Walgreens Mobile App Drives 40% of Online Transactions

Walgreens says 40 percent of its online transactions came from its one-year-old mobile app, where the most active customers are tapping through to shop, order prescription refills or find nearby stores to get flu shots. 

The Walgreens mobile commerce experience shows what can be done using mobile devices, mobile apps when harnessed to marketing and mobile commerce. 

All Devices Now are Content Consumption Devices

Mobile devices increasingly are content consumption devices. “As these device categories evolve and new ones come into being, consumers will continue to expect digital content to be available on all screens, at all times, in all locations,” says Paul Verna, eMarketer senior analyst.

In the United States,  over the next two years, eMarketer expects more than 26 million mobile phone users to turn to smartphones, helping put the devices in the hands of more than half of all US mobile users by 2014. That will dramatically expand the "small screen" audience for content consumption to about 133 million people. 


By any measure, that is a potent potential audience. 

But smart phones are not the only fast-growing new screen. Tablet penetration will increase even more quickly in the United States, from a user base of nearly 55 million by the end of 2012 to almost 90 million in the next two years. By 2014, more than one in three U.S. internet users will have a tablet device, eMarketer predicts. 


Those new screens will join the 75 percent of U.S. households that own either a desktop or notebook computer, a potential audience of about 100 million homes. 


Those statistics indicate why mobile devices increasingly are important. Smart phones already outnumber PC screens, and tablets will, at some point, rival the installed base of PC devices. 

“Without movies, TV shows, games, photos, books, magazines, newspapers, video clips and music, few would care to own a tablet, a touchscreen smartphone, a connected console or an internet-enabled TV,” says Verna. “As consumers continue to gravitate toward digital media consumption, and as content owners and device manufacturers continue to find ways to meet the demand for it, more content will become available in the digital domain.”


The shift of user activities toward content consumption explains, in part, why tablets have become such a "hot" product category. Over time, PCs have become platforms for content consumption, rather than "work" tools. 


In a similar way, smart phones have become content consumption platforms as much as communication devices. Tablets, on the other hand, might primarily be called content consumption devices, even though some amount of communications activity (email, messaging) and "work" activity (mostly related to web surfing and mobile apps). 

Apple Is Making Over the Top Streaming to TVs Much Easier

AirPlay, a feature of Apple's new "Mountain Lion" operating system, allows users to wirelessly beam what's on the screen of your iPhone, iPad, or Mac to your TV, if you have an AppleTV.

That means suitably-equipped users can send "webpages, YouTube videos, iTunes rentals or anything else you can think of onto an AppleTV unit without wires," says Jason Snell at MacWorld. Apple AirPlay will boost OTT video

To be sure, the ability to do so does not automatically mean all the content people prefer is available. That is a matter of content licensing. But the capability will mean it is much easier to view any web content directly on a TV, which means the user experience for any over the top TV viewing is vastly better.

Some might say the issue, going forward, is how long it takes for "piracy" to become a big enough issue that content owners will have different incentives to permit lawful viewing of movies and licensed TV content without having to do so illegally.

Hulu, for example, apparently blocks display of its content on a TV, even though it obviously allows such viewing on a web device. ABC, CBS and NBC also do so.

AirPlay on the Mac doesn't materially change the economics of entertainment video, at least for the moment. But it is one more building block for the eventual infrastructure that will pressure the existing economics of the video entertainment business.

NEC Sets Out Vision for Small Cell Wireless Backhaul for Small Cells

NEC Corporation says it will build its small cell backhaul system using unlicensed 60 Ghz spectrum. NEC has identified 60GHz radio as the key technology behind its Backhaul for Small Cells proposition. Bandwidth availability at 60GHz and the uniquely high channel re-use characteristics of this spectrum are ideally suited to deliver high capacity and low latency connections to hundreds of cell sites, which will be rapidly deployed in concentrated coverage areas of busy city squares and avenues. NEC Wireless Backhaul for Small Cells

NEC's small cell system aims to provide significant reductions in the cost of ownership compared to existing macro-cellular backhaul networks.

The choice of the zero-cost 60GHz spectrum allows the design of compact products, which can be easily installed and aesthetically concealed within a wide variety of urban environments. Furthermore, NEC has developed features for intelligent provisioning of backhaul resources and protection against performance degradations, resulting in improved capacity efficiency and elimination of costly manual maintenance and troubleshooting.

