Do Comcast and Verizon Really Compete with Apple, Google?

One can argue that the recent agency agreements signed between Verizon and Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications and BrightHouse are deals that could reshape the nature of local access competition in the U.S. market.

Some will argue that deals signal a division of effort that has the cable partners focusing on landline services while Verizon handles the wireless business, without a formal merger between the companies.

Call it what you like, one might make the argument that, essentially, the firms are carving up "spheres of influence."  One would be harder pressed to make the argument that Verizon thereby avoids investing in the latest generation of access technology. Verizon already has done so, in nearly all its markets, with a couple of major exceptions.

But rhetorical flights of fancy and feints always are part of the game when such deals require any sort of finding that the deals are "in the public interest." We are likely to hear at least some of that as the Federal Communications Commission weighs its approval of spectrum transfers that are not formally part of the agency agreements.

Skeptics will be watching for signs of a long-familiar tactic, namely misdirection. "Look there, not here," is essentially a tactic sometimes used in such campaigns.

Some might say that is at work when the partners seriously argue the deals are necessary so they can better compete with the likes of Google and Apple.

Ignore for the moment the issue of whether participants in any ecosystem successfully can take over roles held by other key participants. There are reasons enough to doubt the success they could potentially have on that score.

Ignore for the moment the potential impact on local access or wireless competition. Consider only the issue of access providers arguing they need to, and will, compete with their application and device partners.

If serious, that implies the device and application providers will have even more incentives than they already do to reinforce the loosely-coupled way they work with access providers. In simple business terms, "if you try to minimize me, I will try to minimize you."

That is not to say areas of overlap will exist at the edges. Access providers have been app providers in the past. Access providers sometimes have dabbled in the device arena.

App providers do offer features and services that are competitive with, and displace, some service provider apps.

But one has to wonder. If channel conflict continues to escalate, and if in fact four major mobile service providers suppliers actually are too many for the U.S. market to support, long term, whether currently "unthinkable" courses of action might become practical.

No industry in the U.S. economy seems to pile up free cash more than the application provider business. Apple alone has enough excess cash that it has started to pay dividends.

It is true that no major application or device manufacturer really "wants" to be a service provider. On the other hand, firms such as Apple famously are concerned about securing their supply chains. And "access" might someday be seen as a more-vital part of an application or device supply chain.

So, potentially, access providers and app and device providers could wind up competitors rather than collaborators. There is a dynamic tension in the ecosystem. Whether that becomes a destabilizing tension is yet to be seen.

Is "Breakage" the FreedomPop Revenue Model?

“Breakage” might be the biggest near-term revenue generator for “free” mobile broadband provider FreedomPop, which plans to give away 1 Gbytes worth of usage for customers who could pay $10 per gigabyte for usage above the first 1 Gbyte of usage.

There are a couple of salient “angles” here. First, there is the emphasis on “mobile broadband,” not voice. FreedomPop does not sell voice. Also, there is the “freemium” business model. Then there is the issue of the use mode, which some will find a bit kludgy.

FreedomPop works by wrapping a case around an iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S, containing a WiMAX radio so users can communicate with the Clearwire network, which is providing the access. The kludgy part of the deal is that users cannot use their voice functions when the case is on.

There are some people who will put up with quite a lot of hassle to use some app or service “for no incremental charge.” The issue is how many.

Apparently there also is a $75 deposit to use the case. One wonders how many cases will be returnable in usable condition, essentially making the case a $75 upfront investment. That wouldn’t be unusual, though. Dongles or other devices used to access mobile broadband can cost more than $100 to couple of hundred dollars.

What is important here is the potential level of success. Can FreedomPop create a viable business offering mobile broadband on a freemium basis? Will users accept some of the limitations? In addition to breakage, what other for-fee services or features will emerge?

Sprint Has "Apple" Issues

Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett downgraded Sprint shares to "underperform" from "market-perform," and more significantly thinks there is a risk Sprint could go bankrupt in about four years. You might wonder why.

Moffett argues there is potential danger ahead because of Sprint's heavy debt loads. Heavy debt frequently is an issue that trips up lots of firms. Nor is the need to invest heavily in new generations of technology.

