Verizon's Wireline Unions Go on Strike

About 45,000 Verizon Communications workers walked off the job Aug. 7, 2011 after negotiators failed to reach an agreement on a new contract, marking the first strike at the telecommunications giant in 11 years. That represents about half the workers in Verizon Communications wireline business units.

Most of the workers, represented by the Communications Workers of America and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, are in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast regions of the United States, where most Verizon customers are found, and handle the wireline side of Verizon's business.

Read more here.

Google+ Circles: Privacy as Social Media "Dark Matter"

Google SVP Vic Gundotra says there is a good reason much content posted by female Google+ users does not seem as prevalent as material posted by males. "Sometimes if you're not careful, when you're just observing from outside, you mistakenly might be saying, 'Oh, the women aren't commenting.' But it's just a matter of taste," Gundotra says. "They may be doing it to Circles, and you're just not seeing it."

"You'll visit a woman's profile, and it will look like there is no activity. But if you're in one of her Circles, it's filled with content," says Gundotra. "When people share, they are two to three times more likely to share to a Circle than publicly. That means most of the excitement on Google is dark matter; it's not visible."

Google+ and "Dark Matter"

HTC Purchase of Dashwire Appears to Represent Patent Protectiion

In another example of the importance patent portfolios now represent, HTC Corp. agreed to acquire all of the shares of U.S. mobile Internet applications company Dashwire Inc. for as much as US$18.5 million, in a move that could give it more tools in possible future patent litigation against competitors, including Apple.

HTC Purchase of Dashwire Could Help in Patent Suits - WSJ.com (subscription required)

Verizon Workers Might Strike

Typically, a strike at a major telecommunications company means, among other things, that all management vacations get cancelled. That might happen, as Verizon workers are threatening a strike.

Microsoft, Google Spar over Patents

If the sparring is a bit unusual, it might be because the stakes are so high. Many observers say patents might be emerging as a way for Android competitors to raise costs for every Android handset sold, at the very least. In other cases, where cross licensing is not possible or desired by some contestants, some Android software might have to be completely rewritten. Where patents cover processes, even that might not be entirely possible, at least in principle.

Better Web App Communications Coming

In today’s browser ecosystem, web apps are completely disconnected, or require the use of complicated APIs in order to make use of a third-party service such as posting a comment to Twitter from a custom publishing domain.

The Android operating system addresses this problem with "Intents," a facility for late run-time binding between components in the same or different applications. In the Intents system, the client application requests a generic action, such as a "share," and specifies the data to pass to the selected service application.

Google developers are working on an analogous system for the Web. "Web Intents" will be an API will provide the same benefits of Android Intents, but better suited for web applications. That presumably will make the web apps user experience more like the mobile apps experience.

Connecting Web Apps with Web Intents

More Apple-Google-Microsoft Patent Battles Coming?

Google and Apple now are said to be sniffing around for InterDigital patents, in the wake of a consortium purchase of Nortel patents (Apple was part of that group) and a Google purchase of some patents from IBM.

Google has nearly $40 billion in cash and cash equivalents to spend, but Apple has almost double that. And if Apple teams up with Microsoft again, they’ll have over $100 billion in buying power.

Some might argue that, for such reasons, Google will not be able to out-bid Apple, and therefore will be exposed to patent litigation related to Android. Others might argue the whole matter is raising in a new way the need for patent reform, while some might even think the Justice Department will have to intervene.

Competition, many would agree, is a good thing. But it now appears that patent litigation now is increasingly used to stifle competition. And that could become a restraint of trade issue.

Patents Issues Growing?

MtetroP{CS, Leap Troubles Not Helpful for AT&T?

A 40 percent -plus plunge in the stock prices of Leap Wireless International and MetroPCS Communications, triggered by disappointing quarterly results, could be bad news for AT&T, the Wall Street Journal reports. The reason, of course, is that AT&T has touted the amount of regional competition as evidence that U.S. mobile markets would remain robustly competitive even after a completed AT&T purchase of T-Mobile USA.

Any sign that the regional competitors are not faring so well would raise doubts about the ultimate state of competition in the mobile market.

AT&T's Great Leap Back WSJ.com (subscription required)

App Makers Focus on Repeat Buyers, In-App Purchases

Mobile developers are increasingly focusing on engaging repeat customers rather than chasing sales of apps to new users, according to a new survey of developers by Appcelerator.

Developers also are looking to in-app purchases for revenue as well.

Just over 2,000 developers were surveyed by IDC and Appcelerator between July 20 and 21, and just about half of them said pure sales of apps was the primary strategy driving their business model. That’s down about nine percent from Appcelerator developers surveyed six months ago.

Developers see in-application purchasing rivaling app store sales for monetization by 2012, in fact.

App makers relying more on repeat users to make money

Ultrabooks and tablets a Fad?

In a statement that is brave or foolhardy, Acer founder Stan Shih says tablets are a fad. What he seems to mean is that PCs are the base of the IT industry and tablet PCs are also developed from the base; therefore, in the future, products will still need to go through the PC platform to create even more add-on value.

Shih added that Apple achieved success with iPad through its outside-the-box thinking, which is an attitude that all notebook players should learn.

Ultrabooks and tablet PCs are short-term fads, says Acer founder

Amazon set to sell 3 million tablets this fall?

According to CENS.com, Amazon expects to sell three million of its Android tablets this fall. Quanta Computer Inc., the contract manufacturer putting together Amazon's tablet, has been told to keep the assembly line running to the tune of 800,000 to one million units produced each month from August through October. As a point of reference, consider that Motorola said it expects to sell half that amount for the entire year.

