Google Sales Blow Past Expectations

Google posted double-digit jumps in sales and net income, as the company continued to benefit from a strong market for search ads.

Sales increased 20 percent to $5.48 billion, from $4.38 billion a year ago, while earnings per share increased to $7.64 from $5.89 during the same quarter in 2009.

On average, analysts had expected net revenue of $5.25 billion and earnings per share of $6.67, so Google easily beat expectations.

Indeed, Google’s earnings per share and sales figures were greater than even the most bullish analysts had expected.

Google Sales Up 20 Percent

Sprint Nextel Offers New Boost Mobile Loyalty Program

Sprint Nextel Corp. says it will reward customers loyal to its Boost Mobile prepaid brand by lowering their bills every six months.

The carrier will knock $5 off the $50 monthly price of its unlimited talk, text and Web plan after every six months of on- time payments, to drop the bill to as low as $35, says Bob Stohrer, Sprint’s prepaid marketing chief.

Sprint Nextel Boosts Prepaid Brand to Cut Bills for Loyal Users - Bloomberg

10% Reduction in U.S. Communications Investment Would Cost 300,000 Jobs, $100 Billion in Wages, Over 5 Years

The economic impact of Federal Communications Commission policies that depress capital investment in the U.S. telecom indusry by 10 percent would lead to job losses exceeding 300,000 over a five year period, a new economic analysis by the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal and Economic Policy Studies estimates.

A 10-percent reduction in investment costs 130,000 information-sector jobs per year in the following five years, plus indirect jobs of about 198,000 over the same five-year period.

For each million dollars of investment, the Phoenix Center finds that 10 jobs are affected in the information sector and perhaps 24 jobs across the entire economy, about a 40-percent larger effect than found in most earlier studies.

Lost earnings over a five-year period for a 10-percent decline in investment could be $36 billion in the information sector and $100 billion for all affected jobs.

The study was conducted by T. Randolph Beard, Ph.D. Phoenix Center Senior Fellow and Auburn University Economics Professor, Phoenix Center Chief Economist Dr. George S. Ford and Phoenix Center Adjunct Fellow Professor Hyeongwoo Kim, of Auburn University.

read the study here

Some at FCC Apparently Have a Thin Skin

I don't recall the last time an FCC staffer attacked a policy paper from the FCC's own official blog site.

Perhaps oddly, the post castigates the Phoenix Center for living in a "theoretical" world rather than the "real" world of communications policy.

If you are familiar with the work done at the Phoenix Center, you might be puzzled by that remark. The Phoenix Center's work always is grounded firmly in economic analysis.

"Our friends at the Phoenix Center might be well advised to descend from theory-world to look at the actual, concrete actions taken by this Commission over the last few months," says FCC staffer Paul deSa.

I suspect that is precisely the problem the Phoenix Center analysis of Title II regulation was meant to address.

You can read the full Phoenix Center analysis here http://www.phoenix-center.org/PolicyBulletin/PCPB25Final.pdf

You can see the FCC rant here

Blog - Reboot.FCC.gov

Users Younger than 35 are "Talking" Less than in 2009

Generally speaking, younger mobile users are spending less time talking on their mobiles in 2010 than they did in 2009.

Users 35 to 54 talk about as much as they did in 2009. Users 55 and older seem to be talking more in 2010 than they did in 2009.

As a rule, we can probably account for the trends by assuming younger users find texting more efficient than voice communications for many tasks, and that they therefore are substituting text for voice.

Older users might be finding they are more comfortable with mobile voice, or that the cost of doing so has fallen, and therefore are using it more. Also, some portion of the increase likely is driven by an increased volume of inbound calls to their mobiles.

UCalling Yesterday, Texting Today, Using Apps Tomorrow

If it seems like American teens are texting all the time, it’s probably because on average they’re sending or receiving 3,339 texts a month. That’s more than six per every hour they’re awake, and an eight percent jump from last year.

Using recent data from monthly cell phone bills of more than 60,000 mobile subscribers as well as survey data from over 3,000 teens, The Nielsen Company analyzed mobile usage data among teens in the United States for the second quarter of 2010 (April 2010 – June 2010).

No one texts more than teens (age 13-17), especially teen females, who send and receive an average of 4,050 texts per month. Teen males also outpace other male age groups, sending and receiving an average of 2,539 texts. Young adults (age 18-24) come in a distant second, exchanging 1,630 texts per month (a comparatively meager three texts per hour).

The undeniable area of growth is in data usage: 94 percent of teen subscribers self-identify as advanced data users, turning to their cellphones for messaging, Internet, multimedia, gaming, and other activities like downloads.

While teen usage does not reach levels of activity seen by young adults, it has increased substantially compared to the second quarter of 2009, from 14 MBytes to 62 MBytes.

U.S. Teen Mobile Report: Calling Yesterday, Texting Today, Using Apps Tomorrow

Broadband Penetration 48% in EC

With the caveat that there are wide variances between countries, broadband access services are used by about 48 percent of European Union households, the European Commission reports.

On average, household computer access has increased by seven percentage points to 64 percent of households. However, there is considerable country variation, the greatest incidence of household computer access is in the Netherlands (92%), Denmark
(87%) and Sweden (87%), while the lowest incidence is in Bulgaria (37%) and Romania (42%).

Over half of EU households have Internet access (57%), including both dial-up and broadband. Generally speaking, broadband access mirrors PC ownership. The Netherlands (89%), Denmark (85%) and Sweden (85%) exhibit the highest incidence of household Internet access and Bulgaria (35%) and Romania (31%) have the lowest rates of PC ownership.

About 48 percent of EC homes now use broadband, while seven percent use narrowband. By way of comparison, most surveys of U.S. broadband use suggest 60 to 65 percent of U.S. homes use broadband. The FCC recently has suggested 62 percent broadband uptake, while US Telecom uses a figure of 67 percent. Overall, including dial-up access and primary use outside the home, US Telecom says U.S. Internet access reaches 78 percent of homes.

What is different in Europe is the prevalence of telephone network connections, compared to use of cable modems. On average, most (62%) use an ADSL (telco) connection to access the Internet. In comparison, relatively few use the cable network (15%) to access the Internet,
which is the next most common connection type.

However, in Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Romania and Slovakia more connect using the cable TV network than an ADSL connection.

Observers often note that some areas of the United States do not have any fixed-line access. In the EC countries, about 16 percent of respondents say they cannot buy broadband from any fixed-line providers in their areas.

Still, about 43 percent of EC households report they do not buy broadband access service. The majority of those without access claim that it is because no one in the home is interested in the Internet (58%). However, the various costs associated with the Internet are also cited as obstacles to access, although to a lower extent (19%).

Overall, computer access in the home is increasing across the EU; the proportion of households having a computer has increased by seven percentage points on average.

Almost two thirds of EU households have a computer. On average, computer ownership is greater in the countries that are long-time members of the EU, with two thirds (66%) of households having a computer. Computer ownership is lower among countries that have joined the EU more recently (53%).

The greatest incidence of computers in home is in the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden, where about nine out of ten households have a computer. Conversely, the lowest incidence is in Bulgaria and Romania where the proportion with a computer in home is less than half that in the Netherlands, Denmark or Sweden.

read the report here