Barnes & Noble Launches New "Nooks"

Barnes & Noble has announced the latest generation of its “Nook” e-reader and tablet line. New Nook

The new Nook Tablet costs $249 and features several hardware upgrades over its predecessor including a dual-core processor, 1 GB of RAM, and 16 GB of internal storage. It's on sale now for pre-order and will be available in stores the week of Nov. 14th, 2011.

Barnes & Noble says the Nook Tablet is the company’s fastest and lightest tablet, and also offers access to popular movies, TV shows and music from Netflix, Hulu Plus, Pandora and others, plus a collection of high-quality apps, fast Web browsing and email. New Nooks

The Nook Tablet is now available for pre-order at www.nook.com and at Barnes & Noble stores.

The Nook “Color” e-reader now is priced at $199. The new Nook “Simple” is priced at $99, without ads.

Next Amazon Kindle Fire to Feature 9-Inch Display?

Proponents disagree about the "right" screen size for a tablet or e-reader device. Apple has in public insisted only 10-inch screens are "right" for tablets. E-readers of course are another matter, but even there proponents might disagree about the "right" form factors. Best form factor?

Digitimes reports that Amazon is likely to change its product roadmap by shifting the display size of its next-generation Kindle Fire to 8.9-inch instead of 10.1-inch as originally planned, according to sources in Amazon's supply chain. 


Amazon's current 7-inch panel suppliers Chunghwa Picture Tubes (CPT) and LG Display (LGD) reportedly have begun to prepare production capacities for 8.9-inch displays, Digitimes reports. Amazon Kindle Fire 8.9-inch display


Following the launch of the 8.9-inch tablets, Amazon may also release 9.7- to 10.1-inch models in 2012.

Google Not Dominant in Search?

Some will dismiss assertions by Eric Schmidt, Google executive chairman, that Google is not dominant in the search business, something Google Chairman Eric Schmidt recently told U.S. regulators.


Schmidt argued that Google is not “overwhelmingly dominant” in the online search market, and competes with the likes of Facebook, Apple, Yahoo and Microsoft. Google not dominant


Some will scoff at that notion, but there is a reality, namely that in the mobile domain, people do not "search" in the old way. Put one way, where traditional search is a relationship between "pages," in the mobile domain, search is more of a "relationship between persons," while the reason for "searching" changes.


In the desktop domain, search is often about information related to ideas and facts. In the mobile domain, search is more often about "things I want to buy." Google argues that leadership in desktop search does not ensure leadership in mobile search.


That has been a growing trend since the mid-2000s, one might argue. Mobile search is different


The mobile search market generated revenues of $901 million in 2010, equivalent to around three percent of total search revenues.  In 2015,  mobile search revenue is expected to  reach $8 billion, equivalent to around 11 percent of total search revenues and representing a compound annual growth rate of 55 percent. Mobile Search Challenges Google


Mobile search makes up around a quarter of total mobile advertising revenue, but this will increase rapidly and is forecast to exceed 40 percent in 2015.


Although Google already has a strong position in the mobile advertising market, a range of established and new players are challenging its dominance. Voice and local search are important trends, providing opportunities for new and established players. Operators and handset vendors have a strong position in the value chain to influence the success of mobile services.

In fact, many observers would note that Google is challenged by social networking generally, as social networks supplant search engines as the place and the way people look for things, find out about things and link to things.


So far, the historical record suggests that no firm dominant in one era of computing actually retains that same leading role in the following era.


As IBM was dominant in the era of mainframes, but DEC and others lead in the mini-computer era, while Microsoft and Intel lead in the era of personal computing, it is reasonable to expect that none of those firms will be dominant in the next era, however we come to describe it.


Some might argue that Schimdt's comments are merely a reflection of an understanding Google has that it will not, in the next era, have the market leadership it arguably enjoys today.


The issue, some might argue, is to avoid regulating based on the past, and act only when future problems actually have arisen. It might not be precisely true to argue that Google "does not" have a commanding position in desktop search.


But it already is clear that such leadership has not yet conferred on Google any ability to dominate the emerging "search" business, which is based on social networking and mobile mechanisms that increasingly are different from desktop search. Over time, in other words, Google's leadership in desktop search will be effectively challenged by other ways of using "discovery" mechanisms in the mobile and social realms.

What Would Double-Dip Recession Do To Telecom?

It isn’t yet clear whether Europe, or other regions, will enter a double dip recession in 2012 or not. Analysts at Gartner already are predicting that the next recession in enterprise information technology spending has virtually begun, and that spending will slow through 2015.

The impact of the Great Recession beginning in 2008 is easy enough to describe. According to TeleGeography Research, revenue growth  slipped from about seven percent annually to one percent in 2009, returning to about three percent globally in 2011.

The Economic Cycle Research Institute says the U.S. economy is either just beginning to dip, or is about to do so, says Lakshman Achuthan, the managing director of ECRI. "The critical news is there's no turning back,” he says. “We are going to have a new recession." U.S. Double Dip?

If that turns out to be correct, service providers probably will encounter revenue pressure much as was seen in the last recession. The issue will not be so much that “lines” or “accounts” are abandoned, as that users will consume less. So “line loss” will not be the issue so much as “average revenue per user.”

Some believe that, even in the absence of a new recession, there will be no quick post-recession recovery for Western European telecom revenue, according to new forecasts published by Analysys Mason. End-user spend was down by 4.4 percent in 2009, and will decline at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of –1.8 percent until 2012, the firm predicted.  No quick return to growth

What was expected in the last recession was a greater degree of product substitution. "The more flexible cost structure of mobile networks means that mobile operators are winning more of the lower usage end of the fixed services customer base," the International Telecommunications Union says. "This has happened in voice, and 2008 has demonstrated that mobile broadband can substitute for light-usage DSL." Recession impact on telecom

Also, more consumers are likely to opt for prepaid and flat-rate packages for telecom services to try and control their spending.

