Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Verizon Gets Apple iPhone, Now the Questions Begin

How many AT&T customers using iPhones will depart for Verizon, and at what rate? How many current Verizon Wireless customers will switch to iPhone, and what will the retention impact be? Will Verizon Wireless get the right to sell the iPad, with native 3G connections?

Will Verizon Wireless get the right to sell a 4G version of the iPhone, and when? Same question for the iPad on the 4G network.

http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/splash/iphone.jsp

How Will Verizon's Network Handle the iPhone?

Expect a spate of commercials and ads claiming that the iPhone works better on either AT&T's network, or Verizon's network. I suspect few consumers are going to be swayed, one way or the other, by such ads.

eBay Introduces "Try It On Before You Buy" iPhone App

"With “See It On,” iPhone 4 owners can take a picture of themselves using a forward-facing camera and then pinch and zoom to fit the glasses to their face. Users can choose from a small section, including Aviator, Wayfarer or Rimless, in various colors. From there, they can search for matching listings on eBay.

For clothing, the augmented reality feature is called “Outfit Builder.” Users can designate favorite pieces of clothing with the eBay app and store them in their “Personalized Closet.” Then, they use “Outfit Builder” to mix and match items in the closet. To try the items on, the user can similarly overlay the clothes on a white canvas or a saved photo or live image (by pointing the camera toward a friend or a mirror).

Once an outfit is created, it can be saved for future reference or shared via email.

NFC Explosion Sets Stage for Mobile Payments Growth

Technology by itself does not always enable creation of new markets. But technology often is required for such new markets to form. If so, then the growth of near field communications capability in mobile phones is going to create the underpinning for a new mobile payments business, though many would not be at all surprised if mobile advertising, promotion and marketing emerged as a key driver of the value proposition for users.

Worldwide shipments of cell phones with built-in NFC capability will rise to 220.1 million units in 2014, up by a factor of four from 52.6 million in 2010. In 2014, 13 percent of cell phones shipped will integrate NFC, up from 4.1 percent in 2010, according to researchers at iSuppli

There's Money in Virtual Goods

Virtual goods might be a viable revenue model for games developers. Tapjoy began testing out a freemium model for one of its mobile games "Tap Defense" a year ago and found that within a week, it was making six times more money going freemium than paid, based on revenue earned from sales of virtual goods or premium digital goods.

Eventually, the game was making 10 times what it was before. The market for freemium mobile apps went from about 20 a year ago to about 2,500 today, of which he said 90 percent use Tapjoy.

Tapjoy provides monetization, distribution and publishing services for social games, mobile applications, virtual worlds and other social publishers.

The Tapjoy platform includes a turnkey software library that enables mobile developers to embed fully functional virtual goods storefronts with the ability to process microtransactions. The library also comes with a built-in "pay-per-install" user acquisition program, an ad optimization layer and application analytics.

Klout says it can Measure "Influence"

Measurement is why marketeers like online, mobile and other Internet-mediated advertising and marketing channels. Klout now claims it can use the same tools to measure influence.

Facebook Valuation

You can decide for yourself whether there is a bubble building (again) in the Internet app space.

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....