Foursquare Wants to Move from Check-Ins To Recommendations

Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley says the future of Foursquare, the location based service is "what its users are going to do, not what they are doing."

Right now Foursquare essentially tracks the realtime movements of its more than eight million users.

In the future, Foursquare wants to make use of the loads of data it’s collected on these realtime movements (600 million check-ins) to help users plan what they should do next.

From Check-Ins To Recommendations: A Glimpse Into The Future of Foursquare

Mobile Video Revenue: Close to $25 Billion by 2014

Analysts at the Yankee Group estimate mobile video revenues will approach $25 billion globally by about 2014.

That forecast assumes significant mobile user take rates for various types of for-fee video, both subscription and single purchase.

AT&T Mobile Revenue Grows: It Has To

AT&T wireless data revenues, driven by messaging, Internet access, access to applications and related services, increased nearly $1 billion, or 23.9 percent, in the first quarter of 2011.

AT&T had its "best-ever first-quarter increase in total wireless subscribers," up two million to reach 97.5 million subscribers in service, with gains in every category, AT&T says.

AT&T also reported best-ever first-quarter smartphone sales of more than 5.5 million.

Those sorts of results ultimately will be important for many global mobile operators, given the gradual decline of voice revenues, and the importance of the voice revenue stream to total revenues, as this Yankee Group graphic indicates.

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Mobile Money Could Be 5% of Africa Mobile Operator Revenue in 2015

As of September 2010, at least 19 countries in sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa had "mobile money" service available, according to Pyramid Research, which forecasts that by the year 2015, revenue generated from mobile money services could represent around five percent of total operator revenue on the continent. 

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FCC Will Slam U.S. Broadband Again

The Federal Communications Commission is expected to report soon that broadband providers are not deploying services in a reasonable and timely way to all Americans. That wouldn't be surprising: the FCC said so in 2010, and it is hard to see what could have changed in just a year.

That predictably will be irritating to most service providers, who have been steadily upgrading broadband facilities almost across the board, using 4G wireless, DOCSIS upgrades and more fiber deployments at a steady clip over the last year.

Comcast, the largest provider of cable internet in the country, just announced that is provides 40 million residential homes the ability to buy 105 Mbps service. See http://www.comcast.com/About/PressRelease/PressReleaseDetail.ashx?PRID=1067.

Verizon and lots of other cable companies also have been selling 50 Mbps service for a couple of years, at least. The issue is not "availability" in a growing number of cases, but "purchasing." Some observers might argue that the prices charged for either 50 Mbps or 100 Mbps service are "too high." But that is a different matter than claiming such access is not available.

Lots of people make rational choices to buy fixed-line service at lower speeds, say 10 Mbps to 20 Mbps, as a better value-price proposition.

Also, U.S. subscribers have access to multiple national and regional wireless services running at fourth-generation speeds. Some observers likewise will object that these wireless offerings also are "too slow." But some observers are going to see a growing disconnect between what the FCC claims is the case, and what generally-available offers suggest.

FCC poised to give broadband deployment a failing grade

Loopt introduces location-based Q&A

Loopt, a provider of location-based services, today announced "Qs," a new feature that allows users to answer questions and see other user’s responses in any physical business location. People might want to answer questions such as "where is the best happy hour special right now?"

Most people, perhaps as few as one percent, actually create the content displayed by location-based services such as Loopt. The company hopes simple "question and answer" formats will encourage more people to contribute.

The company plans on releasing the new feature first in San Francisco and then roll out from city to city.

Loopt introduces location-based Q&A feature

2% of U.S. Employess Work From Home, 20 Million to 30 Million Telecommute Some of the Time

With gas prices breaking $4 a gallon in some markets, $5 in a few, it is inevitable there will be a new wave of thinking about the benefits of telecommuting or telework. About two percent  of the U.S. employee workforce (2.8 million people, not including the self employed or unpaid volunteers) work from home, according to the American Community Survey.

The Telework Research Network also estimates that 20 to 30 million employees currently work from home at least one day a week. About 15 to 20 million employees must travel at least part of the time for work. See this.

There also are 10 to 15 million home-based businesses and some three million full time home-based businesses.

Europe Still Thinks Market Can Handle "Net Neutraltiy" Issues

Oddly enough, some would note, the European Community continues to believe that market forces and competition will protect user experience better than new regulations, a stance at odds with the Federal Communications Commission.

Of course, it always is difficult to compare regulatory environments across national boundaries, as the concrete circumstances in each country can vary quite a lot. The EC generally features strong wholesale requirements compared to the U.S. market, for example, while the U.S. unusually features robust competition to dominant telcos from cable operators.

Generally speaking, robust wholesale arguably is the better approach, under circumstances where alternative facilities-based networks are not likely to develop.

RIM PlayBook: More Play Than Work

Research in Motion long has had a dominant role as an enterprise device supplier. But its new PlayBook tablet might not. You might wonder whether the PlayBook is an "enterprise-focused" tablet, or more a tablet that could be used in the enterprise.

