How Do Consumers Gain Power Over Sellers?

A study fielded in May 2011 with 502 small business, mid-market and enterprise respondents worldwide has some interesting implications for content marketers and the role of content in the sales process.

As you might expect, the top concern overall was "changes in costs to deliver current products or services," such as competitors with lower cost structures that are able to deliver competitive products at lower retail prices. Some 29 percent of respondents suggested they were "fully or very exposed" to such dangers.

But the second most important source of potential revenue disruption was "increased customer bargaining power, gained directly by their access to better information about product offerings and alternatives." Some 28 percent of respondents reported they were "fully or very exposed" to such dangers.

In other words, competitors selling at lower prices and greater buyer knowledge were nearly equal in terms of dangers to revenue models. That should reinforce the notion that potential buyers have to be reached, indirectly, through web channels, as those prospects conduct buying research, since these actions occur before a brand is aware a prospect is in the market.

Read the full study here

Sprint to Introduce 10 New Motorola Devices using Android

Sprint and its prepaid brands of Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile USA will launch more than 10 new Motorola wireless devices in 2011, all using Android, and including smartphones, tablets and best-in-class Push-to-Talk devices.

Two new devices were announced June 9, 2011, including the iconic Motorola PHOTON 4G, Motorola’s first Sprint 4G device with a dual-core 1GHz processor, Android 2.3, Sprint ID and worldphone capabilities, and Motorola TRIUMPH, the first Virgin Mobile USA device from Motorola.

Sprint and Motorola Forge Renewed Business Relationship That Extends Device Innovation

Google's Enterprise Vision: Mobile First, In the Cloud

The meeting is the staple of corporate life. But lots of people would argue most of the meetings are counter productive.

Google's enterprise vision is to leverage mobility and the cloud to change the fundamental way people work. Workforce productivity used to be about how you can optimize individual output. Google thinks that by putting all that functionality into a cloud environment, workers can use whatever device they want and always be working as a group towards on the mission.

A faster, more secure, more cost efficient workplace will be the result, the thinking goes.

Google's Enterprise Vision: Mobile First, In the Cloud

Sprint Confirms 4G Upload Speed Boost

In an email to Phone Scoop, Sprint spokesperson Stephanie Vinge confirmed that the company plans to increase the upload speeds available on its 4G network. "Soon the uplink speed cap on all existing Sprint dual mode and single mode 4G mobile devices will be increased from 1.0 to 1.5 Mbps. Customers may notice uplink speeds as much as 50 percent faster after the speed cap is raised."

Sprint Confirms WiMax Upload Speed Boost

Visa Makes Big Move into Developing Market Mobile Banking

Visa Inc. is acquiring Fundamo, a leading platform provider of mobile financial services for mobile network operators and financial institutions in developing economies. It also announced a new, long-term commercial agreement with Monitise plc, a leading provider of mobile money solutions for financial institutions in more developed geographies.

The investments illustrate Visa’s conviction that mobile financial services of many types, not just mobile retail payments, are part of its future.

Fundamo's platform enables the delivery of mobile financial services to un-banked and under-banked consumers around the world--including person-to-person payment, airtime top-up, bill payment and branch-less banking services, Visa says.

The combined Visa Fundamo platform will add enhanced functionality and new services to existing mobile financial services subscribers across Africa, Asia and Latin America for safe, reliable and globally accepted payments solutions.

Privately held, Cape Town, South Africa-based Fundamo has more than 50 active mobile financial services deployments across more than 40 countries, including 27 countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

Fundamo's deployments currently have a base of more than five million registered subscribers and the potential to reach more than 180 million consumers with mobile financial services. Mobile prepaid payments provide affordable, convenient and secure transaction capabilities that are transformational to the lives of merchants and consumers in those regions.

Visa will pay approximately $110 million in cash. The acquisition is expected to close today, and is slightly dilutive to Visa's earnings per share in its fiscal year 2011 ending September 30, 2011.

Visa says the expanding relationship with Monitise will enable the company to deliver mobile financial services and payments capabilities to consumers across the full spectrum of uses, geographies and mobile environments from basic services on simple handsets to more advanced services for smart phone owners.

The Monitise deal is aimed at consumers in developed economies, and will include features such as mobile top-up, utility payments, and transit ticketing.

In addition, the two companies will launch a full suite of mobile banking services - including P2P payments, SMS alerts and loyalty offers for clients of Visa's debit and prepaid processing platform.

Visa acquired a 14.4 percent stake in Monitise in 2009 and the pair struck a strategic development deal in February.

http://corporate.visa.com/media-center/press-releases/press1128.jsp

How Can Cloud Services Best be Sold?

If we are indeed moving towards an era of computing where "cloud" is the dominant architecture, you have to ask how such services will be sold to enterprises, small business and consumers. You might logically conclude that cloud-based services will be sold in much the same way current products are sold to each of those market segments.

That is to say, enterprise sales often are sold by direct sales forces; small businesses are served by channel partners and consumers mostly are reached using online and mass media channels. The new wrinkles are that cloud services have a logical relationship to mobile devices, mobile apps and online provisioning, compared to older services and business applications.

"So far, no one that I am aware of has found a way of selling cloud services around the channel in any volume to SMBs without an army of out-bound telesales or field sales people of their own," argues Dale Vile, CEO of Freeform Dynamics. It’s hard to achieve serious scale that way, and without scale, the cloud model doesn’t work well economically."

'Backward' resellers impede cloud progress. Yeah, right • Channel Register

Sprint Reduces Clearwire Voting Stake

On June 1, 2011, Sprint Nextel Corporation notified Clearwire Corporation of its decision to voluntarily surrender Class B voting shares in Clearwire, to reduce its voting interest in Clearwire from approximately 54 percent to approximately 49.8 percent.

Sprint retains its 54 percent ownership of Clearwire, but the voluntarily reduction of voting shares protects Sprint in case Clearwire declares bankruptcy.

The latest move by Sprint illustrates the odd nature of the relationship an strategy, the ultimate wisdom of which is something it will take some years to assess with any certainty. One can argue in retrospect that pooling Sprint's spectrum with Clearwire's assets to create the expanded company was a rational effort to achieve a several year lead in fourth generation services. One also can argue that the move, which ceded managerial control even as Sprint gained 54 percent of the ownership rights, was a mistake.

One can argue it was a reasonable effort to steal a lead in the 4G market, which now looks to be less significant only because the strategy provided only about a two-year lead, and less than that in strategic terms, given the early choice of WiMAX as the air interface, given the rest of the industry's selection of Long Term Evolution as the 4G air interface.

Hindsight is perfect, of course.

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1442505/000095012311057433/v59385e8vk.htm