PlayBook Runs Android Apps

Apparently the RIM PlayBook has an emulator that allows it to run Android apps. A wise move, one might suggest.

Gaming Market Revenue Models Now Must Change

There is no denying the value the Internet represents for users. There also is no denying the disruption the Internet brings to virtually every business it touches. It now appears the console gaming business is about to be disrupted.

"We as VC’s love when a market is undergrowing great change and that industry is shifting from packaged console-based gaming and going to a free-to-play model," says venture capitalist William Quigley, managing director of Clearstone Venture Partners.

"We also need new monetization models," he says, an obvious understatement when a category moves from selling products to enabling "free" usage. Payment and virtual goods seem good candidates for necessary innovation as the transition occurs.

Also, a lot of the dollars currently spent on traditional advertising are migrating to gaming, he notes.

In addition to cloud services and mobile applications, Quigley sees a decade-long wave of innovation ahead for gaming.

Here Come the Cloud and Gaming Funds

U.S. Television Ownership Drops

For the first time in 20 years, the number of homes in the United States with television sets has dropped. In its latest estimate, 96.7 percent of American households now own sets, down from 98.9 percent previously. That works out to 114.7 million TV households, down from 115.9 million in 2010.

There are a few potential reasons for the downward trend. The transition to digital TV. TV penetration first dipped after this transition and continued in 2010. Nielsen also says the cost of owning a TV is a factor. Lower-income and rural homes were particularly affected.

But new platforms might be having an affect as well. Nielsen data demonstrates that consumers are viewing more video content across all platforms.

However, a small subset of younger, urban consumers are going without paid TV subscriptions. The long-term effects of this are unclear. One might argue that the "no TV" behavior is temporary, reflecting a stage of life where discretionary income is more limited. Or, more disturbingly for some providers, younger consumers might value multichannel TV less than older age cohorts.

The issue is whether linear multichannel television is a product like any other, with a product lifecycle that now is past its peak, and starting to decline. It might once have seemed inconceivable that voice service was a normal product, with a lifecycle. But people have other communications alternatives, and some would say mobile voice is the preferred way of using voice communications.

The issue for the video entertainment ecosystem is whether a similar product lifecycle now is starting to assert itself in the TV business.

Television Ownership Drops in U.S., Nielsen Reports - NYTimes.com

Enterprises Looking to Managed WAN Services

A recent survey of executives and IT leaders at large U.S. companies by Boston-based market research firm, Chadwick Martin Bailey (CMB) indicates that enterprises are increasingly relying on managed network service providers.

For example, one large fast-food franchise wanted expertise in restaurant operations and the ability to deliver industry-specific solutions like managed PCI Wi-Fi security, digital signage, or employee video training over the WAN.

In large part, the desire for managed services is a resource issue. IT departments are stretched thin and need to free internal resources up from basic tasks to focus on more-strategic priorities.

Strong customer support is considered nearly four times as important as technical criteria such as the provider's network architecture), when evaluating suppliers, the study suggests.

Strong service level agreements, a provider's understanding of their unique business applications and related industry expertise also were considered important.

Combined, these top criteria account for nearly two thirds of all the weight in an enterprise's final supplier selection.

Improved IT security, simplified compliance and better application performance are among the reasons managed services increasingly are favored. Demand for managed services also benefits from a preference to avoid new full-time hires.

The survey also suggests enteprises increasingly favor specialty service roviders that have high-touch customer service, vertical market expertise, and offer managed applications specifically tailored to their business.

A  majority of respondents favor providers with managed WAN optimization technologies that overlay their existing slower WANs, providing WAN acceleration and Quality of Service (QoS) performance without the associated costs and complexities.

CMB surveyed 342 decision makers at large distributed enterprises with WANs ranging from 100 to more than 500 networked sites, and typically more than 5,000 employees. 

The study was commissioned by Hughes Network Systems.

read more here

Apple iPad Is Transforming Retail

About 41 percent of consumers who planned or were considering buying an iPad cited shopping as a primary reason for their interest, says eMarketer.

The iPad’s most dramatic impact for retailers might be its use in stores. Merchants are beginning to equip sales associates with iPads to aid customers with in-store purchasing decisions. Deloitte forecasts that in 2011, 25 percent of all tablets will be bought for business, and retailers will lead all industries in their adoption.

How the iPad Is Transforming Retail - eMarketer

Markets Morph as Local, Location, Social Converge

A decade ago, "location" and "local" were two very distinct product verticals for most Internet companies. "Local" developed out of the Yellow Pages market, while location was about maps and navigation. The obvious result was that application development was conducted in two different groups.

Today, there is a growing recognition that local, geo-location and mobile are not distinct product groups and technology stacks, but rather essential components of a unified toolset that better connects people with the world around them.

That's the genesis of the "local, social, mobile" theme, which now sees things people do in the real world, where they are, in a more collaborative way, as keys to developing compelling new applications and revenue streams. Location can be used to build apps that are monetized by shopping, for example. "Local" can be monetized by advertising or promotion activities.

"Social," meaning collaboration, or word of mouth referrals, can be monetized by commerce activities. In other words, the confluence of social, mobile and local creates revenue opportunities primarily focused on people spending money and shopping in the real world, not online commerce or online advertising, which have driven most existing online revenue streams.

Snap to the graph, not the grid - O'Reilly Radar

Harris Interactive Says Google Has Best Reputation

The 2011 Harris Interactive "RQ Study," which measures the reputations of the 60 Most Visible Companies in the United States, shows Google at the top, with Apple rising into the top ranks.

As typically is the case, service providers, including leading telcos and cable companies, did not fair that well, showing the middle to bottom of various metrics ranging from customer service to integrity. For whatever reason, and many will have clear opinions about those reasons, service providers tend never to rank too well in such reputation surveys. In fact, service providers often are lucky simply to avoid appearing in the bottom of the rankings.

Some of us who have followed these things for a couple of decades can only note the pattern. Some industries just seem to be perceived more favorably than others, and it never seems entirely clear how much rests entirely within a firm's control. Airlines likewise rarely are likely to be ranked well.

Technology companies tend as a group to fare better, for example. In general, firms that are perceived to be so reliable that they are virtually invisible tend to score better, as well as firms that provide "delight" or "enrichment." One might infer that, for whatever reason, service providers are not consistently viewed as invisibly reliable, or providing clear life enrichment.

One can only speculate, but perhaps the difference, at some level, is that many consumer packaged goods or technology products are paid for only once. By definition, a service requires a recurring payment. How much that affects thinking is hard to say.

But one way of looking at matters is that a consumer gets reminded every 30 days of the cost of a service. Irritants are more irritating when a new payment has to be made repeatedly.

Google Ranks Highest on Corporate Reputation in 12th Annual Harris Interactive U.S. Reputation Quotient Survey