For Sprint, perhaps more so than for other service providers in the U.S. market, there are investment issues related to a specific device. Some time in 2012, it is possible Apple will introduce Long Term Evolution versions of the Apple iPhone.

The problem is that Sprint does not, in Moffett's opinion, have the ability to buy or clear enough spectrum to compete with iPhones using Long Term Evolution expected to be offered by AT&T and Verizon Wireless.

You might be tempted to argue that Sprint simply can sell other devices, and doesn't "need" the iPhone. But Sprint, and most observers, thinks Sprint has to offer the iPhone. Many would say T-Mobile USA's current issues with subscriber growth are a direct result of its inability to sell a version of the iPhone that works on its network.

"We expect Sprint’s competitiveness to begin to backslide when LTE becomes the nation’s de facto standard,” Moffett says.

"To be clear, we are not predicting a Sprint bankruptcy. We are merely acknowledging that it is a very legitimate risk. And notwithstanding a recent rally in Sprint shares, we believe that risk is rising," Moffett said in a research note.

Moffett said he does not expect Sprint to file for bankruptcy any time soon. But he cautioned that it is due to repay $2.6 billion of its debt in 2015, the same year $3 billion in debt comes due for Clearwire Corp, which is majority owned by Sprint.

Sprint already has made a $15.5 billion commitment  to buy iPhones from Apple over the next few years, whether or not Sprint can sell them.

Sprint is also embarking on a $7 billion network upgrade to support LTE, but some worry spectrum could be an issue, in addition to increasing Sprint's debt load.

It might be stretching matters just a bit to say the Apple iPhone now has become a problem that will cause Sprint to fail, financially. But the iPhone appears to be a significant driver of capital investment Sprint cannot easily afford.

Mobile and Untethered Trends Raise Key Questions

Mobile is by far the biggest part of the global telecom business, and service provider revenues tell only part of the story. “Untethered” is the other big part of the story. By some estimates, for example, about 90 percent of all tablets sold use Wi-Fi-only connections, meaning those devices are used untethered, but not in fully-mobile mode.

Other measures of consumer and business spending also point to the growing importance of mobility, and account for the “mobile first” orientation many application providers now take. You might intuitively guess that there are potentially huge implications for communications service providers, both positive and negative.

If we look at the US household information technology spend (including PCs and all other “information” technology), over 50 percent of that spend now goes to mobile, according to Chetan Sharma. On average, wireless spend represents 31 percent of total telecom spend, according to Research and Markets.

U.S. and U.K. enterprises are embracing mobile at an unprecedented rate, according to Antenna Software, with average current investments of $422,000, rising to $926,000 by the middle of 2013, according to a study conducted by Vanson Bourne.

Mobile revenue is about 4.5 times bigger than fixed network revenue, and it has been that way for several years. In a literal sense, the global telecommunications business has become a largely mobile business, with some important fixed line applications and revenue sources.

"Mobile first" therefore has become the important element of strategy for a growing number of application providers better known for their PC-based features and use cases.



You might suspect those sorts of statistics might have huge implications. They probably do, especially for fixed-line communications providers.

“In their current model, some traditional telecoms companies will not succeed,” says Roman Friedrich, Booz & Company analyst, the Financial Times reports. But just what might mean is difficult to foresee at the moment.

Still, it is instructive that, increasingly, there is talk of the extent to which “telcos” compete with the likes of Google and Apple.

The European Union’s telecom regulator, for example, now is investigating whether Vodafone , France Telecom, Telecom Italia, Deutsche Telekom, and Telefonica, as well as to the telecom he GSMA, have violated anti-trust law by trying to create a mobile payments consortium and service.

Google has a major “mobile wallet” service under development, and most observers expect Apple to enter the business in some way, as well. Some mobile service providers want to create their own application stores to compete with iTunes, the App Store and Google Play, as well.

What is interesting, of course, is that Apple is largely a device manufacturer, while Google largely is a software company, though each competes in both hardware and software to some degree.

