Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Orange UK Study: Women Send More Pictures; Men Watch More Video
Women send more multimedia messaging service (pictures) messages than men, as much as 48 percent more than men in some age groups, says Orange UK.
But 71 percent of all mobile TV clips have been purchased by men, Orange UK says. Likewise,
75 percent of all mobile videos have been purchased by men.
Also, some 64 percent of customers using Orange social networking sites were men and 36 percent were women.
On average, iPhone customers use 165 megabytes of data per month. This compares to an average of 115 megabytes of data for other smartphone customers, says Orange UK.
Of these data points, the one which strikes me as being most important is the statistic about data consumption. Where a fixed broadband connection might represent scores of gigabytes worth of usage each month, a mobile broadband connection might represent perhaps a gigabyte or two.
The fact that iPhone users average about 165 megabytes is interesting in that it suggests smartphone devices, though far more numerous than PC dongles, represent an order of magnitude less bandwidth demand on the mobile networks than PC devices.
That could have implications for the marketing of mobile connections to replace landline connections, given that some fixed connections represent an order of magnitude greater load on a network than a mobile PC connection.
On the other hand, the spatial distribution of PC devices, compared to mobile phones, during peak hours of use, likely is quite different. It might also be the case that mobile PC connections get used much the same way as fixed connections, with peaks in the evening.
Since most mobile networks have spare capacity in the evenings, and since evening use is likely to be distributed over a much-wider area than rush-hour traffic, mobile dongle services might mesh relatively well with smartphone usage, in the same way that business use and consumer use of broadband tends to complement, rather than compete.
Labels:
MMS,
mobile PC,
mobile video,
Orange U.K,
SMS

Social Networking Changing Collaboration at Work
Social networking is starting to change the nature of worker collaboration within companies, new poll conducted by Harris Research suggests. Of workers who use social networking at work, 59 percent say that their usage of social networking has increased over the past year. But only about 17 percent of the 1,000 workers surveyed report using social networking.
The study found the most frequently used application for collaborating with others is email (91 percent), but that what people want from their email is changing. In addition to email, the Harris poll found that other applications being used by respondents to collaborate with others in the workplace include shared spaces (66 percent), voice calls and teleconferencing (66 percent), web conferencing (55 percent), video conferencing (35 percent), instant messaging (34 percent), and social networking (17 percent).
Respondents like the fact that email provides an easily-accessible record of communication and the ability to communicate with many people at once. Users also rank email prominently among various collaboration tools because there is a high level of comfort in using the application to easily communicate with others inside and outside their organizations. However, the poll showed there are many pain points associated with the way most email solutions function today.
While email remains the preferred method of collaboration, many respondents complained they receive too much irrelevant email (40 percent) and that they lack the ability to collaborate in real time (32 percent). End users also dislike the fact that they have very limited storage (25 percent) and that large volumes of email come into their inbox with no organizational structure (21 percent).
Half of those using social networking for work by-pass company restrictions to do so. The study participants who prefer to use social networks indicated they would like to have control over who sees their content as well as be able to share with groups of users using different tools. The respondents also indicated the desire to collaborate in real time without having to open up an additional application.
The study found the most frequently used application for collaborating with others is email (91 percent), but that what people want from their email is changing. In addition to email, the Harris poll found that other applications being used by respondents to collaborate with others in the workplace include shared spaces (66 percent), voice calls and teleconferencing (66 percent), web conferencing (55 percent), video conferencing (35 percent), instant messaging (34 percent), and social networking (17 percent).
Respondents like the fact that email provides an easily-accessible record of communication and the ability to communicate with many people at once. Users also rank email prominently among various collaboration tools because there is a high level of comfort in using the application to easily communicate with others inside and outside their organizations. However, the poll showed there are many pain points associated with the way most email solutions function today.
While email remains the preferred method of collaboration, many respondents complained they receive too much irrelevant email (40 percent) and that they lack the ability to collaborate in real time (32 percent). End users also dislike the fact that they have very limited storage (25 percent) and that large volumes of email come into their inbox with no organizational structure (21 percent).
Half of those using social networking for work by-pass company restrictions to do so. The study participants who prefer to use social networks indicated they would like to have control over who sees their content as well as be able to share with groups of users using different tools. The respondents also indicated the desire to collaborate in real time without having to open up an additional application.
Labels:
Cisco,
collaboration,
email,
unified communications

