15 million iPhone 5s for September 2011 Launch

Taiwan-based notebook maker Pegatron Technology is estimated to gotten orders for 15 million iPhone 5s from Apple and is set to start shipping in September of 2011, according to DigiTimes.

Apple's CDMA iPhone 4 sales were lower than expected in the first quarter of 2011, Pegatron shipped less than four million CDMA iPhone 4s.

Pegatron receives orders for 15 million iPhone 5s from Apple

Google Doesn't Need Twitter Anymore

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/07/04/businessinsider-google-lets-contract-with-twitter-expire-2011-7.DTL

The Digital Transition in "Print" Already Has Occurred

A new study by Havas Media of reading habits shows respondents spending 37 minutes a day on digital publications as opposed to 22 minutes a day on print press. The switch to digital already has occurred, one might conclude, at least for readers of large national media products.

According to the Havas Media survey, 51 percent of the respondents prefer web sites, 31 percent prefer electronic editions, and 17 percent use mobile applications.

The New Faces of Digital Readers

Tablet Media Consumption

Media consumption on tablets across North America and Europe has grown substantially, InMobi reports. Globally and in North America, both the Samsung Galaxy Tab and the Apple iPad break into the top 15 devices by ad requests on the InMobi ad network. In Europe alone, the Apple iPad represents over 81 million ads in May 2011.

Download the full report here: http://www.inmobi.com/research/

Beyond tablets, the mobile ecosystem continues to grow. The InMobi network grew by over 40 percent from February to May and now receives over 35.7 billion mobile ad requests monthly. Smart phone ad requests grew 73 percent. The Nokia operating system still represents the most prominent mobile platform by ad requests, followed by Symbian OS, although Android has grown very fast and is now only 2.5 share points behind Nokia OS.

Mobile Insights, May 2011: Tablets, Tablets, Tablets

U.K. Mobile Market: Share Changes as Prices Change

Some recent evidence from the U.K. mobile market illustrates the delicate issue of "raising prices" in a competitive market. Three recently added an unlimited plan that appears to have lifted its market share.

Other carriers have raised their prices, with results you might have imagined.

http://www.reghardware.com/2011/07/04/telcos_lose_customers_when_increasing_prices/

Social Media Changing Media

It isn't yet clear how much success Google+ will have. But the fact that Google has invested heavily in what has to be called a new social initiative tells you all you need to know about the growing importance of social networks in media, and as media.

Up to this point, search algorithms have been built around pages and links. Google never discloses its actual algorithms, but the "PageRank" formula uses the number, type, and reputation of other pages that link to any given site as a major ranking factor. These days, though, the explosion of social networks has had an effect.

Today, far more status updates, photos, videos and other social flotsam and jetsam are published and shared than fully formed Web pages. That’s because content creation is now about "small stuff," rather than "big stuff." The popularity of such "micro" bits of content is that there now is a need to index lots more "personal" content, compared to commercial, professional or other more traditional content sources and sites.

That doesn't mean traditional sites have to be abandoned for Twitter streams. It does mean that it makes a difference whether content gets re-tweeted, "like" or otherwise shared. Google, for example, now incorporates Twitter data into Google results.

Specifically, tweets and mentions of your published content receives has a material impact on how Google ranks your sites, pages, posts and stories.

It actually isn't easy to describe the suite of services that are part of Google+. See http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/introducing-google-project-real-life.html.

The issue for content marketing is that social sharing is becoming a more important SEO requirement.

Why Google Has the Hammer To Make Businesses Use Google Plus

Google+ Cost $585 Million?

By one back of the envelope calculation, it might have cost Google some $585 million to create Google+.

Google Costs $585 M, the Same as MySpace? - Daily Artifacts

Will Google+ Be a Kiler App on Mobiles?

"Because Google is also available on the iPhone you may be tempted to downplay the significance of the app for the Android ecosystem," argues Matthew Panzarino. But Google will be able to do things with the app on its platform that would never happen on iOS, he argues.