Lower Backhaul for Developing Regions?

The "WiBACK" wireless backhaul system developed by the Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems FOKUS in Berlin aims to bring lower-cost broadband to remote areas in developing regions.

In Zambia, the Institute is setting up an "eKiosk" with a number of PCs. The system aims to significantly reduce both the capital expenditure and the operating costs involved in providing such service. In part, that cost advantage flows from the cost of the WiBACK routers. Cheaper backhaul

Netflix Adds DVD-Only Unlimited $7.99 Plan. Huh?

Netflix says it has added a DVD-only rental plan, costing as little as $7.99 a month. Frankly, I'm  confused. 

We thought that was what Netflix had done back in the summer of 2011, when it said that it was creating DVD-only and online-only options. 


As one might recall, Netflix said it was creating a $7.99 a month "one DVD at a time"  plan and $11.99 a month for a "two DVDs out at-a-time" plan. Other plans allow users to have larger numbers of discs out at any time. 


But the new change seems to allow unlimited rentals at that price. In principle, the older $7.99 plan, allowing users to have one disc out at any time, also was unlimited. 


Over the years, I have argued that Netflix was underestimated, in terms of its business strategy and execution. Since the summer of 2011, Netflix has suffered unusual gaffs. 


I admit I'm confused. I thought Netflix had created this plan back in the summer of 2011. What is new here? 


Netflix has been drop dead simple. But this is confusing. 

How Big is the Mobile Apps Business?

It's getting harder to figure out how big the mobile apps business is, despite its growth. Actually, it is because of its growth that the tracking is becoming more difficult. A few years ago, one only had to track sales of mobile apps, or use of mobile apps, or downloads of mobile apps.


In 2012, mobile application revenues from in-app purchases will pass pay-per-download revenues, according to ABI Research.  One might argue that "revenue is revenue," but there is a big difference between gross revenue and net revenue. 


To be sure, apps sold in most app stores represent about 70 percent "net" proceeds for the app supplier. But proceeds from in-app purchases can be a different story, depending on what it is that is being sold. Up to this point, arguably most in-app purchases were digital goods designed to be used inside an app. 


But someday that will change, and more of the in-app sales volume will be of all sorts of products, and one has to anticipate that more of the sales volume over time will be of products that do not provide 70-percent "net" proceeds to an app provider, because the products are created by third parties, while the app serves mainly as a sales channel. 


In such cases, revenue for the sales partner will be quite minimal, compared to sales of in-app digital goods that essentially are parts of the app experience. 


“As a revenue model, in-app purchase is very limited today,” says Mark Beccue, ABI Research senior analyst, mobile services. “The vast majority of current in-app revenue is being generated by a tiny percentage of people who are highly-committed mobile game players.  We don’t believe the percentage of mobile game players making in-app purchases will grow significantly, so for in-app purchase revenues to grow, mobile developers other than game developers must adopt it.”


Despite these challenges, in-app purchases will successfully spread outside of games. Total mobile app revenues from pay-per-download, in-app purchase, subscriptions, and in-app advertising will soar over the next five years, growing from $8.5 billion in 2011 to $46 billion in 2016, according to 


A 2010 study by Chetan Sharma Consulting, commissioned by the GetJar app store, projected that the global mobile apps economy is set to be worth $17.5 billion by 2012. 


Mobile app downloads were expected to increase from over seven billion downloads in 2009 to almost 50 billion in 2012. 


The study also found that in 2008 there were just four apps stores, while there are 38 in 2010. 


ExperTech, a recruiting firm for information technology professionals, notes that  “82 percent of our clients have said they plan on developing a mobile app in 2012,” says Joe Budzienski, XperTech EVP.

And it would be hard to miss the dramatic growth of the mobile apps trend. Trade group TechNet says mobile app development is creating jobs at a dramatic pace.

According to a new TechNet study, there are now roughly 466,000 jobs in the so-called “app economy” in the United States, largely defined as jobs involved in the creation of apps or jobs at firms that create and sell apps. 


That’s a dramatic improvement over 2007, when the number of people involved in the mobile apps business arguably was close to zero. Mobile app employment study