Essentially, contestants in the communications and entertainment ecosystem are finding they increasingly must compete not only with other competitors within a portion of the ecosystem, but even to a certain extent with partners in the rest of the ecosystem. That’s the sense in which there is validity to assessing how much, and where, telcos and cable companies might actually find themselves competing with traditional partners in the value chain.

Some would say the significance of the European service provider moves are all of the efforts to develop new services ranging from mobile advertising to new messaging technologies to counter competing and often free services from Apple and Google.

That sort of creeping competition between “access providers” and “handset or application providers” might be viewed as a logical extension of current roles into adjacent business roles.

But that raises a bigger question: to what extent is it even feasible for access providers to consider abandoning that role within the ecosystem. In other words, are they network players or not?

There is a “soft” way of answering that question, and a “hard” alternative. The soft answer is that a specific company continues to offer access or transport services, but sources them from a third party.

As a mobile virtual network operator buys capacity from an underlying carrier, or a competitive local exchange carrier buys wholesale service from a third party, so a “soft” way of answering the question of whether a network services provider continues to operate is to say “yes,” but with an increasing emphasis on other ecosystem roles.

One example is the difference between a firm that sees its competencies in “marketing” rather than “network management.” That sort of firm might be comfortable sourcing access and transport from third parties. A firm that believes its core competence lies in networking will generally prefer to own its own network assets.

The more radical “hard” answer is that a company literally divests network assets and seeks its fortune elsewhere in the ecosystem. That so far has seemed an unworkable strategy.

But it is not unknown. The 1985 divestiture of the Bell System had AT&T completely getting out of the access business, to focus exclusively on long distance and technology services (Bell Labs and Western Electric). In essence, AT&T became a technology supplier and long distance specialist, and not longer was a “telco” in sense of providing access services and “dial tone.”

Rochester Telephone in the 1990s essentially gave up its local exchange monopoly, creating a separate wholesale access company and then a separate retail services division. The deal was part of a larger bargain that gave Rochester Telephone the right to create a long distance services business, at the time seen as the faster-growing revenue opportunity.

In similar fashion, Singapore Telecom gave up its own retail monopoly in exchange for freedom to pursue offshore growth opportunities.

In those cases, an incumbent gave up ownership of the “networks” business to become just one of many local retail providers. To be sure, Rochester Tel and SingTel continue to sell access services, but don’t own the networks.

The more radical, “hard” strategy would have had either firm abandoning the access business entirely.

That probably still will be an exceedingly rare occurrence. What could prove less rare are divestitures of whole parts of an access business though, as if a firm divests landline assets to become a wireless “pure play.”

The point is that it would at one time have been meaningless to talk about direct competition between an application provider or device manufacturer and a telco or cable company. That increasingly is less true. 

source: Martin Geddes

Millennials Aren't Getting a Fair Shake

If you care about America's future, you have to care about the hammering Millennials are taking in the current economy. This is a three-generation problem, though.


Aside from Millennials, their parents are affected. And looking out a bit further, grandparents are worried about what it all means for their grandchildren. Do not discount the seriousness with which this is viewed. 


Created by: OnlineGraduatePrograms.com

Retailers Say 2% of Sales Generated from Mobiles

According to the annual "Merchant Survey" conducted by the Direct Response Forum, a majority of retailers report only two percent or less of their sales are generated from a mobile device. Those 63 percent of  respondents presumably do not rely on mobile-enhanced payments in store, or do not relay heavily on online commerce. 


About 17 percent reported that mobile sales are over 10 percent, though. 


With regard to mobile commerce retailers report 17 percent of mobile customers are new buyers,   while another 17 percent of respondents say mobile customers are existing customers who are now purchasing using a mobile device.  


These findings should be qualified, though. Fully  54 percent of the respondents said they are unable to determine how much mobile commerce is happening. 

Screen Size Dictates Usage Mode

Screen size and app use are correlated, according to Stephanie Ethier, NPD In-Stat senior analyst. “Screen size has emerged not only as a key differentiator, but also the leading indicator of different tablet usages," she says. 

For example, devices with smaller form factors in the 3.5 inch to less than seven-inch range, spanning the portable media player and tablet categories, best serve entertainment needs that are typically considered complementary to everyday activities like commuting, exercising, and other on-the-go activities, Ethier argues. 

