Apple’s 30% And Google’s 10% Fees Are Too High?

The most important outcome of this week’s emerging tussle between Apple and Google is that we are about to have an intense and financially difficult conversation about what a fair price is for delivering customers to developers, publishers, and producers.

Economically, this is one of the most critical issues that has to be resolved for the future of electronic content. Very soon, a majority of consumer experiences (that which we used to refer to as the media) will be digital. But not until the people who will develop those experiences have unambiguous, market-clearing rules for how they can expect to profit from those experiences.

The question comes down to this: Is 30% a fair price for Apple to charge?

Apple’s 30% And Google’s 10% Fees Are Too High | Forrester Blogs

Will Video Follow Music?

There are reasons to believe the video industry will not follow the music industry as the shift from physical media to online and mobile delivery occurs.

But it has to be worrisome that the great age of compact disc music resembles the great age of DVD sales and rentals.

Kaspersky Believes Android Will Get 80% Share

Computer security expert Eugene Kaspersky predicts Google's Android smart phone operating system will come to dominate the market, reducing Apple and BlackBerry to niche players. Android could wind up with 80 percent of the installed base, Kaspersky maintains.

Kaspersky argues there is only “one company, one operating system which follows Microsoft's strategy of the 1990s” when its Windows computer operating system became dominant on personal computers.

Of course, that view assumes the mobile computing market will mirror the desktop computing market, and many would contest that notion.

Kaspersky believes Android will dominate mobile market - The China Post

Google Search Gets More Social

Google is changing its search results algorithms to return more "social" results. To that end, Google will add new emphasis on results created by people that are a part of one's social networks.

Social search results will now be mixed throughout results based on their relevance (in the past they only appeared at the bottom). This means you’ll start seeing more from people like co-workers and friends, with annotations below the results they’ve shared or created.

Official Google Blog: An update to Google Social Search

"Last Year was Boring; Not 2011" at Mobile World Congress

Lots of new technology, devices and networks are part of the reason.

Debit Card Rule Will Harm Community Bank Customers

People who use debit cards issued by community banks will face higher costs and increased restrictions if a proposed Federal Reserve regulation goes into effect, according to a new survey of members of the Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA).

The proposed Federal Reserve rule would implement the Durbin amendment of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. That amendment limits interchange fees to the tune of about $12 billion a year.

That means issuers will raise other fees, and impose new charges, to recoup the losses. An end to "free checking" is among the likely changes.



Survey: Fed Debit Card Rule Will Harm Community Bank Customers - pymnts.com

Are Handset Vendors Service Providers?

There used to be a clear division of labor in the mobile business. Handset vendors and device manufacturers focused on designing the best possible hardware, using specifications provided by the mobile network operators. More recently, software has emerged as a key differentiator. But the "service" was provided by the mobile operator.

But all that is changing. Handset vendors are trying to shift in the direction of providing an "experience" for their end users that necessarily has handsets providing some "services."

Think about Apple iTunes, App Store, MobileMe, iAd and FaceTime. All are services provided directly by Apple to end users, irrespective of network.

If you are thinking there is an inevitable shift of value and revenue towards the "over the top" services and apps delivered over broadband access services, you are right. That's what a loosely-coupled network, such as the Internet, implies. That is not to say fixed or mobile operators do not have a role in the value chain. They always will. The inevitable point, though, is that there is no reason why most of the newly-created value will remain in the "access" part of the ecosystem.

Mobile operators will have an easier time of this than fixed operators, but no access provider can hope to capture much more than a fraction of the new value and revenue created by application providers. That's what "layers" mean. Applications do not have to know much about the physical layer to "work." Nor will future application provider business models need to "know" much about the physical and lower layers of the software stack.

In the evolving ecosystem, even devices will become application providers.

Are Handset Vendors About to Become Service Providers? | VoIP SurvivorVoIP Survivor