European Commission clears Motorola deal

Don Harrison, Google VP and deputy general counsel says the European Commission has approved Google's acquisition of Motorola Mobility. Similar clearance will be necessary in the United States before the deal can close on a final basis. European Commission clears Motorola deal

The United States Department of Justice also has to give its approval, but there have not been signs DoJ is opposed.



 

"Social" and "Unified Communications" are Complements or Substitutes

There's a reason one hears more talk these days about whether social media or social communications are "substitutes" for "unified communications."

As it turns out, many business users see social media as complementary to unified communications, though in some cases, social tools are used as a substitute.

In the consumer world, social media hubs such as Facebook and Google+ are taking on the role of the personal communicator, social networker, entertainment curator, search engine and directory.
But voice, messaging and video are becoming parts of overall app functionality.

In the business market, there are similar trends. In most cases, social media and collaboration tools are viewed as a natural part of unified communications and are formally deploying it as part of a UC roll-out.

 

How Well Will Industry Handle Huge Product Transitions?

Whatever else you might say about the global telecom business, there is no shortage of understanding that fundamental changes are happening and that huge challenges must be overcome.

Rapidly evolving mobile Web technologies have introduced a period of hyper-competition in the mobile sector, analysts at Deloitte say. As a result, new entrants are chipping away at incumbent advantages and profits.

The Deloitte study also suggests the mobile power structure is changing. According to 49 percent of our respondents (70 percent of which are from network carriers), Web companies, rather than network carriers or handset makers will dominate the mobile business in five years.

Moreover, 89 percent believe the role of carriers will be limited to providing access services. That is a major finding. No matter what executives might hope, nearly nine out of 10 respondents think "access," essentially "dumb pipe," will remain the role for ISPs.

The very-largest tier-one service providers arguably will have other options. But smaller firms might be entirely

Also, 87 percent believe that carriers must make the transition from the walled gardens of the past to new organizational models built around open development ecosystems to sustain competitiveness.

Some 31 percent of respondents employed by network carriers think changes in open access regulations will accelerate the commoditization of carriers and 90 percent of the same group believe the traditional carrier “closed garden” business model is quickly becoming a strategic relic.

Consumers Shifting Spending to Tablets, E-Readers?

PCs and TVs still represent the two largest categories of U.S. consumer technology hardware and consumables sold in 2011.
But tablets and and mobile phones are the third and fourth largest product categories, by revenue.

Revenue from products was about $144 billion according to The NPD Group.
PCs represented the most revenue with nearly $28 billion in sales, accounting for almost 20 percent of sales.

Tablets and e-readers were the clear growth categories in 2011, nearly doubling sales to $15 billion in 2011.

And it appears that consumers are shifting spending from other categories toward the top-five categories.

“U.S. hardware sales growth is becoming harder and harder to achieve at the broad industry level,” said Stephen Baker, Vice President of Industry Analysis at NPD. “Sales outside of the top five categories fell by eight percent in 2011 as consumers shifted spending from older technologies to a narrow range of products.”

Apple was the leading consumer electronics brand for the second year in a row. Among the top five brands Apple was the only one to experience a sales increase, posting a 36 percent rise over 2010.
Sales through online, direct mail, and TV shopping channels jumped seven percent and accounted for 24 percent of all sales, up from 22 percent in 2010.

Sales through these non-retail channels captured 25 percent of industry revenue in the fourth quarter of 2011.

Some Forms of Smart Phone Commerce Were Nearly Ubiquitous Last Christmas, Holiday Shopping Season

Smart phones took center stage in the consumer shopping experience during the fourth quarter of 2011, according to NPD Group. Both websites and apps got serious use during the most-recent Christmas and holiday shopping season. 

In December alone, the proportion of U.S. Android smart phone users engaged in shopping websites rose nine percent from November, to almost 80 percent of smart phone users accessing shopping related websites on their devices.

Shopping apps also played an important part of the overall shopping experience, rising five percentage points in December to 59 percent usage.

It would be fair to say that, up to this point, people have been using mobiles for research and sharing with friends. There arguably was less comparison shopping, but that sort of behavior is growing, by all accounts.

Still, such surveys probably overestimate the direct activity related to products users are shopping for, from inside retail locations. And it is applications and behavior on the part of users just before they go to a retail location, and what they do while inside a retail location, that probably has the greatest potential impact on retail sales, for better or worse.

So far, though mobile shopping activities are growing, much of the activity is not too dissimilar from the shopping apps and behavior we have become familiar with on PCs. The big potential changes are how smart phone based commerce behaviors happen while consumers actually are inside stores, shopping.

Source: NPD Connected Intelligence SmartMeter

PayPal Deemphasizing NFC at Point of Sale

PayPal is conducting a major test of ways to integrate PayPal into standard Home Depot point of sale systems. But PayPal continues to believe that near field communications is "too early" in its life cycle to be useful, at least at the moment.

In fact, eBay CEO John Donohue has quipped that "near field communications" stands for "not for commerce." It therefore is not surprising that PayPal appears to be discontinuing, its efforts to supportpmobile payments at the Point of sale using NFC.

PayPal doesn't seem to see enough merchant interest, at least not enough where PayPal is concerned. So far, it appears there is greater retailer interest in adding PayPal payment methods in ways that do not even require use of a mobile device. Merchants bigger on PayPal than NFC

Millennial Males Seem to Like Mobile Ads More than Millennial Women

Among Millennials (some would say that includes people 18 to 29, others would put the range as something more like 18 to 35 or so) men were significantly more likely than women to recall having seen a mobile ad on their mobile phone.

Some 69 percent of Millennial men reported recalling having seen an ad on their mobile devices. 

Less than half of women the same age remembered seeing mobile advertisements. Overall, 59 percent  of smart phone owners of any age or gender reported seeing mobile ads, according to InsightExpress.

Among women ages 18 to 29, just 12 percent said they liked mobile ads at least somewhat, while a plurality were ambivalent. But fully 40 percent of men report actively enjoying mobile advertising, including 20 percent who said they liked it “very much.” 

On average, across all smart phone owners, a quarter liked mobile ads at least somewhat. It isn't clear what the findings indicate. It could be that more attention has been paid to the creative elements for ads aimed at men, or that it is easier to create such elements for advertising aimed at men. 

There could be "respondent bias" of some sort. It is possible that people think they recall specific ads, when they actually do not. It is possible the Millennial women respondents were simply more honest. 

Perhaps the most important finding is that advertising is an enjoyable form of content at all. It appears advertisers are producing more entertaining content.