Alcatel-Lucent Ventures on Mobile Payment Challenges

 Brian Stout, Alcatel-Lucent Director, Alcatel-Lucent Ventures, talks about the challenges of offering a mobile payments solution. 


"It really is about consumer adoption," says Stout. "How do you replace the leather wallet?" As simple a question as that might be, the answers are complex because the existing business already is complex, and might be disrupted if a mobile can displace a credit card or debit card.


Mobile operators, merchants and banks all have customer relationships, but who owns the customer in a mobile payments context?  And make no mistake: changing the status quo is really key. Mobile operators want to lower churn and get revenue from non-traditional means. Merchants want loyalty. 


"Our vision is that you have to create value beyond payment," says Stout. And the whole business has to get to critical mass as well. 



Beyond payment, there are other values. Can you replace library cards and other information vehicles? Mobile payment systems will  have to integrate with existing back office and customer care systems; support multiple stored-value accounts;  cash, loyalty points, coupons and other offers. 


Digital signage apps also are part of the ecosystem, says Stout. Advertising, location services, voice and social media also will be part of the solution. 

Mobile Shopping: Before, During, and After a Sale

It might be easy to miss the full extent of the growing role mobile devices are playing in the "shopping" process because so much attention is rightly focused on mobile payment or social shopping (Groupon, LivingSocial). In the former case you have the actual payment transaction, in the latter case the inducement to buy something.

The more subtle roles are played as people first become "searchers" before they become shoppers, looking for information first, before the intention to buy something has surfaced. To the extent that involves mobile search, recommendations and so forth, mobile as a venue for advertising and marketing is the issue.

Then, as searchers shift to the "shopping" mode, direction, location and mapping move to the fore. Then mobiles get used inside retail outlets for comparison information, further detail on products and possibly, exposure to any offers that might be current.

The point is that the ways people use their mobile devices before they get to a store is part of the shopping process, and creates business potential for different entities in different parts of the mobile ecosystem. Once a product is purchased there are other ways mobile can be used for supporting customer service, creating social reviews or supporting repeat behavior.

Mobile payments and social shopping are only two of the salient ways mobile is used in the shopping process, and only part of the ecosystem of activity growing up around mobiles.

Reaching the Mobile Shopper: Before, During, and After the Big Sale | ClickZ

Social Shopping $4 Billion in 2015

U.S. consumer spending on deal-a-day offers, social shopping, mobile coupon services such as Groupon or LivingSocial, will grow from $873 million in 2010 to $3.9 billion in 2015, representing a 35.1 percent compound annual growth rate, according to BIA/Kelsey.

But it also is possible the market could grow faster, to as much as $6.1 billion by 2015 (47.4 percent CAGR), while a very conservative outlook pegs the space at $2.1 billion (19.7 percent CAGR).

BIA Kelsey - Press Releases

SMB Market a New Battleground for Local, Online, Mobile Spending

Local media companies now are focusing on small local businesses for revenue growth. Companies like Groupon went from zero to more than $400 million in a year’s time just by targeting smaller businesses, for example.

A Borrell Associates survey of 2,872 small and medium size businesses found that they plan to increase their ad budgets 4.5 percent in 2011, but their online budgets 29 percent. The biggest gainers: email and social media advertising, including spending on their own websites.

Borrell Associates, Inc | 2011 Outlook: SMBs Become Everybody's New Best Friend

Nexus S for Sprint 4G Network

Google Voice Works With Virtually all Sprint Handsets

HTC "Flyer" Tablet

Tablets now are available in form factors ranging from five inches to about 10 inches. The new HTC "Flyer" is a seven-inch device. http://news.yahoo.com/s/digitaltrends/20110324/tc_digitaltrends/handsonwiththehtcflyersprintevoview4gauseful7inchtablet?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Google Voice Integration with Sprint Smartphones

Can a Tablet Replace a Smartphone?

Most people rationally consider a tablet a replacement for a PC of some sort, typically a notebook or netbook. But it has been noted in some cases that some users might consider a tablet a replacement for a smart phone. As odd as that might sound, consider a case where a traveling worker carriers two mobiles and a notebook, and possible a Kindle and iPod as well. That's a lot of screens.

The typical user probably would choose the smart phone for the "go everywhere" device, it is safe to say. And it would take a special set of circumstances to create conditions where that assumption could be challenged. A five-inch tablet with full voice and text messaging support is the perhaps-obvious example. So far, such a device does not exist. But five-inch tablets are available. read more here

But some do suggest that carrying a tablet everywhere is a real option. read more here, for example. It isn't the most-logical combination of devices, but consider a situation where user carries a simple feature phone for voice and text, and no smartphone, using the tablet as the connected Internet device.

The not hard to understand scenario is smartphone plus tablet, though. So far, there does not seem to be much evidence that the tablet generally is a replacement for anything but a notebook or netbook. Still, there are lots of substitutions some users will find reasonable.