Things like a "Hangout" or "Huddle" widget, the system wide integration of Google into the operating system to capture photos and videos or email addresses and phone numbers categorized by "Circles" will only exist on Android. "In the end, it’s safe to say that Apple will never integrate even basic Google functionality into the innards of the iPhone’s OS," he argues.

And it’s not enough that Apple has its own equivalents to some of these features in its iCloud suite, Panzarino. For instance, every picture can be automatically uploaded to your Google gallery every time you press the shutter button of an Android phone, mimicking the behavior of the Photo Stream in iOS. But these photos cannot be instantly shared with a Circle of your friends, they can’t be viewed in a gorgeous, socially enabled, online gallery.

With Google , Android finally gets its killer app - TNW Google

Blogs Don't Work?

There is an argument to be made that "blogs" aren't relevant anymore. Of course, the possible reason is simply because "blogs" have become an indispensable part of a brand's online experience, adding the dynamic component that Google and other search engines use to rank sites. In other words, to get more attention, brand websites have to become more content rich. In that sense, "blogs" as a separate activity is an idea that might have become outmoded.

"Blogs are replacing the static websites that businesses have traditionally considered their online home," says Jeff Korhan. The reason, as noted, is that search engine optimization now makes fresh content an essential element for website ranking.

Blogs are where people in the know go to get the most relevant news, Korhan argues. This is precisely why AOL Media paid handsomely for top blog The Huffington Post, a site that is seldom referred to as a blog. Indeed, it isn't. It is a media site.

But there is one practical implication. "It may be time to forget about blogs and instead direct our communities to our interactive websites, these online forums where they can tap into our expertise and a great deal more," he argues.

Your Interactive Expertise Distribution Site

Smart Phone Mobile Activities Rival PC

Research from Google and the Mobile Marketing Association finds Internet usage on mobile devices is quickly becoming as important as internet usage via PC among those who own smartphones.

In the United States, 58 percent of smart phone owners had used their phone to go online every day, compared to 78 percent who said the same of their PC. When asked about usage, 53 percent of respondents said they used the mobile internet multiple times, compared with 67 percent who said the same of their PC.

Mobile Activities Rival PC for Smartphone Owners - eMarketer

DOCOMO to Develop New Services by Working with Twitter

NTT DOCOMO will be working with Twitter to develop new applications and services incorporating Twitter features for DOCOMO feature phones and smartphones.

Real-time tweets and other Twitter content will be added to the search results on the DOCOMO “i-mode” portal for feature phones and the “docomo market” portal for smartphones. DOCOMO expects to launch the service for feature phones this summer and for smartphones later this year or early next year.

DOCOMO also plans to update an existing “touch and follow” application for feature phones, which will allow two DOCOMO customers to begin following each other quickly and easily by simply placing their feature phones together to exchange follow permissions via the NFC data transmission function of DOCOMO phones.

DOCOMO to Develop New Services by Working with Twitter

Double Your Phone’s Battery Life?

Justin Manwelier‘s "SleepWell" is a piece of software that helps maximize download efficiency by alerting the WiFi device in your phone when a download is finished on a neighboring device.

Most WiFi devices have to “stay awake” while waiting for their turn to download, draining a good deal of battery in the process."

New Wifi Tech Could Double Your Phone’s Battery Life

European Mobile Ops See Mobile Payments as Way to Avoid "Dumb Pipe"

European mobile operators, for better or worse, seem to think that now is the time to get into the mobile payments and mobile wallet businesses, before they are reduced to "dumb pipe" providers in one more application space.

Peter Van Leeuwen, strategy and business development manager for KPN, believes that mobile networks and banks are in danger of not gaining ownership of the m-commerce channel and being relegated to being "bit pipes" in the value chain. Watch a video here.

