Bing,Grows Share of U.S. Searches by 50 Percent

A year after the official relaunch of its search product under the "Bing" brand, Microsoft's share of U.S. searches has grown by 50 percent, according to data from comScore.

The firm estimates Microsoft's sites accounted for eight percent of U.S. searches in May 2009, but that the company grew its share to 12.1 percent of searches in May 2010. That represents a year-over-year growth rate of over 50 percent.

Over the same period, searches on Google and Yahoo properties dropped by 1.3 percentage points and 1.8 percentage points, respectively, with Ask and AOL sites also losing searches. Data for Google sites does not include searches on its video site YouTube.

With Bing, Microsoft Grows Share of U.S. Searches by 50 Percent - ClickZ

Skype CEO Envisions Switching Devices During Calls - PCWorld

Skype eventually will give users the ability to seamlessly switch devices between calls at the push of a button, says Skype CEO Josh Silverman. That would allow a user to start a conference call on a desktop PC switch to a mobile phone and then to his in-car navigation system without dropping the call.

Currently, Skype users can transfer calls to contacts or phones using the software's call transfer feature, but that feature doesn't yet allow users to transfer calls between devices using the same account.

Skype CEO Envisions Switching Devices During Calls - PCWorld

Google Earth Updates For PC & Mobile

Google has announced Google Earth 5.2 for the PC and 3 for iOS with native iPad support. The PC version now includes the ability to open a browser within Google Earth.

You can click a button on the top nav and a full browser appears. Anything that you would then do in a browser can be done within Google Earth. It's convenient, and an example of the current trend to embed more functions natively within a single important application.

http://www.gearthblog.com/

Sprint May Throttle Heavy Roaming Users

Sprint Nextel Corp. says laptop customers using an excessive amount of mobile data while roaming could have their accounts temporarily suspended, though the carrier still doesn't plan to limit the wireless connection for its high-volume smartphone customers, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The key issue here is heavy roaming use, off the core Sprint network, and the primary reason appears to be that Sprint obviously incurs direct incremental costs when users are on partner networks.

Sprint is changing its policies for data service for laptops users with mobile broadband cards or USB modems will not apply to smartphones.

Sprint already has a cap of 5 gigabytes of data usage within the network, and 300 megabytes of roaming data. Starting July 11, excessive data roaming by mobile laptop users could lead to Sprint suspending the off-network service until the customer's next billing cycle, unless the customer opts into a plan with extra charges for off-network usage.

Sprint says it will notify broadband customers by text message or email when they hit 75 percent and 90 percent of the roaming data limit. The plans include 5 cents per megabyte on the Sprint network and 25 cents when roaming.

The threat of suspension doesn't apply to usage on Sprint's 3G network or the 4G network run by partner Clearwire Corp., says Sprint spokesman Mark Elliott. "Sprint does not, nor plan to limit speeds, nor change a customer's ability to use any particular application or Internet site."

Analysts are expecting an industry-wide shift to control the amount of data traffic consumed by users, so the Sprint move is not unexpected, though Clearwire continues to say it will not cap data usage.

The issue is whether the new move will complicate Sprint's "simplicity" and "simply everything" marketing message.

T Mobile USA already has in place policies to throttle users who exceed the 5 gigabyte monthly cap. AT&T has adopted new caps of 200 megabytes and 2 gigabytes.

Verizon Wireless has not yet made any specific announcements about changes.

RIM Readying Tablet PC, New BlackBerry OS

Research In Motion Ltd. is  testing a touch-screen smartphone with a slide-out keyboard, the Wall Street Journal reports. The phone runs on a new version of the BlackBerry operating system and works much like an iPhone, letting users swipe through screens and expand images with their fingers. It also has a universal search bar that lets users scour all the phone's data and some data online as well.

RIM is also is reported to be experimenting with a tablet device to serve as a larger-screen companion to its BlackBerry phone. That device, which is in an early stage of development, will connect to cellular networks when tethered to a BlackBerry phone.

The new offerings come as RIM faces increased competition from devices built by Apple and those that run on the Android operating system from Google Inc.

RIM still sells more smartphones globally than any company besides Nokia Corp., and last year grabbed 19 percent of the world market for smartphones, according to  Strategy Analytics. But RIM's share of the North American market is slipping.

RIM's share of the North American smartphone market by shipments dropped to 38 percent in the March 2010 quarter from 54 percent in the first quarter of 2009.

Apple's share climbed from 18 percent to 23 percent over the same period.

The new slate device comes with four gigabytes of storage space and a five megapixel camera, the Wall Street Journal reports.

RIM is also readying a new Internet browser that renders Web pages much faster than the current browser, and allows users to access more than one Web page at a time, people familiar with the device said.

News Corporation Buys Skiff

News Corporation has acquired Skiff, Hearst Corporation’s e-reading platform, designed to deliver premium journalism to tablets, smartphones, e- readers and netbooks. The Skiff platform is designed to deliver visually appealing layouts for newspaper and magazine content.

News Corp. also announced an investment in Journalism Online, the venture dedicated to enabling newspapers, magazines and online-only publishers of quality content to collect revenue from their online readers.

News Corp. apparently believes it will benefit from owning the Skiff e-reader platform, though it doesn't appear to be enamored with the Skiff hardware. News Corp. is purchasing the Skiff software platform, but the device will remain with Hearst.

