Thursday, January 13, 2011

The Next Big Media Battle: Publishers Against Ad Agencies

The media business has been in chaos for a decade, and there's more coming. The next big media revolution will be an escalating and increasingly bitter competition between the content creators -- especially newspaper and magazine publishers -- and their former friends, the traditional ad agencies, which still create and buy most print ads for their clients.

The traditional ad agencies are going to lose because creating great, engaging content is emerging as the key skill in marketing. And they don't have it, some would argue.

Mobile venture capital investments grow to reach pre-crisis levels

Mobile venture capital investment took a sharp turn upwards last year reaching $6.1 billion, almost as much as the 2006 high of $6.4 billion. The mobile industry now accounts for 34 per cent of all the venture capital in tech as CapitalIQ research showed.

The growth is mostly due to a growing average value of deals. It was estimated that there were 416 deals made last year, while in 2009 and 2008 the number of deals stood at 269 and 284, respectively. The biggest deals – of course – came from the carriers and last year they made for a third of all the financings with a total value of $2.3 billion.

Do Tablets Affect When We Read?

Tablets might change how some people read, what they read, how much they read or what else they give up to read. Tablets might also change when people read. After analyzing about one million articles saved for later reading by Read It Later, the company suggests that tablets already are shifting the consumption of content, at least on the part of tablet owners.

The data suggests that iPad owners, for example, shift much of their reading away from PCs during work hours and towards "personal prime time" in the evenings.

Looking at the number of articles read each hour by Read It Later users on their computers, a significant amount of content was shifted towards the end of a user’s day (6PM – 9PM).

When a reader is given a choice about how to consume their content, a major shift in behavior occurs. They no longer consume the majority of their content during the day, on their computer. Instead they shift that content to prime time and onto a device better suited for consumption.

That reinforces the notion that iPads and tablets might wind up being used extensively "on the couch" and in the home, rather than as a replacement for a PC on business trips. One also wonders what happens to TV viewing, as reading is relatively more-immersive activity than much music listening, which happens when users are doing something else.

New Motorola Zoom Tablet

Motorola Zoom tablet, powered by Android.

Will Verizon iPhone Hurt Android Sales?

Will the launch of the Verizon iPhone 4 slow Android's growth? Some will say yes, others no.

Charlie Wolf of Needham and Co., and Shaw Wu of Kaufman Bros. both believe Apple's deal with Verizon will hit Android sales. The notion is that Android phones will suffer because Verizon users bought Androids in the past primarily or largely because the iPhone wasn't available on Verizon. Once it is, they will switch when they can.

The alternate view rests much more on the range of price points Android devices will be available in, at least on a global level. So the answer might well be "both of the above." It is conceivable Verizon will see at least a momentary dip in Android sales as iPhone sales begin. But on a global basis, the Apple deal with Verizon does not affect the overall dynamics of competition between Android and iPhone.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

300% Increase in Mobile YouTube Viewing in 2010

YouTube now exceeds 200 million views a day on mobile, a 300-percent increase in 2010.

Mobile Payments $1.13 Trillion in 2014

Global Mobile Payments transactions to rise to $1.13 trillion in 2014, a CAGR of 94.8%
Mobile payments continued its stellar growth in 2009 with the total number of users increasing to 351.4 million

Globally, we are expecting the number of mobile payment users to rise to 1.06 billion in 2014 for a CAGR of 20.5 percent.

On the transaction value side, the gross value of mobile payments transactions was $37.4 billion in 2009. We expect mainstream take-up of mobile payments to happen in the 2011 - 2013 time frame. Our forecast is that in 2014, the gross value of mobile payment transactions will reach $1.13 trillion.

SMS accounted for 76.4 percent of mobile payment transactions in 2009. This is expected to decline to 58.7% in 2014.

Ease of use, ubiquity, and minimal network investments means that SMS will continue to be the transaction technology of choice for mobile operators and users, the report suggests.

The Roots of our Discontent

Political disagreements these days seem particularly intractable for all sorts of reasons, but among them are radically conflicting ideas ab...