Google's Patent Search Likely is Not Finished

An analysis of more than 1,000 patents that Google bought from IBM offers a glimpse inside the search giant's increasingly frantic efforts to protect its Android mobile operating system against legal attacks from competitors.

IPVision, which makes patent-analyzing software, says that the 1,029 patents that Google bought from IBM in July contain little that the company could use to either attack its competitors or defend its own products.

Bundles of patents covering computing—especially mobile computing—technology have become a hot property in recent months. Apple, Nokia, Microsoft, and others have used them to extract money from competitors, or even to block those competitors' products from being sold. This year, Apple successfully prevented the sale of some Samsung devices in much of Europe, while Microsoft has used patents to extract millions of dollars in licensing fees, from companies including Samsung and HTC, for using Google's "free" Android operating system.

Google's Search for Valuable Patents

Mobile Payments Will Take 10 Years to Reach 50% of U.S. Households

Optimists might think mobile payments will be a significant business in as little as two to four years. 

Some might argue from history that it will take a decade or so for mobile payments to be adopted by a significant number of users. By "significant" we might say half of households using mobile payments. KPMG survey


History suggests why that might be so. After 20 years, the percentage of U.S. households using automatic bill paying is still only about 50 percent. Likewise, after 20 years, use of debit cards by U.S. households is only about 50 percent. 


It took about a decade for use of automated teller machines to reach usage by about half of U.S. households. 


The takeaway is that payments innovation tends to be a rather deliberate process, with adoption processes that take between 10 years to 20 years to reach 50 percent of consumer households.

Why Mobile Payments Might Still Be A Few Years Away

Sprint: No more Clearwire devices after 2012

Sprint Nextel Corp. says it will stop selling phones and other devices compatible with Clearwire Corp.'s network at the end of 2012, as it switches customers to its own Long Term Evolution network. The irony is that Sprint owns a majority of Clearwire. Still, the latest Sprint news might help clarify the Sprint relationship with the wholesaler.

What Clearwire has to decide is whether it can afford to switch to LTE itself at the same time it cannot seem to finance its national network build. One would have to say it is starting to look as though Clearwire cannot survive as an independent entity. Its biggest wholesale customer is going to stop referring customers to Clearwire. Sprint, by indicating it will no longer sell WiMAX devices, also is signaling that customers will in the future be served by Sprint's own network. That means even the customers Clearwire now gets from Sprint are going to start to decline.

Sprint says "No more" Clearwire devices after 2012

Facebook on a Mobile Without a Data Plan

Gemalto is offering feature phone users a way to use Facebook on their mobiles without buying a data plan. The service is not free. Instead, customers are charged a subscription of $1 for a day, $3 for a week, $9 for a month,  for unlimited access to "Facebook for SIM."

Open Range Goes Bankrupt

Open Range Communications has declared bankruptcy. Open Range received about $267 million in loan from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development Utilities Program as part of the "broadband stimulus" program.

Open Range had hoped to create a broadband wireless Internet provider whose primary focus was hundreds of un-served and underserved communities across America. Open Range intends to serve over 500 communities, making its services available to approximately six million people in Arkansas, Alabama, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, South Carolina and Wisconsin.

You might recall that back in 2009, the federal government was pitching "investment in broadband" as a "jobs" program. If you talk to suppliers eligible to supply gear to broadband stimulus recipients, you will find that precious little of the money has actually been disbursed. That is not to say no money has moved, but not very much.

As the "stimulus" was supposed to help with the Great Recession of 2008, and since most of the money hasn't been allocated, you can assume there was nothing at all "shovel ready" about the program. That's one traditional objection to most short term federal spending that is supposed to be counter cyclical. By the time the money actually hits the economy, the economy already has begun to improve. In other words, as they say in the legal profession, "justice delayed is justice denied."

In the fiscal realm, counter-cyclical spending that is delayed also has no effect ameliorating the impact of a recession, because the recession is over before the money can do any good. To add insult to injury, you get a major broadband stimulus recipient going out of business.

Bankruptcy for Open Range

Sprint to Launch LTE in Former CDMA Spectrum

Sprint executives now are explaining how they will launch Long Term Evolution services on the Sprint network, using the 1900 MHz spectrum.

If the implications are not clear, it means Sprint has decided to start using the LTE air interface in the same spectrum it presently uses to support its 3G CDMA network.

That means a complete upgrade to LTE across the entire Sprint footprint, cannibalizing CDMA spectrum.

Some had thought Sprint would use the 800-MHz spectrum freed up by the shut down of the iDEN network, or perhaps spectrum made available by Clearwire. It appears Sprint simply has decided it cannot wait, and is going to start pulling 3G spectrum off line as it adds LTE services in the same frequencies.

Sprint executives expect that by the end of 2013, 275 million potential users (PoPs) will be covered by the LTE network, including 100 percent of the area where Sprint's 4G WiMAX services now exist.

The move is highly significant, as it means Sprint is going to move fairly quickly to upgrade CDMA users to LTE.

Sprint to use CDMA bands for LTE

Social Media Can Drive 20% to 40% Higher Spending

A recent survey of more than 3,000 consumers by Bain & Company found that customers who engage with companies over social media spend 20 percent to 40 percent more money with those companies than other customers. They also demonstrate a deeper emotional commitment to the companies, granting them an average 33 points higher Net Promoter score, a common measure of customer loyalty.

Up to this point, a disproportionate share of those results appear to have been reaped the big early adopters.

The gap between the early adopters and those waiting to take the plunge has actually widened. While the average billion-dollar company spends $750,000 a year on social media, according to Bain & Company analysis, some early adopters such as Dell, Wal-Mart, Starbucks, JetBlue and American Express invest significantly more. In some instances, the investment is tens of millions of dollars.

Bain argues that social media can create value at virtually every stage of the sales funnel, from awareness to retention.

Putting social media to work