The purchase, along with an investment in news paywall provider Journalism Online, appears to be part of the larger News Corp. effort to put online content behind pay walls.

link

Mobile Web Use: Android Grows, iPhone Drops

Android’s share of mobile Web consumption in North America has gone from just five percent to 20 percent from January 2009 to May 2010, while the iPhone OS has dropped from about 75 percent to 59 percent, according to Quantcast.

The BlackBerry OS accounts for 10.4 percent, and all others combined account for roughly 11 percent.

link

iPad Browser Share Already Beating Android, BlackBerry

Though there are only two million iPads in the market, the iPad's share of the global browser market is already bigger than Android, BlackBerry, and the iPod touch, according to Morgan Stanley.

Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty says iPad usage is closer to a PC than a smartphone, which is not really surprising, since it's designed for web browsing. What is shocking is the rapid emergence of the iPad as a web appliance.

CHART OF THE DAY: iPad Browser Share Already Beating Android, BlackBerry

Investors Seem to Say Google Hasn't Found its Next Great Business

Google's stock has taken a beating this year, falling more than 20 percent since January, presumably because it hasn't yet shown investors it has figured out what to do for an encore, after its search business.

Contrast Google's equity valuation compared to Apple. Investors, rightly or wrongly, think Apple knows what it wants to do, and is doing it.

CHART OF THE DAY: Hey Google, Better Figure Out Another Business (Other Than Search)

Starbucks Digital Network Launches

Starting July 1, 2010, Starbucks is enabling free Wi-Fi at its U.S. company operated stores, and launching the Starbucks Digital Network, which will offer unique content, including unrestricted access to paid sites such as the the Wall Street Journal, as well as content from iTunes, The New York Times, Patch, USA TODAY, The Wall Street Journal, Yahoo! and Zagat.
    
Set to debut in the fall, and offered at U.S. company-operated Starbucks stores, Starbucks Digital Network will allow customers free unrestricted access to various paid sites and services including previews, free downloads, local community news and activities.

Developed in partnership with Yahoo! and using AT&T access, the new network aims to create a unique customer experience that also deepens customer engagement.  The new plan further illustrates the public Wi-Fi business model, which frequently "gives away" the access as an inducement to support some other business model.

FCC to Vote on Title II Reclassification Move This Week

The Federal Communications Commission says it will vote Thursday, June 17 on issuing a notice of inquiry that would allow the agency to explore whether to reclassify broadband as a Title II common carrier service.

Wall Street will significantly halt investments in broadband networks if the FCC moves to reclassify broadband access as a common carrier, Title II service, said former Rep. Harold Ford (D-Tenn.), Broadband for America honorary co-chair.

The chairman's proposal will make investors "timid or hesitant to make the kinds of investments needed to expand broadband."

link

The End Of "All-You-Can-Eat" Mobile Data in Europe

O2 UK will stop offering "unlimited" data usage and replace them with "buckets" ranging from 500 MBytes up to 1 GByte. )2 says 97 percent of O2 smartphone customers would not need to buy additional data allowances, as the lowest bundle (500MB) provides at least 2.5 times the average O2 customer’s current use.

Other U.K. operators as well as KPN in the Netherlands and Orange France have shared indications that they will move to buckets as well.

The End Of "All-You-Can-Eat" Mobile Data Plans? | Forrester Blogs

Placebook: Location-Based Service Emerges from Stealth

A new location-based service comes out of stealth.

FTC Opens Probe of Apple Mobile Ad Practices

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission will investigate whether Apple Inc.'s business practices harm competition in the mobile advertising market, Bloomberg reports.

It appears Apple's refusal to allow third-party firms access to analytics, as well as the apparent refusal to allow some competing ad networks access to Apple mobile applications, are contributing to the FTC's concern.

Regulators want to know whether moves by Apple will result in less competition in the growing market for ads on handheld computers and phones. Separately, Apple has barred applications using Adobe Flash, requiring all apps to use HTML5 for video.

This may not be the only antitrust investigation Apple faces. Justice Department lawyers recently contacted companies about Apple's practices in the music business. The Justice Department could forge ahead with that inquiry independent of the FTC's investigation.

The Justice Department is already investigating whether Apple and a range of other tech companies improperly agreed not to poach each other's employees, the Wall Street Journal says.

The starkly higher attention Apple has drawn suggests how Apple's role in several businesses--from content and devices to advertising--seems to have changed recently.

Apple recently surpassed Microsoft Corp.'s market value, a sign of its growing power in the technology industry.

Apple also controls around 70 percent of online music sales and has more of the overall music market than Wal-Mart Stores Inc., according to market research NPD Group. Apple's MP3 player market share is well over 70 percent, and its share of mobile phones is growing steadily, not to mention the explosive debut of its iPad tablet device.

The fear seems to be that Apple could be headed for such outsized domination of high-end mobile phones, a possible new tablet device category, and mobile advertising, now viewed as a key revenue source for mobile applications.

Some antitrust enforcers say that if they wait until a tech company has cornered a market, before moving to limit its power, it may be too late. The technology sector has powerful "network effects" that, some say grant outsize advantages to first movers and make it particularly difficult for competitors to break in, regulators say.

"The Commission has reason to believe that Apple quickly will become a strong mobile advertising network competitor," the FTC said last month. "Apple not only has extensive relationships with application developers and users, but also is able to offer targeted ads…by leveraging proprietary user data gleaned from users of Apple mobile devices."

