Mobile Video Forecast

Consumers are demanding more personalization and entertainment content on their mobile phones, driving mobile video revenue to exceed $3.5 billion in 2008, according to recent research by MultiMedia Intelligence.

By 2012, the mobile video and mobile TV market will exceed $15 billion, including direct customer payments and advertising. But most of the money is in subscriber fees. Total Mobile TV and Video advertising revenue will exceed $1 billion by 2012.

Those numbers illustrate something about the relative importance of various revenue streams. Some observers think video, advertising and other related revenue streams ultimately will represent most network service provider revenue.

I'm a bit of a contrarian, perhaps, but I continue to believe voice and data services will constitute the clear majority of "legacy" telecom service provider revenues for the indefinite future. That doesn't mean "dumb pipe" or "simple access" services are the only revenue components former telcos will have.

It is to argue that most of the revenue will continue to come from access and the services that are built rather directly on access. I'd argue that will continue to be true on both wireless and wired networks.

With the combination of a large wireless subscriber base and free-to-air alternatives, Asia has the vast majority of mobile TV subscribers. By 2012, Asia will have two thirds of all mobile TV subscribers.

For that reason alone, mobile TV is unlikely to represent a very large revenue stream for network service providers. And what revenue there is will come in the form of recurring subscription payments or on-demand fees.

Harmonizing WiMAX and LTE

Participants from both the WiMAX and LTE camp and IEEE and ETSI 3GPP standards organizations seem to be of a mindset that a common air interface for both Long Term Evolution and WiMAX would be a good thing. Vodafone, for example, is calling for the merging of WiMAX and LTE.

Count Intel as a proponent of such harmonization as well.

These proposals point out a key fact about both WiMAX and LTE: they simply are wireless broadband platforms. The differentiation will come only as differentiated business models can be created. It probably is inevitable that in the early going the volume will be in "DSL and cable modem substitution" and "alternative to 3G mobile broadband."

LTE, though, is in a different strategic position. Its backers can assume they essentially are looking at a next-generation network that will, over time, port existing customers and business models over to the new platform.

WiMAX, in North America, has to create space for itself by stealing some share from other existing contestants. That's why the pressure to position on one hand as a fixed line alternative and on the other hand as "better 3G" will be irresistable. If that is all WiMAX does, it will not be as successful as many hope. The compellingly different positioning is "mobile Internet," with all that implies about openness, applications heterogeneity, pricing and packaging.

U.S., Italy Lead in Moble Internet

Mobile Internet has become a mass medium in the U.S. and Italian mobile markets, say researchers at Nielsen Mobile. As of May 2008, there were 40 million active users of the mobile Internet in the United States.

Perhaps more interesting is the fact that 95 million U.S. mobile users have subscribed to the service but do not necessarily use it.

According to Nielsen, 144 million (57 percent) of U.S. mobile subscribers were data users in the first quarter of 2008 (any data activity from text messaging to mobile Internet).

Some 95 million (37 percent) of U.S. mobile subscribers paid for access to the mobile Internet, either as part of a subscription or transactionally.

About 40 million subscribers (15.6 percent in May 2008) were active users of mobile Internet services, using those services at least once on a monthly basis.

It's a small point, but in recent days studies have shown that penetration of global positioning satellite services and now mobile Internet are highest in the U.S. market. Over time, that distinction means little. But it's worth keeping in mind that different services propagate at different rates in different countries and regions, often because of value drivers specific to each region, sometimes because of regulation, other times because of pricing and packaging policies.

Less Value from Linking?

Louis Gray of LouisGray.com says he detects a decline in the effectiveness of "linking" as a driver of blog site traffic. Taking a look at traffic to his own site, he now finds "traffic from other blogs to be driving an ever-declining percentage of visits to my site, swamped by social media tools, aggregation sites, and of course, Google search."

People seem to be relying more on news aggregators and RSS feeds.

I'd have to agree. On this site, something like 68 percent of visitors arrive from a search engine site, about 23 percent from referring sites and about nine percent direct.

My personal interest in traffic drivers is as a professional journalist of more than 25 years. Since more of what we do is moving to online delivery, with more of the readership on a story by story basis, irrespective of the brand name packaging we used to emphasize, I'm always interested in how the craft of journalism is evolving.

I used to spend more time embedding links and tagging. These days I do so quite rarely. Mostly, I just put up the posts and am done with it. Of course, I've also stopped using instant messaging as well, Skype for calling and just about any other related applications as well.

I find I am too busy to keep testing many new applications; tired of having to adopt new behaviors. I'm even spending lots less time on Facebook.

Of the new things I've tried recently, Lypp, the Web-based conferencing tool, has proven most useful. It is even delightful. There's still a continuous stream of interesting tools. I just have gotten to the point where getting my work done matters more than exploring lots of new apps. Lypp actually helps me get my work done.

Microsoft ResponsePoint SIP Trunking Suppliers Named

Microsoft Corp. has selected Junction Networks as a preferred SIP trunking and gateway service provider for its Microsoft Response Point small business phone system. The Response Point Service Pack 1, generally available now, will feature services from Junction Networks pre-configured for simple account activation and maintenance.

Microsoft also has certified New Global Telecom, which now is accepting customer orders for NGT Digital Voice for Microsoft Response Point. In April, NGT became the first certified, Microsoft recommended service provider offering industry-standard SIP (session initiation protocol) phone services that works seamlessly with Response Point.

Hosted Business VoIP Seats: Long Ways to Go

Ike Elliott over at Telecosm has completed a partial survey of business VoIP seats now in service. It's a tough number to come up with and is not exhaustive. But it is instructive.

The issue some of us have raised is whether hosted VoIP ever will be a business bigger than legacy Centrex was, in which case market saturation could come at about 33 million seats in service.

Ike's respondents do not represent the whole universe, but are instructive. We have a long ways to go before we can answer the question of how big hosted business IP telephony will be.

Apple Yanks 3G iPhone in Canada

Apple has decided not to sell the iPhone 3G in its retail stores across Canada in protest of Rogers price plans, according to AppleInsider. A minimum three-year contract for $60-a-month buys 150 talk time minutes, 75 text messages and 400 megabytes of data downloads. It clearly is an awful deal.