Android Market Withdraws Tethering Apps

Most free or low-cost tethering apps formerly available at the Android Market now have been removed from the Android Market, meaning that AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile Android smart phones will not be able to use them.

Easy Tether, Internet Sharer, Klink, PDAnet and Tether for Android are among the apps observers say no longer are available. Users can still install free tethering apps on rooted phones, or from another source other than the official Android Market.

The consumer interest in such apps is obvious: it allows them to use the smart phone data plan to connect other devices. Service providers of course sell service plans to connect PCs and other devices.

The perceived fairness of access plans has much to do with expectations. Even "capped" fixed-line plans offer 150 Gbps to 250 Gbps worth of monthly consumption, at a time when most users probably use several Gbps a month, across all PCs, tablets and other devices used inside a home. Wireless plans are sold differently, on a per-device basis, with varying caps and price plans that tend to top out at 5 Gbps a month for any single device.

Sprint is the exception, offering unlimited 4G usage plus 5 Gbps of 3G usage each month for HTC Evo and similar devices. Users seem to accept as fair an allotment of 150 Gbps to 250 Gbps at a fixed location, supporting multiple devices, for possibly $60 a month. Wireless plans often cost $60 for a 5-Gbps plan for a single smartphone.

That's a big difference, and so the interest in tethering is not surprising. Mobile executives often point out that the cost of delivering bandwidth over a mobile network is more costly than on a fixed network, and there is almost-complete agreement with that general principle.

How plans might change in the future is not clear, but it is clear that mobile users already have learned to use Wi-Fi connections for tablets and smart phones, instead of their mobile usage buckets, when Wi-Fi is available. Also, the typical mobile user simply does not consume as much data as when using a PC. These days, it remains an unusual smart phone user that actually consumes more than hundreds of megabytes a month from a smart phone. Tablets represent a mixed case.

And, of course, everyone expects usage to climb, over time. "Fairness" is a moving target.

Android Tethering Free Ride is Over | PCWorld

Browser Shares Stable

After a month of availability of Internet Explorer 9 and Firefox 4, it appears that the browser market remains stable.

Internet Explorer is down slightly, dropping 0.81 points to 55.11 percent. Firefox experienced a small drop of 0.17 points, to 21.63 percent. Chrome was up 0.37 points to 11.94 percent, and Safari was up 0.54 points to 7.15 percent.

The implication is that people adopting the latest versions are upgraders, and that little major change has occurred.

Apple Has 50% of Smartphone Market Profits

According to an analysis by Canaccord Genuity’s T. Michael Walkley, Apple now captures 50 percent of first quarter 2011 smart phone operating profits among the top 8 OEMs, despite having only 4.9 percent of global handset unit market share.

Apple Has 50% of Smartphone Market Profit Share

Wireless Carriers Say Their Use of Location Data is Opt-In

The four largest U.S. wireless carriers say they obtain customer permission before using a subscriber's physical location to provide driving directions, family-finder applications and other location-based services, and before sharing a subscriber's location with any outside mobile apps that provide such services.

But the wireless companies also say they have no power to require device makers like Apple or independent developers of location-based apps to get similar user consent if these apps don't rely on the carriers themselves to track a user's whereabouts.

Wireless Carriers Get Consent To Use Location Data

Is Telstra Getting Out of Fixed Line Consumer Voice?

In what might strike you as an odd statement, Telstra executives say that VoIP is not sufficiently reliable to sell to consumers.

While launching a new IP telephony services aimed at small business customers, Telstra CEO David Thodey said the company was only continuing to review consumer VoIP services.

“As we think the product is mature enough, and has enough technical backup, we’ll bring that product to market,”Thodey said. However, Thodey didn’t appear to believe a Telstra VoIP offering would appear soon, according to Australian content provider Delimiter.

“We don’t think the quality and reliability is there," Thodey said. "We could bring it to the market tomorrow, but we don’t want to."

That explanation might strike some as quite odd, given the success carriers are having with consumer VoIP.

In fact, some of us might speculate that something else is afoot, namely an unwillingness to invest in consumer VoIP because Telstra might not want to sell consumer VoIP when it starts to buy wholesale access services from the National Broadband Network.

When that happens, Telstra, like other retail service providers, will have a choice of customers to serve. Given Telstra's belief in 4G Long Term Evolution, Telstra might be planning to rely on wireless for consumer voice, staying out of the consumer fixed-line voice service.

That might strike you as odd, but keep in mind that Telstra also operates separate cable TV facilities, running on separate networks. While you might think Telstra is giving up a "triple play" opportunity, it isn't. Telstra can deliver broadband access using the NBN, video entertainment on its existing cable TV networks and voice and mobile broadband on its planned 4G network.

In principle, Telstar could deliver voice using its cable networks as well, but Telstra might simply have concluded that mobile is the best way to sell voice to consumers.

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RIM Goes Multi-Platform, Losing Smartphone Battle?

In a move almost certain to be interpreted as a sign enterprises are migrating to iOS and Android devices and away from their past heavy reliance on BlackBerry devices, Research In Motion announced plans for a multi-platform BlackBerry Enterprise Solution for managing and securing mobile devices for enterprises and government organizations.

The solution is expected to incorporate secure device management for Android and iOS based devices and tablets, all managed from a single web-based console, RIM says.

Some might try to spin the announcement as an extension of BES features to other key enteprise operating systems, and that it is. But others will say the move suggests RIM already can see that enterprises and larger organizations are moving away from BlackBerry and towards Apple and Android devices.

In fact, some might already be ready to predict the possibility that RIM might someday be a provider of server solutions, not handsets.

RIM's business has traditionally been driven by IT departments at enterprises, as BES gave companies an easy way to do things like activate devices, manage passwords, push out software updates, and wipe lost or stolen devices clean.

That might be the future of the business, not handsets.

read more here

AT&T to Take On Groupon

AT&T will itself get into the social shopping business by launching its own service within the next several weeks in Los Angeles, Atlanta and Dallas-Fort Worth.

The service, apparently to be housed within AT&T's yellowpages.com subsidiary, confirms the potential of social shopping as a new part of the local advertising business, historically where directories have part a part of the business as well.

The U.S. social shopping or group shoppingmarket, offering discounts at local businesses, will grow to $3.93 billion in 2015, from $1.25 billion this year, according to BIA/Kelsey.

Some might not believe the business will last, and in that case AT&T is just chasing a mirage. But there is good reason many now are optimistic about what might be possible as mobile devices, location awareness and local advertising and promotion meet to create what some believe is a genuinely-new business capable of diverting spending from other existing channels at the very least.

AT&T to Take On Groupon With $10 Promotion for Daily Deal Site - Bloomberg