Amazon Will be a Mobile Service Provider in Japan

Amazon is set to enter the Japanese mobile service provider market, selling prepaid 500 MByte SIM cards for a flat rate of about $25, Nikkei reports.

The cards will be usable on NTT Docomo’s LTE network. The news comes as Facebook is said to be considering building its own smart phone.

Facebook also is rumored to be looking at its own browser as well.

To be sure, the move is probably more aimed at helping Amazon sell  mobile content than anything else.

But that alone shows that a new segment could open up in the mobile business, namely lots more entry by application providers into the mobile virtual network operator business, bur as specialized content providers, not traditional voice and data access providers.

Microsoft's recent investment in the new company that will own the Nook tablet and content business illustrates a couple of important strategic shifts now happening in the mobile device and application markets. 

The biggest shift is the growing importance content, advertising and commerce operations are assuming for device and application suppliers.

Some believe the "Four Horsemen" of the Internet include Facebook, Apple, Google and Amazon. Others might say the list actually is "Five Horsemen" and include Microsoft. Either way, the notion is that  handful of firms have the ability, at least in principle, to create and own a complete and walled-off ecosystem in which consumers use a single company’s hardware, operating system and storefront to search online, buy apps and purchase digital media and  physical products.

If that proves to be true then a couple of predictions are easy to make. Facebook and Amazon will produce their own smart phones. Facebook might also have to produce a tablet. Apple will have to create a mobile payment service, as will Microsoft.

Google and Facebook will have to get more share of the e-commerce and mobile commerce transactions, and all will deepen the activities they now already support around mobile advertising, promotion and loyalty.

The rumor surfaced that Facebook is getting closer to releasing its own branded smart phone, an obvious attempt at owning a stack component (hardware) that’s currently missing from its line-up, is part of that trend.

“A smartphone would be a logical next step for Amazon,” ABI Research Analyst Aapo Markkanen says.

Traditionally, mobile phones simply were devices carriers had to provide to sell voice and messaging services.

These days, matters are more complex. In addition to communications, hot consumer devices frequently are used for content consumption. That means smart phones are more important to application providers as platforms for selling content and advertising.

Everyone expects a mobile device to handle voice and texting. Beyond that, more users expect the ability to consume content and conduct transactions. That changes the strategic importance of being a device manufacturer.

For mobile service providers, phones have been a sort of prop to produce revenue indirectly, in the form of service subscriptions. But that also now is increasingly true for application providers.

For Apple, which merchandises all sorts of content to sell devices, the tight bundling of content and commerce is a major reason it can sell so many devices. That also is true for some other mobile device manufacturers. But not for all.

For Google and Amazon, devices are a way to sell more advertising, content and merchandise. Microsoft has a slightly different take, as it always has preferred to sell operating systems to partners who make phones. But Microsoft has to succeed in mobile operating systems to profit from the device ecosystem that supports the advertising, commerce and content businesses.

Such thinking is not terribly new. Consumer electronics manufacturers have for decades understood that content was important for the devices business. Sony is probably the best example of that. Apple arguably was the first consumer devices firm to really achieve that integration, with its iPod and iTunes.

These days, gaining the ability to lock consumer into a particular content ecosystem is the reason producing devices matters.

There has been lots of speculation about whether Apple, for example, might want to become a virtual mobile service provider as well. It is getting harder to ignore the speculation.

New Chromebooks Coming June 15, 2012

Samsung has just announced a new Chromebook and the first Chromebox. 


The newest Chromebook is a fast and portable laptop for everyday users, but most people don't use one.


Google seems to be focusing its adoption efforts on several verticals, including schools, retailers, call centers and airlines.


These focus areas probably build on areas where Google has had success so far. 


Google says more than 500 schools have used these devices. Retailers such as Dillards are planning to deploy Chromeboxes in more than half of its US stores, while others such as Kaplan are moving their New York-based call center to Chromeboxes.


Chromebooks will be available online June 15, 2012, in the United States,  United Kingdom, France, Germany, Netherlands, Italy and Spain. More countries will follow in the coming months. In the U.S., Chromebooks will be available from Amazon and Best Buy  and internationally from leading retailers.

The new Chromebook and Chromebox, based on Intel Core processors, are nearly three times as fast as the first-generation Chromebooks.  The new Chromebook boots in less than seven seconds and resumes instantly. 

The new versions also have a new user interface said to make it easier to find and launch apps, and use alongside browser or other apps. Commonly-used apps can be pinned to the screen for quick access, with multiple windows displayed side-by-side.


Since most of my "PC" usage is for content creation, I never use a tablet as a "replacement" for a notebook. I also travel quite a lot and use cloud apps on a number of machines. The Chromebook is the device always packed in my backpack.