It added that Apple's ownership of the iPhone software development tools, and its control over the developers' license agreement, "gives Apple the unique ability to define how competition among ad networks on the iPhone will occur and evolve."

Verizon Wireless Extending Skype Functionality

Skype isn't the danger telecom service provides once believed it was. There are lots of reasons, including the growing importance of data plan revenues and the decline of voice revenues. Basically, it now makes more sense to "merchandise" voice calling as a way of building data plan penetration.

Also, Google generally has replaced Skype as a significant worry. That isn't to say executives worry more about Google than they do the instability of communications regulation and policy. But after regulatory threats and competition between cable and telcos at the local level, Google--as a proxy for "over the top" applications--probably is an issue.

That worry likely will fade over time as well, however. Over time, as access providers figure out better ways to expose core access functionality to business partners, and executives start to see a path forward in the new ecosystem, fear about displacement from the likes of Google will recede, as it in many ways already is at companies such as Verizon Wireless.

Verizon Wireless now has partnered with Google to create new handsets and applications, as it also is doing with Skype. Verizon Wireless has since integrated Skype into 12 smartphones and says it will add the feature to a number of "3G multimedia phones" soon.

Apart from being available on normal feature phones, the Skype expansion will also support Korean and simple Chinese languages. Skype will also be upgraded to include a better user interface with drop-down menus and flags for international calling, Verizon Wireless says.

“The value prop is that we have 90 million customers who have in-calling, and now it expands to 580 million Skype users," John Stratton, EVP and CMO of Verizon Wireless, recently said.

Skype-to-Skype calls and chats are unlimited and free when users have a data plan. Skype mobile calls made to landline and wireless numbers in the United States ("SkypeOut," in effect) use minutes from customers’ voice plans.

Verizon Wireless To Bring VoIP To Non-Smartphones Using Skype | mocoNews

eWEEK - Latest News - Motorola to Answer iPhone 4 with 2GHz Android Phone

http://mobile.eweek.com/19878/show/c139fc6b6da7171791190855abdc4e09&t=4b3d7db9df15001f4cbb76a0ec50550c

iPad Internet Usage Patterns Compared to Smartphone and PC

Normalizing Internet appliance behavior by setting Apple iPhone usage as the baseline, you can see pretty clearly that smartphone web behavior is distinct from PC usage.

So far, iPad usage (page views) is roughly twice what iPhone usage typically is, but less than what people tend to do on either Windows or Macintosh PCs.

Page views aren't the same thing as "bandwidth consumed," but you can see the pattern: desktop usage is heavier than smartphone patterns.

One suspects today's PC dongle user has a usage pattern more similar to an iPad user than a desktop user. Most of us probably think page view and bandwidth usage will intensify over time on every platform, but that the disparity between PC desktop and "phone" behavior will remain.

There likely are some people who view more web pages on their phones than on their desktops. Generally speaking, though, heavier use occurs on a PC, while smartphone usage is much lower, volume-wise.

Scratch Test for HTC Evo

That's one way to test for scratches. Apparently the HTC Evo resists scratches well, but it is unnerving to watch this.

iPhone Ecosystem Drives Itself

Some new analysis by Chitika Research suggests a reason why the Apple ecosystem is so powerful: it has a base of customers that are highly motivated to buy other Apple products they don't yet own. Or at least one would infer from an analysis of search terms entered by iPhone, BlackBerry, Palm, Android, and iPad users.


The reason that Apple is so tough to compete with is that it has a fanatically loyal fan base, builds lots of producs on a single OS, is a single provider of hardware with a standard approach with products across a broad range of prices, from cheap iPods without screens up to Mac Pros that will break your budget.

Then it has the  iTunes and the App store that are becoming a hub for everything digital, including e-books and apps.

Search Study: iPhone Users Want New, Palm Users Want Out – Chitika Research

51% Mobile Video Growth Since 2009

Nielsen's latest "Three Screen Report" shows 51 percent growth of video watching on mobile phones, with a perhaps-surprising skew of demographics.

About 55 percent of the mobile video audience is aged 25 to 49. Also, the number of people with multi-tasking behavior, where users "watch" TV while using their PCs, was down in March 2010, though the length of time spent was up about 10 percent for people who did multi-task.

More than half of U.S. TV households now have a high-definition television and receive high-definition signals, while HDTV penetration grew 189 percent between the first quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2010.

More than a third of homes have a digital video recorder, up 51percent over the last two years.

About 64 percent of U.S. homes now use broadband Internet access while nearly a quarter of households (up 38%
year-over-year) have smartphones. The former trend means more uses can stream or download Internet video, while the latter trend means more place-shifting behavior, as well as some amount of incremental video consumption.

The amount of time spent watching television is still increasing. U.S. viewers watched two more hours of
TV per month in the first quarter of 2010 than in the first quarter of  2009.

The average time spent simultaneously using TV and Internet in the home also grew 9.8 percent, to 3 hours and 41 minutes per month, though the number of people doing so declined.

The number of people who are timeshifting has grown 18 percent since last year to 94 million, with the
average user now timeshifting 9 hours and 36 minutes per month.

The mobile video audience grew 51.2 percnet  year over year, surpassing 20 million users for the first time.

Beyond the TV, technology is helping drive video use on the “second” and “third” screens. The proliferation of broadband access is bolstering online video, creating an alternative mass outlet for distributing television content and “timeshifting” long-form TV.