By implication, 10-inch screens more commonly are used to displace activities formerly conducted on PC screens. 

Worldwide shipments for devices with screen sizes between 3.5" to less than 7.0” will decline throughout the forecast period to 15.6 million in 2016. 

Due to continued iPad success, tablets in the 9.7” to less than 11” form factor category will represent 65 percent of worldwide tablet shipments, NPD In-Stat says. 

Mobile Bandwidth Demand Will Double Every Year Through 2015

Internet-generated broadband traffic will increase approximately 50 percent year over year on fixed networks and double on mobile networks.IDC also notes that fixed and mobile traffic volumes are driven by power users.

IDC forecasts that end-user demand for worldwide wireline and mobile broadband traffic will increase from 9,665 petabytes per month in 2010 to 116,539 petabytes per month in 2015, or two orders of magnitude in just five years. 


Web browsing, peer-to-peer file sharing, audio/video streaming, and a host of other applications are all driving bandwidth consumption. 


"The enormous growth in end-user demand for both fixed and mobile broadband services is staggering," says Matt Davis, IDC director of Consumer SMB Telecom Services.
Bandwidth usage strongly correlates with the availability of faster broadband speeds. Given access to faster speeds, users and application providers adjust by creating and consuming apps that use such speed.

Hign-definition video content will drive a new level of bandwidth demand, with more than 50 percent of video and audio streaming destined for a connected TV (either directly or indirectly), an iPad, or another mobile device or tablet.

Smart Phone Owners Prefer Larger Displays

Up to a point, smart phone owners in the United States and United Kingdom say they prefer larger screens,  compared to displays on their current phone, Strategy Analytics has found.

Respondents surveyed prefer device screens in the four-inch to 4.5-inch range, as long as the device is also thin.

Females are more likely to consider slightly smaller devices than males, and existing Android owners are more likely to seek larger devices than existing Apple iPhone owners.

“Almost 90 percent of existing smartphone owners surveyed chose a prototype smartphone with a display larger than their current device,” says Paul Brown, Strategy Analytics director.

NetZero Offers 4G Dongle and Wi-Fi Hotspot Service

NetZero Wireless has launched its “NetZero 4G Mobile Broadband,” a mobile broadband service using a PC dongle or stand-alone Wi-Fi personal hotspot.

Very-light users, who can live within a 200 Mbyte monthly usage limit, can get service free for one year, with the purchase of a device. NetZero offers a variety of plans starting at $9.95/ month for 500 Mbytes of usage, up to $50 for 4Gbytes of usage a month.

Users do not have to sign a  contract and there is no activation charge.

The NetZero 4G HotSpot simultaneously supports up to eight Wi-Fi-enabled devices. The NetZero 4G Stick supports a single laptop or netbook via a USB port. The NetZero 4G HotSpot costs $99.95 and the NetZero 4G Stick costs $49.95.

The service is available in over 80 cities nationwide, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Washington, D.C. and Miami, though coverage in some metro areas is spotty. Check the website to verify actual coverage in any metro area.

Apple to Initiate Dividend and Share Repurchase Program

In response to calls to "do something" about the excess cash Apple has been piling up (about $98 billion at the moment), Apple today plans to initiate a dividend and share repurchase program, starting later in 2012..


Apple plans to initiate a quarterly dividend of $2.65 per share sometime in the fourth quarter of its fiscal 2012, which begins on July 1, 2012. Apple also has authorized a $10 billion share repurchase program to start in the Apple's fiscal 2013 business year, which begins on September 30, 2012. 


The repurchase program is expected to be executed over three years, with the primary objective of neutralizing the impact of dilution from future employee equity grants and employee stock purchase programs.


You might argue that Apple alternatively could have plowed more of its cash back into building its business, but Apple in recent years has been cautious about undertaking large acquisitions, so the refusal to make a big, "game-changing" acquisition was not unexpected. 


The new plans might represent a cash outlay of about $15 billion a year. 