As a "cloud" device, you can't do much without a Wi-Fi connection. That means on airplanes I just do something else (that's when the tablet gets used, mostly for reading, for example). The only "offline" format I have found troublesome are PDFs. But then I find PDFs annoying on all my machines.


You might still have trouble finding anybody you know using a Chromebook on a regular basis, though.

66% of U.K. SMBs Have Adopted Cloud Services, or Plan to

The ability to work in a more mobile and flexible way was identified in an IBM study as the number one reason for small and mid-size businesses to use cloud-based apps. IBM says the survey shows interest has moved from cost savings to more-strategic advantages.

About two thirds of the senior managers surveyed had either already implemented cloud services or intended to in the future, with 45 percent of U.K. businesses looking to do so within the next two years.

The increased ability for employees to work with greater mobility and flexibility was identified as the most popular reason to move to cloud services (39 percent of respondents), with cost efficiencies named as the second most popular reason (33 percent of respondents).

Multiple Fixed Networks "Make No Sense"

Multiple networks make no sense, TM Forum’s Founder and Chairman, Keith Willetts argues in “Unzipping the Digital World.” In some markets, including Singapore, Australia, Malaysia and New Zealand, that is the way regulators have decided to use as the framework for fixed network broadband services. 


He shares his views in this video interview. 

OTT Destroys Voice, Text Business, Isn't Just Share Shifting

Mobile operators’ SMS revenues may be under pressure from mobile messaging apps such as WhatsApp, iMessage and others. The only real issue is where, when and how much over the top apps will reduce mobile service provider revenue.

To be sure,  Informa Telecoms & Media still forecasts that mobile operators will still generate a total of $722.7 billion in revenues from text messaging revenues between 2011 and 2016.

Third-party providers of over the top (OTT) messaging services will earn about $8.7 billion in 2016. That disparity in revenue illustrates the issue.

The big problem is not that OTT providers take so much revenue from mobile service providers, so much as OTT messaging essentially destroys the existing business, rather than shifting share to new contestants.

Text messaging revenue could decline 40 percent over the next three or four years in the European and Middle East markets, many executives predict. About 84 percent of respondents to a Telco 2.0 survey thought the main reason for such declines was the expected price reductions mobile service providers would adopt to compete with OTT services and apps.

In many ways, that is precisely what service providers have encountered when facing over the top voice apps. The OTT providers do not so much take revenue away from incumbent service providers as destroy the market.

Informa Telecoms & Media estimates that every 10 percentage points increase in smart phone penetration could cost Western European operators $1.19 billion in voice and messaging revenues and $306 million for their Eastern European counterparts.

In 2010, for example, mobile operators made on average only $13.21 per user per year from mobile VoIP services.

In other words, VoIP turns out not to be such a great product for incumbent service providers.

In fact, some might argue there is almost no way incumbent service providers can avoid losing both voice and messaging revenue to over-the-top applications, no matter what they do.

Mobile service providers lost an estimated $13.9 billion in text messaging revenue in 2011, as subscribers turned to outside social messaging apps, according to researcher Ovum.

Globally, Informa forecasts that SMS traffic will total 9.4 trillion messages by 2016, up from 5.9 trillion messages in 2011. However, SMS’s share of global mobile messaging traffic will fall from 64.1 percent in 2011, to 42.1 percent in 2016. Traffic is not revenue, though.

At the same time, global mobile instant messaging traffic will increase from 1.6 trillion messages in 2011 to 7.7 trillion messages in 2016, doubling its share of global messaging traffic from 17.1 percent in 2011 to 34.6 percent in 2016.

“There will not be a uniform decline in mobile operators’ SMS traffic and revenues as a result of the adoption and use of over-the-top messaging services,” says Pamela Clark-Dickson, senior analyst, Mobile Content and Applications, at Informa.

Text messaging traffic on the KPN Netherlands network shows the impact of changing use of text messaging and OTT apps. SMS traffic has been declining since the third quarter of 2010, it appears, after hitting a plateau in early 2010.

While Informa is forecasting either slowing growth or even a small decline in person-to-person SMS revenues in some developed regions and countries, total global SMS revenues will increase at a compound annual growth rate of three percent over the next five years.

Western Europe will generate the highest amount of SMS revenues globally between 2011 and 2016, totalling $174.1 billion, followed by Asia Pacific Developing, where SMS revenues will total $173.8 billion between 2011 and 2016.

Mobile Broadband Changes "Broadband"

U.S. broadband adoption seems to have flattened markedly since about 2010. For some, that might represent a problem. But something else is happening. For a growing number of U.S. consumers, wireless broadband has become the preferred way of using broadband and the Internet, much as wireless has become the preferred way of using "voice."

In 2010, some noted a digital divide between white Americans and Hispanic Americans. Back then, it was noted that 45 percent of Latinos had a home broadband connection, compared with 65 percent of whites.