Similarly, the increased popularity of smartphones has created yet another opportunity for incremental viewing, and Nielsen logically expects smartphone video viewing to keep growing. On top of that are new devices such as tablet PCs that also are expected to increase the amount of mobile video viewing.

Walled Gardens on the Web?

Though it might have seemed a ridiculous notion just a few years ago, the web now is fragmenting into various walled and curated gardens as devices, service provider business deals and even operating system environments begin to favor and curate web services.

Of course, for some users curated environments might be a good idea. Children's use of the Internet, for example, seems an area where parents might welcome more control and curation.

"Now fraught with pornography, scams, spam, fraud, malware, adware, and viruses, the Web has become a dangerous place to raise children or conduct any other form of educational endeavor," says Chris Poley, a financial markets participant and trader.

It is not entirely clear whether most users will prefer curated experiences, and if so, when and where. What seems incontestable is that there are use cases (iPads and smartphones, for example) where curation increasingly is the case and might even be welcomed.

It is a stunning reversal of the trend to openness, though.

Internet Evolution - Chris Poley - An Argument for Walled Gardens on the Web:

O2 Scraps Unlimited Mobile Plans

U.K.-based O2 is ending its unlimited data access plans and is switching to buckets of usage.

Beginning June 24 a variety of plans ranging from 500 MBytes to 1 GByte.

O2 to step back from unlimited mobile data deals • reghardware

E-Reader Maker IRex Files For Bankruptcy

E-Reader maker IRex Technologies has filed for bankruptcy, citing disappointing sales of its consumer device in the United States.

The firm's DR800SG e-reader was notable because it used an “open” model that gave publishers lots of control over how their content was distributed. Unlike the Kindle, for instance, publishers could set their own pricing. But most observers expected there would be a shake out in the market, and that now has happened.

E-Reader Maker IRex Files For Bankruptcy | paidContent

Apple Faces Another Antitrust Probe

U.S. antitrust regulators--it is not clear whether it is the Federal Trade Commission or the Department of Justice, are reported by the Financial Times to be weighing another investigation of Apple for restraint of trade, this time because of its plans to block rivals from access to its mobile app advertising network.

The ironic point is that regulators continue to bustle about, trying to regulate an access industry fighting simply to replace revenues it is losing, while the arguably-more-important gatekeeper decisions are being made by device and application providers, whose businesses everyone conversely expect will power the businesses of tomorrow.

The latest concern comes less than a month after concluded an  investigation of Google's purchase of AdMob. So powerful is Apple seen to be that the mere presence of Apple in the market with its own iAd network and a suite of "must have" devices was seen by regulators to be enough of a counterweight to Google that there was no risk of anti-competitive behavior.

According to the Financial Times, it is not yet clear whether it will be left to the Federal Trade Commission, which carried out the recent Google investigation, or the Department of Justice to take an investigation forward.

Apple’s latest rules about analytics for bar access to such information by competing ad platforms, third-party analytics firms or companies that compete with Apple in hardware.

Google is saying, and most observers agree, that the rules effectively bar Apple apps from using Google's ad network.

So consider the possible other implications. Perhaps in retaliation for its exclusion from the Apple application ecosystem, Google makes YouTube inaccessible from iPhones, iPads or iPod Touch devices. Or search, or other apps. You get the point: serious gatekeeping happens all over the Internet and broadband ecosystems these days.

Phone.com Mobile Office for Android Devices

Is There a Need for Economic Regulation of the Internet

Two necessary preconditions must be satisfied to justify market intervention in the form of economic regulation on the part of the government, says Dennis Weisman, Professor of Economics at Kansas State University and an editor of the Review of Network Economics and a member of the Free State Foundation's Board of Academic Advisors.

The first one inquires as to whether there is a problem and the second one inquires as to whether there is a solution? Only if both questions can be answered in the affirmative can such intervention be justified.

He says the case for economic regulation of broadband markets is weak at best. The Federal Communications Commission can point to, at most, two cases where things went awry — Madison River and Comcast.

Madison River was resolved with dispatch; and in the case of Comcast, the supposed cover-up was arguably worse than the alleged crime, Weisman says. "There is no offense in reasonable network management practices designed to prevent congestion and maintain service quality," he adds.

Nor is there evidence that the major incumbent telecommunications carriers or the cable companies were earning supra-normal returns that might be suggestive of market power," which might imply there is a problem waiting to be solved. http://ssrn.com/abstract_id=1525568

The structure of broadband prices is a problem in the economics of two-sided markets, though. The issue is that it is difficult to determine how the price structure should be changed to enhance economic welfare. "In other words, there can be no reasonable assurance that regulatory intervention to alter the price structure would not do more harm than good," says Weisman.

Google Caffeine Boosts Content Refresh Rate 50%

Google's new indexing engine, Caffeine, is said to provide 50 percent fresher results for web searches than Google's last index.

Google's older index had several layers, some of which were refreshed at a faster rate than others. The main layer would update every couple of weeks, for example. To refresh a layer of the old index, Google would analyze the entire web.

With Caffeine, Google analyzes the web in small portions and updates its search index on a continuous basis, globally. That means fresher information.

Official Google Blog: Our new search index: Caffeine

Apple Bans Google Mobile App Ads

Apple has changed the terms of its application developer agreement to block apps from using competitive ad networks operated by rivals such as Google.

That's ironic in light of "network neutrality" debates that some claim involve packet blocking, in the "restraint of trade" sense. Others point out that network management and grooming, as well as ability to create value-added services and features, are more the issue.

