Smartphone Niches Emerging

Data from ChangeWave about smartphone preferences might suggest both the existence of clear smartphone segments as well as an evolution of those segments.

By definition, all smartphones handle voice and text. Beyond that, there seem to be distinct user niches.

One might characterize the Palm user as someone whose unique application is the "organizer."

One might characterize the BlackBerry user as oriented to email, and the iPhone owner as oriented to Web-delivered applications.

Looked at this way, the Changewave data might suggest that the value proposition for the email-focused remains steady, but that the value of "organizer" functions is receding, while mobile Web is growing. We also have seen the introduction recently of devices organized around social networking and navigation, so the number of smartphone niches addressed by particular devices seems to be growing.

The Palm Pre and Motorola Cliq are among new devices pitched at the social networking niche. Garmin's nuvifone is perhaps the best example of a navigation-focused smartphone. So the obvious big question is how the growing raft of Android-based smartphones will contribute to the proliferation of devices with a lead application mode.

How demand for the Droid will shape up is hard to say at the moment. Some fragmentary data suggests that Droid users access the Web even more than iPhone users do. But its turn-by-turn navigation features might also emerge as a key drawing point.

Mobile Ad Audience Grows, Number of Resisters Also Grows

Mobile ad spending is poised to grow 27 percent to $2.1 billion in 2010, according to the Mobile Marketing Association. The good news is the audience for mobile marketing is growing. The bad news is the audience is still relatively small and confined to a limited segment of the arket, say researchers at BIGresearch.

That means there is a high probability of turning off potential consumers. Consumers who like mobile marketing tend to be young men. They are mobile phone-centered and more likely to use social media.

People who don’t like mobile marketing tend to be slightly-older women who are not as centered around their mobile phones or users of social media. Receptive consumers have an average age of 39 while non-receptive consumers have an average age of 46.

About 23 percent of receptive consumers are regular users of MySpace, compared to 10 percent of non-users. About 13 percent of receptive consumers regularly use Twitter, while just 3.5 percent of non-receptive consumers say they regularly use Twitter.

Since June of 2008, the percentage of people who don’t like mobile marketing has ncreased, BIGresearch says. About 66.8 percent of 2,200 survey respondents say they don’t like text ads.

Some 60.2 percent don’t like voicemail ads. About 60 percent say they do not like video ads. By itself, those sorts of reactions are to be expected. How many of you would actually say you like receiving, hearing or viewing most ads?

Android People Heavier Web Users than iPhone People?

The Motorola Droid is the latest smartphone to be touted as a poential  “iPhone killer.” I'm not among those doing so, not for any lack of confidence in the Droid so much as a belief that the iPhone is not just a smartphone.

Like other Apple products before it, and like some other popular consumer products, the iPhone already has carved out an "experience" and "emotional bond" that cannot be broken by a substitute product.

Still, the Droid seems to be the sort of product that will advance the use and adoption of Web content to a connected device, especially for users whose Web experiences are heavily Google-mediated.

Significantly, Nielsen data from the third quarter of 2009 already suggests Android users are heavy mobile Web users, maybe even more so than iPhone users, who, up to this point, have been the heaviets mobile Web users.

But there is still plenty of room in the market for devices that are optimized around a lead application. The iPhone might have been the best example to date of a device really optimized around Web access as BlackBerry has been optimized around mobile email and other devices are plumbing the "turn by turn navigation" app, for example.

In the fourth quarter of 2009, perhaps 40 percent of all new devices sold will be smartphones of one sort or another. By 2011, smartphones will represent the majority of phones in use, Nielsen forecasts.

"Projecting Nielsen data out through 2010, we see smartphones crossing 50 percent of the market by the middle of 2011, roughly equal to 150 million users," says Jerry Rocha, Nielsen Online Division senior director.

Sabi the War Hero Dog

Okay, I love labradors....labradors that defy death, get lost for 14 months and then get to go home is even better.

Verizon Grows Annual Revenue 5x More Than Average

Verizon's revenue growth over the last year tops, by a substantial margin, revenue growth for nearly all other service providers among the 30 largest in the world.

Annual revenue growth of about 1.6 percent is the average, says TeleGeography.

Verizon grew revenue by 10 percent. Vodafone, China Mobile and Deutsche Telekom were the other stand-outs.

Despite Shocking Unemployment, Consumer Demand for Communications Holds Up

There's a sobering statistic in the latest research from Centris about consumer spending on communications and video service consumption: 27 percent of households reporting at least one member who lost their job in the last six months.

Most of the other findings seem consistent with other surveys taken over the last two years, though. The issue now is whether recession-induced behaviors will change as we exit the recession.

About eight percent of U.S. households said they were likely to cancel their Pay TV service in the third quarter of 2009, unchanged from the second quarter of 2009. Keep in mind that a typical churn rate for video services is about two percent a month, so those findings are relatively consistent with typical disconnect plans, and most churners simply sign up with alternate providers.

Some 18 percent of households said they were likely to cancel their home phone service and replace it with a currently-used cell phone. That is an underlying trend that might have accelerated during the recession, but was in place already.

Fully 75 percent of respondents said they would not likely downgrade their Internet access service. Virtually all other studies show high resistance to cutting back, or cutting off, Internet access services.

Nearly half of all households have contacted their current TV service providers shopping for discounts and lower-priced packages, though.

If past patterns show themselves, consumers should start spending more on enhanced services of all sorts, including premium video entertainment and mobile services, as the economic recovery takes hold. The wild card are services such as wired voice, which have been under pressure for other reasons unrelated directly to the recession.

Video Now Driving Bigger Access Bandwidth Packages, says Compete.com

How much Internet-delivered video is being consumed by users of sites such as Hulu.com or Netflix.com? According to compete.com data, Hulu.com traffic has grown 210 percent over the last year.

"If Hulu.com continued this growth trajectory for another year, we could see it break into Compete.com’s top 50, surpassing unique visitor traffic to sites like the NYtimes.com and Netflix.com," says Matt McGlinn, Compete.com writer.

From September 2008 to September 2009, Netflix.com’s volume of unique visitors viewing movies and other content online increased 163 percent, says Compete.com.

The good news for Internet service providers is that these trends will keep driving end users to buy access packages featuring higher amounts of bandwidth, says McGlinn.