iPhone Keyboards, Bigger Screens?

As much as Apple's iPhone has surfaced latent demand for new mobile Web behaviors, the next rounds of development will have to tackle more prosaic issues: proliferating the product line to better address market segments: heavier texters who like keys and larger screens for users who really want to use the device as a notebook substitute.

There is every likelihood, in other words, that the iconic iPhone form factor will diversify, the way iPods have, with models optimized for particular use cases.

Industry sources told Times Online that the device will have a "radically different" appearance to the current device, which has a 4.5 inch screen and slick, aluminium backing. Among the possibilities are flip version, which would enable the screen to be larger, and a sliding model with a regular qwerty keyboard - as opposed to a touchscreen one.

The Financial Times even thinks Apple will within a year or so change distribution deals, abandoning single-carrier franchises as early as June 2009 in the U.S. market and October 2009 in the U.K. market.

That of course likely will lead to a change in revenue streams, from revenue-sharing payments to transactions and Internet advertising. That would be a fairly abrupt shift of income stream, but a necessary step to build greater device handset volumes and ad potential.

More Aggressive Prepaid Mobile Efforts

Prepaid mobile calling offers have gotten more competitive over the past year as the overall market continues to saturate. T-Mobile launched FlexPay, providing prepaid customers the same plans as those currently available to contract subscribers.

Verizon Wireless enhanced its pay-as-you-go INpulse plans by creating lower voice and messaging rates. Boost Mobile, meanwhile, introduced Unlimited by Boost to counter prepaid offers from Leap Wireless and MetroPCS.

As carriers and mobile virtual network operators search for new subscribers, they increasingly are targeting the prepaid customer base. Not only are more carriers launching postpaid-like monthly prepaid plans that include buckets of minutes and value-added features, but they are also extending value-added services to standard prepaid services such as messaging buckets and even unlimited messaging.

Carriers have even started selling prepaid customers subsidized handsets, which is something that was unheard of in the industry just 18 months ago.

T-Mobile arguably is the most aggressive of the major carriers in competing with the regional prepaid players. Up to this point AT&T and Verizon Wireless have mostly avoided chasing that customer segment with any vigor.

Broken Internet by 2010?

"We are going to be butting up against the physical capacity of the Internet by 2010,"
Jim Cicconi, AT&T VP, says, in a speech reported by the Financial Times.

"In three years' time, 20 typical households will generate more traffic than the entire Internet today," Cicconi maintains.

He argues that the "unprecedented new wave of broadband traffic" will increase 50-fold by 2015.

"Eight hours of video is loaded onto YouTube every minute," he says, predicting that "video will be 80 percent of all traffic by 2010, up from 30 percent today."

eBay Considering Skype Sale?

At the CTIA Wireless meeting recently, people were wondering where some of the Google voice guys were. The speculation was that Google was mulling a purchase of Skype.

So now eBay CEO John Donahoe says in the Financial Times that "if the synergies are strong, we'll keep it in our portfolio. If not, we'll reassess it." Any such decision and sale won't come until the end of this year, though.

Skype had revenues of $126 million for the quarter, up 61 percent year over year, and that it added 33 million new registered users, giving it a total of 309 million registered users around the world. eBay indicated it even hopes to make a profit - for the first time - on Skype this year.

The $4.2 billion eBay acquisition of Skype had been to meld Skype into eBay's core auction businesses. So far, that has proven to be a virtually insurmountable problem.

Bubble Bursting Time Again?

Fearing a reprise of the 2000 catastrophe which wrecked hundreds of tech companies, big firms in the sector are hoarding cash. The broader problem is that these firms don't need it. In the last major contraction cycle, it was all the little startups who died when the capital markets slammed shut.

Something like that, but on a lesser scale, is about to happen again. That means the big cash-flush firms will once again have a chance to snap up assets while some of the smaller startups simply vaporize.

Of course, it takes less capital to innovate these days, compared to 2000. But we are in for a winnowing period, nevertheless. I don't think anybody thinks we collectively are in a "bubble" of manic proportions. Wiser heads now prevail just about everywhere.

The similarity is simply that there's lots of innovation, but with a period of capital stringency upon us, many of the innovators won't be able to sustain their development efforts. The lack of access to capital won't kill innovation. Perhaps innovation won't even slow in ways that are industry damaging, overall.

Amazon, eBay and Google were among the notable successes of the late-1990s wave of innovations. One would have a hard time coming up with a similar list of financially-successful firms among the most-recent generation of innovators.

History doesn't necessarily repeat. So we are not seeing an "Internet bubble" all over again. But cycles of capital availability are important. Let the winnowing begin.

Transfer Money Using Your Mobile

Obopay says customers can now use their existing bank accounts to send and receive money using their mobile phones. With Obopay’s mobile money transfer, non-customers can pick up payments without signing up for Obopay.

These innovations make it easier than ever for any bank customer to conveniently send and receive payments from their mobile phones.

By linking an existing checking or saving account — at any American bank — with Obopay, customers can send money directly from and receive money into that account using any mobile phone.

Anyone can pick up money received by having it deposited directly into their existing bank account or by requesting a check, without having to sign up with Obopay.

“Obopay’s mission has always been to provide the best tools possible to conveniently get, send and spend money from any mobile phone,” said Obopay Chief Executive Officer, Carol Realini. “Now we provide it directly from any bank account."

Many new applications just take a while to get traction. Mobile payments seem to be one of them, at least in the U.S. market. Japan has been the model, but over the years there have been significant cultural differences between regions of the world that could affect market adoption.

A decade ago it remained true that Europeans preferred debit cards while Americans preferred credit cards. But as with the text messaging habit, U.S. consumer behavior is starting to resemble that of other regions. Mobile payments still have some ways to go before becoming a natural habit for U.S. users.

80:20 Rule Holds in Rural Markets

Wireless "unlimited" plans exist for one reason: to retain the loyalty of the heaviest users--synonymous in many ways with "best customers." But that same sort of thinking increasingly should be seen in the broadband services and wireline customer business as well.

John Rose, president of the rural telephone trade group OPASTCO, says not only that fiber to the home is coming for rural telcos, but that symmetrical bandwidth is coming as well. But that doesn't mean every customer will buy every service. That's a big change for rural telcos, who are used to nearly universal take rates.

Some providers already are finding that even when triple play services are available, a third of customers only buy voice, a third take video and voice while a third take all three services, he notes.

So even on the wireline side of the house, high-end customers are emerging. So it will be really important for rural telcos to take care of those best customers, Rose says.