Bigger Screens Drive More Transactions

To the extent that larger screens are more conducive to many types of commerce operations and transactions, it is not surprising that actual transactions seem to happen more frequently on tablets than smart phones.

Tablet and smart phone ads seem to lead to later transactions conducted on PCs. There are differences, though.  Tablet and smart phone owners in Germany, Italy and the U.K. are more likely than American device owners to make a purchase online using a PC, after viewing an ad on their tablet or smart phone, according to new research from Nielsen. 

Italian device owners are the most likely to click on an ad to seek out further information on a product advertised on their tablet or smart phone.

Americans are the least likely to make a purchase on their smart phone after viewing an ad. 

But U.S. tablet owners are more likely to click on a mobile ad or search for more information after viewing a mobile ad than U.S. smart phone owners.

AT&T Caps Unlimited Data Plans

Some 17 million AT&T subscribers might be affected by new AT&T bandwidth caps that end unlimited smart phone plans, even for customers that had been grandfathered under older plans. 


Subscribers who were grandfathered into $30-a-month unlimited plans will find that their download speeds will be cut back if they use more than three gigabytes of data a month. It also appears the new limits will apply to users on family plans as well. 

Retailers Want Their Own Mobile Payment System

As if the mobile payments business were not complicated enough, a consortium of about 24 major retailers, including Wal-Mart Stores and Target, are developing their own mobile payments system.

That move illustrates the complex nature of the mobile payments business, where formerly distinct industries strive to grab leadership in a new business that necessarily has to include retailers and end users, but remains unsettled in terms of the roles of banks, transaction processors, devices, application and service providers. Retailers Join Payment Chase

Google: Wallet expanding to 10 more Sprint devices this year - FierceMobileContent

Sprint Nextel will introduce "at least 10 additional phones" with support for Google Wallet in 2012. That's important since mobile payments is a scale game, and limited availability of Google Wallet on specific and popular handsets inhibits attainment of scale. Google Wallet on 10 more Sprint devices

Some 22 of the largest U.S. retail chains now support the Google Wallet, Google says, implying a base of 300,000-plus MasterCard PayPass-enabled merchant terminals able to accept Google Wallet.

Still, there is some element of the dot com frenzy to "get bigger faster."

U.S. Smart Phone Ownership 46%

Some 46 percent of American adults are smartphone owners as of February 2012, an increase of 11 percentage points over the 35 percent of Americans who owned a smartphone in May 2011, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project.


Some 20 percent of cell owners now describe their phone as an Android device, up from 15 percent in May 2011. About 19 percent of cell owners now describe their phone as an iPhone, up from 10% in May 2011.


Some six percent of mobile device owners now describe the phone as a Blackberry, down from 10 percent in May 2011. 

The proportion of cell owners describing their phone as a Windows (two percent) or Palm (one percent) device is unchanged since the last time we asked this question in May 2011.

What's the "Best" Way to Charge for Bandwidth?

Comcast recently reiterated that it has no current interest in usage-based billing for consumer broadband access. Time Warner Cable has tended to support the notion. Telco executives tend to favor usage-based billing, as that is the industry legacy and mainstay.


But there are differences. Tier one service providers tend to be much more strongly favor in favor of charging customers for data on a usage basis than tier two and tier three service providers.

In large part, such discussion of retail packaging is happening because volume growth for broadband access services, especially on mobile networks, threatens to outstrip supply.


That's one compelling reason why mobile service providers might like to manage peak-hour traffic more gracefully, possibly by using charging mechanisms to create incentives for off-peak consumption.

In principle, one might argue that capacity upgrades “solve” the problem. That might be true, but only to the extent that capital investment is offset by revenue gains. If not, service providers ultimately will fail. And consumers have proven highly resistant to price hikes. 


Mobile service providers almost universally are moving to data usage caps, as one immediate step.
If data caps do not work to manage mobile network peak hour traffic loads, what does? The answers will vary from country to country, and are different on mobile and fixed networks.

U.S. mobile operators have different tools, including Wi-Fi and small-cell offload, policy, content optimization and QoS-based tiering. Those tools are not available to fixed-network operators, at least if current “network neutrality” rules survive legal challenge.

In some markets, “transparency” is required, but traffic management, including traffic shaping, can be employed. Ofcom rules

In Canada, both fixed line and mobile service providers have more freedom than U.S. ISPs. Though regulators say “the best remedy for network congestion is investment in new infrastructure,” the second choice is economic incentives.


Internet traffic management practices such as charging more for higher speeds, are one way to generate incremental revenue to support incremental investment, says Konrad von Finckenstein, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission chairman. But other tools likely will be required, as well.

Eventually, to fully benefit from traffic management tools, mobile operators will have to move to real-time, cell-level traffic management in the radio access network, Monica Paolini of Senza Fili Consulting argues. Policy-based management will be needed

U.S. network neutrality rules do not absolutely prohibit such measures in the mobile network, though fixed-line operators basically are stuck with rules that mandate complete “best effort only” access.

Paolini argues that mobile operators will need to actually act ahead of time, using predictive data to prevent congestion, especially when due to unexpected traffic spikes. That sounds appealing in principle, but adds new cost and complexity to carrier operations

“Most mobile operators I talked to would rather avoid this and reasonably so,” she says. “Tracking and acting traffic in real-time at the cell level inevitably adds complexity.”

Such are the tensions between the desire for operational simplicity, consumer friendly pricing and packaging, and the desire for more-sophisticated end-user features. Likewise, there is a tension between the ability to manage networks simply, and the desire to manage them with greater sophistication.

In truth, consumers, regulators and service providers are “conflicted” to some degree about balancing simplicity and variety. Users want understandable plans, fair pricing and clear billing statements. But they also might want differentiated experiences.

Service providers want simpler operations, but also greater sophistication in terms of ability to create and package new and existing products. The tension probably cannot be eliminated.

Mobile Search is Universal, Local Shopping is Going to Be

Google is big on mobile commerce, for any number of reasons, Mobile represents the biggest advertising revenue stream nobody yet dominates. And mobile commerce represents potentially the biggest change in retailing since the advent of online shopping. 

Across most of six markets, including the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain and Japan, roughly 60 percent of smart phone users are searching because of an ad they’ve seen offline or in a store.


Another reason is big on mobile and smart phones is that mobile users search while on smart phones. 



Some 99 percent of smart phone users in Japan have used a search engine on mobile.


This means that practically everyone who’s gone online on mobile has searched on their phone.


Mobile search is a frequent activity. In most of these six countries more than 75 percent of smartphone Internet users search at least once a week.

The study suggests 92 percent of Americans use their smart phones to look for information about local businesses or services.


More to the point, those searchers take action. Some 81 percent of French smart phone users who’ve looked for local information then acted on it with a quarter (26 percent) having called the business and 43 percent having visited the business.


Globally, one out if five smartphone users in all six countries made a purchase after looking for local information, whether in-store or online. Mobile commerce study