Tech Supply Chain Exposes Limits of Trade Metrics - WSJ.com (subscription required)
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Does iPhone Increase or Decrease U.S. Trade Imbalance?
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
Enterprises Adopting iPads
The Apple iPad (82 percent) remains by far the most popular tablet for business purposes. H-P has 11 percent share and Dell has seven percent share.
As with other Apple products, the iPad’s satisfaction ratings are outstanding, with 69 percent of corporate users saying their company is very satisfied and another 28 percent somewhat satisfied with the Apple device.
The larger point is that tablet devices, lead by the iPad are finding a home in enterprises very quickly. The ChangeWave survey also suggests that enterprise adoption could double, to 14 percent, over the next quarter.
About 73 percent of respondents say the iPads are used for Internet access, while 69 percent report they are used for checking email. About 67 percent report that iPads get used for work away from the office.
Sales support is an application used by 46 percent of respondents, while 45 percent use iPads for customer presentations. In about 38 percent of respondents say iPads are used for laptop replacement.
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
Why Enterprises Move Apps into the Cloud
But cost savings are the second most important reason for moving at least some applications into the cloud. Competitive advantage also is seen as a top driver for such moves.
read the study here
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
Triple Play and Broadband Pricing: The Assumptions Always Matter
Methodology matters when any researcher attempts to make a cross-nation comparison of TV, voice or broadband access value and spending.
For example, when trying to determine whether consumer prices are up, down or flat, and looking at either stand-alone or bundled service packages, the assumptions make all the difference.
A new study by the Technology Policy Institute, for example, finds that U.S. broadband prices are relatively steady.
Researchers Scott Wallsten, TPI VP and James L. Riso, TPI senior fellow, studied about 25,000 wireline broadband plans across Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries as part of their analysis.
Overall, quality-adjusted prices remained relatively constant from 2007 to 2009, they find.
Prices for standalone broadband plans in the U.S. are approximately in the middle of the range of prices across OECD countries. Prices for triple play plans in the U.S. are among the highest in the OECD. And while residential prices have on the whole remained constant in the U.S. they have been declining in most other countries.
read the full study here.
The study also compared quality-adjusted broadband prices across countries and over time, and found that
U.S. standalone broadband plans (plans not bundled with voice or video services) compare favorably to other OECD countries, but that U.S. prices for triple play (plans bundled with voice and video) packages and very-fast broadband connections tend to be higher than those in other OECD countries. In addition, while residential prices have remained unchanged in the U.S., they have been falling in most other OECD countries, the study found.
One might argue that the triple-play prices are subject to the assumptions one makes. By definition, a triple-play bundle includes three products at one price, so an analyst has to attribute component prices to each of the constituent products.
Indeed, the researchers caution that the results must be viewed carefully. "The figures must be interpreted cautiously," the report says. The raw prices do not immediately translate into meaningful observations about the real world for at least two reasons, say Wallsten and Riso.
"First, the number of plans in a given country will affect the median and range of prices in that country," they say. "These simple summary statistics assume all of a country’s plans are equally important and representative, which is not the case."
Plans often are available to subsets of a country’s population of varying size, and the popularity of different plans differs even when they are available to the same population. "Notably, existing studies and sources of data on prices suffer from this problem: the prices they report may be based on plans that are not those to which consumers typically subscribe." In other words, the study deals with published rates, and not with the percentages of consumers who may be buying various plans.
Also, the plan data does not account for contracts and data caps, which makes simple comparisons difficult.
The other issue, when looking at triple play pricing, is that if prices for the other constituent services--voice and video--vary significantly, the triple play packages will reflect, to a large extent, those pricing differentials. And most observers might note that U.S. video entertainment packages cost more than equivalent services in most other markets. See study here for a comparison of multichannel TV spending in variious countries.
The point is that all such cross-country studies are highly dependent on the assumptions and methodology used.
A new study by the Technology Policy Institute, for example, finds that U.S. broadband prices are relatively steady.
Researchers Scott Wallsten, TPI VP and James L. Riso, TPI senior fellow, studied about 25,000 wireline broadband plans across Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries as part of their analysis.