Whether that is a legitimate fear some will question. The larger question might be the extent to which mobile operators can establish key roles in developed markets, as compared to developing regions, where the business case and mobile operator role would seem to be much clearer.

The difference in market potential is simple. "Payments and banking" are not broken processes in the developed world. In the developing world, those functions are, in fact, quite undeveloped. To succeed in developed markets, mobile operators and others must create new value, not just displace existing payment systems.

In developing markets, the value is clear and obvious. No existing business has to be disrupted to succeed. The value there is not "a better way to pay," but "you can use a bank."

European operators dash for m-commerce involvement

Telenor Launches Mobile Payments Trial

Telenor has launched a 250-person mobile payments trial using near field communications with DnB NOR and MasterCard.

Each member of the 250-person test group is equipped with a Samsung mobile phone and a special SIM card. The SIM card contains information for the person’s MasterCard, issued by the Norwegian bank DnB NOR. By holding the phones up to a card reader in selected stores around the city, this group of testers can buy everything from shampoo to pizza slices using their phones alone.

Mobile payment becomes a reality in Oslo - News and Media - Telenor Group

2 Billiion Potential Mobile Banking Customers in Developing World

Mobile financial services may reduce the number of unbanked in Pakistan by 20 per cent by 2020, a study by Boston Consulting Group estimates.

In India the number of people with formal savings accounts could increase by 142 million. In Bangladesh it could increase tax revenues with US$500 million. And in Serbia it could lead to 23,000 new jobs being created.

In the developing world, more than 2.5 billion adults, or approximately 72 percent of the population, are unbanked, meaning they have no access to traditional financial services like banks. At the same time, nearly 2.5 billion people in these same emerging economies have mobile phones.

This means that there could be up to two billion mobile phone users who are currently unbanked that could be served through mobile financial services. Overall in the five countries covered in the study, mobile financial services has the potential to reduce financial exclusion by five to 20 percent through 2020 and increase GDP by up to five percent.

mobile financial services may improve the lives of two billionTelenor Group

Zynga Files for IPO, Bubble Building?

Zynga Inc., a company that sells imaginary tractors and other make-believe goods in online games, for real-world money, plans to go public in a deal that could value it as high as $20 billion, the Wall Street Journal reports. See Zynga Files for IPO - WSJ.com (subscription required).

Those sorts of eye-popping numbers should have the rational person thinking there might be another Internet investment bubble building. Others will make all sorts of arguments about why at least some of the valuations are justified.

Are we in another tech bubble? You will hear lots of people denying that thesis, but they were doing that the last time, and although the refrain last time was "things are different," this time people are saying "Internet assets are not over-valued; the firms have actual revenues" and so forth. What is harder to dispute is that growth expectations are quite high. How high is "too high" is the current question.

Keep in mind what happened in the last tech bubble, though. Lofty valuations crashed hard. From the bubble peak, sometime between 1999 and very early 2001, valuations plummeted to about 10 percent of peak. Valuations too rich by an order of magnitude was the rule. Some of us would say it remains a good rule.

Google, Among Others, Considering Bid for Hulu

Google apparently is among the companies that Hulu advisors have reached out to as they begin to hunt for a bidder, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Yahoo apparently also is interested in potentially bidding. Hulu's bankers were setting up meetings with a wide array of technology and media companies, though, and it remains unclear whether Hulu's owners would be interested in seeing Google, with its YouTube ambitions, get the asset. At the same time, some would argue that Hulu is essentially hobbled, strategically, because its media owners do not agree on strategy, and in any case remain profoundly "conflicted" about how aggressive they ought to be in encouraging online and over the top distribution.

What seems clear enough is that only an owner primarily interested in distribution alone could give Hulu the marketing push it might require. Right now, Hulu can't clearly push the service as hard as others might, because it would like to succeed, but not too much; wants to grow new channels and protect existing channels.