What is striking are the many ways packets are being groomed, blocked and shaped by application and device providers. Apple blocking Google ad network ads, or Apple refusing to share analytics with some third-party ad networks, are new examples.

Blunt instruments do not work well in a business and an ecosystem that changes this fast, especially when content pay walls, app stores, even operating systems and browsers can favor or deny access to "Internet bits."

Apple bans Google mobile app ads | News | New Media Age:

UC is Changing Channel Requirements

Channel organizations have faced change ever since IP communications began to displace older voice technologies, principally by increasing technology skills requirements.

The complexity of UC implementations, especially in multi-vendor environments, requires a significant vendor or channel partner implementation and integration expertise, notes Melanie Turek, Frost & Sullivan principal analyst.

Most companies with more than a few dozen employees will deploy UC across technology from at least two vendors. That will involve integration, and since it's unlikely those two vendors are plug-and-play today, that integration will require services, she says.

The nature of channel partnerships also is changing as IT and telecom staffs converge with the shift to software-centric solutions, and with businesses increasingly virtualizing their data centers and communications infrastructures.

http://www.nojitter.com/blog/archives/2010/06/the_channel_is.html

T-Mobile May Offer All Phones Free for Father's Day

T-Mobile might be gearing up to offer free phones for Father’s Day.

According to the copy of the script TmoNews apparently obtained, a voice-over says, “Starting early 8 a.m. this Saturday, T-Mobile is putting families first with another first. We’re making every single phone in the store free.”"

T-Mobile May Offer All Phones Free for Father's Day

http://www.tmonews.com/2010/06/june-19th-the-mother-of-all-fathers-day-sales/

Apple Will Bar Google (AdMob) From iPhones, iPads, iTouch Devices

Says AdMob CEO: Apple proposed new developer terms on Monday that, if enforced as written, would prohibit app developers from using AdMob and Google’s advertising solutions on the iPhone.  These advertising related terms both target companies with competitive mobile technologies (such as Google), as well as any company whose primary business is not serving mobile ads. This change threatens to decrease – or even eliminate – revenue that helps to support tens of thousands of developers. The terms hurt both large and small developers by severely limiting their choice of how best to make money.  And because advertising funds a huge number of free and low cost apps, these terms are bad for consumers as well.

Let’s be clear. This change is not in the best interests of users or developers. In the history of technology and innovation, it’s clear that competition delivers the best outcome. Artificial barriers to competition hurt users and developers and, in the long run, stall technological progress.

Since I started AdMob in 2006, I have watched competition in mobile advertising help drive incredible growth and innovation in the overall ecosystem.  We’ve worked to help developers make money, regardless of platform – iPhone, Android, Palm Pre, Blackberry, Windows, and others. In the past four years, AdMob has helped tens of thousands of developers make money and build real businesses across multiple operating systems.

I’ve personally worked with many iPhone app developers around the world, including one who created a fun and simple game in the early days of the App Store. He built the app because he was interested in the challenge. He built this single app into a multi-million dollar advertising revenue stream with AdMob, hired a whole team, and turned a hobby into a real business.

We see these stories all the time.  We want to help make more of them, so we’ll be speaking to Apple to express our concerns about the impact of these terms.

Google Voice to Integrate with Gmail

Google apparently is testing a new feature that makes Gmail chat more useful: users are able to make and receive Google Voice calls from inside the Gmail application, as they would using Skype on a PC.

A new phone icon opens a Gmail chat window with a dialpad, an option to find contacts, a credit balance and a call button.

Google Voice to Integrate with Gmail as a VoIP Service:

Sprint’s HTC EVO 4G Sold Even Where There is Only 3G

Sales of Sprint Nextel Corp.’s HTV Evo smartphone did well even in markets that don’t yet have access to the company’s new super-fast 4G wireless network, the company’s CFO told analysts Wednesday. Considering there is a $10 monthly surcharge for the 4G network feature, paid by all HTC Evo users, whether they have access to the network or not, that's something.

Bob Brust, appearing at a New York analyst event, said that first-day sales of the HTC EVO 4G on Friday “did really well across the country, not just in 4G areas” and that the Overland Park-based company was “working hard to remedy” a rash of stores that sold out of the devices.

CFO: Sprint’s HTC EVO 4G smartphone sells well in non-4G markets - Kansas City Business Journal

Is Sprint Finally Turning Its Business Around?

"Assuming it can execute on its current plans, the worst is behind it," says Yankee Group analyst Carl Howe.

Sprint is winning back consumers the old-fashioned way: with hard-nosed cost management, good customer service, and simpler and cheaper services, says Howe, despite a tough period since about 2005 when the Nextel deal and then operational issues caused huge customer defections.

Sprint Nextel’s annualized customer churn rate in the first quarter of 2008 was 38.2 percent, one of the highest in the wireless industry, and a disproportionate share of those losses came from the Nextel portion of the customer base.

In the first quarter of 2008, in fact,  Sprint posted a $29.7 billion write-down of the $36 billion it paid for Nextel. It isn't clear what might have happened had Sprint not purchased Nextel, but it seems clear now that it was a mistake.

But Sprint has been clawing its way out of a hole for the past few years. Annual churn is down to about 33 percent, which is higher than Sprint probably wishes it were, but is a vast improvement.

Based on our North America Mobile Carrier Monitor, annualized customer churn at Sprint has fallen to just over 33 percent.