At the same time, 52 percent of black Americans had a home broadband connection.

But much has changed. mobile broadband is used by two thirds of all adult Internet users. Also, as many note, for many users, the smart phone and tablets have started to displace the desktop PC as the computing device used most often. That shifts demand, to a large extent, from fixed modes to mobile modes.

Many expect that multi-device data plans will enhance and encourage that shift, boosting use of tablets for mobile broadband access.

26% of U.S. Internet Users Might Buy a Tablet This Year

Recent studies by Ipsos MediaCT examining penetration and ownership of tablet PCs shows dramatic increases in buying of tablets.

In fact, tablet ownership is now 16 percent among 18 year olds and has increased across all demographic groups.

Ipsos expects more than a quarter of U.S. online consumers could purchase a tablet before the end of 2012.

Samsung Galaxy S3 Will Test the "Big Screen" Theory

The Galaxy S3, which tracks the user's eye movements to keep the screen from dimming or turning off while in use, and features a giant 4.8-inch screen, is launching in 28 European and Middle East countries. The U.S. launch will probably come in July 2012.

The Galaxy S3 is deemed by some observers to be the single device best positioned to compete with the Apple iPhone, including the upcoming version of the Apple iPhone.

The smartphone, running on Google's (GOOG.O) Android operating system, boasts a 4.8-inch (12.2 cm) screen, one of the largest on smartphones ever, and much bigger than the 3.5-inch display on the iPhone 4S.


In the first quarter of 2012, Samsung sold 44.5 million smart phones, giving it 30.6 percent market share. Apple sold 35.1 million iPhones, taking 24.1 percent market share.

Will Developing World Mobile Innovations Come Back to Developed Regions?

Innovation traditionally has taken established paths. New technology has been made available to people in developed nations, while the rest of the world getting access as markets scale and prices come down.

Likewise, technology has been developed in universities, commercialized for enterprises, then migrates into the mid-market, then small and medium business. Eventually, consumers might adopt, as well.

But those diffusion pathways are changing. These days, it is very likely that innovations are created in the universities, then popularized first in the consumer markets, before being adopted later by businesses of all sizes.

In similar fashion, technology innovations can be created in the developing regions and then find their way back to developed regions.

So Nokia looking to use Kenya to debut a free classifieds service (think a mobile-phone version of Craigslist), complete with a first-ever feature that lets people shop using voice commands to browse for goods.

In fact, the traditional model of developing new products is quietly reversing course. Call it "trickle-up innovation," where ideas take shape in developing markets first, then work their way back to the West.

"If it's radically innovative and reduces costs, it's going to get looked at and will accelerate," says Michael Chui, McKinsey Technology analyst. Consider almost anything related to mobile phones.

For the average developing market mobile user, a mobile feature phone costs a few months’ salary. Using the devices can represent over 10 percent of their monthly income, UNICEF believes.

Batteries can be hard to recharge locally, so long battery life is necessary. Handset cost and low recurring costs, including apps that require very little bandwidth, also are necessary. All of those innovations would be helpful in developed markets as well, though.

The Long Road to Streaming TV

As haltingly slow as the process is, we continue to glacially create all the infrastructure required to enable streaming delivery of television at a revenue-significant level. Better broadband is the first requirement, as is the consumer habit of watching TV on lots of devices connected to the Internet.

Better ways of aggregating content, providing navigation and ease of use also are needed. In many ways, Xbox now provides some of that functionality. Boxee and Roku are other examples.

But content availability remains the biggest blockage. AT the moment, online content still does not feature most of what consumers expect when they buy video entertainment services. To be sure, a growing number of consumers decide to live without traditional video services. But those consumers remain a small percentage of all consumers.

Still, even once the infrastructure to support robust video streaming is in place, there will be key obstacles, namely content availability.

Historically, even content availability has not proven it can create a large market.

According to a new report released by The Diffusion Group (TDG), video-on-demand services provided by PayTV operators should be, but are not, generating significantly higher viewing and advertising revenue. Total VOD use is small, representing only one percent of all U.S. TV viewing.

By some measures, VOD is doing better. Magna Global has estimated that U.S. homes with VOD, a "category that includes both traditional multichannel VOD offerings and over the top services," will hit 70.1 million homes, about 57 percent of all TV homes at the end of 2016.

TDG attributes that failure as a reflection of VOD's inadequate advertising support and awkward program guides that limit availability and viewing of ad-supported VOD content. That also suggests the "for fee" VOD has not gotten widespread interest.

VOD in recent years has contributed about $2 billion a year worth of revenue for U.S. video entertainment providers. U.S. cable TV companies alone booked about $98 billion in 2011 revenue. That doesn't include the sizable revenue earned by satellite and telco providers as well.

The point is that VOD, as a service, has been a modest success, though it has had three decades to make its case.