Lots of business users carry mobile broadband dongles. A smartphone can in many cases displace the dongle. A traveling user might then find that the amount of time the smartphone is used as a Wi-Fi hotspot vastly outstrips the amount of time the device is used as a phone. Still, the advantage of the smartphone is its versatility, functioning as the voice and texting platform, GPS device when out of town and the personal Wi-Fi hotspot. Whether the second device is a tablet or notebook depends on the type of work the traveling worker does.

Content consumers who just need web access and email can easily do with a tablet. Content creators will find a notebook a better choice. So far, at least, the tablet does not seem to be a substitute for a smartphone.

In-App Buying is One Way Free Android Apps Can Earn Revenue

Google says it will be launching in-app billing in the last week of March, 2011, allowing developers to monetize their products by selling more chapters, episodes levels or virtual goods from inside the application. Previously, the only other way to monetize on Android was to sell an application. But that has been a problem for developers of "free apps." The new in-app billing creates a new path to revenue. http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2011/03/in-app-billing-on-android-market-ready.html

A Flood of Apps to Hit Android Market Next Week Thanks to In-App Payments | Tricia Duryee | eMoney | AllThingsD

What's the Difference Between "Pay Per Action" and "Pay Per Transaction?"

Some ad networks now feature a pay per action model, where payment to the ad network happens only when users take some pre-defined action. Some might occasionally consider a pay per transaction model, where the ad network gets paid only when a consumer makes a purchase.

So connect the dots. What is the other well-understood payment model? Shopping. People pay when they buy a product or service. How does that fit with advertising? At some point, more "advertising:" other than brand advertising is going to shift to "enable transactions," with the marketing entity getting paid a percentage of the sales amount. In other words, commerce is the future of many businesses that today are supported by advertising.

News Publishers Get into Social Shopping

The McClatchy Company is getting into the social shopping business, offering daily discount offers on its local newspaper websites. McClatchy is the third largest newspaper company in the U.S., publishing more than 30 daily newspapers, including The Miami Herald and The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and 43 non-dailies.

The New York Times and Denver Post also are in the business. Think about the implications, though. Traditionally, newspapers made made money from advertising and subscriptions, mostly from advertising. The classical revenue mix for subscription based newspapers is 30 percent from subscription fees and single copy sales and 70 percent from ads and classifieds. See

http://blog.business-model-innovation.com/2009/09/who-says-paper-is-dead-business-model-innovation-in-the-newspaper-industry/. The big problems are that classified advertising has been hit very hard by Internet alternatives, while display also has suffered a major drop.

The classical revenue mix for subscription based newspapers is 30 percent from subscription fees and single copy sales and 70 percent from ads and classifieds.

A new book published by Oxford University essentially argues "too much reliance on advertising" is the problem newspapers in some countries face. The study, commissioned by the Oxford-based Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, examined newspaper industries in several countries, including the US, UK, Germany and Brazil. http://ipcarrier.blogspot.com/2010/11/what-ails-newspaper-business-model.html.

But one struggles to think of what new revenue model could be found. Many newspapers operate direct marketing or direct mail operations. The revenue model there is marketing services, not news. It remains to be seen whether a newspaper can actually shift its revenue model enough in the direction of marketing services to sufficiently replace today's newspaper advertising.

Some of us think advertising simply isn't going to be sufficient, over the long term, whatever other sources become more important. In many cases, only commerce--people selling things--has enough financial heft to replace advertising. Where the old model was to "aggregate and audience to sell advertising," the new model might well be "aggregate an audience to sell a product or service."

That will be different. Less activity will occur on non-targeted sites and channels, but much more will happen on targeted, specialized sites and channels. Different kinds of content will sometimes be produced, in that regard. But commerce is a big enough human activity that lots of companies have clear incentives to spend money to make more sales.

Major News Publishers Jump on the Daily Deals Bandwagon

Mobile Commerce Bridges Physical, Digital Activities

One of the best ways to create a revenue model is to create a new way to accomplish tasks or activities people and entities already must do now, and then shift the associated revenues. About 70 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product comes from consumer spending. That's a big enough market to satisfy virtually any company.

Tablet, PC Policies Head Opposite Directions Within Enterprises

Information technology organizations in 26 percent of firms with 1000 employees or more were planning to implement, or had implemented, policies to support general purpose touchscreen tablets such as the Apple iPad. If that seems unremarkable, consider that, by the third quarter of 2010, tablets had only existed for six months. That is a very-rapid adoption profile for enterprises, indicating that the device resonates strongly.

Of that total, four percent reported they’d already implemented, and 17 percent were already piloting by the third quarter of 2010. Firms with 999 employees or less, also were adding support for tablets, with 18 percent planning to adopt, or having already implemented policies on use of tablets.

That rapid level of adoption contrasts with parallel "bring your own PC" policies, it appears. Only about two percent of firms, large and small, reported implementing or piloting bring-your-own-PC models, despite several years of hype among the desktop virtualization software vendors about this model.