And though some might view the segment as unappetizing, Sprint has focused much of its marketing efforts on prepaid plans, the fastest growing segment of the mobile phone market.

Sprint has improved its customer satisfaction significantly since 2008 as well. Howe says the average satisfaction of Sprint customers is 7.3, just slightly higher than the industry average of 7.2, and higher than AT&T according to the May 2010 American Customer Satisfaction Index.

While not yet profitable again, Sprint has been slowly and steadily improving its financial performance.

And while some might scoff at the model, Sprint also is restructuring its business as wireless providers in some other markets (India and Europe) also have done, focusing on marketing and outsourcing technical elements of the business.

Basically, Sprint is trying to externalize all functions non-core to service differentiation, customer acquisition and retention. It has spun off network operations management, though not ownership, to Ericsson AB.

That agreement moved 6,000 Sprint employees to Ericsson, while reducing Sprint’s operational expense.

Spirnt also is sharing mobile infrastructure. In 2008, Sprint sold off more than 3,000 of its mobile towers to TowerCo and agreed to lease these towers back for its operations. By leasing instead of owning the towers, Sprint was able to free up capital.

The operator also has roaming agreements with Verizon, giving Sprint the flexibility to exchange operational cost for coverage when it doesn’t feel capital expenditures for coverage are warranted.

While Verizon and AT&T are swapping maps and million-dollar advertising budgets fighting to capture postpaid customers, Sprint has no fewer than four brands focusing on prepaid subscribers: Assurance for government-subsidized plans, Common Cents for Walmart shoppers, Boost for voice-focused consumers, and Virgin Mobile for data-oriented young consumers.

With the postpaid wireless market saturated and prepaid plans now accounting for the majority of growth in wireless, Sprint is focused on serving customers that the other carriers aren’t.

Sprint also was first out of the gate with a fourth-generation network, though some might now say it faces a switch of air interface again from WiMAX to Long Term Evolution.

It is not completely clear whether consumers will see WiMAX, Wi-Fi features Sprint is emphasizing and its approach to retail pricing as the differentiators Sprint hopes they will be, but there is no question Sprint is trying.

Any consumer considering a higher-end smartphone purchase these days probably will find Sprint's approach a lot easier to understand, as users now must decide how many voice minutes they want, how many text messages they need, whether they want or need multimedia messaging service, which data plan is best, and so forth. It simply is more complicated to buy a device and service today, than it used to be.
Sprint is trying pretty hard to simplify all of that.

Yankee Group believes that it will rebound this year more strongly than its competitors might think, says Howe.

Consumption of Long-Form Video Grows Faster than Short-Form Content

It isn't yet clear whether long-form video or short-form video poses the bigger demand on mobile and fixed access networks. But both are increasing.

The number of US online video viewers has risen steadily for the past few years and is expected to continue climbing in moderate increments through 2014, according to eMarketer, which suggests that growth will slow from between eight percent and nine percent a year from 2010 through 2012 to about 5.2 percent in 2014, when 77 percent of US Internet users will be watching online video content at least monthly.

Growth in online video viewership was increasing more quickly between 2008 and 2009, by 11.3 percent.

But streaming and downloading of full-length movies increased much more dramatically. According to Ipsos OTX, the percentage of Web users who watched long-form online video more than doubled between September 2008 and Oct 2009.

Such rapid increases in downloading and streaming mean full-length movie—and, by likely extension, TV—content is on a faster growth track than online video viewing as a whole, eMarketer says.

One factor behind the turn toward long-form content is the success of Hulu, which The Nielsen Company ranked second to YouTube in overall video streams viewed in April 2010. But Internet-connected devices in use also will play a part.

In-Stat expects U.S. shipments of Web-enabled devices that support TV applications will increase from 14.6 million this year to 83.4 million by 2014.

The demographics of online video viewing also help to explain why Internet users have gone beyond snack-size clips to adopt full-length TV and movie viewing on the Web. The highest penetration of online video viewing is among users 18 to 24, with 25- to 34-year-olds and teens not far behind. By the middle of this decade, those age groups will be at saturation points of above 90 percent penetration for video consumption.

Not only do these demographics watch online video in massive numbers, but they are also the most receptive to TV content online. Retrevo found that 29 percent of under-25s get all or most of their TV online, compared with eight percent of the video viewing population as a whole.

“If the first iteration of online video was about silly pet tricks on YouTube, the next wave will be about professionally produced full-length content such as TV shows, movies and live sports,” says Paul Verna, eMarketer senior analyst.

Some Like Integrated Updates, Feeds and Messages; Some Don't

Apple is apparently "unimpressed" with the way that other mobile phones have integrated social networks into one feed, and prefers to keep its streams uncrossed.

HTC's FriendStream, MotoBlur from Motorola and Sony Ericsson's TimeScape have proven to be popular in the mobile phone market, combining Twitter, Facebook and other social networking into one place.

However, Phil Schiller, Apple SVP says Apple will not be looking to do something similar, except to unify email boxes.

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Hosted IP Telephony Surpasses Single-Line Revenue Among Business Users

Hosted IP Centrex finally has surpassed broadband IP Telephony (single lines) as the leading revenue-generating, carrier-based business VoIP solution. That's a significant shift, and long in coming, as up to this point carriers actually have made more money selling single voice lines to business users than they have hosted PBX or hosted Centrex.