Content availability is the single biggest key needed to unlock the streaming TV business. But if video on demand is any indication, even that might not be enough to create a robust streaming video business.

Platform Wars Explain Apparent Facebook Phone Interest

The platform wars are driving application providers into what might be unusual territory. In order to compete with Facebook, Google attempts to build a social network. In order to compete with Google, Facebook attempts to build a phone. Lots of device or app firms have launched their own browsers.

And the "platform wars" are occurring on a number of fronts.

The fight over the TV is really a fight over the next massive consumer platform that is coming up for grabs. Of platforms there are few: Google owns search, Amazon owns digital retail, Facebook owns social, and Apple owns consumer devices. Microsoft owns, well, nothing at the moment, despite its handsome revenue stream from Windows and Office, argues James McQuivey of Forrester Research.

But Microsoft’s Xbox 360 is already the most-watched net-connected TV device in the United States and soon, the world. With more than 70 million consoles in households worldwide, as many as half of them connected to the Internet, depending on the country, Microsoft can rapidly drive new video services into tens of millions of households, McQuivey argues.

Significantly missing from those lists of platforms are cable or telco access service providers. At least for the moment, telcos and cable operators are not "platforms."


Rumors about Facebook creating its own smart phone are not new. Now there are rumors that Facebook is considering buying mobile browser Opera, a move that would strengthen Facebook's platform status without requiring an immediate move into the actual device business.

Separately, there are rumors Facebook is hiring engineers as part of a project to create its own smart phone.

You might ask why Facebook would want to enter competition with Google, Apple, Microsoft, Mozilla and Yahoo. The answer is that, right or wrong, such a move would be viewed as a way of allowing Facebook to grow its status as a platform, much as Google, Apple and Amazon have done.

Keep in mind that Facebook also has talked about becoming an ad network, able to sell inventory outside Facebook. A browser would help, in that regard.

Google itself makes far more money from advertising on the iPhone than it does on its own Android devices, some would note. That suggests the rationale for an ad-supported company to control its own devices and use its own operating systems.

Apple Shares To $1,000?

Research firm Piper Jaffray believes Apple shares will hit a value of $1,000 in the next couple of years, based on a refresh of existing product lines and launch of Apple TV devices.

In 2012, Piper Jaffray analysts are looking forward to several “meaningful updates” to core products, including the iPhone and Mac, as well as the introduction of a TV, for shipment in 2013. Those products will, at least in the near term, prove Apple can still innovate at its accustomed high level.

Google Already Seems to Have Learned Something about Access in Kansas City

Some say Google is backing off its commitment to provide wholesale access to third parties as part of its 1-Gbps Kansas City network. Early on, Google seemed to believe it would offer third parties access, but it might be that Google already has learned how difficult it actually is to make business with an advanced fiber-to-home network.

Google might have concluded that any realistic hopes of operating the network as an money-making enterprise, as well as its hope to encourage lots of application innovation, might only be possible if Google acts as a retail provider and reaps all the revenue.

Also, if the point is to create a test bed for new applications, Google might now be concluding that it will learn more if it takes a more direct and active role in sponsoring such applications. One of the problems with operating as a wholesale provider is that you don't actually learn very much about what retail customers want, and are doing, because you don't actually have those customers.

Some think the wholesale approach would have been more interesting, as GigaOm tends to argue. But some might say the realities of the fiber to the home business now are clearer. As other triple-play service providers can well attest, offering such services in a competitive market, and Kansas City already has strong, entrenched cable and telco providers, is difficult.

If Google only wanted to create a "test bed," and didn't mind losing quite a lot of money, a wholesale approach might be feasible.

Utopia, an open access network operated by 16 municipalities in Utah, is among those entities trying to prove that a wholesale model can work, commercially.

Google might not believe it can learn as much, much less turn a profit, without offering and managing a retail service, allowing it to work with partners to test new services directly.

Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics

The federal government calculates the deficit in a way that makes the number smaller than if standard accounting rules were followed (in trillions). Deficits are far worse than the Federal government reports, in other words. 


For only the fiscal year of 2011, the actual deficit was $5 trillion, not $1.3 trillion, as the executive branch reports. The same was true in 2010. 


Decades ago, some policy advocates would have argued that "deficits don't matter." These days, when governments at virtually every level, all over the world, are borrowing money to finance current deficits, that isn't true any longer. Deficits do matter, and everywhere. 

Communications Both Helps, Hinders "Work"

Dealing with on-the-job distractions is a constant part of every marketing professional's day, according to a new survey by The Creative Group.

Ad and marketing executives surveyed say the longest they can work on a task without being interrupted is 30 minutes, on average, according to the study. 


As you might guess, it also takes some time to get back to whatever task it was that any respondent was working on, before the interruption.
The most common culprits of on-the-job distractions are people stopping by to chat and phone calls, cited by 27 percent and 26 percent of ad and marketing execs, respectively.

