AT&T Bet on Jobs

Leslie Cauley, USA Today staff writer, says AT&T got a one-year extension of its exclusivity deal for iPhone sales in the U.S. market as part of the new deal with Apple to pay an upfront fee, rather than a share of monthly recurring revenues. The original exclusive deal was set to expire at the end of 2009. So AT&T has another two and a half years to wring more magic out of the iPhone before contending with other carriers.

The iPhone might seem like a no-brainer now, but back then it was little more than a concept, with no name, design plan or software operating system. And it was offered by a computer company that had zip experience in wireless.

And credit AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson for making a key, and somewhat "un-telco-like decision." in staking so much on the Apple deal.

"We're not betting on the handset," Stephenson says. "We're betting on Jobs."

That appears so far to have been the right decision. It isn't just the handset. It was the intuition that Steve Jobs, whose firm never had built mobile phones before, could bring something spectacularly new to handset design, and by extension to the mobile data business.

Imagine any stodgy, old school CEO at a firm that big, betting on a person, rather than a company track record. It's a sign of new thinking, for sure.

UK VoIP: Naked DSL Will Help

Continental Research estimated in April 2006 that Vonage had about six percent share of VoIP usage in the U.K. market, which is heavily skewed towards PC soft clients. But Vonage U.K. seems these days to be focusing on several user segments with higher propensity to use landline replacement services. A key segment is users with frequent needs to call the United States, says Vincent Potier, managing director, Vonage U.K.

But change could be coming. It is possible that customers will be able to buy a "naked DSL" service in the U.K., in the future. That will be important since 75 percent of broadband customers in the U.K. use DSL.

Still, the European VoIP market really was defined by Skype. Users expected to use headsets and make occasional calls on a scheduled basis, especially when calling internationally.

So Vonage has had to position itself as a different sort of experience: a replacement for the landline. Up to this point that has been a bit of a marketing challenge as U.K. users must buy a bundled voice line when buying DSL. So the opportunity for cost savings is not as great as would be the case in a "naked DSL" environment.

Still, more and more European countries are offering naked DSL, including France, Norway and the Netherlands. There being a fairly clear correlation between mass market VoIP and naked DSL availability, Vonage U.K.'s growth prospects will be aided quite a lot if the naked DSL option surfaces

13% Mobile Handset Growth in 2008

In the second quarter of 2008, tier one handset vendors enjoyed year-over-year unit shipment growth of between 15 and 22 percent, says ABI Research. ABI estimates that 301 million units were shipped during the quarter.

The mobile device market will deliver 13 percent growth to take 2008 annual shipments to 1.3 billion units.

“If there is an economic slowdown, no one bothered to tell the mobile device buying public,” says ABI Research vice president Jake Saunders. “In particular, consumers in emerging markets in Asia, the Middle East, Africa and South America shrugged off inflation fears to sign up as mobile phone users.

These healthy gains in net subscriber additions are stimulating replacement and upgrade sales. In developed markets handset purchases tended to be flat, but those consumers who did purchase dug deeper and paid out more for coveted higher-end handsets and smart-phones.”

In terms of market share, Nokia has passed the 40 percent threshold for the first time (40.3 percent). Samsung secured second place with 15.2 percent, while Motorola barely managed to keep ahead of LG with its 9.3 percent versus LG’s 9.2 percent, and both edged out Sony Ericsson (8.3 percent). There is a distinct possibility that LG might overtake Motorola by the end of 3Q 2008, putting Motorola into fourth place, ABI researchers say.

Social Networking Might be Key to Mobile Advertising

Social networkers also are much heavier consumers of digital content including text messages, mobile email, photos, music, games and mobile TV, say researchers at ABI Research.

“The fact that online social networkers consume more mobile content and media than mobile subscribers who aren’t into online networking may not be really surprising,” says principal analyst Nick Holland. “However, what we have long suspected is now confirmed by the numbers: for most kinds of mobile content, online social networkers consume about twice as much as their non-networked peers.”