For Many Small Businesses, Facebook is Commerce

For 37 percent of small businesses surveyed by Payvment, Facebook is the sole online sales channel. That probably is because the survey is disproportionately weighted towards "online-only" or "online mostly" businesses. 


The fact that using Facebook is "easy" apparently accounts for much of its popularity. 

Verizon Applies Coding to Save Bandwidth

Verizon Wireless has developed software technology that cuts video traffic by transmitting only the parts of an image that change, Verizon Communications  Anthony Melone, chief technology officer said. It isn't immediately clear whether the coding is done "on the fly" or required pre-processing video. 


That doesn't mean Verizon will not eventually need more bandwidth, but does indicate the range of options and activities service providers are engaging in, to better manage bandwidth. 


Engineers working to develop high-definition television early hit upon the idea of transmitting only the portion of scenes that change, which allows lower bandwidth. Other techniques include the intentional "bit robbing" of information that the human eye cannot detect. The impairments are there, but people cannot see the impairments. 


"There are things that can be done that reduce the amount of bits without degrading quality the consumer can notice," according to Melone. 


Verizon Wireless also is using "multiple input, multiple output" (MIMO) techniques that help the firm economize on consumed bandwidth.


AT&T likewise is said to be working  with Intucell Ltd., whose software automatically assists wireless coverage areas, or cells, that are overloaded. That approach might not help reduce video bandwidth, but does better distribute the load. 

Tablets and E-Readers Changing News Experience?

Mobile devices including tablets and e-readers may be leading to a "deeper experience" with news than on the desktop/laptop computer, the Pew Research Center Project for Excellence in Journalism reports. 


For a light hearted but instructive look at the ways reading is "optimized" for different scenarios, on smart phones, e-readers and tablets, read this.


The study also confirms that audiences are growing fastest online, and that revenue likewise is growing fastest for online media. 


As sales of e-readers and tablet computers grow, Pew's early research has found consumers are reading more "immersively" on these devices than on desktop PCs, for example.


About 27 percent of U.S. residents now get news on mobile devices.


And these mobile news consumers are even more likely to turn to news organizations directly, through apps and home pages, rather than search or recommendations (social media), potentially strengthening the bond with traditional brands.


No more than 10 percent of digital news consumers follow news recommendations from Facebook or Twitter “very often,” the survey finds. And almost all of those who do are still using other ways like going directly to the news website or app as well.
 

The survey also suggests mobile is adding to, rather than replacing, people’s news consumption. Data tracking people’s behavior, for instance, finds that mobile devices increased traffic on major newspaper websites by an average of nine percent.


The technology may also be spreading this access to groups that were passed over by the first generation of digital. Some rural populations like Native Americans who largely missed the desktop generation, are now moving straight to mobile options that do not rely on broadband access.

Nearly Half of AT&T Subscribers Can Save Money by Switching to Metered Plans, Consumer Reports Argues

Close to half of AT&T customers with unlimited plans could save $10 a month by switching to a metered plan, Consumer Reports says.


Consumer Reports came to that conclusion after analyzing usage data provided to by Validas, a company that tracks wireless data coverage.


The data suggests that about 48 percent of AT&T unlimited-plan subscribers, who pay $30 a month for their data service, use no more than 300 megabytes of data a month, on average. 
AT&T's 300 MByte-a-month data plan costs $20 a month.


So subscribers who use little data could save more than $100 a year by switching to it. That is probably true, unless usage grows. And it would be an odd user that did not find gradually-increasing usage, over time. 

U.S. Business Fiber Penetration 32%

Some 32 percent of U.S. commercial locations with twenty or more employees now are able to buy fiber access services, according to Vertical Systems Group. That is up from 28 percent in 2010, Vertical Systems Group says. 


"Buildings" are the key concept here. Lots of smaller businesses are located in bigger buildings, so "connected buildings" are not the same as "connected" or "potentially connectable" organizations and firms. 


Still, one might conclude from the slow, gradual uptake that most buildings that offer enough revenue potential to serve with direct optical fiber connections already have that access. The issue now is how many of the less-desirable locations (in terms of payback potential) can be reached incrementally. 


You might argue that about 70 percent of locations actually are not very good candidates for a payback. 