Such distractions, one might argue, are the downside of “always connected”  communications. In a sense, one value “presence” features offer is the saving of time wasted trying to find and communicate with people. The flip side of all our enhanced communications, though, is the risk of even more interruptions, from more channels, than ever before.

That is probably why many professionals who work away from the office say they get more actual work done. Approximately 69 percent of the employees surveyed by Cisco cited higher  productivity when working remote, and 75 percent of those surveyed said the timeliness of their work improved.

Of course, communications are essential for those telecommuting workers, just as it would be for at the office workers. But communications can aid or hinder “work,” it can be argued. 

Groupon, Facebook Moves Show Complexity of Advertising Ecosystems

Groupon is said to be testing its own mobile-assisted mobile payments service, using a dongle that provides cred card swiping capability for a smart phone. Separately, Facebook now is rumored to be exploring a purchase of mobile browser Opera.

Both moves show the complexity of the mobile ad business these days. PayPal, a traditional online payments supplier, now is getting into the offline retail point of sale business. But that is only part of the effort. PayPal sees targeted advertising and loyalty programs, as well as in-store promotion as parts of the changing mobile commerce business.

In that business, the actual payments process is only part of the overall range of operations that are potential parts of the mobile shopping business.

That's why Groupon might be beefing up its actual payments capability, while Facebook might get into the mobile browser or even mobile phone business. Platforms are better able to maximize the value of an advertising or loyalty business.

Is Facebook Going to Get into the Mobile Browser or even Phone Business?

Rumors about Facebook creating its own smart phone are not new. Now there are rumors that Facebook is considering buying mobile browser Opera, a move that would strengthen Facebook's platform status without requiring an immediate move into the actual device business.

Separately, there are rumors Facebook is hiring engineers as part of a project to create its own smart phone.

You might ask why Facebook would want to enter competition with Google, Apple, Microsoft, Mozilla and Yahoo. The answer is that, right or wrong, such a move would be viewed as a way of allowing Facebook to grow its status as a platform, much as Google, Apple and Amazon have done.

Keep in mind that Facebook also has talked about becoming an ad network, able to sell inventory outside Facebook. A browser would help, in that regard.

Google itself makes far more money from advertising on the iPhone than it does on its own Android devices, some would note. That suggests the rationale for an ad-supported company to control its own devices and use its own operating systems.

Could White Spaces "Revolutionize" Access?

White spaces broadband is viewed by many as an important new challenger in the broadband access business.  There are a couple of ways white spaces can be viewed. Some might see it as a potential replacement for mobile broadband, while others might see it as a replacement for fixed broadband.

It is too early to say where, or how much, either of those positions might be true. One can note any number of would-be challengers that have garnered attention over the last couple of decades.

Wi-Fi itself was once seen as a potential challenger to mobile networks. Power line technologies have been discussed for decades as a new broadband access platform. Before Sprint was born, frequencies used for educational TV (MMDS) were seen as the foundation for a new sort of "personal communications service" that would be different from "cellular telephone" service.

Metropolitan broadband using wireless techniques have been seen as rivals to telco or cable TV access services. Other wireless techniques such as that used by Ricochet Networks also were tried in the first decade of the 21st century.

The point is that any number of attempts to create new and successful broadband networks have been tried over the last couple of decades. Judging by market share, none of them have gained significant share in the market, and most have failed to get traction in the way initially forecast.

Public Wi-Fi has become important, but more as a feature of a fixed broadband or mobile broadband network, than as an alternative to cable modem, digital subscriber line or fiber to the home service.

It remains to be seen whether white spaces will fare any better than earlier efforts.

Is Apple Changing, or Not?

The inevitable question for Apple, post Steve Jobs, is whether Apple can continue to create new markets on the scale it has done in the past. It isn't an easy question to answer, if only because Apple's product roadmap tends to stretch out a ways.

So any "post-Steve" initiatives will take some time to emerge. Some might argue Apple is changing under CEO Tim Cook.

Adam Lashinksy seems to be in that camp. Jon Gruber is not.

But it wouldn't be unusual to argue that, over time, Apple's performance will regress toward the mean. The only question is how long it might take for that to happen, and how great a reversion might occur. But companies, like products, have life cycles.

Apple isn't likely to escape its own life cycle indefinitely. The next "big thing" Apple attempts might not tell the story.

If it turns out that "television" is that next big product opportunity, we might not start seeing the first real "post Steve Jobs" initiatives until one more major product category is tackled, after TV.

The reason is simply that Apple's roadmap stretches out a significant way into the future, and that Steve Jobs was an unusual leader. Few business executives in the last century have stamped their own sense of "what the market wants" on a company, rather than "responding to what the market wants."