Some early reviews are mixed on that score. Some say it is a bit inconvenient to get back to enterprise data, sometimes requiring a separate BlackBerry. That does offer a higher degree of data protection, but arguably isn’t convenient. Most tablet users today want their work email on it too, and more likely they won’t have a BlackBerry to connect.

Unlike other RIM devices, the PlayBook offers lower battery life than the competition, and less stability.

RIM PlayBook: More Play Than Work

eBay Gets Into "Deal of the Day" Business'

eBay has purchased Where.com, which creates apps for listing merchants, restaurants, and bars while serving deals for such establishments based on user location. The deal gives eBay four million active users looking for deals from about 120,000 retailers.

Incorporating eBay's popular digital payment product, PayPal, could help the eBay-Where.com union compete against an emerging list of location-based daily deals players.

eBay Purchase Shows 'Where' Deals Niche Is Heading

Online Now 8% of Home Video Spending

Consumers are still using DVDs and Blu-ray Disc to watch movies more than all other digital-video options combined, says the NPD Group. . Over the past three months, 77 percent of consumers reported watching a movie on a DVD or BD, unchanged from 2010. Those who viewed movies from physical discs reported watching an average of four hours per week, which is also unchanged from the prior year, as well.

By comparison 68 percent watched a movie on a TV or cable network channel, 49 percent at a theatre, and 21 percent used paid video on demand through their TVs, says NPD.

Consumers reported that 78 percent of their home video budgets went to the purchase and rental of DVD and BD, including online and in-store retail purchases and rentals, while 15 percent was spent on video subscription services like Netflix that offer a mix of physical and streaming rentals.

Digital video downloads, paid streaming, paid transactional video on demand (VOD), and pay per view (PPV) comprised the remaining eight percent. Overall per-capita spending on home video fell by two percent, though.

DVD and Blu-ray Disc (Still) Dominates Home Video Movie Viewing and Spending

60% of Consumers Have Cut Back on Driving

As the national average for a gallon of gas edges closer to $4-a-gallon, consumers have cut back on their driving, reports The NPD Group. That should come as no surprise. That's what consumers always do when fuel prices climb.

The number of gallons purchased are down 1.2 percent from a year ago, NPD says. In addition, a consumer survey conducted by NPD in January 2011 to gauge what price level would be required to cause consumers to drive less suggests that at today's gas prices (national average is $3.79-a-gallon) approximately 60 percent of consumers are cutting back on driving already.

That should have implications for retailers of all sorts. Higher gas prices mean less discretionary income left for other purchases. What remains unclear is whether online retailers could benefit, if shoppers drive less to physical retail outlets.

Sixty Percent of Consumers Have Cut Back on Driving Due to Higher Gas Prices, NPD Reports

T-Mobile USA Provides Free Calls on Facebook

T-Mobile USA now provides Facebook users free VoIP calls between other uers. "Bobsled" by T-Mobile is a VoIP application integrated with Facebook that also provides voice mail service capable of pasting messages to the receiver's wall. The ability to call other people affiliated with a single network is not unusual these days.

What is a bit different is a direct move by a mobile service provider to enable such communications, which arguably compete with for-fee services. T-Mobile USA is expected to add the ability to call out to mobile and fixed networks in the near future, as well.

T-Mobile turns Facebook telco

iPhone keeps record of everywhere you go

Security researchers have discovered that Apple's iPhone keeps track of where users go, and saves every detail of it to a secret file on the device which is then copied to the owner's computer when the two are synchronised.

The file contains the latitude and longitude of the phone's recorded coordinates along with a timestamp, meaning that anyone who stole the phone or the computer could discover details about the owner's movements using a simple program, researchers say.

For some phones, there could be almost a year's worth of data stored, as the recording of data seems to have started with Apple's iOS 4 update to the phone's operating system, released in June 2010.

As with just about everything else related to advanced technology, the features can provide user benefit as well as danger. Where a person is, has been, and likes to go can be an important part of the "social graph," the accumulated network of interconnections among people, groups and organizations in a social network. The term refers to both the social network itself and a diagram representing the network.

Individuals and organizations, called actors, are nodes on the graph. Interdependencies, called ties, can be multiple and diverse, including such characteristics or concepts as age, gender, race, genealogy, chain of command, ideas, financial transactions, trade relationships, political affiliations, club memberships, occupation, education and economic status.

As you can well imagine, a social graph can be highly useful to people, brands advertising things to those people, ethnographers and product and application designers. But there are dangers to privacy and illegal use of such information, as well.

iPhone keeps record of everywhere you go | Technology | guardian.co.uk

Telecom Services Market to Reach $1.4 Trillion by 2014

The global telecommunication services market shrank by 0.2 percent in 2009 to reach a value of $1.2 trillion, according to MarketResearch.com. Given the global economic unpleasantness of that year, the dip is not surprising.

In 2014, the global telecommunication services market is forecast to have a value of $1,4 trillion, an increase of 13.6 percent since 2009, driven in large part by growth of subscribers 25 percent globally, compared to 2009.

Wireless is the largest segment of the global telecommunication services market, accounting for 56.6 percent of the market's total value, and is particularly important in fast-growing developing regions.

