Now that traffic flows are about to become quite unbalanced, that won't work.

With the massive new Netflix CDN deal where Netflix is currently the largest source of traffic in North America, Level 3 will likely start sending five times more traffic to Comcast than it receives.

When that happens, a "settlement-free" peering arrangement often becomes a "for-fee" transit agreement, where the network imposing an unequal traffic load pays the other network.

That's the situation here, where a business relationship that worked well when traffic exchange was equal becomes untenable as traffic flows become highly unequal. Settlement-free peering works for the former, not the latter. So Comcast wants a transit style agreement where it gets paid for carrying the excess traffic.

Level 3 would prefer not to pay, and it is not alone in that desire. Unequal traffic flows do not lend themselves to settlement-free peering agreements.

Digital Society Level 3 outbid Akamai on Netflix

For-Fee Online Video Demand Still Nascent

A new study by Ipsos finds that some viewers are willing to pay for online video, though much depends on the payment model and the actual type of content.

In a survey of 18-to-34-year olds, Ipsos found that 51 percent of respondents were interested in fee-based models from Hulu, Netflix or iTunes.

Ipsos OTX MediaCT created a scenario where free alternatives were not available and TV was available from Netflix at $9 a month, iTunes at $1 a download with no ads, and Hulu at $1 with ads.

While 17 percent of the younger demo was interested in a pay-per-episode Hulu model, only 11 percent of those 35 and older wanted to buy that way. Overall 49 percent of youth had no interest in pay models while 70 percent of the 35+ group suggested they were not interested in such fee-based offerings.

Eagerness to use the Web to catch up on or re-experience TV content varies a bit from genre to genre and even more from show to show. People are more likely to want to re-watch comedies than other genres, but a subscription service like Netflix was more appealing for its run of dramas since viewers wanted access to whole season.

MediaPost Publications Young Video Viewers Will Pay for Their Online TV 11/30/2010

Google Wants Groupon Because Social Ads Are the Future: Tech News «

http://gigaom.com/2010/11/30/google-wants-groupon-because-social-ads-are-the-future/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OmMalik+%28GigaOM%3A+Tech%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

Is email growing or shrinking?

Both, it seems.

http://www.marketingcharts.com/direct/inboxcom-gmail-show-impressive-annual-growth-15170/?utm_campaign=rssfeed&utm_source=mc&utm_medium=textlink

And you thought net neutrality couldn't get more convoluted

Now interconnection agreements get tarred.

http://www.digitalsociety.org/2010/11/comcast-level-3-net-neutrality-the-new-fire-in-a-movie-theater/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=comcast-level-3-net-neutrality-the-new-fire-in-a-movie-theater

Interconnection now gets sucked up with "net neutrality"

Peering and transit agreements aren't net neutrality issues.

http://247wallst.com/2010/11/30/the-next-round-of-fighting-over-net-neutrality-nflx-lvlt-cmcsa-ge-vz-goog/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2FRyNm+%2824%2F7+Wall+St.%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

Clearwire races towards target of 120m POPs - Rethink Wireless

So much for the couple of years headstart over other 4G providers.

http://www.rethink-wireless.com/2010/11/30/clearwire-races-towards-target-120m-pops.htm

Who Wins in Tablet Business?

Apple, Google, Motorola, Samsung and HTC could be early winners as tablets start to cannibalize the PC market, some might argue.

Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Acer could be losers, some think.

Tablets Will Displace PCs: Picking Winners and Losers -- Seeking Alpha

Verizon FiOS Broadband Penetration?

Analysts at Trefis expect the penetration of FiOS broadband to reach 81 percent of Verizon broadband subscribers by 2016, up from about 49 percent in 2010. In other words, of Verizon customers who buy broadband access, 81 percent will buy FiOS, while the remaining 19 percent will be on digital subscriber line platforms.

Verizon FiOS Penetration Rising -- Seeking Alpha

Entertainment Video Accounts for 37% of Peak-Hour Bandwidth

As much as 37 percent of peak-hour Internet traffic might be entertainment video.