IP telephony use by business customers also will double the 2009 numbers in just three years, says In-Stat, reaching 79 percent penetration by 2013.

Today about 33 percent of companies use IP telephony. And despite all the talk of new and enhanced features, cost savings will remain the adoption driver.

"VoIP adopters have a good understanding of the cost savings associated with VoIP, and have oriented their limited budgets to optimizing efficiency and savings by replacing legacy TDM voice solutions,” says David Lemelin, In-Stat analyst.

Broadband IP Telephony revenue will also double by 2013, In-Stat said, fueled by single user applications as well as mobile usage.

About 33 percent of businesses that have already deployed VoIP solutions report that recent economic conditions have caused them to slow additional deployment plans, compared to 30 percent reporting no change in plans.

Broadband IP Telephony revenues continue to grow and will more than double by 2013, compared to 2008. This growth will be fueled by single-user applications among increasingly distributed and mobile workforces.

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U.S. Small and Medium Businesses to Spend $32 Billion on Voice and Data in 2010

U.S. small and mid-sized businesses will be spending about $32 billion in 2010 on voice and data services, according to Analysys Mason.

Rural Wireless Carriers Get Ready for Fight

Rural cellular operators say they are prepared to lobby the Federal Communications Commission aggressively for mandatory data roaming, Steven Berry the CEO of the Rural Cellular Association says.

RCA members also will push for mobile broadband to be a bigger part of the National Broadband Plan and future Universal Service Fund funding, and will fight handset exclusivity.

Times of regulatory change always provoke such fights, and that is precisely where the industry finds itself these days.

Light Reading - 4G/LTE - Rural Wireless Carriers Ready for a Fight - Telecom News Analysis

Mobile Internet Gets Used As PC Internet Does, In One Respect

In the month of April, 32 percent of mobile daily page views occurred between 7 p.m. and midnight, with the highest volume occurring at 9:00 p.m., according to an analysis by Ground Truth. If you are familiar with uage patterns for how consumers use the PC-based Internet, the results are similar, as usage starts to rise after people get home and builds until 9 p.m. or so before declining.

Ground Truth’s April census of 4.24 million Americans show that from 4 a.m. onwards, mobile Internet usage, as measured in page view consumption, climbs steadily throughout the day, with usage intensifying after 6 p.m. and peaking at 9  p.m., when 7.2 percent of all page views occurred.

Throughout the workday (9 a.m. until 5 p.m.), an average of 54 percent of Mobile Internet users browse content, with workday usage heaviest around 4 p.m.

“This data proves that mobile is, indeed, an ‘always-on’ medium,” says Evan Neufeld, Ground Truth VP. “On an average day, more than half of all Mobile Internet users are accessing the mobile Internet from the moment they wake up until they put their phone down on their bedside tables."

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Social Networks More Popular than Search Engines in UK

Social networks were visited more often than search engines by users in the United Kingdom, says hitwise.

About 55 percent of social network and forum traffic goes to Facebook, hitwise says. YouTube got 16 percent of traffic. Twitter leapt over Bebo and MySpace in May to land a distant third, with only two percent of UK social traffic.

Social networks more popular than search engines in UK, says Hitwise | VentureBeat

Twitter Has 190 Million Users Tweeting 65 Million Times A Day

Twitter is now attracting 190 million visitors per month and generating 65 million Tweets a day. Those numbers are up slightly from 180 million self-reported unique visitors per month back in April, and 50 million Tweets per day in February.

The number of visitors to Twitter.com is not the same as the number of registered users. Most users don’t Tweet at all, but rather use Twitter as a media source.

Costolo: Twitter Now Has 190 Million Users Tweeting 65 Million Times A Day

Verizon Launches Group Communications

Verizon Wireless is launching "Group Communication," a way of simply handling one-to-many communications to members of a group.

Family Group Contact provides a toll-free number 888-894-7687 that automatically connects up to 20 members of an account with a call, text or voice message.

Businesses that have more than 20 lines can select up to 20 account contacts and connect with them using the toll-free number.

Members of a Family Group may include anyone on an account, plus one non-Verizon Wireless number or any wireline number not associated with that account.

Family Group Contact is $4.99 per month per account, and once subscribed, any member of the group with a Verizon Wireless number has the ability to initiate communication with the others.

"Group Contact" allows a customer to create up to seven customized groups, each with up to 20 different wireline, wireless or international phone numbers. Group owners can initiate communication with a call, text or voice message by dialing a unique phone number assigned to the group when it is created. Group Contact is $6.99 per month per line and includes Quick Contact, which allows users to ring all members of a Quick Contact group simultaneously.

Latest Voice 2.0 IMS 2.0 news: Verizon Launches Group Communication for Family,Friends and Business

Steve Jobs Speech Introducing iPhone 4: Watch the Video

You can watch the entire speech and demonstration by Steve Jobs, introducing the iPhone 4, here.

Steve Jobs Speech Introducing iPhone 4

Will Apple Be First to Make the Video Calling Breakthrough?

Lots of people will point out that person-to-person video calling appliances and features have been available for a while. Most of us would point to Skype, while others would point to the capabiltiies Nokia has been offering on its high-end phones, or the specialized video telephony products now on the market.

Apple's new  iPhone 4 "FaceTime" video calling feature might be notable, though. People will have different opinions about the ease of use for Skype video telephony, but the big snag for most consumer video telephony appliances has been the need to buy them in pairs.