What drives online social networkers towards consumption of mobile media? They are on average younger and more tech-savvy for a start. Also, many social networking networks are organized around a specific media-related interest such as photography or music.

“Advertising on social networks isn’t working particularly well, so promotion of mobile content on online social network sites should be a high priority for mobile operators, content distributors, media companies, and advertisers," says Holland.

Send a Text Message, Carriers Say

The earthquake that hit Southern California on Tuesday almost by definition was going to lead to a temporary spike in call volume and temporary blocking of many dial attempts. The perhaps interesting angle was advice by AT&T to "try text messaging on a mobile" as a way of getting messages such as "are you okay?" or "I'm okay" through the congestion. Good advice.

"Always Connected" Downside

Never-ending "to do" lists might be forcing people to manage their time rather than their attention, says consultant Linda Stone. She argues that managing time increasingly is counter-productive. The problem is that to-do lists have a way of expanding, leaving the list-makers feeling burned out.

Managing one's attention might be more important, Stone argues. The issue is what is meant by managing attention. "Each evening or morning before you start your day, make a short list of your intentions (the result and feeling of something you want) for the day and by each, write the related to do's for that day," she says. "Try to keep your list to five intentions."

"Consciously choose what you will do and what you will not do," she notes. "Keep a different list of what you will review for inclusion on other days."

"List only what you really expect to do that day," she says, not a list of all things you want to do for a longer period. "As other things come to mind, write them on a separate list," she says. That keeps you focused on only those things which must be done today, rather than creating anxieties about "all the things that must be done."

One of the more difficult--but perhaps most important pieces of advice is to "give yourself meaningful blocks of uninterrupted time to focus on each intention," she says. "Turn off technology each day during those blocks and focus on your intentions."

Lots of you immediately--and rightly--will note that much of your "to do" list is not under effective control. That especially will be true in staff and line organizations where departmental requests, inbound customer support volume and software or hardware failures are the drivers of immediate "to do" lists. In such cases the original items on a daily "to do" list simply will be pushed over to the "do later" list.

But all of that is reason for creating better methods for screening and filtering communications and messages that really can be avoided.

Verizon Earnings Show Material Shift

Commentators have been noting heavy telephone company loss of voice lines for some years. These days, the commentary has shifted to gains in broadband, video and wireless data services. For good reason. Though it takes a longish while to materially shift revenue and cost structures at entities as large as tier one service providers, that shift is happening.

It is not simply that carriers know they must change their business models. They are changing them. And Denny Strigl, Verizon COO, hints of coming convergence between the FiOS and wireles service, as one would expect. In the future, there will be little end user distinction between wireless and wired network fabrics, in terms of ability to invoke and use services.

Verizon Communications reported second quarter wireless revenues up nearly 12 percent, with mobile data revenues growing more than 45 percent. Broadband and video revenues earned from end user customers (excluding wholesale) grew 52.9 percent year-over-year, and penetration rates for both FiOS Internet and FiOS TV were up. Penetration rates for FiOS Internet averaged 23.5 percent across all markets, up from 18.7 percent from last year, while FiOS TV penetration averaged 19.7 percent, up from 13.3 percent.

In fact, growing revenue from its broadband and video services help boost consumer average revenue per unit in Verizon’s otherwise stagnant wireline markets. APRU climbed to $63.76, up 10.4 percent from the same period last year. FiOS figures were even better, with FiOS customer figures coming in at more than $130 a month.

Verizon Business had revenue of $5.3 billion in the second quarter, up .9 percent from a year ago. Global enterprise revenue was up 1.7 percent to $4 billion. Revenue from IP, managed services, Ethernet and optical ring services grew at an 18.7 percent clip.

If new services revenue are not yet a "flood," they are more than a "trickle." And though analysts sometimes focus on consumer revenues, Verizon operates in enterprise and smaller business segments as well. In that regard, relatively robust enterprise revenues seems to have been matched with somewhat "weak" small business revenue.