Amazon set to sell 3 million tablets in fall?

12% of U.K. consumers don't carry cash

Some 66 percent of U.K. consumers say they don't like using cash, and one in eight has stopped carrying it entirely, according to Barclays.

The research was done by Populus, which interviewed 2,000 people and discovered that the average UK wallet contains £23.

12% of UK don't carry cash

Digital dollars are finally starting to matter to Viacom

Up to this point, major content providers have faced a brutal choice. Digital and online delivery is seen as the future, but revenue for digital products just hasn't had the magnitude of the legacy products they replace.

The typical way of describing the revenue differences are that analog generates dollars while digital products generate pennies, perhaps dimes.

But that might be changing. Programmers like Viacom are finally starting to see a real uptick in the money they get from digital distributors.

On Viacom’s fiscal third quarter earnings call, the company reported that affiliate revenues grew 20 percent domestically and 16 percent worldwide. That growth was due in part to digital deals that the company has struck recently, including new ones with Netflix and Hulu that make its shows available for streaming.

Digital rights might finally be turning a corner. For consumers, that means higher prices for digital versions of legacy products, of course. But that's part of the price to be paid if users want the same high-quality content on their mobile, handheld and other screens as they are used to seeing on their TVs.

Digital dollars are finally starting to matter

Are Personal Hotspots the First 4G "Killer App"?

New fourth generation networks might not have yet produced a new "killer application,"  but personal hotspots and video are likely candidates. So far, the personal hotspot is the one new app that 4G is enabling, some might argue.


Novatel Wireless says its "second quarter benefited from strong growth in our MiFi intelligent mobile hotspot product line, as well as initial sales of 4G Expedite embedded solutions," said Peter Leparulo, CEO of Novatel Wireless. "Our LTE MiFi hotspot has quickly become the category leader."


Novatel Wireless Second Quarter 2011 Financial Results

Smart Phone Preferences by State

New data from Jumptap shows that consumers in the South and Southwest tend to be Android-biased compared to the rest of the country, while those in the Midwest and Northeast lean towards iOS.

California, Texas and Florida also over-index for Android use and states in New England and the Midwest over-index for iOS use.

Blackberry use, which over-indexed in New York, was also included in the geographic data. This new data establishes an evolving narrative of a North vs. South divide in the ongoing battle of the two top mobile operating systems.

Jumptap Maps the U.S. as Android vs. iOS

Gaming Firms Need 10GigE?

Providers of cloud-based infrastructure and application hosting services, as well as bandwidth suppliers, might want to pay attention to recent moves by gaming companies, which are finding that, at least in some cases, cloud services providers cannot provide the network bandwidth gaming applications require, leading to performance issues.

Digital Chocolate, provider of social games such as Millionaire City and Pro MMA Fighter, is following Zynga by launching games in the cloud, then bringing them back in house when demand levels off.

Alfred Tsai, Digital Chocolate’s director of global IT and network operations, says Digital Chocolate was operating entirely in Amazon Web Services, but decided to bring some games back in-house when performance issues got to be too much. In other words, the backbone optical network was not running fast enough, with enough capacity.

Gaming startup pulls back from the cloud

Gamificiation Culturally Specific to U.S.?

"Gamification" is seen as a growing technique for increasing user application engagement Mayorships, stickers and badges are examples.

“There is a huge trend in the US that has fuelled the likes of GetGlue, Miso, YapTV, Intonow and all the rest, all leveraging off Foursquare,” Zeebox CEO Ernesto Schmitt says. The consumer variant of "gamification" is the "check-in."

But many think "gamification" is, and will be, an important loyalty mechanism.  Read more here.

But Schmitt thinks the notion is culturally specific to U.S. users. “Americans and all of American society have a big thing about competitions about everyday activities," he argues. “We don’t see gamification as being anywhere near that importance or acceptance in Europe."

"Gamification Only an American Trend?

Will You Give Up Facebook for Google+?

It might be a bit of a waste of time to worry about whether Google+ will "displace" Facebook or Twitter. There probably is room for several leading social networks.

And there is some evidence that many people already are thinking they will use, or will try to use, both Facebook and Google+.

Read more here.

Digital Loyalty Matters

Loyalty always matters in business, for the simple reason that acquiring new customers is expensive, compared to retaining and cultivating long-time and repeat buyers. That is true for social media as well as for all other marketing activities of a business. Read more here.


One rule of thumb is that it costs six to seven times as much to acquire a new customer as to retain a current customer. The other important metric is that customers any retailer or brand has had for a longer time tend to buy more, represent higher profit margins and cost less to support (they know the product, know how to use it and don't have as many questions in the billing, delivery or other operational areas).





  

Digital Goods Have Been Purchased by 31% of All Gamers

U.S. gamers, whose online purchases of digital goods were once paid for largely by credits earned from advertiser offers, now say they are migrating to “real world” payment for digital goods using debit, credit and prepaid cards, according to a new study of online gamer behavior commissioned by PlaySpan, a Visa company.

According to the study, 31 percent of the general gamer population has used real world money to purchase virtual content. Of those gamers who use real world money, 57 percent said they make purchases of virtual items using real world money at least once every month.

Console games with online play account for the majority (51 percent) of virtual purchases using real world money, with social networking games (30 percent) and massively multiplayer online games  coming in at second and third respectively.

Overall, 72 percent of respondents indicated they expect to spend the same or more money on games in 2011 as they did in 2010.  About 67 percent of those who intend to spend more said they were playing more online games than last year, with 42 percent saying they have more money to spend.

Download the full report here.