Google, Among Others, Considering Bid for Hulu - WSJ.com (subscription required)

The US Group Buying Universe

When it comes to social shopping, group buying or "deal of the day" services, there doubtless are doubters. "Just a fad," some will say. The argument for why social shopping is not a fad is that it actually might represent the next generation of the local advertising and local promotion business, functions that already exist, already are sizable and would seem to be poised for redefinition as mobile phones, location services and mobile payments become more popular.

As always, being "too early to market" can be fatal. Woot, founded in 2004, currently has over 1.4 million unique monthly visits. Groupon, founded in 2008, has 29.1 million unique monthly visits. . Mercata, another early mover, was shut down in 2001.

LivingSocial is around half the size of Groupon, at 14.3 million unique monthly visits, with 301 US cities to Groupon’s 182. Yeah that’s about five percent of the US population visiting the site monthly.

The US Group Buying Universe

"Owned" Media is Media

Content marketing is a bit like the television business. Any single person might have regular access to hundreds of channels, but most will watch only a handful, perhaps six to seven on a regular basis, and possibly a dozen, including those channels watched only occasionally. Most people never dwell at most of the hundreds of channels.

Keep in mind that “audience” creates the revenue opportunity. Viewers create the advertising opportunity, because viewers are potential customers. For most brands, the analogy is that paid, earned and owned media are attempts to get access to an audience that consists of potential buyers.

From an owned media perspective, the issue is how to become one of the few sites prospects turn to, daily, weekly or frequently, to get information about the issues, opportunities and context of the business they are in. In that sense, a content marketing effort has to try and operate like any entertainment video channel.

If your prospects are going to spend a limited amount of time with any content site in their business segment, you want your “channel” to be among the handful of places a prospect regularly goes to learn things. That doesn’t mean what those prospects typically want to learn about are the specifications for your latest product.

What they are most likely more interested in is the news flow that alerts them to opportunities and threats to their own business, not the brand’s opportunities.

"If you think about your online patterns, you have a tendency to only visit a couple of various websites every day,” says consultant Pat Miller. “While you may stray from these sites ever so often and look at other webpages while doing a search or aiming to waste time, for the most part your web content history is mostly focused around twelve or so pages which you visit religiously.”

“This isn’t a fluke, it is because of just one sound truth: you enjoy and depend on such sites,” he notes. Read more here. That’s as important a truth for brand content marketing as it is for traditional media outlets. People are busy and will create a habit of seeking out information from a relative handful of trusted sources on a regular basis. So the key is create a habit about returning to your own site.

“Folks stay with websites that they like,” Miller says. “They also follow websites they feel protected on,” in the sense of  not having to worry about phishing attacks or other dangers.

“Having said that, we have come to only rely on websites that have professional looking articles and a professional looking design,” Miller says. “That’s the basis behind web content marketing."

Intuit Buys Mobile Money Ventures

Intuit Inc. has acquired mobile Web banking technology assets from Mobile Money Ventures, a global solutions provider of next-generation mobile financial solutions. The deal supports Intuit Financial Services' position as a leading online and mobile technology provider to financial institutions, Intuit said.

The deal allows Intuit to directly manage customer support, and have full control over the design of its mobile Web banking solutions.

Customers of more than 320 U.S. banks and credit unions use Intuit's existing mobile Web technology, which was provided by MMV. Intuit also provides text message and downloadable application solutions to enable financial institution customers to conduct their critical banking tasks from virtually any mobile phone." Intuit Press Release - Intuit Buys Mobile Money Ventures Platform to Bolster Mobile Banking Capabilities.

Mobile Money Ventures, based in San Mateo, Calif., was formed in 2008 as a joint venture that combined the strengths of Citigroup, a leading, global financial services company, and SK Telecom Americas, an early-stage technology innovator. As an Intuit partner, MMV provided a proven mobile Web banking solution currently reaching more than 400,000 consumers. MMV's offering is optimized for all major handsets and screen sizes, making it right for all customers - regardless of their mobile device.