IP PBX Line Shipments Will Dip for First Time Ever in 2009

IP PBX lines shipped in 2009 will decline for the first time ever in 2009, say analysts at Dell'Oro Group. Aside from the global recession, vendor instability (Nortel, in all likelihood) is causing a bit of hesitation.

“For 2009, we anticipate a degree of vendor volatility that will cause many customers to stay on the sidelines for a longer period of time than we would expect if downward pressure was coming only from the weakened economy,” says Alan Weckel, Dell’Oro Group director.

“In the current environment, some customers will hold on to existing analog and digital lines for a longer period of time,” Weckel says.

According to the report, Cisco, Avaya and Nortel had the most IP line shipments in the quarter. The eight largest vendors in the market, including Aastra, Alcatel-Lucent, Avaya, Cisco, Mitel, NEC, Nortel and Siemens represent about 49 percent of total line shipments in the first quarter of 2009.

Notwithstanding, IP telephony penetration will continue to grow this year, albeit at a slower pace compared to the previous years.

Branch Offices Ripe for Cloud Computing?

At many enterprises, branch offices account for 20 percent of a company’s IT infrastructure, according to Forrester Research. Since IT departments are seeking to cut costs, branch office IT investments likely will be shifted to remote services provided by some sort of cloud computing infrastructure.

The potential impact on the service provider business is not so clear, but one might assume there will be greater bandwidth requirements at remote locations and in the backbone than presently is the case, as the traditional trade-off in computing is between local processing and bandwidth. One can compute locally, substituting cycles for bandwidth, or compute remotely, substituting bandwidth for cycles.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/IT-Infrastructure/Branch-Offices-Ripe-for-IT-Consolidation-Forrester-239188/?kc=rss

Social Networking Explodes 83%, Facebook 700%

U.S. users increased their time using social networking apps 83 percent last year, according to Nielsen Online. In fact, total minutes spent on Facebook increased nearly 700 percent year-over-year, growing from 1.7 billion minutes in April 2008 to 13.9 billion in April 2009.

One wonders what all those users are doing less, as they network more. Even if one assumes multitasking is going on, attention and time still are linear. People can't do more of one thing withoug doing less of another, or at least are attention sharing to the point where it is questionable how much actual attention is being paid to something that is "available and in use."

INQ Mobile to Launch Twitter Phone

Cell phone maker INQ Mobile plans to introduce a "Twitter phone" for the Christmas selling season. The device is intended for sale at prices less than $140, and feature an Internet-based Twitter client, says Frank Meehan, INQ CEO.

The phone will use Internet connections for sending Tweets, not text messages. The idea is to spur usage by eliminating the text messaging charges, and using the mobile phone's data plan, instead.

INQ in 2007 had introduced a mobile device optimized for use of Skype. The move indicates a developing niche in mobile devices and applications: social networking as a lead application.

In a sense, you can think of the BlackBerry as an "email phone" and the iPhone as an "Internet phone." INQ earlier this year also introduced what some call the "Facebook phone," as it is optimized for instant access to Facebook, Skype and other social networking applications.

And the optimization might be working. Traffic on INQ1 "Facebook phones" are three to four times higher than from other phones, says Marc Allera, 3 UK director of sales and marketing.

About 65 percent useFacebook on a regular basis while 50 percent use Windows Live Messenger regularly.

http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE5513L820090602?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0&sp=true

AT&T Launches New Small Business Bundle

AT&T has launched what it calls the nation's first bundled offer targeted at small businesses,  including wireless, wired and high speed Internet services, starting at $99.99 a month.

The “All for Less” bundle is now available to small business customers with one to four lines at a single location, across AT&T’s 22-state footprint.

The wireless plan features 450 minutes of use each month for each wireless device.

The broadband service operates at rates up to 1.5 Mbps and comes with as many as 11 email accounts and AT&T Wi-Fi hotspot connectivity.

The local voice service comes with unlimited local calling, call forwarding and caller ID, as well as unlimited domestic long distance calling.

To qualify, customers must already have wireless service or purchase new wireless service from AT&T in addition to new or existing local voice, long distance voice and broadband services.

The offer expires Aug. 31, 2009 and requires a two-year service agreement. Additional bundles that include other high-speed Internet speed tiers and/or wireless plans are available at additional costs.

Fring Launches New Social Networking for Mobile App

Fring haslaunched a new version of its social community and communication service that combines each contact’s separate online social communities into one, manageable profile on the users’ mobile phone.

Fring enables users to talk and chat with their Internet instant-message buddies on Skype, GTalk, Facebook, Twitter and last.fm, among other services, from one integrated, searchable fring contact list. 

The new fring version combines a user’s multiple IM contacts into one dynamic profile, which shows each friend’s current availability at a quick glance and enables interaction, all directly from this combined mobile profile.

As social networking becomes a more-popular mobile activity, we are likely to see mobile devices optimized for social networking, much as iPhones have popularized the notion of a "Web" phone or BlackBerry essentially created an "Email phone."

In fact, the notion of a "smart phone" should at some point stop being a meaningful end user category at all, replaced by a lead feature corresponding to a lead app. 

Has the Recession Ended?

ADP’s jobs data is showing an expected jobs decrease of some 532,000 for the month of May. The data for April from ADP also showed that the job losses were revised down to 545,000.

If the Bureau of Labor Statistics data confirms the trend on June 5, 2009, it will add to other data suggesting the recession has ended. Unemployment claims are a lagging economic indicator and a rule of thumb is that recessions later are determined to have ended about 30 days after the peak rate of new claims.

The SurePayroll Hiring Index rose 26 points to 11,430 in May, up from 11,404 at the end of April. The uptick was 0.2 percent from the prior month, suggesting that on average small businesses were hiring.

Year-to-date, the Hiring Index is up 1.4 percent, which puts small business hiring on track to increase 3.3 percent for calendar year 2009.

The results suggest that the U.S. economy is in much better shape these days than many may realize, SurePayroll says. Small businesses often lead economic recovery, so it is good to see that small businesses are continuing to add new employees, the firm notes.

It might seem odd to call the end of a recession when the nation still is losing a half a million jobs a month. But if the trend is confirmed, the economy's direction has changed.