Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Sony Reader Banned from Apple App Store

Apple has rejected Sony’s Reader app from its App Store because it sells content within the app, and lets users access content that they purchased outside Apple’s own App Store, the New York Times reports.

Apple has told Sony that from now on all in-app purchases have to go through Apple. That's the downside of curation. On the other hand, few would quibble about a news stand, bookstore, cable network or radio or TV broadcaster selecting the content it wishes to carry, so long as the content is legal, tasteful and generally accurate. Okay, at least legal.

Amazon, Apple, And Their Future In Steaming Video

Not everybody thinks Apple or Amazon, not to mention others such as YouTube or Wal-Mart, can make a serious business out of streaming video. For that matter, perhaps it might be said that Time Warner doesn't think most media companies can really do so, either.

Nor is Netflix likely to have an easy time, from now on, getting access to the compelling content it needs to remain a viable provider of top -notch video programming. Content owners now see "streaming" as the key new business to protect, rather than the DVD business, as important as that latter business has been, over the last decade or two. See http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/13/business/media/13bewkes.html.

In the late 1990s the media industry embraced Netflix as a new distribution outlet for renting DVDs. Perhaps nobody clearly understood that the move might accelerate the decline in the sales of DVDs, which for years had been the lifeblood of the film industry. Now, with its success online, Netflix has raised fears that consumers may stop paying for cable television as well.

That new perception is likely to put the brakes on Netflix, to some extent, as well as others that might like to participate in the streaming business.

The studios and networks will see to it that the streaming business is not handed to Netflix, much less to Apple, Amazon or anybody else.

Video Will be 66% of All Mobile Traffic in 2015

Worldwide mobile data traffic will increase 26-fold between 2010 and 2015, reaching 6.3 exabytes per month or an annual run rate of 75 exabytes by 2015 due to a projected surge in mobile Internet-enabled devices delivering popular video applications and services, according to the latest Cisco Visual Networking Index.

This traffic increase represents a compound annual growth rate of 92 percent over the same period. Two major global trends are driving these significant mobile data traffic increases: a continued surge in mobile-ready devices such as tablets and smart phones, and widespread mobile video content consumption.

The Cisco study predicts that by 2015, more than 5.6 billion personal devices will be connected to mobile networks, and there will also be 1.5 billion machine-to-machine nodes -- nearly the equivalent of one mobile connection for every person in the world.

Mobile video is forecast to represent 66 percent of all mobile data traffic by 2015, increasing 35-fold from 2010 to 2015, the highest growth rate of any mobile data application tracked in the Cisco VNI Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast.

Mobile traffic originating from tablet devices is expected to grow 205-fold from 2010 to 2015, the highest growth rate of any device category tracked.

Next Jump Powers Enterprise Loyalty Programs

Next Jump, still a private company, will go public soon. Perhaps the most-notable partner Next Jump has is MasterCard, which in 2010 signed a three-year partnership with Next Jump to enhance its payment services.

Will Big Carriers Take Over CDN Business?

There's a general rule in the communications business that a specialist wants to find a niche that is unattractive to the tier-one telcos, but big enough to be very interesting for the specialist. Lots of services start out small, but then get big enough to draw the interest of the tier one providers, typically with unpleasant results for the niche providers.

Mobile phones, digital subscriber line (broadband access) and SIP trunking are just a couple recent examples of services the big tier one providers avoided until it was clear they were going to be significant.

One wonders whether the content delivery networks business, which has been such a niche, now is becoming big enough to matter to tier one telcos.

Report Finds Windows Phone 7 Share Lagging Windows Mobile

Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 appears to be trailing the older Windows Mobile operating system in sales, according to trhe NPD Group.

For the fourth quarter of 2010, NPD Group put Windows Phone 7′s share at two percent of the market, dead even with Palm’s webOS but lagging Windows Mobile (four percent), Research In Motion’s BlackBerry franchise (19 percent), Apple’s iOS (19 percent) and current market leader Android (53 percent).

Android enjoyed a quarter-over-quarter growth of nine percent, while iOS and RIM fell four percent and two percent, respectively. Windows Mobile dropped three percent. NPD Group’s Top 5 smartphones included the Apple iPhone 4, Motorola Droid X, HTC Evo 4G, Apple iPhone 3GS and the Motorola Droid 2.

Google’s Android becomes the world’s leading smart phone

Google’s Android has become the leading global smartphone, according to Canalys. Shipments of Android-based smartphones reached 32.9 million, while devices running Nokia’s Symbian platform trailed slightly at 31.0 million worldwide. But Nokia did retain its position as the leading global smart phone vendor, with a share of 28 percent. The fourth quarter also saw the worldwide smart phone market continue to soar, with shipments of 101.2 million units representing year-on-year growth of 89 percent. The final quarter took shipments for the year to fractionally below 300 million units, with an annual growth rate of 80 percent over 2009.

Directv-Dish Merger Fails

Directv’’s termination of its deal to merge with EchoStar, apparently because EchoStar bondholders did not approve, means EchoStar continue...