Firms also have broadly embraced consumer-style Web applications on PCs, with 84 percent of firms increasing their use of Web applications recently.

One might argue that rapid tablet adoption suggests the PC is less useful, or at least less desired, by many categories of employees. It appears that many workers only need email and website access when working, much of the time. Over time, more enterprise apps likely will be adopted for tablet use. At the moment, that does not seem to be driving adoption, though. One wonders how soon it will be before the standard issue computing device, for many categories of workers, is a tablet, not a PC.

The Consumerization Of IT Proceeds Unevenly, From Growth In Tablets To Anemic BYOPC Adoption | Forrester Blogs

Fastest Phone, on Fastest Network?

App Providers, Carriers Look to Develop Software Defined Networks

gigaomtv on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

Deutsche Telekom, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Verizon, and Yahoo! have formed a new standards group, the Open Networking Foundation, a nonprofit organization to promote"Software-Defined Networking." SDN hopes to allow data centers, wide area telecommunication networks, wireless networks, enterprises and home networks to optimize network behavior.

For instance, in data centers SDN can be used to reduce energy usage by allowing some routers to be powered down during off-peak periods. Other expected benefits include additional ways to lower the cost of operating and managing networks, in part because it will be easier to simplify hardware and network management chores.

The SDN approach arose out of a six-year research collaboration between Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley. Essential to SDN are two basic components: a software interface called OpenFlow for controlling how packets are forwarded through network switches, and a set of global management interfaces upon which more advanced management tools can be built.

The first task of ONF will be to adopt and then lead the ongoing development of the OpenFlow standard (www.openflow.org) and encourage its adoption by freely licensing it to all member companies. ONF will then begin the process of defining global management interfaces.

“Software-Defined Networking will allow networks to evolve and improve more quickly than they can today,” said Urs Hoelzle, ONF President and Chairman of the Board, and Senior Vice President of Engineering at Google. “Over time, we expect SDN will help networks become both more secure and more reliable.”

The initial members of ONF are: Broadcom, Brocade, Ciena, Cisco, Citrix, Dell, Deutsche Telekom, Ericsson, Facebook, Force10, Google, HP, IBM, Juniper Networks, Marvell, Microsoft, NEC, Netgear, NTT, Riverbed Technology, Verizon, VMware, and Yahoo!.

22% of Starbucks Transactions Last Quarter Used Mobile Payment App

More than three million people have made a purchase using the new Starbucks mobile app, Starbucks says. In the most-recent quarter, 22 percent of all transactions were made using the Starbucks mobile app.

"Starbucks now offers the nation’s largest mobile payment network,” said vice president of Starbucks Brady Brewer. The program is a “touch to pay” system, where customers pay by simply holding up the app’s barcode to the scanner at the register. Piloted in select stores back in September 2009, the program didn’t fully launch nationwide until this past January to 6,800 company-operated stores.

Starbucks Card Mobile Payment App Is A Winner - SlashGear

Mobile Marketing by the Numbers

Some Cloud-Based Video Rentals Raise Issues

Cablevision Systems Corp. ran into an awful lot of opposition when it originally proposed to use a hosted, remote digital video recorder approach rather than putting hard disk drives into consumer homes. Cablevision ultimately won the right to conduct such operations on a remote basis, though the case had to go to the Supreme Court for resolution.

With remote storage, TV shows are kept on the cable operator's servers instead of a machine inside the customer's home, as systems offered by TiVo Inc. and cable operators currently do. See http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20090629/FREE/906299979.

Another test of an alternative approach to online-delivered video entertainment likely is coming. A company named Zediva buys physical DVD copies of new-release movies , and plays them one-at-a-time on physical DVD players located at the company’s servers; customers rent a player for $2, and the user’s computer acts as the remote.

Only one customer can watch a given DVD at a time, which the company says gives them legal cover since it makes them not really different from a traditional video rental store or Netflix’s DVD-by-mail service.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/03/is-zedivas-new-release-movie-streaming-service-legal.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss

The service works with PCs, Macs and Google TV users with Adobe Flash. The issue is that content owners are likely to sue to kill the service. In the past, studios have sued to prevent the sale of videocassette recorders, for example, so the attempt to block new delivery systems is not new.

About Us | Zediva

France Telecom Facing Significant Challenges

France Telecom remains significantly challenged by decelerating trends in its wireline voice business, which is shrinking at a greater pace than its major European peers, as recession-hit customers terminate landline phones, analysts at Seeking Alpha say.

However, the company’s deleveraging balance sheet, healthy dividend payout and the combination of T-mobile and Orange’s network assets make the stock attractive for investment.

France Telecom reported strong fiscal 2010 earnings that were well above the Zacks Consensus Estimate and the year-ago earnings, Seeking Alpha says. Revenues improved slightly as the second half of 2010 was strong, particularly driven by growth in mobile services. But it arguably is international investments which will power much of France Telecom's future earnings growth.

France Telecom Facing Significant Challenges - Seeking Alpha