Cable Got 82% of Net New Broadband Access Subs in 4th Quarter 2011

Cable modem service appears to retain its advantage as the preferred broadband access method for 82 percent of net new customers in the fourth quarter of 2011, according to the  Leichtman Research Group. 

The unanswered question is whether there is a pattern to the new adoptions, such as new customers disproportionately reflecting business customer purchases (either direct or reimbursable by an employer, for example).

Most of the new customers were added, as you would expect, by the 18 largest cable and telephone providers. Those 18 firms got about 93 percent of all the three million new customers.  

Perhaps the more telling statistic is that just two cable companies added 72 percent of those customers in 2011. The largest four firms added 89 percent of all new broadband customers for the full year 2011. 

Likewise, the top three telcos--AT&T, Verizon and CenturyLink--added 84 percent of all new net telco-supplied broadband access connections for the full year. But the largest seven telcos collectively added only 750,000 net new broadband subscribers for the full year 2011.

Broadband Internet Provider	Subscribers at End of 4Q 2011	Net Adds in 2011
Cable Companies
Comcast	18,147,000	1,159,000
Time Warner^	10,344,000	491,000
Cox*	4,500,000	130,000
Charter	3,654,600	252,900
Cablevision	2,965,000	73,000
Suddenlink	951,400	65,100
Mediacom	851,000	13,000
Insight^	550,000	25,500
Cable ONE	451,082	25,680
Other Major Private Cable Companies**	1,925,000	55,000
Total Top Cable	44,339,082	2,290,180
Telephone Companies
AT&T	16,427,000	117,000
Verizon	8,670,000	278,000
CenturyLink	5,554,000	238,000
Frontier^^	1,735,000	37,833
Windstream	1,355,300	53,600
FairPoint	314,135	24,390
Cincinnati Bell	257,300	1,200
Total Top Telephone Companies	34,312,735	750,023
Total Broadband	78,651,817	3,040,203

Sources: The Companies and Leichtman Research Group, Inc.
* LRG estimate
** Includes LRG estimates for Bright House Networks, and RCN
^ Totals prior to Time Warner Cable's acquisition of Insight completed on 2/29/2012
^^ LRG estimate does not include wireless subscribers
Company subscriber counts may not represent solely residential households
Totals reflect pro forma results from system sales and acquisitions
Top cable and telephone companies represent approximately 93% of all subscribers

What Will Cloud Mean for Enterprise Users, VAR Business?

By the end of 2013, consumer cloud services for accessing content will be integrated into 90 percent of all connected consumer devices, according to Gartner. Gartner managing vice president Andrew Johnson said that the emergence of personal clouds reflects the “4S experience”, consumers’ desire to store, synch, stream, and share their content on regardless of device or platform seamlessly.

That raises an interesting question. To the extent that enterprise and business technology increasingly is based on use of consumer tools, that means cloud apps and services will be better suited to business and in many cases enterprise application and information technology requirements.

So what might that mean for enterprise communications, enterprise data architectures and “business technology” in general? The answers of course have huge implications not only for enterprises, but for suppliers of all forms of “enterprise” voice, data and applications.

If in fact we certainly are leaving the PC era, and if the next era of computing architecture, for which we as yet have no name, includes a heavy reliance on both cloud computing and mobile technologies, there are certain to be new developments that essentially simplify and “flatten” business IT requirements.

We can't yet say with definitiveness that the next era of computing is defined by mobile devices, tablets, the Internet or cloud computing or even the fact that leadership is shifting more in the direction of applications and activities than computing appliances.

Those are big changes, indeed. But they are logical implications of a shift to cloud-based computing and mobile devices. More and more people will be able to work by interacting directly, from their mobile devices, with mission-critical business apps that are cloud based.

The need for intermediary and mediating technologies will not be necessary. Users will be able to use any broadband-connected device to access all the apps that formerly were resident on a local server. That could be a big shake up.

“The shift to the personal cloud will accelerate rapidly in 2012 as consumers learn how to use new services on their devices,” said Johnson.  “As cloud services become part of people’s lives, device vendors and platform providers must integrate cloud services in order to win customers in 2012 or risk being displaces by those that offer these services. Brands must stretch across multiple devices, platforms and services.”