The iPhone 4 might be the first "appliance" supporting video telephony that does not actually have to be "bought in pairs," given the huge installed base the device is likely to have, globally. The other angle is that video telephony could become a "mere feature" of the most-widely-used communications appliance on the planet, though of course for the moment only on Apple iPhones from version 4 and forward.

Video calling might be a social function and therefore there is a network effect not possible when the units are deployed pair by pair.

Some significant sub-set of the mobile user population uses iPhones. In my own family, for example, all four of my children use iPhones, and it appears iPhone use among their peers is just about that high.

By confining FaceTime sessions to Wi-Fi connections, Apple avoids the almost-certain uneven quality of experience users would experience on AT&T's 3G network.

Innovations sometimes, perhaps ever, solely or primarily dependent on development of new technology. More commonly, it is a combination of ease of use, user installed base, price and the face that lots of other people seem to be doing it. Up to this point, almost no users had to worry about "everybody else doing it." That could change, beginning with the iPhone 4.

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What iPhone 4 Means For Google, Microsoft, Netflix, And Amazon

Apple's new iPhone 4, announced yesterday and on sale June 24, has wide ranging implications for big Internet players like Google, Microsoft, Netflix, and Amazon, Barclays analyst Doug Anmuth believes. For starters, the "mobile Internet" will be more platform-based and less URL-driven than the traditional Internet.

What does that mean? Mobile platforms and app stores, as well as "apps," will be more important than platforms or app stores tend to be for the PC-based Internet use case. People are simply not going to "search" as intensively, or interact as much, as they do when using the Internet in a PC mode.

Google remains the default search engine on the iPhone, which helps Google. But Apple seems to be highly optimistic about its prospects in the mobile display ad market.

Anmuth does not believe Amazon Kindle sales will be hurt much. He expects the iPad to take some share, but not much, from Kindle.

What iPhone 4 Means For Google, Microsoft, Netflix, And Amazon:

Amazon CloudFront: HTTPS Access

Amazon CloudFront, the firm's content delivery network, has reduced pricing 25 percent. CloudFront HTTP requests now start at $0.0075 per 10,000 requests.

Amazon also now supports delivery of content over an HTTPS connection, by replacing the 'http:' with 'https:' in the links to CloudFront content.

Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is a combination of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol with theSSL/TLS protocol to provide encryption and secure (website security testing) identification of the server.

HTTPS connections are often used for payment transactions on the World Wide Web and for sensitive transactions in corporate information systems.

Amazon also has added a new edge location in New York City. This location will provide even better performance to users requesting content from New York and the northeastern United States.

Amazon Web Services Blog: Amazon CloudFront: HTTPS Access, Another Edge Location, Price Reduction:

Apple's Curse of Success

Oddly enough, time, it's own success, the inescapable logic of public company valuation and the firm's ability to churn out products it can convince people they have to own, are going to cause Apple problems, despite the launch of version four of its iPhone, the iAd network or the iPad.

Apple likely will execute well enough on all those fronts. Still, as it keeps getting bigger, friction is going to increase. The simple fact for any large company is that growth is hard to sustain because of the law of large numbers: Apple simply has to climb a bigger wall every quarter as its market capitalization and sales revenue grows, quarter over quarter.

Also, as every equity analyst has said, or thought, Steve Jobs, a singularly important executive in the technology business, will not live forever. No matter how capable his successors, he has proven to be an unusually effective chief executive, not for his management prowess but for his driving vision. Most companies produce products. Apple creates emotional needs.

So Apple will start to become the victim of its own success. No company can create an endless string of hit products quarter-after-quarter and year-after-year, though it is hard to argue with what Apple has achieved since 2001. The iPod began the streak.

But then Apple discovered iTunes was something more than a distribution system for music, leading to the App Store and the mobile apps trend. The iPhone arguably changed not only mobile phone design but the business ecosystem. The iPad might be the start of another wholly-new mass market. And Apple seems destined to be a player in mobile advertising as well.

Keep in mind that Apple shares were selling for about $8 in 2001. They are up around $250 or so today.

Nor will even these challenges prevent Apple from bidding to be among the dominant firms of the coming mobile computing era. It has a shot at such success. But success, for a firm that is getting to be as large as Apple, increasingly gets difficult, no matter how visionary it is.

The targets keep getting bigger. And, at some point, reversion to the mean will occur. Some future executive will start to worry about the numbers too much, become shy about destroying existing product lines in favor of new and untested product lines. Apple will lose that "magical" quality Jobs talks about so much.

Will Apple Get 48% of All U.S. Mobile Advertising by End of 2010?

Apple CEO Steve Jobs predicts the Apple iAd network will get 48 percent of spending on mobile advertising in the United States from July through December of 2010.

That's a stunning prediction, given that total U.S. mobile advertising for 2010 is estimated to be about $593 million. Apple has about six months to get that done, starting from zero. Well, not zero.

Apple says it already has gotten commitments for about $60 milliion from  Nissan, Citi, Unilever, AT&T, Chanel, GE, Liberty Mutual, State Farm, Geico, Campbells, Sears, JC Penny, Target, Best Buy, Direct TV, TBS, and Disney.

Apple iPhone 4: All that Metal Includes the Antenna

Which means signal reception is going to be affected by the way the user holds the device, though possibly less so than in the older design.

That's a lot of metal, with fairly good spatial dispersion for the antenna element. So in a weak signal area, reception might improve, for voice, when the speakerphone is activated and the user is "hands free."