Overall, quality-adjusted prices remained relatively constant from 2007 to 2009, they find.
Prices for standalone broadband plans in the U.S. are approximately in the middle of the range of prices across OECD countries. Prices for triple play plans in the U.S. are among the highest in the OECD. And while residential prices have on the whole remained constant in the U.S. they have been declining in most other countries.
read the full study here.
The study also compared quality-adjusted broadband prices across countries and over time, and found that
U.S. standalone broadband plans (plans not bundled with voice or video services) compare favorably to other OECD countries, but that U.S. prices for triple play (plans bundled with voice and video) packages and very-fast broadband connections tend to be higher than those in other OECD countries. In addition, while residential prices have remained unchanged in the U.S., they have been falling in most other OECD countries, the study found.
One might argue that the triple-play prices are subject to the assumptions one makes. By definition, a triple-play bundle includes three products at one price, so an analyst has to attribute component prices to each of the constituent products.
"First, the number of plans in a given country will affect the median and range of prices in that country," they say. "These simple summary statistics assume all of a country’s plans are equally important and representative, which is not the case."
Plans often are available to subsets of a country’s population of varying size, and the popularity of different plans differs even when they are available to the same population. "Notably, existing studies and sources of data on prices suffer from this problem: the prices they report may be based on plans that are not those to which consumers typically subscribe." In other words, the study deals with published rates, and not with the percentages of consumers who may be buying various plans.
Also, the plan data does not account for contracts and data caps, which makes simple comparisons difficult.
The other issue, when looking at triple play pricing, is that if prices for the other constituent services--voice and video--vary significantly, the triple play packages will reflect, to a large extent, those pricing differentials. And most observers might note that U.S. video entertainment packages cost more than equivalent services in most other markets. See study here for a comparison of multichannel TV spending in variious countries.
The point is that all such cross-country studies are highly dependent on the assumptions and methodology used.
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
Few U.S. Consumers Buy 25-Mbps Services
Of services offering 25 Mbps or more bandwidth, business buyers register something on the order of two percent of total broadband subscriptions.
Consumer take rates are low enough not to register on the graph. One might argue that take rates for the higher tiers among consumers are so low only because the 25 Mbps services are not available in most markets. That's true. See http://ipcarrier.blogspot.com/2010/12/us-broadband-access-not-as-bad-as-some.html.
But even where such services are available, take rates remain quite low. Low enough, in fact, that U.S,. service providers never disclose the numbers.
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
Enterprise Social Software Revenue to Surpass $769 Million in 2011
Enterprises are getting more "social," so global enterprise social software revenue is on pace to total $664.4 million in 2010, a 14.9 percent increase from 2009 revenue of $578.2 million, according to Gartner researchers. That's not a huge amount of spending on a global basis, but does indicate changing enterprise requirements.
Enterprise social software enables participation through formal and informal interactions. Technologies include blogs, communities, discussion forums, expertise location, feeds and syndication, social bookmarks, wikis, and integrated platforms/suites.
The market is poised for continued growth in 2011 when revenue is forecast to reach $769.2 million, up 15.7 percent from 2010.
Enterprise social software enables participation through formal and informal interactions. Technologies include blogs, communities, discussion forums, expertise location, feeds and syndication, social bookmarks, wikis, and integrated platforms/suites.
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Smartphones Will Replace Your Wallet, in Some Cases
Samsung’s Nexus S, the first NFC-enabled Android phone, will be on sale at Best Buy starting December 16; Nokia has announced that all of its Smartphones starting in 2011 will support NFC; and Apple recently hired an NFC expert.
Jeff Miles, the director of mobile transactions worldwide at NXP Semiconductors, which co-invented NFC with Sony in 2002, says he expects more than 70 million NFC-capable handsets to be manufactured in 2011.
“As far as what will happen with it, who owns the keys and all of that, none of that has really been determined,” Miles says.
“As far as what will happen with it, who owns the keys and all of that, none of that has really been determined,” Miles says.
Technology does not automatically create habits and markets, of course, but we are about to see what can be done with transaction-enabled smartphones.
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
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