PayPal, Google, Facebook And Apple Are Fighting For This New Multibillion Dollar Market

"AT&T challenges Visa, MasterCard" is an irresistible and compelling headline. So is "PayPal, Google, Facebook, Apple fighting for dominance in mobile payments." Whether the implied competition is direct, indirect or largely fictional is hard to address at the moment. Six months ago it seemed as though AT&T and Verizon Wireless were on a collision course with Visa and MasterCard. That no longer seems to be the case, and it has taken just six months for matters to change.

Nor is it likely that PayPal and Google are interested in the same parts of the ecosystem. Google cares about advertising potential. PayPal, on the other hand, clearly cares about transaction revenue and the "float" on prepaid accounts. Apple might be more concerned about boosting the value of iTunes in ways more directly related to content. Facebook almost certainly is more interested in online forms of social commerce.

There is but one unifying theme: Every company, or just about every company, thinks people are going to be using their mobile devices more often for commerce activities. In some cases that might mean using the mobile device as a substitute for a credit card or debit card swipe. In other cases the loyalty application will be the driver. In yet other cases the business model will hinge on promotion, advertising and marketing potential.

In yet other cases, the attraction will be mobiles used to make micropayment purchases for games. In most cases the headline potential won't be as dramatic, though the concrete revenue models will be. Some players will enter the market targeting one segment, then shift course and wind up targeting other segments. Isis originally launched as a "payment" competitor, but has switched to the "wallet" or "credentials" part of the ecosystem.

Square established itself as a payment terminal provider, but now seems to be adding on "wallet" functions as well. Similar shifts can be expected each step of the way as the "mobile money" business gets going on a larger scale. PayPal already is a major player in online transactions, and the issue is how it might try to leverage its position to become a bigger player in real-world retail transactions as well.

PayPal, Google, Facebook And Apple Are Fighting For This New Multibillion Dollar Market

Location-Based Ads Will Hit $6 Billion By 2015

"Location-based service" advertising will grow to over one-third of all mobile advertising in four years, according to Pyramid Research. But navigation services will be important, likely much more important, for mobile service providers, as most of the advertising will be earned by third parties.

By 2015, location-based advertising will be $6.2 billion,Pyramid Research says. In 2010, location-based advertising was $588 million, representing about 18.5 percent of all mobile advertising. Location-based advertising will generate 60 percent of all location-based revenue in four years. See MediaPost Publications Location-Based Ads Hit $6B By 2015 06/28/2011.

“Following many years of high expectations, the location-based services market is finally coming of age," says Jan ten Sythoff, Pyramid Research analyst.

Overall location-based revenue is expected to reach US$10.3 billion in 2015, up from $2.8 billion in 2010, ten Sythoff says. “There are a number of different factors driving market growth, including increasing GPS and smartphone adoption, success of new business models, continued growth of mobile advertising and the wider coverage and higher speeds of mobile networks,” adds ten Sythoff. See http://www.pyramidresearch.com/pr_prlist/WPR053111_RPLBS.htm.

Growing adoption of GPS devices is the key driver, helping a whole host of different applications and services to grow. “For mobile operators, this is an opportunity to drive new revenue streams, but it is also a threat because it means access to location information is no longer their monopoly.

In 2008 operators gained around 80 percent of all location-based service revenue. This has fallen to around half, but the total market has grown more than fivefold,” he says.

How Long Before NFC Payments are Used by 10% to 20% of Consumers?

Consumer adoption of new technologies often can take a while, even when the application or product is deemed to have clear value. It might take an application, service or device to reach 10 percent penetration of U.S. households, for example.

There are some caveats. Not every innovation succeeds. But a Wall Street Journal illustration of past adoption rates for new and popular consumer electronics products shows how long mass adoption can take, even if rates of adoption for newer products and technologies have grown significantly shorter than in the past. 

A panel I was recently on was asked how long it might take for near field communications technology to be adopted by a significant number of U.S. consumers. My response, based on past work studying consumer electronics adoption rates, was that it can take quite a significant amount of time, between three and 10 years, to reach the crucial 10-percent-of-homes threshold, which seems to be the point at which any innovation really begins to accelerate, in terms of adoption.



Also, the more complicated the ecosystem, the longer it will take. Apple iPhones and iPads did not take long to reach the 10-percent penetration mark, because they operate in a fully-developed ecosystem where all that is required is purchase of a product, to obtain the value.

Mobile payments will likely take longer, as will NFC adoption, because lots of other things must be done, on the business infrastructure level, before 10 percent of U.S. consumers will easily be able to use NFC, on a large scale.

We often hear that it will be year X when some percentage of phones shipped will include NFC capabilities, or year Y when X percent of phones in use will have NFC. That's an important metric, but only one metric among many that has to be substantial before NFC-based payments are ubiquitous enough, valuable enough and easy enough to use. It isn't as though the credit card and debit card payment system is broken.

Despite the legitimate excitement, it might take some time before NFC-based mobile payments are a widely-used payment mechanism in the U.S. market.

LTE Advanced: 954 Mbps in 60 MHz

Ericsson has demonstrated Long Term Evolution "Advanced," running at 964 Mbps, in 60 MHz of spectrum, to the Swedish Post and Telecom Agency. The demonstration, held in Kista, Sweden, featured speeds more than 10 times faster than those currently experienced by LTE consumers in Sweden.

If you have enough bandwidth, you can go fast!

LTE Advanced: mobile broadband up to 10 times faster - Ericsson

10 Airline "Location" Apps

Location-based services are supposed to offer value to businesses and end users. It isn't so clear, yet, that they always do so. But here are 10 applications airlines have created to target and "track" their customers, speed customers through unfamiliar airports, entertain or provide messaging.

Top 10 Location Based Service Initiatives by Airlines

France Telecom Debuts Data "Family Plan"

Executives at AT&T have been saying for some time that the firm expected ultimately to introduce data plans that are shaped as many mobile family plans now are, allowing devices on a single account to share a single bucket of usage.

For a couple of months now, France Telecom’s Orange unit has been allowing iPad owners in Austria to share one allotment of data with a phone, while other shared data plans were recently launched in France, the United Kingdom and Spain.

Although the plans vary somewhat by country, the basic premise is the same. Users pay an extra couple of dollars a month for each additional device that shares data, similar to the way families and businesses here have long been able to share minutes between multiple phones.

“We believe that’s really a way for the future,” said Olaf Swantee, senior executive vice president for France Telecom’s Orange unit.

France Telecom Debuts the Data Plan of the Future - Ina Fried - Mobile - AllThingsD

Square Moves into Wallet Functions

Some of us would argue that there is an intimate connection between mobile payments and mobile wallet functions and business opportunities. Now Square, the mobile credit card acceptance system for iPhones and iPads, has moved into the credentials or wallet function as well.



https://squareup.com/cardcase