According to Gartner’s definition, personal cloud allows consumers to seamlessly store, sync, stream and share using multiple connected devices such as smart phones, media tablets, televisions and PCs over the Internet.

In principle, there is no reason why enterprise apps could not be supported in precisely the same way.

Consumers have begun to adopt cloud-based services as part of their digital ecosystem, thanks to services such as Netflix, Google Apps, Amazon Music, Microsoft SkyDrive and Apple's iCloud. In a personal cloud, a TV show, for example, can be watched, left and resumed across multiple devices.

Might enterprises do the same? And if so, what happens to the business need for VARs and system integrators, when everything is in the cloud, and accessible directly on any device, especially mobile devices that communicate directly with the cloud services?

Small Business Big on Tablets

Small business adoption of tablets has jumped from nine percent in 2010 to 34 percent in 2011, indicating that the iPad is the fastest growing technology among the U.S. small and medium-sized business market, a study by The Business Journals has found.

About 75 percent of small business owners report said they are "very or somewhat familiar" with the device.

Godfrey Phillips, vice president of research at The Business Journals, says the adoption is fueled by smaller business executives and managers needing access to their business information and data, anytime and anywhere.

But smart phones and cloud computing also are among the trends that also correspond to that need.

"The iPad, as well as smartphones and cloud computing, are all part of this new trend and are experiencing significant growth as a result of that need," he said.

The study found that iPad users in the small business community are tech-savvy and financially successful. They also are highly educated, with 72 percent having a college education. The segment's annual household incomes averaged $176,000. Their companies are also well-established, having existed for an average of 28 years and averaging $9.2 million in annual sales. 

Can Anybody Unseat iPad?

Google is rumored to be preparing to launch a branded tablet of its own. The new "Nexus" tablet reportedly will have a seven-inch form factor, and be released mid-year, with a formal announcement coming potentially as early as May 2012.

The device would sell for as little as $149 in a Wi-Fi-only version. At that price point, Google would seem to be aiming directly at the Kindle Fire, which has been selling in volumes that make the Kindle Fire the first non-iPad device to get traction.

Some will argue the device will debut with a content ecosystem less well developed. So the issue might be "why" users buy the device. People buying the Kindle Fire arguably have been doing so for access to Amazon's rather rich content offerings.

On the other hand, some users will note that the Kindle Fire has been designed as a convenient gateway to Amazon content, but arguably does not work as well as a general-purpose tablet for web content.

The issue, some might say, is whether any such Nexus tablet will take on the iPad or only the Kindle Fire.

Apple iPad penetration in the United States will nearly double from 2011 to 2013, from just over 12 percent of internet users to 22 percent. But other suppliers will whittle Apple's market share from 83 percent in 2011 to 68 percent at the end of 2014, eMarketer predicts.

There will be 54.8 million tablet users in the United States by the end of 2012, eMarketer predicts By the end of 2014, that number will nearly double to 89.5 million.

The adage that "there is no tablet market, only an iPad market" is no longer as true as it was a few years ago. But it still might be fair to say there is an iPad market, and then a tablet market. When one supplier has 70 percent market share, it is analogous to the MP3 player market, which wound up being an iPod market, with some other providers.

In 2011, for example, Apple continued to hold 78 percent of the music player market. That is what "terrifies" other competitors. Apple has more than once showed an ability to dominate a new consumer electronics category.

The mobile phone market is more complicated, as Apple does not compete in the feature phone category. In the smart phone category, Apple has about 30 percent share, globally.

But Apple has managed to achieve an important distinction. By itself, Apple earns 62 percent or so of all smart phone supplier operating profit, according to Strategy Analytics.

Apple in the fourth quarter of 2011 shipped 37 million smart phones worldwide, up 117 percent from 17 million in the second quarter. This represented the strongest sequential quarterly growth among the top-five smart phone brands, according to IHS ISuppli.

The “nightmare” for all the other competitors is that Apple seems quite able to create new markets others have difficulty entering.