Video Substitution Still A Marginal Activity
In 2009 an estimated 800,000 U.S. households stop subscribing to a cable, satellite or telco video service, say researchers at the Convergence Consulting Group. By the end of 2011, that number is forecast to double to 1.6 million, the group predicts.
Cord cutters don’t yet represent a serious threat to the $84 billion cable/satellite/telco TV access industry, which counts an estimated 101 million subscribers, the analysts suggest. But they might be a leading indicator of the shift to TV viewing on the Web.
So far, Web video viewing clearly is ancillary to other linear TV modes. The cord-cutters make up less than three percent of all full-episode viewing on the Web. The rest comes from people who are only beginning to watch occasionally online. An estimated 17 percent of the total weekly viewing audience watch at least one or two episodes of a full-length TV show online. Last year, that percentage was 12 percent, and next year it is forecast to grow to 21 percent, Convergence Consulting says.
Nor will major programmers be compelled to speed up their online distribution efforts, as the amount of incremental advertising remains quite small.
U.S. online TV advertising made up 2.5 percent of major-network ad revenues of $62 billion in 2009. Convergence Consulting estimates the incremental revenue at $1.56 billion.
source
Cord cutters don’t yet represent a serious threat to the $84 billion cable/satellite/telco TV access industry, which counts an estimated 101 million subscribers, the analysts suggest. But they might be a leading indicator of the shift to TV viewing on the Web.
So far, Web video viewing clearly is ancillary to other linear TV modes. The cord-cutters make up less than three percent of all full-episode viewing on the Web. The rest comes from people who are only beginning to watch occasionally online. An estimated 17 percent of the total weekly viewing audience watch at least one or two episodes of a full-length TV show online. Last year, that percentage was 12 percent, and next year it is forecast to grow to 21 percent, Convergence Consulting says.
Nor will major programmers be compelled to speed up their online distribution efforts, as the amount of incremental advertising remains quite small.
U.S. online TV advertising made up 2.5 percent of major-network ad revenues of $62 billion in 2009. Convergence Consulting estimates the incremental revenue at $1.56 billion.
source
Labels:
cord cutters,
video substitution

Will LTE Bend the Cost Curve?
Mobile service providers hope Long Term Evolution will "bend the cost curve." They also hope it will provide the foundation for new services, but many of us would guess the primary advantage lies in bending the cost curve.
Labels:
consumer behavior,
LTE,
network economics

Google CEO Lauds Professional News Organizations, Steps in a Mess?
A smart chief executive officer knows how to tailor his or her remarks to an important ecosystem partner. The trick is to do so without alienating another important part of the same ecosystem. I'm not completely sure Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, completely succeeds on that score.
He makes the point that the importance of "journalism" is its quality, compared to much content produced by bloggers. At some level, that's simply a reflection of reality. Blog content is uneven. And Schmidt is right in catering to the professional content producers whose help could be invaluable in creating more-powerful advertising models for Google.
Still, there are relatively more artful, and less artful, ways of phrasing things. Perhaps another approach would have made the same point without risking some amount of potential blogger ire.
He makes the point that the importance of "journalism" is its quality, compared to much content produced by bloggers. At some level, that's simply a reflection of reality. Blog content is uneven. And Schmidt is right in catering to the professional content producers whose help could be invaluable in creating more-powerful advertising models for Google.
Still, there are relatively more artful, and less artful, ways of phrasing things. Perhaps another approach would have made the same point without risking some amount of potential blogger ire.

What's the ROI from Telepresence?
Unfortunately, "usage" is not the same thing as "return on investment" If those two metrics were in fact directly related, nobody would ever have a problem figuring out the return on investment from deploying any unified communications solution.
Generally speaking, one has to assess "success" using soft measures, though some will point to offset travel costs. The problem is that it is difficult to quantify "better quality communications" or "faster development time" or "reduced friction," though those are the sorts of benefits one would expect to see.
The trouble is that most of what one can quantify is "usage."
source
Generally speaking, one has to assess "success" using soft measures, though some will point to offset travel costs. The problem is that it is difficult to quantify "better quality communications" or "faster development time" or "reduced friction," though those are the sorts of benefits one would expect to see.
The trouble is that most of what one can quantify is "usage."
source
Labels:
ROI,
telepresence

Monday, April 12, 2010
Verizon CEO Says Market Can Sort Out Tough Issues
Labels:
network neutrality,
spectrum auction,
Verizon

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