Point Topic does not believe any recession would affect “line growth.” The total number of broadband lines in these countries will grow from 393 million by the end of 2008 to 635 million by 2013.

Adding in estimates for the remaining smaller countries suggests that the world will add a further 48 million broadband lines to reach 683 million in total over the period. Point Topic forecast

This represents a 10.8 percent per year compound growth rate, well down from 27.7 percent per year in the 2004 to 2008 period, but still substantial, Point Topic argues.

One major reason for the slowdown in growth is that most of the richer countries are approaching saturation with broadband; new customers are becoming harder to find and sign up. At the same time poorer countries such as China and India have gone through the initial phase of rapid growth and are now growing steadily rather than exponentially.

Whatever else one might say, the number of accounts or lines in service seemed relatively unfazed by the recent “Great Recession.”  Fixed voice subscriptions will continue a downward trend, as users increasingly switch to mobile and VoIP substitutions. The recession impact is likely to be on average revenue per user, not abandonment of service, as such. Line growth

For its part, Gartner believes enterprise IT spending in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), which will be €604 billion in 2011, a 1.4 percent decline from 2010, will face headwinds through 2015.

Euro-based enterprise IT spending in the region will grow by 2.3 percent in 2012. Western Europe will continue to slow EMEA growth through 2015, according to Peter Sondergaard, senior vice president and global head of Research at Gartner. IT to Hit Double Dip

“The second recession is about to hit and CIOs must decide which way to turn,” said Mr. Sondergaard. “The continued global economic uncertainty and the eurozone crisis will impact your IT budget in 2012, and your business will face difficult budgetary questions,” says Sondergaard.

Sharply lower economic growth in the mature economies of Western Europe is the reason for the tight IT budgets.  Austerity measures brought in to deal with the sovereign debt crisis will curtail government spending on IT in particular and hinder economic growth, which will result in lower demand for IT products and services from businesses.

Western Europe, which accounts for 80 percent of EMEA enterprise IT spending, will see enterprise IT spending in euros decline by 1.8 percent in 2011 and grow by only 1.5 percent in 2012, Gartner predicts.

Government (including education) IT spending will account for the largest share of Western Europe enterprise IT spending in 2011, at 20 percent of the total. Gartner predicts that this sector will decline by 4.8 percent in 2011 and 1.7 percent in 2012, and that it will not recover to the level seen in 2010 until 2015.

Starbucks has Processed 20 Million Mobile Payments

Most contenders in the mobile payments or mobile wallet business are hoping to create large-scale platforms used by lots of retailers. Starbucks. on the other hand, has reasons of its own for creating a proprietary system that already has processed more than 20 million mobile payment transactions. 


The approach shows one way even "targeted" mobile payment applications and systems can add business value. For starters, the Starbucks approach does not require inventing anything new. It uses existing tools to quickly reach critical mass.

mobile payments forecast

Starbucks also has clear business drivers, mostly related to enhancing loyalty. 


Since each mobile payment account is tied to a Starbucks card, Starbucks increases the value and usage of its prepaid cards. 


That also means Starbucks benefits from the float on payment instruments that are pre-funded. Starbucks gets paid before products are delivered. There also is some amount of "breakage" as well, the small amounts that might be left on pre-paid cards, and never used.


Starbucks Mobile Pay, the company’s pay-by-mobile application and in-store scanner system, was rolled out nationwide in January 2011. The system, available at roughly 9,000 locations, lets iPhone, Android and BlackBerry users with the Starbucks or Starbucks Card Mobile applications pay with their phones by scanning 2D barcodes on the screen at store registers. Starbucks has processed 20 million mobile payments

Bill Me Later: Change Your Mind about Payment Method

Consumers assume they will have a choice of payment formats when checking out at a retail location, ranging from cash to debit to credit, prepaid or postpaid instruments.

Mobile wallet systems likely will attempt to make that process easier. PayPal's "Bill Me Later" enables users to decide on their payment method up to five days after a purchase.


Bill Me Later provides credit for individual purchases by performing risk analysis during the checkout process, based on little more information than what a customer regularly provides to merchants. By weaving this technology into a mobile wallet, PayPal can issue customer credit and provide a five-day float for each purchase. The customer can change the funding option for each transaction within that time.

It isn't so clear that this will become a major attraction, but it suggests the many nuances of mobile payment that could potentially change the user experience or retail advantage.

PayPal Lets Users Change Their Minds about Payment

Will Mobile Commerce Will Be Driven by Better Experience and Increased Control?

Despite the fact that mobile commerce will include payment and transaction mechanisms, mobile commerce, and a good deal of retail commerce, will not be primarily about the change in payment mechanism, argue analysts at mobileYouth.

In fact, control and access to information will be more important for users, mobileYouth predicts. Payments may be important for the generation without credit cards but it’s their fear of losing control, and avoiding surprises, that will drive adoption.

Mobile commerce also will be about sharing and reclaiming the social experience, mobileYouth predicts. Mobile commerce is not just about making the purchase more informed, or easier, but making it more social.

Providers need to think less about the payment and more about the shared experiences and activities made possible by mobile payment systems. In other words, replicating the value of "hanging out together at malls" is more important than providing a new way to pay for things.

Mobile commerce: information and experience