America accounts for 34.3 percent of the global telecommunication services market value, down from the situation several decades ago when the U.S. market accounted for nearly half of global telecom revenue. That statistic alone is evidence of the shift of growth to newer regions around the globe.

Telecom Services Market to Reach $1.4 Trillion by 2014

Service Providers Do Not Rank High on Survey of "Top Customer Experience"

Video and telecommunications service providers do not tend to lead many, if any surveys of consumer satisfaction, for all sorts of reasons. (Click image for a larger view)

Aside from some cases where companies just make strategic mistakes (some years ago Sprint under-invested in its customer service personnel, and Qwest cut back too much on service and technical support personnel), cable, telco and satellite companies operate huge businesses with sometimes cumbersome back office software, sub-systems that do not seamlessly move data back and forth easily, selling products at prices that arguably do not allow as much room for "service" as one might prefer.

The recent rankings by Temkin do not deviate from the typical pattern. Video entertainment, mobile or fixed-line service providers just do not rank high on measures of customer experience satisfaction.









http://www.temkinratings.com/wp-content/themes/Temkin/assets/pdf/2011TemkinExperienceRatings_CompanyRankings.pdf

Wireless Substitution in United Kingdom

Broadband wireless substitution is the analogy to wireless substitution in voice, many would note.

At some point, as fourth generation wireless networks start to offer access speeds in the 40 Mbps range, a wider range of end users are going to conclude, for various reasons, that a wireless broadband connection can substitute for a fixed-line connection.

In the United Kingdom, as elsewhere, the trend remains relatively small, but seems to be growing.

For almost one in seven users of mobile broadband (14 percent), the use of a dongle or datacard is their only Internet access method. This figure rises to 21 percent of males, 31 percent of 18 to 24 year olds and over one third of Londoners (34 percent). See this.

DirecTV to Show Movies 10 Weeks After Theatrical Release

DirecTV says it will offer a 48-hour rentals of Sony Corp.’s movie “Just Go With It” for $29.99 just 10 weeks after the movie’s theatrical release. That test of a shorter release window and the new pricing point will test consumer demand for such earlier-release products.

Universal Pictures, Warner Bros. and Twentieth Century Fox will also supply films to the service eight weeks after their theatrical release, Jade Ekstedt, a spokeswoman for El Segundo, California-based DirecTV said.

Studios, which are looking to the new release format to counter shrinking DVD sales revenue, won't get fans among theater owners, who fear that viewers will shift some amount of theater attendance to the new TV release window. The $30 fee might seem steep, but studios and DirecTV are betting that such movie buys will be seen as an alternative to taking a whole family to the theater. In other cases the total cost of theater viewing, which includes babysitting and concessions, might be quite a lot more expensive than $30, even for one or two viewers.

DirecTV Starts Premium Film Rentals at $29.99 for 48 Hours - Bloomberg

Mobile Money Strategies for Mobile Service Providers

"Mobile money” is sometimes hard to understand for good reasons: it includes a number of different functions and many different groups of participants, each with slightly or significantly different opportunities and challenges. (Click on images for a larger view)

Among the prominent new contestants are mobile service providers, who see an opportunity to enter a new line of business with direct transaction revenue benefits, namely the transaction fees generated when payment services are provided. Up to this point, that has included both per-transaction fees of some cents per event, plus a percentage of the gross amount of the transaction.

That is changing, at least for debit card payments. But there are lots of other potential business models and revenue streams, and different participants likely will try them all, ranging from local advertising to promotions to point-of-sale apps to loyalty programs.

Mobile Money Strategies for Mobile Service Providers | Mobile Marketing and Technology

SK Telecom to Launch LTE Network in July 2011

SK Telecom plans to begin providing commercial 4G Long Term Evolution services in Seoul in July 2011 and later upgrade its LTE networks in 2013 to LTE-Advanced (LTE-A), repurposing its second generation frequencies in the 800 MHz bands. The LTE-A upgrade will offer speeds up to 75Mbps downlink speed and 37.5Mbps uplink speed on 10 MHz of spectrum

SK Telecom also is upgrading its 3G network in April 2011 to HSPA+, the fastest 3G version and operating at speeds the International Telecommunications Union says are officially "4G" networks.

As other LTE providers have done, SK Telecom plans to launch 'LTE data modem handsets' in July this year at the time of LTE commercialization and expand its LTE handset lineup to smartphones and tablet PCs within the second half of 2011.

First, SK Telecom will adopt its own cloud-based network technology named Smart Cloud Access Network (SCAN) to set up its LTE network. With SCAN, SK Telecom successfully separated Digital Unit (DU) and Radio Unit (RU), the two main components of a base station. DUs will be stored together in one area, while Remote Radio Units (RRU) - along with the antenna - will be set up in various locations, thereby enhancing network operation efficiency. Also, with full-fledged application of cloud computing technology, the network will be able to flexibly and seamlessly handle mobile data traffic that varies by time and region.

The company plans to expand its LTE coverage to 23 cities including the Seoul metropolitan area, providing nationwide coverage (82 cities) in 2013.

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