BilltoMobile already had signed deals with AT&T and Verizon Wireless, giving the firm access to about 85 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Sprint Selects BilltoMobile to Enable Subscribers to Charge Online Purchases to Their Wireless Bill - Barrons.com
BilltoMobile has reached a deal allowing Sprint customers to charge online purchases directly to their Sprint bill. Once implementation is complete in the coming months, merchants and payment resellers using BilltoMobile's mobile payment service will be able to offer this payment option to Sprint customers.
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.
Facebook Replacing Mobile Communications?
Mobile and fixed service providers face all sorts of competitors, most of them indirect. Email and instant messaging, for example, cannibalize some amount of voice traffic, as do over-the-top services such as Skype. In other cases, over-the-top applications simply "suck up all the oxygen in the room" by usurping the revenue created by those apps. In past years, telcos might have preferred to create the apps and keep the revenue themselves.
Some even think Facebook is in competition with mobile operators. Facebook has an integration deal with Skype for voice communications and in November 2010 unveiled an email offering.
In the Philippines, for example, the National Telecommunications Commission reports declining text message volumes as more people communicate with each other through the web and web-based apps.
The agency said that in 2009, the average Filipino user sent about 30 text messages per day, or a total of well over two billion messages. If the volume of those messages declines, there will be revenue implications for mobile service providers.
In the Philippines, for example, the National Telecommunications Commission reports declining text message volumes as more people communicate with each other through the web and web-based apps.
The agency said that in 2009, the average Filipino user sent about 30 text messages per day, or a total of well over two billion messages. If the volume of those messages declines, there will be revenue implications for mobile service providers.
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.
Square Drops 15-Cent Fee for Credit Card Purchases
Square says it is dropping the 15-cent transaction fee when merchants use its mobile payment system, and instead will take what is an interchange fee of of 2.75 percent of the gross sales amount.
The change is helpful for many of the small merchants who use Square, namely high-volume, low amount transactions.
The change is helpful for many of the small merchants who use Square, namely high-volume, low amount transactions.
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.
U.S. Cable Operators Will Lose 6 Million Households by 2015
U.S. cable operators will lose six million more customers by 2015, predicts Jonathan Doran, Ovum analyst, down from 60 million households in 2010 to 54 million households.
Doran estimates that U.S. households subscribing to cable dropped by four million between 2007 and 2010. The losses will come from a combination of share losses to satellite and telco competitors, plus some amount of replacement by online services.
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.
Dwolla Promises Retailers Lower Transaction Costs
Much of the original premise behind mobile payments was that it could lead to lower merchant transaction fees. That has not always proven to be the case, but Dwolla claims it does deliver on the promise.
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.
Augmented Reality for Navigation
The downside for video-assisted navigation services used by auto drivers is that they might be tempted to look at the screen, instead of keeping their eyes on the road. This is useful, but potentially also a source of distracted driving danger.
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.
Mobile Payments Boosts Ecosystem Value
Mobile and fixed service providers these days continually face the challenge of adapting their services in ways that preserve or create significant roles in the Internet, application, broadband access and voice ecosystems. In that regard, mobile payments and banking are significant precisely because those sorts of services are amenable to leverage.
In other words, service providers have other assets they can bring to bear that offer a substantial role in the creation of value, and presumably, therefore, a substantial role in revenues and profit within the ecosystem. It isn't that mobile banking and mobile payments cannot be offered "over the top," as virtually all other applications now can. It is rather that mobile service providers have existing assets to leverage, typically described as including active billing relationships with hundreds of millions of customers.
“Google’s massive, but Google does not have a billing relationship with 99 percent of its customers,” Deutsche Telekom Chief Technology and Innovation Officer Ed Kozel said in an interview last week. “That’s our opportunity.”
Also, some ways of conducting mobile banking and payments make use of text messaging, a service mobile operators largely control. In principle, mobile service providers also have billing systems set up to handle micro-payments, a potentially significant part of the overall mobile payments business.
Tablets also represent an opportunity. Online or virtual goods payments are growing in volume, and tablets should provide a richer environment for that sort of activity, especially as tablets develop as significant platforms for gaming and content consumption.
By some estimates, the retail mobile payments business could account for a third of the $1.13 trillion global market in mobile transactions by 2014, according to IE Market Research. Note the obverse, that other transactions will represent two thirds of mobile activity.
By some estimates, the retail mobile payments business could account for a third of the $1.13 trillion global market in mobile transactions by 2014, according to IE Market Research. Note the obverse, that other transactions will represent two thirds of mobile activity.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
-
We have all repeatedly seen comparisons of equity value of hyperscale app providers compared to the value of connectivity providers, which s...
-
It really is surprising how often a Pareto distribution--the “80/20 rule--appears in business life, or in life, generally. Basically, the...
-
One recurring issue with forecasts of multi-access edge computing is that it is easier to make predictions about cost than revenue and infra...