The prevailing mantra of "listening to the customer" was not how Apple revolutionized existing markets, and created new markets. The view has been that people could not adequately determine their own desire for products and experiences with which they had zero familiarity. Few business leaders will have the "arrogance" or "insight" (depending on how one wishes to view the matter) that Steve Jobs did.

That is not to say Jobs did not form a company culture with distinctive characteristics. But neither does the impact of a distinctive  company culture remain constant over long periods of time. HP, 3M, IBM, AT&T and all other sufficiently-large firms also have cultures.

You might question whether the core values and cultures have been maintained, in business-driving ways, over time. People, companies, products and countries evolve over time. It seems unlikely Apple will "forever" escape that aging process.

"Hybrid" Behavior in Consumer Use of Digital Financial Management

While consumers are beginning to embrace digital financial management, they remain hesitant to dive in completely, taking a "hybrid" approach.

More consumers receive their statements online than through the mail, but more than 25 percent of consumers "double dip," receiving both paper and electronic statements, Javelin Strategy & Research says.

That sort of behavior is typical when major new technologies start to displace older ways of doing things. When steam engines began to displace sails as the propulsion for ships, ship owners outfitted sailing vessels with boilers, in part because, early on, the economics of steam power were not as good as sails.

Most fixed communication networks use a hybrid of older copper media, with an overlay of optical fiber media, and a mix of digital signaling and IP transmission.

In a similar way, people now use a mix of bank visits, ATM machines, PCs, tablets and smart phones to check balances or conduct transactions. That "hybrid" behavior will continue for some time, as behaviors shift and more users are able to use newer methods for seeking information and conducting transactions.

Some 40 percent of mobile-device owners will tote a tablet by end of 2012. About 72 percent of U.S. adults with mobile devices will tote a smartphone, up from 45 percent in 2011. More than half of mobile-device owners (111 million) will use mobile banking on an annual basis, up from 30 percent in 2011, Javelin predicts. 

PayPal Adds 15 U.S. National Retailers for Retail Payments

PayPal has announced 15 new national retailer partners who are adding PayPal’s offline payment and shopping solutions. The key phrase there is "offline."

 These include: Abercrombie & Fitch, Advance Auto Parts, Aéropostale, American Eagle Outfitters, Barnes & Noble, Foot Locker, Guitar Center, Jamba Juice, JC Penney, Jos. A. Bank Clothiers, Nine West, Office Depot, Rooms To Go, Tiger Direct and Toys “R” Us, PayPal says.

Though PayPal is a player in "mobile payments," its arguably bigger strategic move is into the offline payment process, namely retailer transactions. Those efforts include a mobile component, but also feature use of the PayPal credit card.

The other notable point is that PayPal, like many other contestants, sees "payment" as part of a larger range of shopping activities where mobile devices can change the experience and add value.

Telecom Now is a Multi-Product Business

Vodafone gets 14.5 percent of its £43 billion service revenue from mobile data, despite the fact that it represents the majority of traffic carried.

That points out one important new challenge for service providers operating multi-product businesses, where each service might have a different profit margin and revenue contribution.

You might even say that, at the moment, the highest-margin products are narrowband, representing a small percentage of total traffic.

Some products might represent high volume but low profit, while other services might represent low volume but high profit, with most services likely someplace in between those extremes.

One of the truisms about virtually every business is that 80 percent of the profits will tend to come from about 20 percent of the activities people at those businesses conduct. That “Pareto” distribution can apply for a business as a whole, as well as for each constituent product a company sells.

So it now is quite necessary to understand, in detail, what profit margin every single product delivers, as well as what the cost of each discrete service might be.

What, and How Big, is the M2M Market?

The “machine to machine” communications business is among a handful of truly-significant new revenue categories for mobile service providers. But figuring out how big that opportunity is, and how fast it is growing, is complicated.

One reason is that definitions of what constitutes an “M2M” service vary quite significantly. Some service providers consider mobile broadband connections to “non-voice” devices, such as tablets, to be “M2M” connections. Some would say that those are examples of “connected devices,” but not truly “M2M.”

Others define M2M as business-to-business telemetry and other apps where a human being is not the user of either devices on the ends of a connection. In other words, a wireless meter reader or heart monitor would be an example of M2M, but a connected iPad would not be an instance of M2M.

“Much confusion exists around what makes up M2M,” says James Brehm, Compass Intelligence senior strategist. “In defining the market, the GSMA includes devices like connected iPads and other media tablets, some tier-one  mobile network operators include connected consumer electronics like picture frames, personal navigation devices, and the like, while others look solely to B2B applications,” says Brehm.

Those definitions matter for any observer trying to track the growth of M2M revenues. Some observers would say M2M in the “B2B” sense is more important than connected tablets and photo frames as it represents an entirely new category of mobile services, where connected tablets are an extension of today’s PC dongle business.

