Sometimes Being Second Can Help

2008 was a Mobile Device Inflection Point, Apparently

It appears as though 2008 was noteworthy in several respects. It was the year the global "Great Recession" hit. It also seems to have been the year for big changes in the global mobile phone business.

Notably, it seems to have been the year that the iPhone began to stamp its leadership on the device market. It also seems to have been the year that prior successful feature phone strategies began to unravel.

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83% of Execs Predict Wide Mobile Payments Adoption in 4 Years

About 83 percent of 1,000 executives surveyed by KPMG in the financial services, technology, telecommunications, and retail industries believe that mobile payment will be widely accepted by consumers within four years, compared to only nine percent who see them as mainstream today. In fact, 46 percent believe mobile payments will be mainstream within two years.

Approximately 72 percent of the executives predict mobile payment to be reasonably important in the future, with specialist online systems building on its leading position as a payment method, and mobile banking and near field communication (NFC) gaining significantly greater traction than today. In addition, 58 percent said they a mobile payment strategy is already in place.

One should typically treat all such forecasts with a bit of skepticism. There is a tendency for observers, no matter how well informed, to overestimate impact in the early part of a new business development of this magnitude. But it suggests a rather broad consensus that something important is growing.

But the results also indicate how much the new ecosystem is bringing formerly disparate industries into cooperation and competition. Typically, disruption occurs when some online service or application threatens to displace only one existing business and set of providers. Mobile payments, and the wider mobile commerce business, has leaders and attackers in multiple industries, perhaps in  five or so distinct fields, having to protect or grow their existing profiles. That will lead to a chaotic and complex adoption path.

The other unknown is whether the business, obviously a scale game, will result in just a few large ecosystems, or whether a common core of platforms will allow many niche providers to become established.

The survey took place in the Americas, Europe, Middle East, Asia/Africa, and Asia Pacific, involving 970 business people, including 250 in the U.S., in primarily the financial services, technology, telecommunications and retail industries.

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Mobile "Payments" are About Integrating Online, Real World Shopping

"The objective of next generation payment isn’t merely wireless payments," some would argue.

"As cool as it is, it is not a drastic improvement to the shopping experience." Instead, the broader goal is to integrate and enhance the physical shopping experience with Internet apps and capabilities.

Though some think it is a rather trivial development, Groupon and other social shopping apps are more than "coupons delivered a different way."

Over the longer term, the issue will be the way mobile devices are used to create a platform for all sorts of enhanced commerce operations. Payment is a tool, just as location, cameras, social circles, shopping history, advertising and offers are part of the broader "shopping" experience.

Mobile payments are about integrating online with physical shopping

Streaming Video Could Help Access Providers, Really

Growing bandwidth demand is a genuine "problem" for access providers in one clear sense. If all access providers can sell is best effort, unlimited access, growing access is a problem, as costs grow, but revenues do not. Streaming video is the big driver of bandwidth consumption for most users, which is why everybody is hearing so much talk about the end of "unlimited access."

What also is obvious is that the problem actually is an opportunity for access providers, so long as access providers are able to charge for usage in some logical way. Absolute "metering," as with electricity or water, never has been popular with end users, and arguably depresses application usage.

Such notions are not reassuring for some other participants in the ecosystem, of course. Users will not want to pay more. Application providers understandably are worried about whether they will wind up paying access providers in some way, either for quality of service mechanisms or some other form of access tolls. Perhaps the bigger issue is potential abuse of market power, rather than pricing that is linked in some logical way to consumption.

But usage traditionally has been an important input for communications service pricing and packaging. Some might argue that the simplest, most logical way for access providers to participate in application system revenue growth is to simply tie retail access pricing in some way to expected growth of bandwidth usage.

Circles is a Winner, Reviewer Says

"At first, Google looks like a shameless Facebook duplicate," says David Pogue at the New York Times. "There’s a place for you to make posts (your thoughts and news, like Facebook’s Wall); there’s a stream (an endless scrolling page of your friends’ posts, like Facebook’s News Feed); and even a little "1" button (a clone of Facebook’s Like button)."

"But there’s one towering, brilliant difference: Circles." Virtually every review I've seen has said Circles is the big innovation, as it deals with some "privacy" issues Facebook has not been designed to address. Some of us might say the better term is "relevance" problem. Some items, posts, pictures and recommendations are not relevant for all of one's Facebook Followers.

If you are my children, many of them should absolutely not be shared. Circles solves that basic problem.

Google Gets a Leg Up on Facebook - NYTimes.com

Netflix Hikes Prices To Shift Distribution Model

For those of us who can remember Netflix saying that online delivery of movie and other content was coming, but not so soon, and that, in any case, Netflix would adapt, it is a bit startling to see Netflix taking steps to push its customer base towards streaming delivery.

Many have noted that the new price plans, for customers who want both unlimited DVD rentals and unlimited streaming, are increasing 60 percent. In fairness, 60 percent of a smallish number is still a smallish number.

But some would argue that Netflix operating costs will be lower, and its customers can pay less, if they shift to streaming only. The price plan changes are what one calls a "tipping point," or "inflection point."

Netflix Hikes Prices To Kill DVDs