Mobile Service Providers to Offer "Joyn" Messaging

Smart phone adoption is driving mobile service provider mobile broadband revenue. But smart phones also are cannibalizing service provider voice and messaging revenue.

In 2012 the increase in smart phone penetration will cause voice and messaging revenue erosion of 3.9 percent in Western Europe and 1.6 percent erosion in Eastern Europe, according to Informa Telecoms & Media.

In fact, every increase of 10 percentage points in smart phone penetration in a given market costs Western European operators a 0.5 percent loss of voice and messaging revenue, according to Informa calculations.

For such reasons, Spain's Telefonica, the UK's Vodafone, France's Orange, Telecom Italia SpA and Germany's Deutsche Telekom AG are set to unveil a new messaging system tentatively called "Joyn" at the Mobile World Congress, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Joyn is a service made possible by the “Rich Communication Suite,”  essentially messaging applications built on IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) standards.

GetJar Launches "Universal" Virtual Currency for Android

GetJar, acknowledged to be the world’s largest independent app store, has launched GetJar Gold virtual currency rewards that can be spent at GetJar, Android Market or Amazon.com.

The loyalty rewards are an enhancement to the existing GetJar Gold loyalty program, but exemplify one of the first virtual currency systems that not only are loyalty-oriented but allow currency redemption across much of the Android ecosystem.


Consumers earn GetJar Gold virtual currency by downloading any Android apps, and can spend it on premium apps and in-app purchases. GetJar Gold virtual currency can be used with any Android apps from any app store, including GetJar, Android Market and Amazon.


Developers can use the GetJar SDK to support GetJar Gold virtual currency for in-app transactions as well as upgrades from free to premium versions of their app. Virtual currency collected by app developers can be exchanged with GetJar for real dollars. GetJar Virtual Currency

Samsung to Unveil 10-Inch Galaxy "Note" Tablet

It increasingly is getting to be the case that manufacturers of 10-inch tablets want seven-inch models, and makers of seven-inch devices think they have to compete in the 10-inch form factor as well. Samsung is the latest supplier to make that move to provide both 10-inch and seven-inch models.

29% of Smart Phone Owners Use Devices for Shopping

New research from Nielsen reveals that 29 percent of smart phone owners use their phone for shopping-related activities. 

And one big difference between how smart phones get used, compared to PCs, is that people use their mobile devices while they are in stores, in the process of shopping.

Retailers might not always appreciate that face, since users often are comparing prices at online or other physical locations. 

But people also appear to be checking product review while in stores. 

Top activities among mobile shoppers include in-store price comparisons (38 percent  of mobile shoppers), browsing products through their mobile Web or apps (38 percent h) and reading online product reviews (32 percent). 

Apps, which account for the majority of mobile phone time in the U.S., may be the key to shifting consumers from browsing products on their phone to making purchases on the spot. 

Although only nine percent of mobile shoppers have used their phone to pay at the register, the desire to do so is apparent, says Nielsen.

Some 71 percent of app downloaders would be interested in an app that allows them to use their phone as a credit card. 

Apple iPhone users are more interested in this option than Android users, with over a third (39 percent) saying they would be extremely or very interested in an app with this ability.

3 Outcomes for Mobile Commerce: 2 are Negative

It never has been terribly easy to describe the mobile payment ecosystem and it arguably has gotten more complicated now that so much focus is going to mobile wallet and mobile commerce functions.

Mobile payments originally might have been more centrally involved with transforming payment and banking operations and experience. But a broader emphasis on mobile commerce now promises to potentially change “shopping” in a broad sense, with a potential blurring of online and offline shopping experiences.

In fact, you might now consider “mobile payments” to be one segment of the broader “mobile commerce” business, including mobile payments at retail locations, mobile wallets for consumer identity and loyalty functions, personal finance and banking, money transfer and then marketing and incentive operations for advertisers and retailers.

At the very least, there is potential for rearranging value and hence participant revenue within all the existing legacy businesses in the retailing, banking, payments and marketing industries. The larger question is whether value, and industry revenue, grows or possibly shrinks, whether new roles are added and new industry segments are created.

If mobile commerce and payments do not grow the business, in terms of revenue for existing and new participants, then participant welfare will, in many cases, be worse than before. In other words, mobile commerce will wring revenue and profits out of the participating businesses, as the Internet has tended to do in other businesses it has transformed.

On the other hand, mobile commerce, particularly in the marketing and advertising arenas, has potential to shift revenue into mobile venues from other online or offline channels. In this scenario, participant revenues could grow, allowing new participants and roles to be created, while virtually all contestants potentially gain.

The third possibility is that aggregate participant revenue neither grows nor shrinks dramatically, strictly because of a shift to mobile commerce and payments, meaning most contestants simply “run in place.” In other words, most participants might find themselves spending money to keep what they now have, rather than growing.

Put simply, for the entire commerce ecosystem, there are basically three revenue outcomes, and two of those outcomes are negative. Since a mere shift to mobile forms of commerce does not change aggregate consumer disposable income, one has to assume that mobile commerce offers the potential to shift participant revenues, or possibly reduce friction in the shopping process.

But there is one obvious exception to that “rule.” It is entirely possible, and even likely, that revenue will shift from offline and online marketing and advertising channels into mobile marketing and promotion.
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Deutsche Telekom Invests in Pinger

T-Venture, the venture capital arm of Deutsche Telekom, has made a  $7.5 million  investment round in free messaging provider Pinger.

Pinger isn't the first over the top application or service Deutsche Telekom has invested in. In 2007 Deutsche Telekom lead a round of investment in Jajah, a significant provider of over the top voice services. 


Telefonica now owns Jajah. 


Those investments in over the top messaging and voice are not as odd as one might think. It certainly is true that such over the top apps increasingly are competing with, and displacing, traditional mobile service provider voice and messaging services.


On the other hand, even though over the top services cannibalize legacy revenue, such apps also allow firms such as Telefonica and Deutsche Telekom to make revenue and get customers outside their traditional service territories. 


Much as firms acquire other firms in new areas to gain the additional customer base and revenue, so over the top apps, even when cannibalizing some amount of in-territory revenue, also create the foundation for new revenues outside a traditional service territory. 

Google Selling Clearwire Stake

Google is selling its stake in Clearwire, amounting to 29.4 million shares of ClassA common stock, at $1.60 per share. The sale ends one Google experiment aimed at spurring broadband deployment, much as Google has experimented with municipal Wi-Fi networks, is testing a 1-Gbps local access network in Kansas City, Kan. and Kansas City, Mo.. and has given support to white spaces initiatives. 


It has been a while since Internet service provider executives seriously wondered whether Google had aspirations to become a service provider itself, either in the mobile or fixed realms. Google arguably has the money and complementary assets to do so. 


To be sure, Google has been investing in long haul facilities since at least 2005, but that is similar to Google investing in its own data centers. Both are core supports for many of Google's businesses. That doesn't mean Google wants to be in the local access business, really. 


Of course, Google did announce that it was prepared to bid as much as $4.6 billion for wireless spectrum in 2008, but the company did so to trigger "open access" provisions. Google didn't want to become a wireless service provider.