Some might prefer to track all non-phone revenues in a separate category than “phone” revenues for reasons of impact on average revenue per user. Most use cases within the broader M2M revenue category will involve connections with far less ARPU than phone connections generally represent.

But the caution is that using the broader definition, as the GSM does, inevitably will provide one view of how big the M2M business is. Using the narrower definitions will provide a different sense of market growth.

For the moment, it appears observers will have to guess at the revenue contributions made by tablet subscriptions, GPS devices and e-readers, as one category, from M2M revenue generated solely by telemetry and other B2b applications that many consider the core of the M2M revenue opportunity.

Of course, some might argue there is a clear “political” reason why the GSM and others choose the broader definition of M2M. It is easier to show revenue and category growth when using the broader definition. Executives will be anxious to demonstrate that they are gaining significant new revenue from M2M, which is among a handful of big growth opportunities for mobile service providers.



New market data from Berg Insight likewise shows strong momentum for M2M so far in 2012, showing year-over-year growth rates around 15 percent to 30 percent, Berg Insight says. Keep in mind that those estimates are made using the broader GSM definitions.

Among the mobile operators that officially report M2M subscriber statistics on a quarterly basis, AT&T reported the highest figure in the first quarter of 2012 of 13.3 million, up 25 percent year-on-year.

Vodafone reported 7.8 million M2M subscribers at the end of the financial year ending March 2012, up 47 percent from the previous year.

Japanese operators NTT DoCoMo, KDDI and Softbank recorded year-on-year growth rates in the range 20–35 percent and reported between 1.9 million and 2.4 million M2M subscribers each.

Many of the leading global mobile operators do not report M2M subscribers separately. Among these Berg Insight estimates that China Mobile has the largest installed base of around 15 million, followed by Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile and Telefónica at around 7–9 million.

T-Mobile USA is the only entity in the Deutsche Telekom group disclosing M2M subscriber data, reporting 2.7 million at the end of the first quarter of 2012. Other major M2M communication providers in Europe and North America include Orange, Telenor and Sprint, which had approximately three million to four  million M2M subscribers each.

New categories seem continually to be added to the M2M device mix, as well. According to Berg Insight, the number of shipped consumer M2M devices with cellular connectivity grew to 7.1 million worldwide in 2011, up from 6.4 million in the previous year.

This relatively new breed of connected devices – neither classified as handsets, PCs, tablets nor traditional M2M devices, includes E-readers and personal navigation devices.

Handheld gaming consoles, personal tracking devices and wellness devices are promising categories as well, Berg Insight says.

the next five years, shipments of consumer M2M devices will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 39.8 percent to reach 37.9 million devices in 2016.


One way or the other, using a broader "connected non-phone devices" or a narrower "sensor" definition of M2M, the category is important. But current broad definitions will obscure progress made on the sensor communications business.

Consumers use of Smart Phones for Shopping and Recipes Shows Potential of Mobile Commerce

Mobile phone applications quickly are becoming the go-to source for countless daily tasks, including finding grocery deals, according to the NPD Group. That has implications for growth of mobile payments, use of mobiles for coupon delivery and marketing.

Consumers are using the Internet and social media to hunt down recipes, shop for food, and connect with their favorite food brands. That is one obvious linkage to delivery of information and inducements to buy specific brands and products used by various recipes.

Coupon apps are used by about 25 million Americans each month, and this happens most frequently in households with children. The foods these app couponing families consume more often skew towards kid friendly staples like eggs, cold cereal, bacon, sausages, macaroni and cheese, soup, and fruit juice.

More than half of U.S. consumers are aware of Groupon, the localized deal-of-the-day website, and about one in five consumers receives emails regularly from the service.

Cisco to End "Cius" Tablet

Cisco will no longer invest in the Cisco Cius tablet form factor, and no further enhancements will be made to the current Cius endpoint beyond what’s available today, Cisco says.

Cisco might continue to offer Cius "in a limited fashion" to customers with specific needs or use cases.

For a company that is "re-prioritizing" its efforts and ditching product lines that offer slim hopes for market leadership, the abandonment of any single product would not be unusual.

But the move might illustrate in a larger sense how hard it is for large service providers and large application and software firms with an enterprise orientation to create products for consumers or even business customers, in a market where consumer grade hardware is winning the day.

Lawsuits Pose Major Tests of Broadcast TV Business Model

A couple major tests of the business relationship between over-the-air broadcast networks and video distributors have started bubbling through the courts, with direct major consequences for Dish Network, a start-up known as Aereo, and the major broadcast TV networks.

At least in principle, the outcome of those two court cases could reset broadcast network revenue expectations and content carriage costs for for all telco and cable distributions of broadcast TV network programming as well.

