Amazon Gains, Netflix Loses, on Satisfaction Scores

Amazon appears to have made major gains on Netflix in the “customer satisfaction” area, as  Netflix dropped six points (from 85 to 79); while Amazon gained two points to achieve a score of 88, for a net swing of eight percentage points, in ForeSee’s survey of Christmas and holiday period customer satisfaction in December 2011.

The two companies, who have long been together atop the Index, are starting to diverge, signaling a strong year to come for Amazon and a difficult one for Netflix, ForeSee predicts.

The survey data is based on more than 8,500 customer surveys collected during prime holiday shopping time between Thanksgiving and Christmas of 2011.  Amazon gains, Hulu loses in satisfaction scores

Google+ Surpasses 62 Million Users

Google+ is adding new users at a very rapid pace, and seems to have surpassed 62 million users, according to Paul Allen, who has been estimating Google+ usage since the summer of 2011. 


In the summer of 2011, Google+ users were unusually weighted in the direction of technology, especially software-related job titles. That might be expected for an "early adopter" product.
“Each week my team from elance runs hundreds of queries on various surnames which we have been tracking since July,” he says.  “We revised our model based on the actual user announcements made by Google on July 13th and Oct 13th.” Google+ subscribers
 
July 13 - 10 million
August 1 - 20.5 million
September 1 - 24.7 million
October 1 - 38 million (Larry Page announced "more than 40m users" on Oct 13th)
November 1 - 43 million
December 1 - 50 million
December 27 - 62 million
January 1 - 65.8 million (forecast)
February 1 - 85.2 million (forecast)

894 Million Mobile Banking Users by 2015

Mobile banking and related services are expected to grow from 55 million users in 2009 (at a CAGR of 59.2 percent) to reach 894 million users in 2015, according to Berg Insight, The Asia-Pacific region is expected to become the most important market region, accounting for more than half of the total user base. 894 Million Mobile Banking Users by 2015

Are 4G Sales Slow or Not?

What adoption curve will fourth generation mobile networks take, especially the new Long Term Evolution networks? Right now, only one service provider in the United States, Verizon Wireless, has a full year of operation to talk about. 

Of course, Clearwire has been in operation since 2005, but key differences in business model and markets render the comparison inexact.
Clearwire, which mostly has grown on the strength of its WiMAX 4G network, ended the second quarter 2011 with approximately 7.65 million total subscribers, up 365 percent from 1.64 million subscribers in the second quarter 2010. Clearwire subscribers 

But some would note that Clearwire has made significant changes in its business plan, from fixed to mobile, from rural markets to all markets, and from a mix of retail and wholesale to wholesale-only. Along the way, Clearwire also has merged its spectrum with that of Sprint. All of those changes make an "apples to apples" comparison challenging.

So keep in mind that Clearwire had a five year to six year period where its growth was rather measured, not to mention that it began life offering a fixed-only wireless alternative to fixed network broadband. The inflection point for growth didn't come until 2010, when a variety of factors, ranging from Android adoption to overall smart phone growth to arguably better marketing seem to have made a difference.


The Clearwire subscriber base consists of 1.29 million retail subscribers and 6.36 million wholesale subscribers. The key point is that although the analogy is not precise, since Clearwire started out as a fixed network alternative, and only later changed to mobile broadband, early demand might not be reflective of what might have happened if it had focused on mobile broadband, or if Clearwire had been able to focus on mainstream mobile customers rather than largely-rural potential customers.

The initial focus on smaller and more-rural markets would, in and of itself, been the cause of slower growth than a nationwide smart phone mobile service, at a time when smart phone adoption is robust.

One year after its launch, Verizon Wireless's 4G LTE network has failed to capture the imagination of the public, who still seem to prefer the slower-connecting Apple iPhone by large margins, argues Paul Kapustka of Sidecut Reports. Sidecut report

With data-download speeds up to 10 times faster than previous technologies, it might seem that Verizon's "fourth generation," or 4G wireless network, would be a hot commodity in a mobile device-crazed world, says Kapustka.

But lack of a compelling new "4G-only" application is one possible reason why Verizon had sold fewer than two million 4G LTE-capable smart phones during the first nine months of 2011. he argues. Some of us also would argue that 3G is quite good enough for most smart phone users, at the moment.

The other complicating issue is that it is in most cases the rule that devices drive subscriptions, and the popular Apple iPhone only works on 3G networks. As it has been the case that ability to get the iPhone seems to drive the subsidiary choice of service provider, so it might continue to be the case that overall demand for iPhones, which only work on 3G networks, is affecting the choice of network, though less so service providers, these days.

By way of comparison, more than four million people bought the new Apple iPhone 4S the first weekend it went on sale, from Verizon as well as from AT&T and Sprint, Kapustka argues.

One might not consider Verizon 4G sales "slow," in the context of rather-slow 3G adoption, and the long run-up of Clearwire 4G sales.

SMBs Have Embraced Online Marketing Channels, Local Will Grow

Small businesses are not unlike other businesses where it comes to using various online and web-based marketing channels, with 81 percent to 90 percent of respondents surveyed by BIA/Kelsey saying they use those channels.


One would suspect that the volume of efforts could change, over time, though. As more users on smart phones make active use of web-based information when about to shop, or while shopping, it is going to become more important for many local and smaller businesses to maximize their ability to found easily by users who have access to location information.


Also, the usefulness of information will become more important, as will promotion efforts. 

Mobile Apps Now Top Web Use

Smart phones are changing how people use "web" resources. For the first time ever, daily time spent in mobile apps surpasses desktop and mobile web consumption, according to Flurry. Also, it took less than three years for native mobile apps to achieve this level of usage. Mobile apps used more than web

All of that is going to significantly change the ways people use applications and devices, from navigation to web behavior. For starters, smaller screens and out of the home usage mean that the types of information people are looking for, when mobile, are different from desktop modes. More purposeful searches are one example.

When out and about, people are more likely to be looking for someplace to go, something to do, places to eat and drink or shop. So one consequence is that mobile users are more directly interested in commerce apps than PC users. The latency between search operation and "buying" is more direct, and more frequent.

That explains why there is so much more activity around mobile commerce, mobile payments, mobile banking and mobile wallets.

For our Jewish relatives and friends....

A humorous look at the Christmas holiday, from a Jewish perspective.