Lowe’s Goes "Standard Issue" with Apple iPhones

Lowe’s Cos. is enhancing its website and equipping store employees with iPhones as the second-largest U.S. home-improvement retailer seeks to catch up to Home Depot and boost sales from its existing locations.

Next month, Lowe’s will introduce its MyLowes online tool that customers will be able to use to store owner’s manuals, warranties and paint formulas, Chief Information Officer Mike Brown said. The company is arming workers with 42,000 iPhone 4s to answer shoppers’ questions and ring up purchases.

Among the logical rules for retail sales personnel is that they should know more about their store's products than shoppers do, and the iPhones are expected to help, in that regard.

Lowe’s adds 42,000 employee IPhones

Facebook leads online "time spent"

No question about it: people spend a significant amount of time interacting with Facebook, especially news feeds and profiles.

 Facebook engagement time

Majority of tablet customers activate 3G, AT&T says

The majority of customers who buy tablets from AT&T Mobility now also buy mobile broadband service with their devices, says Glenn Lurie, AT&T president of emerging devices, wholesale and partnerships. Most of those devices seem to use a prepaid data plan, rather than a postpaid plan. More tablet users buy mobile service


That would be a significant development, as one might argue most users will typically have to spend $50 a month for a prepaid service including 1 Gbyte of usage.

Day	$ 15	100MB
Week	$ 30	300MB
Month	$ 50	1GB

That's a big deal. In fact, for the first time in the U.S. wireless history, non-operator branded wireless connections were  the majority source of customer additions in the second quarter of 2011.

Also, almost half of the increase of mobile connections came from customers that are mostly unaware of the network they were actually using. Amazon Kindles, Barnes & Noble Nooks, countless other connected devices, and MVNOs such as TracFone were driving the growth of the industry with more than 52 percent of net additions, says Roger Entner of Recon Analytics.

The second largest growth segment was no-contract with almost a third of new subscriber additions. Contract net additions were less than 16 percent of overall net subscriber additions. B2B now drives mobile broadband

Google Introduces Own Airfare and Flight Search App

Google has begun rolling out its own airfare and flight search application, called "Flight Search." An “early look” at the service on Tuesday with flights to and from a handful of cities, including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas and Minneapolis. Participating airlines include Delta, JetBlue, Continental and American.


Google enters fare search business with new app

Openbucks: Use Gift Cards to Make Virtual Goods Purchases

Openbucks is a new firm that allows users to buy gift cards from a number of companies and then use the stored value to buy things on online sites. Subway, CVS, Citgo, Sports Authority, Hess and Circle K are participating gift card suppliers. 

Use these gift cards:

Virtual currencies and social network payments

If you are a bit confused about the ramifications of mobile payments, so is just about everybody else. The common sense notion is that "mobile payments" is principally about using a mobile phone, in some way, to buy things, in scenarios where cash, a credit card, a debit card or perhaps a check typically is used instead.

At least part of what some of us might say is growing confusion about mobile payments is that "payments" are part of the "buying," "shopping" or "commerce" activity, and there now are growing ways to embed "promotion," "coupons," "offers," "daily deals" and "loyalty" into a shopping experience. You hear the term "mobile wallet," for example, which is how some of these related processes might be integrated and handled in the future.

To complicate matters further, shopping for "virtual goods," or "content" goods, as well as real world goods, are seen as essential parts of the mobile payments business. In other words, you might use your mobile to checkout from a retail location, buy a song or video, as well as purchase virtual goods for use in a game that is played on a mobile.

Then consider a growing interest in the ability not only to buy virtual goods with real money, but then to export virtual money to other applications or retailers, in some cases as another version of virtual currency, but possibly even as "money" in the classic sense.

You can go into a Wal-Mart right now and pay cash (or check) for a Facebook payment card, to be used in virtual gaming with such companies as Zynga. That doesn't seem to trouble regulators. But many believe there are advantages to allowing points, credits or tokens to be accumulated and then redeemed back into some form of actual real world currency. And that means there now are banking and other regulations that come into play.

Virtual currencies and social network payments

Cable's Cash Flow Business

The U.S. cable TV business was for many decades a difficult business for investors to understand. For decades, cable companies seemed to be plowing all their money back into construction and capacity. Few were profitable in a classic sense, but generated huge amounts of cash flow. That has required quite a lot of explaining by cable executives.


It seems cable remains a cash flow story, in large part, though a handful of cable TV firms now pay a dividend and are profitable in a classic sense. Cable companies paying dividends


Revenues for seven large U.S. cable operators have risen at an annual growth rate of 7.3 percent, from $53.57 billion in 2006 to $70.95 billion in 2010, and operating cash flow has risen 8.3 percent annually, from $20.19 billion in 2006 to $27.78 billion in 2010, SNL Kagan reports.

Margins have held steady in the upper 30 percent range, but the pressure has increased due to rising programming expenses, including both cable network and retransmission costs.



The programming expense growth has been somewhat offset by cash flows from the high-margin advanced services segments and from advertising revenues. In addition, 2010 marks the first time all of the large cable companies in the index were free cash flow positive.


Of course, nothing is really certain in video entertainment and telecom these days. The ability to deliver such predictable results and cash flow hinges on the continued success of the business model, and many would say that is questionable, over time.


So far, though, the cable industry has been remarkably adept at responding to declining, and now negative growth rates in its legacy business. To the extent that cash flows continue to grow in the future, more and more of that growth is going to come from new sources.




Cable is a cash flow business