SNL Kagan, for example, says that the broadcast networks and local television stations will be pulling in more than $3.6 billion annually in so-called retransmission consent fees from cable and satellite operators by the end of 2017. In 2010, SNL Kagan said retransmission consent generated about $1.14 billion.

None of the cases are unprecedented. Broadcasters and cable companies have sparred for years over the commercial agreements around “retransmission consent,” the ability of a video distributor to re-transmit broadcast network programming.

And lawsuits about the lawfulness of ad-skipping technology, as well as other technologies such as VCRs, have been filed in the past, as well.

In the first set of lawsuits, Dish Network and leading TV networks are suing each other over Dish’s plan to allow automatic skipping of all ads on broadcast network prime time shows.

The second set of lawsuits have been levied by broadcast networks against Aereo, a streaming service that charges $12 a month to stream the local broadcast signals of TV stations over the Web to consumers' iPads or computers. It is currently available only in New York City.

The lawsuits against Dish Network’s “Hopper” set-top and integrated DVR are not the first time networks have sued DVR suppliers over ad-skipping. By my reading it is at least the third time, with lots of skirmishes.

Sonicblue was put out of business, while TiVo simply stopped offering the ad-skipping feature.

Aereo insists what it is doing is legal. In essence, its service includes a dedicated off-air antenna for each customer, much as a homeowner might mount a rooftop antenna. The difference is that Aereo records and stores that video. A consumer has the legal right to do that using a digital video recorder.

The issue, the broadcasters claim, is that Aereo reformats the signals, a traditionally key distinction in broadcast law. By reformatting, Aereo incurs the obligation to get permission from the broadcasters.

But that’s the perpetual issue: is the use of new technology to accomplish older operations an infraction of copyright, or not?

The issue with Hopper is only partly “whether it is legal” for a DVR to skip commercials. It might well be found legal. The issue is whether the broadcast TV business will be disrupted.

Groupon Looking at Mobile Payments?

Groupon is testing a mobile payment service of its own, VentureBeat reports. The potential move shows the increasingly complex relationship between mobile marketing, the loyalty and promotion business and mobile-enabled payments. 


Like other services from Square, Intuit, PayPal, Verifone and Sage, the Groupon service would use a dongle on a smart phone that provides the card swipe reader, with the revenue earned on each transaction.


Groupon might be banking on the fact that there are segments within the mobile-enabled payments business. 


Groupon's pricing is said to include a 1.8 percent transaction fee and a 15 cent per transaction charge for transactions processed through the terminal. 


Square charges 2.75 percent with no per transaction fee. 


PayPal Here and Verifone Sail charge 2.7 percent, also with no transaction fee. 


But different cards have different pricing. Groupon is charging 2.7 percent  for processing American Express  transactions. Square and PayPal don’t charge extra, and Sail charges 3.7% for American Express transactions.


Groupon also is offering customers an iPod Touch and card reader, free of charge. 

For customers whose typical transaction exceeds $15, it can make financial sense to use Groupon’s offering. On a $100 Visa transaction, Groupon would charge $1.95, Square’s $2.75.

iPad 2 is 60% of Installed Base, Latest Model has 20% Share

Two months after its launch, the new third-generation iPad this week caught the original, becoming the second most widely used of Apple’s family of tablets, though the iPad 2 still represents 60 percent of the installed base.

After selling over 3 million devices and grabbing 14% of the US iPad market in the first four days of availability, the updated iPad has continued to sell extremely well. It now accounts for over 20% of all US-based iPads seen by apps using Localytics for app analytics, on par with the original and up nearly 50 percent from its launch-week share.

People Like Their Smart Phones, But Don't Want to Pay Too Much for Them

A new survey of U.S. consumers suggests the magnitude of the problem mobile service providers face as they try to wean buyers off of high handset subsidies.


The majority of consumers who recently purchased a handset reported a mean overall handset purchase price of approximately $114.23. Similarly, the majority of consumers who plan to buy any type of handset in the near future plan to spend on average approximately $127.25.

Granted, those figures include feature phones and smart phones, but about 71 percent of the sales were of smart phones.

When iGR examined the price the respondents were willing to pay for a smart phone, the survey showed that consumers were on average willing to pay $135.90 for an Apple iPhone compared to $124.65 for an Android device.

Given the cost of manufacturing and selling those sorts of devices, which can carry retail prices in the $500 to $600 range, there is a wide gap between apparent willingness to pay and actual cost. Of course, actual end user behavior is a better guide than survey responses. Based on those sorts of data, one might argue actual purchase behavior can run up to about $200 for high-end devices.


In a May 2012 survey, consumers indicated that 28 percent of the mobile handsets they purchased recently were basic mobile phones and 71 percent were smart phones. Close to 69 percent of the handsets they plan to buy in the future are likely to be smart phones, iGR Research found.