Mary Meeker Internet Trends presentation

Is Level 3-Comcast Dispute a Typical Spat Over Peering Fees?

Thomas Stortz, Chief Legal Officer of Level 3, says Comcast has demanded, and is getting, payments from Level 3 related to delivery of Internet traffic from the Level 3 network to Comcast's network. It isn't immediately clear whether this is simply a commercial dispute between networks that exchange unequal amounts of traffic, or a possible violation of "Internet Freedoms" principles.

That's one of the difficulties with "network neutrality." It sometimes is difficult to separate out "content discrimination" from simple commercial agreements to exchange traffic between networks.

Stortz says taht “on November 19, 2010, Comcast informed Level 3 that, for the first time, it will demand a recurring fee from Level 3 to transmit Internet online movies and other content to Comcast’s customers who request such content."

“On November 22, after being informed by Comcast that its demand for payment was ‘take it or leave it,’ Level 3 agreed to the terms, under protest, in order to ensure customers did not experience any disruptions," says Stortz.

Press Release - Level 3 Communications

Microsoft in talks for new online TV service

Microsoft Corp has held talks with media companies to license TV networks for a new online pay-television subscription service through devices such as its Xbox video game console, says Reuters.

The maker of the Windows operating system has proposed a range of possibilities in these early talks including creating a 'virtual cable operator' delivered over the Internet for which users pay a monthly fee.

Microsoft in talks for new TV service: sources | Reuters

Netflix a Fast-Growing Rival to Hollywood and Cable - NYTimes.com

In a matter of months, the movie delivery company Netflix has gone from being the fastest-growing first-class mail customer of the United States Postal Service to the biggest source of streaming Web traffic in North America during peak evening hours.

All of that has to raise fears in the content business that a powerful new entity is arising in the movie distribution business as Apple's iTunes earlier grabbed a powerful role in distributing music.

At least in part, that explains why Hollywood studios hope to create a new distribution channel to replace lost DVD revenues.

A new "premium" form of video on demand, which would make new releases available in streaming format just 45 days or so after they start showing in theaters. In the past, newly-released movies have appeared on VOD services about 120 days after theatrical release.

Video-on-demand services often price such movies at a price of about $4.99. But studios think the new earlier release window could allow them to price movies at perhaps $25 a view. Whether consumers will have the same value perception is not so clear.

Some believe DVD sales have stagnated because consumers no longer view $20 to $30 DVD purchases a reasonable balance of value and price. Whether consumers will think earlier streaming access is worth that much is debatable.

Studios also like the better profit margins. Generally, studios get as much as 80 percent of that early VOD revenue, and much less for a DVD copy. DVD rentals might net a studio about 30 percent margins, for example.

But an equally-important issue is maintaining more control over the distribution process, and avoiding ceding power to Netflix in the same way Apple now influences music distribution.

Netflix a Fast-Growing Rival to Hollywood and Cable

Online, Mobile Commerce Big on "Black Friday"

The U.S online retail sector delivered double digit growth on Black Friday 2010 compared to the same period last year, according to analytics-based findings by IBM. The Coremetrics third annual Black Friday Benchmark Report indicates that online sales were up 15.9 percent, with consumers pushing the average order value up from $170.19 to $190.80 for an increase of 12.1 percent.

Consumers are also embracing mobile as a shopping tool. On Black Friday, 5.6 percent of people logged onto a retailer’s site using a mobile device, a jump of 26.7 percent compared to the prior Friday. That suggests users are using their mobiles inside stores, for example, perhaps for comparison shopping.

Jewelry retailers reported a 17.6 percent increase in sales.

But there also is some evidence that consumers know what they want, where to get it and are being very targeted in their efforts to find those items. People are viewing 18 percent fewer products on sites than they did last year, suggesting that they are shopping with a specific item in mind and quickly moving on.

Consumers appear increasingly savvy about their favorite brands’ social presence, and are turning to their networks on social sites for information about deals and inventory levels. While the percentage of visitors arriving from social network sites is fairly small relative to all online visitors—nearly one percent—it is gaining momentum, with Facebook dominating the space.

read more here