C Titles Prefer Web

According to an online study from Forbes.com and Gartner, the Internet continues to be the most influential and important source of business information for C-Level executives around the world, at 67%.

This number has increased 37% since 2004. At the same time, C-Level executives, citing newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal as their main source of business information, has decreased 36% since 2004.

The number of C-Level executives who prefer the Internet first thing in the morning has increased 22% since 2004, while those who prefer to read the newspaper first thing in the morning has declined 11% over the same time  period, the survey suggests.

HTTP is the Long Term Issue, Not P2P

Though it is peer to peer traffic that currently has network engineers concerned, HTTP traffic rapidly is surpassing P2P in volume, driven by the amount of video being viewed in a Web context.

Open Road for Open Source

Open source now is mainstream in the enterprise environment and in the Web environment. So it is not too surprising that open source now is emerging in a big way in the mobile market.

It isn't simply Android or Linux. It also with a couple years will include Symbian.

If one is looking for innovation, the mobile market is among the best places to watch. No devices or experiences are as customizable as mobiles are. No devices get replaced quite so often. No devices are so well adapted to applications that are "always on."

A Dramatic Change in Core Functionality

What is the core value of enterprise application? What is the core value for any PC application used by consumers? In times past, one might have answered "productivity" for an enterprise. In the consumer space, entertainment probably rivals productivity.

And though those might still be the right answers going forward, there's something new afoot. How are productivity and entertainment realized?

Increasingly by use of social and communications mechanisms, ranging from email, messaging, downloads, uploads, managed and hosted services, cloud computing and social networking.

Software increasingly works because it is connected to other software and other people. In some real sense, even when productivity or entertainment is the "value," value is realized only in the form of communications and connected computing.

As Bill Gates steps from history's computing stage, that's the observation that occurs. Bill Gates deserves thanks for personifying the "PC era." Maybe we don't have a name yet for what is coming, or any single person, company or application to define it.

Who could forget Time magazine naming the "PC" the person of the year? Who thinks it will be so easy to tag what is coming?

Why People Miss 30-50% of Calls

According to studies sponsored by Nokia, people who carry their mobile in their pockets sometimes or always miss 30 percent of inbound calls.

People who carry mobiles in their handbags sometimes or always miss half of all their inbound calls. That's reason enough for mobile providers and device manufacturers to investigate other ways of distributing the inbound call function.

It's hard enough to connect with a person when busy and unavailable to speak immediately. It's even harder now that so much voice traffic has shifted to mobile methods. Now, even when a person is available, calls are missed simply because the "alert" function has failed.

Some of us try to get around this problem by putting devices into "vibrate" mode. That works well enough until the phone is out of the pocket and sitting on a desk someplace. Then we forget that there won't be an audible tone--and we miss calls that way.

Three Screen Ads: Heat More than Light

At least some tier one service providers have high hopes for advertising spend based on targeting techniques and availability on three screens (TV, PC, mobile).

You see huge numbers around online ad spending, mobile ad spending or targeted ad spending. Nobody knows what will happen, except that share will continue to shift from existing media to online and mobile.

It doesn't seem so clear to me that new ad revenues will be transforming for either cable or telco providers, though.

Cable has been at the ad game for quite some time, and the overwhelming amount of money made by ca cable operators comes from recurring services.

In fact, cable modem and voice services already surpass total ad revenues. As a new revenue stream, it's important, to be sure.

The issue is how significant targeted advertising can be, when location and other attributes are easy to assimilate as part of the placement decision. If history provides any guidance, the answer will be "far less than you think."

Cable TV Model for Some Parts of the Content Ecosystem

"An unconstrained profit-maximizing platform charges a positive fee to the other side of the market if and only if content providers value additional consumers higher than consumers value additional content providers."

In other words, platform and service providers have opportunity to earn revenue from content partners when new, emergine or highly-focused content partners want expedited carriage, placement or promotion on platform portals.

It's the same sort of thing the cable industry long has had as a business practice. Popular networks get paid, low-viewership networks often must pay to get carriage (shelf space). In a service provider context, the analogy is that promotion, targeting, location, billing and other features and services can be so useful a content partner might be willing to pay to obtain them.

If, on the other hand customers highly value a particular content provider, a rational platform simply will make sure the popular provider is well supported, and will do nothing to impede customer access.

It's still an emerging sort of thought, and the services and applications platforms can offer partners isn't so well developed. But it is coming.