Voice Business "Gravy Train" is "Over"

Ilja Laurs, founder and CEO of mobile application company GetJar, and Rebtel founder Hjalmar Winbladh say the telco voice "gravy train" is over. Frankly, there is not an executive left anywhere in the business who would disagree. And many would argue there are few, if any executives who have not already begun guiding their businesses to new replacement revenue streams. Voice business "over"

 

Sprint CTO Talks About Sprint Strategy

For the moment, unlimited data remains in place. Sprint, which always has been more receptive to wholesale business models than AT&T or Verizon Wireless, and seems willing to keep pushing that point of view.



Sprint CTO talks strategy

Will Consumers Save Money as Streaming Grows?

There are reasons to wonder whether consumers will be able to save much money, if any, if or when online access expands. One reason is that content owners do not seem willing to sell their content in ways that would allow such savings to occur.

“Don’t sell products into a platform where you end up with less money than when you were selling it to the previous buyers,” says Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes. Some might not believe content owners will have the ability to enforce those policies, but for the moment they seem to be able to do so.

That bit of advice suggests why consumers might not save much money, if any, as professionally-produced video and movie content distribution shifts from current channels to new channels.

Will Consumers Save Money as Streaming Grows?

Facebook, Google Have Grown User Engagement Over Time

Over the last several years, social networking steadily has claimed more end user engagement. Google application engagement has grown as well, but not as clearly as Facebook.

Verizon Wireless Stashing Cash for Acquisitions

No matter what happens with the AT&T bid to buy T-Mobile USA, Verizon Wireless is storing up cash that might be needed to make acquisitions or other investments. Verizon Wireless is slated to make a $10 billion one-time payout to the two owners, but Vodafone wants a regular annual payment, too. Verizon Wireless says it can't do so.

Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam, told the Financial Times of London that an annual dividend was unrealistic because “we may end up buying spectrum, and we may end up buying another company.” Verizon gets ready for more acquisitions

Verizon would have one set of options if the AT&T deal fails, other sets of options should it succeed. If the AT&T deal is rebuffed, Verizon Wireless likely would conclude that it cannot make a similar big deal of its own. If the AT&T deal succeeds, Verizon would be free to consider an acquisition of Sprint or other spectrum assets.

PayPal Now Processing $315 Million In Payments Per Day

PayPal is processing around $315.3 million in payments per day. On average, the payments platform is seeing upwards of over five million transactions a day. PayPal also has raised its estimates of the amount of mobile payments transactions, doubling the estimate to $3 billion in mobile total payments volume in 2011.

PayPal says that the rate at which people are using the payments technology to buy items via their mobile phones is growing rapidly and this is actually the third time the company has had to update its numbers. At years end in 2010, PayPal predicted $1.5 billion in mobile payments and in February, the company revised this to $2 billion. PayPal Now Processing $315 Million In Payments Per Day

Is Google is a Monopoly? If So, Are Consumers Harmed?

Oddly enough, whether Google is, or is not, more or less a monopoly, might not matter. How does it not matter, in terms of classical antitrust thinking?

One can argue, since Google provides its services for free, that whether Google competitors are at a disadvantage or not is not the real issue. How one can prove that consumers are harmed is the issue, and one might question how consumers are harmed by Google's dominance in the search market.

For purposes of assessing whether Google in some way violates U.S. antitrust law at least, the issue is less "monopoly-like characteristics. The issue is whether Google has acquired that monopoly by nefarious or anticompetitive means, or is using that dominant position in a way that harms the market for those services.

The problem with applying that to Google is that even if you assume it has a monopoly and is being anticompetitive, it’s not at all clear how that is bad for consumers.

Whether Google is a monopoly isn’t the point