Google TV: Still the Business of the Future?

There's no telling what Steve Jobs, Apple CEO, might bring up today at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference. He might announce something that would make Apple TV more than a hobby, which is how Apple formally characterizes it.


But that hasn't stopped Google from launching Google TV, its own effort to meld "the best of TV and the best of the web in one seamless experience." Google  TV builds on Google Chrome to allow users to access all of their favorite websites and easily move between television and the web.

Google TV will use an SDK and web APIs for TV so developers can build richer applications and distribute them through Android Market.

Google is working together with Sony, Logitech and Intel to put Google TV inside of televisions, Blu-ray players and companion boxes. These devices will go on sale in the fall of 2010, and will be available at Best Buy stores nationwide.

"The TV industry is eventually going to be severely disrupted by the Internet, and eventually, I hope that I'll be able to get everything I want to watch online," says Dan Frommer, Business Insider deputy editor. "But it's going to take longer than it should, because TV companies are still fairly insulated -- especially as Comcast buys NBC -- and can protect their legacy business models for a while longer."

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Less Apple Hype Than is Typical

Apple is expected to unveil a new iPhone on June 7 that is thinner with a flat back, higher resolution display and a front-facing camera. Apple might have additional details about the iAd network and Game Center, the social networking feature, according to Wall Street Journal reports.

There might be less hype for this upgrade than typically is the case, because of the unauthorized leak of a prototype.

A new iPhone OS 4.0 operating system also will be debuted.

Analysts believe that the phone will be priced at a similar range as the current iPhone 3GS, which starts at $199 with a two-year contract, with the iPhone 3GS price cut to $99 with a similar contract.
The new lower price for the 3GS device, combined with AT&T Inc.'s new data prices, which lower the entry-level monthly service rate, could accelerate demand beyond the strong triple-digit growth the phone has been seeing, some believe.

"One of the impediments to smartphone adoption has been the service plan," says Shaw Wu, an analyst for Kaufman Brothers, adding that "when they make a form factor change, it's pretty powerful."

Apple is expected to sell about 36 million iPhones in its fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2010.

So Who'll Follow AT&T's Wireless Pricing Model?

Question: Which Internet access providers will follow AT&T and adopt some form of "bucket-based" access pricing? Answer: Everybody, eventually.

To be sure, Sprint says it has no immediate plans to change its "unlimited" pricing. Sprint Nextel currently has no plans to change its mobile data pricing structure in the wake of AT&T Mobility's decision to move to a usage-based model, according to CEO Dan Hesse, at least for its fourth-generation network and voice devices.

Sprint already has a 5-Gbyte monthly cap for users of its 3G data cards and dongles, though the 4G network has an unlimited plan for dongle and data card users.

Clearwire Corp, 55 percent owned by Sprint Nextel Corp, also plans to keep unlimited data plans. But pricing changes are inevitable.

The reason the WiMAX network can offer unlimited data access across the board is because there are so few users on the network at the moment. That will change.

So Who'll Follow AT&T's Wireless Pricing Model? - Comcast: 'gauging customer interest' in unlimited wireless broadband - dslreports.com

Sprint Says HTC Evo Set a Sales Record

Whatever else the HTC Evo might mean for Sprint, it seems already to have accomplished one thing: settting a single-day sales record for Sprint Nextel. On June 4, 2010, the Evo became the device that has sold the most units in a single day, ever, at Sprint Nextel.

Sprint says the total number of HTC EVO 4G devices sold on launch day was three times the number of Samsung Instinct and Palm Pre devices sold over their first three days on the market combined.

In many cases it appears the Evo, which works on both the 3G and 4G networks, was being bought by customers who actually cannot use the 4G network yet, as Clearwire, which is building the 4G network, strains to add markets in Boston, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Denver, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York City, Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, St. Louis and Washington, D.C.

"HTC EVO 4G has more than lived up to our expectations that it would be one of the most anticipated technology products of the year," said Kevin Packingham, Sprint SVP.

China a High Cost Producer?

China has a "problem," caused by its success. Before the recession it was clearly the low cost provider of goods among the largest nations of the world.

It has only been in the last year or so that China’s cost of labor has spiked up, notes 247wallstreet analyst Doug McIntyre. As did the Asian Tigers and Japan before it, China is on the way to becoming a country that will progressively move up the value chain in its hardware businesses, for example.

The country is the victim of its own success as Japan was, in a sense. It has a large middle class, rising wage rates and will have to create an internal market for its goods, rather than focusing on exporting.

China Becomes The High Cost Provider Of Goods – 24/7 Wall St.

Top-10 U.S. Telecom Sites Suggest

The May 2010 Hitwise report on site traffic has some interesting potential implications for communications service providers.

The top single site was Cricket, a firm historically focused on the wireline replacement market and using value pricing to replicate the unlimited free local calls element of fixed line service.

Verizon has three sites in the top 20, as well as holding spots two and three for traffic.

What is notable is that one of the three Verizon sites is the customer portal, indicating that people are becoming quite comfortable with using the portal for paying bills, asking questions and checking on usage and status information.

AT&T has two sites on the list, and the percentage of traffic for the four leading U.S. mobile carriers mobile sites is in line with their respective market shares.

T-Mobile USA also has two sites in the top 10, one of them its customer service portal, which likewise suggests user comfort with online support, as well as T-Mobile's possible success converting its customers away from paper billing to online-only billing.

Comcast's site in the top-10 also is a customer support portal. Back in the "old" days the top-10 sites were likely to be retail sales and transaction portals. These days, three out of 10 are relatively strictly customer support sites.

Steve Jobs Single-Handedly Restructured The Mobile Industry

With the introduction of the iPhone, Steve Jobs achieved something that might be unique in the history of business: he single-handedly upended the power structure of a major industry, argues Chris Dixon, Hunch co-founder.

Before the iPhone, the carriers (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile) had an ironclad grip on the rest of the value chain, particularly, handset makers and app makers. Back in the old days, an application could get access to the customer only by cutting a deal with a carrier.

That mostly is not the case anymore. To a greater or lesser degree, app developers can work directly with handset vendors these days. That's a huge switch.

Steve Jobs Single-Handedly Restructured The Mobile Industry: