Friday, September 3, 2010

Social Networking, Gaming Key for Tweens, Teens

Social networking and gaming increasingly are prevalent in children's lives. Facebook is now the favorite website among tween (8 to 11) boys and teen (12 to 15) girls.

Online games dominate for boys and girls ages 8 to 11. 91 percent of tween boys and 93 percent of tween girls play games online.

Google TV Today

It's hard to tell what Google TV, or similar initiatives, will look like and feature in the future. But here's what it offers today.

Teens Text 5x More than Adults

Teens ages 12 to 17 send and receive a median of five times more texts per day than adult texters, according to new data from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

But that's probably not the most-important finding. The data also show that use of texting is growing in every age demographic.

Slightly more than half (51 percent) of adults who text send one to 10 texts per day, compared to 22 percent of teens.

The percentages of texting adults and teens who send 11 to 20 and 21 to 50 average daily texts are fairly similar. Where teens begin to outpace adults is in the percentage who send 51 to 100 average texts daily (18 percent of teens, seven percent of adults) and more notably in the percentage who send 101-plus average texts daily (29 percent of teens, eight percent of adults).

Angry Bird Creators on Why Such Games are So Compelling

If you like games, "Angry Birds" is worth a try. If you fear wasting too much time, don't go there.

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Why Apple Hasn't Signed More Studios

Though Disney and News Corp. have agreed to allow Apple to sell content at 99 cents per episode or show, other studios are balking.

As typically is the case for changing rights arrangements in the TV content ecosystem, the issue for studios is the disruption of other parts of the revenue ecosystem.

The 99-cent price tag that represents a steep discount from the TV episodes already offered on iTunes for about $3.

Apparently some executives are worried about devaluation of the content, not just for online consumption, but also "downstream" release windows such as DVD and syndication.

As typically is the case, content owners are trying to protect existing big revenue streams while slowly growing the new channels. But the bigger risk right now is cannibalizing the big revenue channels in favor of much-smaller ancillary channels.

Prepaid Market Cracks With Verizon Smartphone Offerings

Prepaid customers traditionally have had to live with a selection of devices that intentionally did not include the top devices sold in the postpaid market. But that has taken a huge change with Verizon's new willingness to sell even its leading devices on a prepaid basis.

At least at Verizon, the difference between prepaid and postpaid offerings is based more on payment options and subsidized or full price phones than anything else. That is a big change, indeed.

Verizon Wireless also has launched a new "3G Prepaid" data package that lets customers access unlimited data on select 3G smartphones and multimedia phones for $30 monthly access.

Multimedia phone customers also have the option of selecting a new $10 monthly data package for 25 MB per month ($.20/MB overage). These new prepaid data packages are available at Verizon Wireless stores already, and will be available online at www.verizonwireless.com beginning Sept. 28, 2010.

Supported smartphone devices include:

BlackBerry Curve 8330
BlackBerry Curve 8530
BlackBerry Storm 9530
BlackBerry Storm2 9550
BlackBerry Tour 9630
BlackBerry Bold 9650

Palm Pre Plus
Palm Pixi Plus

DROID by Motorola
Motorola DEVOUR
DROID X by Motorola
DROID 2 by Motorola
DROID Eris by HTC
DROID Incredible by HTC
LG Ally

3G Multimedia phones available include:

LG enV TOUCH
LG enV 3
LG Chocolate TOUCH
LG VX8360
Samsung Alias 2
Samsung Renown
Nokia Twist
Casio EXILIM

Will T-Mobile Invest in Clearwire?

Though Clearwire already has gotten about $5 billion in investment, but likely needs another $4 billion to complete its national network.

Credit Suisse analyst Jonathan Chaplin estimates Clearwire will need another $4 billion to extend coverage to the 200 million people they plan to reach by the end of 2011.

That is the biggest carrot for Clearwire: it needs cash, and T-Mobile could provide some of it.

Though Sprint might have qualms about enabling a competitor, Verizon and AT&T, not T-Mobile, is the big problem.

When Sprint and Clearwire merged their networks, Sprint invested $1.2 billion in the venture. Comcast and Time Warner invested a total of $1.6 billion, and they now market Clearwire's service under their own names.

Intel put in an additional $1 billion on top of the $660 million they had invested in Clearwire earlier.

Google invested $500 million and cable operator Bright House Networks kicked in $100 million.

Whether Clearwire gets T-Mobile USA as an investor or not, nothing is going to keep T-Mobile USA from finding some way to provide 4G services. The lesser of the two evils might be to allow T-Mobile USA to invest in, and use, the Clearwire network.

DIY and Licensed GenAI Patterns Will Continue

As always with software, firms are going to opt for a mix of "do it yourself" owned technology and licensed third party offerings....