India Will be World's 2nd-Largest Mobile Broadband Market in 2016

India will become the world’s second largest mobile broadband market within next four years with 367 million mobile broadband connections, second only to China, which will have 639 million mobile broadband subscriptions in service, the GSMA predicts:


The U.S. market, in contrast will have 337 million mobile broadband connections by 2016. 


Mobile broadband connections currently stand at a bit more than 10 million HSPA connections across the country. That number is expected to grow by 900 percent to 100 million connections in 2014. 



Tablets are a new factor in some markets. So is Long Term Evolution, though not in the Indian market.

Is Skype a Service, App or Feature?

According to Reuters,  Facebook and Google separately are considering some form of deals with Skype.


Facebook apparently has had preliminary discussions about buying Skype, while Google is said to be considering a joint venture. 


Not to be silly, but is Skype a "service," a "product" or a "feature?" To be sure, Skype generates something on the order of $900 million in revenue, the last time we had access to published information, in 2010. At that revenue run rate, Skype said it lost a bit of money, though, so it is a "revenue neutral" business, in a literal way, or at least used to be. 


That isn't to say all consumer "VoIP" services or business IP telephony services have similar issues. 

VoIP will continue to expand at double-digit rates in 2012 followed by high single-digit gains, averaging 9.4 percent on a compound annual basis for the forecast period to $18.9 billion, according to the Telecommunications Industry Association. 

Still, to keep matters in perspective, "legacy" circuit-switched voice revenue, though declining at a 1.5 percent compound annual rate through 2015, still will represent, in 2015, a $127 billion revenue stream. VoIP will amount to about $19 billion in 2015.

In other words, as a revenue source, legacy voice is seven times bigger than VoIP.

That is not to deny the importance of VoIP in the consumer market. In 2012, VoIP access lines will be about 49 percent as large as circuit-switched lines, for example, suggesting that perhaps 58 million VoIP lines are in service. But the notable point is that VoIP does not represent all that much revenue, in an overall sense.

In 2015, declining circuit-switched voice will still represent an order of magnitude more revenue than VoIP.

In contrast, fixed network broadband access services will amount to about $46 billion in annual revenue by 2015. Entertainment video will contribute about $14 billion in annual revenue in 2015.

So VoIP will be a bigger revenue stream than entertainment television, but not by much. In 2015, legacy voice still will be the single most-important revenue stream for fixed-line service providers, by far, even though it is declining.

Skype revenue might or might not actually create earnings. 

Sprint Announces HTC Evo 4G LTE

Sprint just officially announced the HTC EVO 4G LTE, which is a variation of the HTC One. It features "speed and feed" advancements, but most users might not care about that, so much as the bigger screen, which measures 4.7 inches.

The new EVO also comes with a new Sprint service called HD Voice, a MicroSD slot and a 1.5-Ghz dual-core Qualcomm chip. Speeds and feeds get too much attention. If you have used the Sprint Evo, you know the kickstand is a big deal. Only now it will be red, and easier to see.

Seriously, the kickstand is really useful.

34% of U.S. Teens Own an iPhone; 40% Will Buy One in Next 6 Months

You probably won't be surprised to learn how popular the Apple iPhone is in the teenager demographic. About 34 percent of U.S. teenagers already own an iPhone, while 40 percent of those who don’t own an iPhone are expecting to buy one in the next six months, a new survey by Piper Jaffray suggests.


Piper Jaffray polled 5,600 American teenagers, which finds continued, rising interest for the device in the high-school demographic. 


The percentage of teens who own an iPhone rose to 34 percent from 23 percent in fall 2011, and 17 percent in spring 2011. Meanwhile, the percentage of those who hope to own one rose from 38 percent and 37 percent during the same time periods. 



Some 20 percent of U.S. mobile phone owners now describe their phone as an Android device, up from 15 percent in May 2011, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project. 
Some 19 percent of mobile phone owners now describe their phone as an iPhone, up from 10 percent in May 2011,  according to Pew. 

LightSquared Mulls Bankruptcy

LightSquared is "seriously considering" filing a voluntary bankruptcy,  Reuters reports. That would appear to be a new position, since Chairman Philip Falcone had been insisting he would try to revive the company, in part by litigating the Federal Communications Commission's refusal to approve its petition for re-purposing satellite spectrum to build a terrestrial Long Term Evolution fourth generation mobile network. 


The new stance could be the result of pressure from major stakeholders, especially creditors, who are themselves threatening to file bankruptcy claims. 


Voluntary bankruptcy has frequently been a business strategy in the telecommunications business over the last decade or so, allowing firms to stave off creditors, erase debt and start over. The principal asset LightSquared would continue to own is its spectrum, even though the FCC has concluded that use of much of that spectrum to support a terrestrial mobile network would pose unacceptable interference with GPS service, aeronautical communications and military communications. 


At least near term, the biggest beneficiaries would seem to be the largest U.S. mobile service providers, who will not have to face a new LTE network operating on a wholesale-only basis, enabling many new competitors into the 4G market. 


But Clearwire, itself a major wholesale provider of 4G service, should be positioned to pick up many of the wholesale deals LightSquared had gotten, and now has lost. 

Little Innovation in Global Mobile Handset Business?

Some might argue there has been a slowdown in mobile device and application innovation over the last year or so. Whether, in most years, it is possible to point to huge breakthroughs, is an arguable point. 


But an inability to point to a single big innovation does not mean change is lacking. A sharp change in the installed base of Android and Symbian devices might indicate only a change in potential innovation, not innovation itself.  


But the explosive growth of the tablet market might be a clearer indication of innovation. True, we have been talking for some time about the smart phone as representing the next big wave of personal computing. 


We are talking about the "post-PC" era of computing, sometimes in reference to mobiles, sometimes in reference to tablets. Those changes likewise might be viewed more as "enablers" of innovation, rather than direct instances of innovation. Others would disagree, arguing that device adoption is itself a significant innovation. 


At least some of us would dispute the notion that there has been "little" innovation in mobile devices and apps over the last year. Some would argue that truly-important innovations take time to gain mass market adoption. In fact, really-important changes should be measured in decades, rather than years. 





Still, much of the innovation some expect will come in the area of user interfaces, moving beyond "touch" to include voice recognition and gesture recognition, for example. 

Mobile Business Finally Moving Beyond "Feeds and Speeds?"

The telecom industry is turning away from an emphasis on “speeds and feeds” to focus on customer experience, says Jean Foster, NeuStar VP. In many ways, that is parallel to a similar change PC suppliers have had to make over the last 10 years, when the value of raw computing power ceased to be as important as many had believed.


Foster notes that, at Mobile World Congress in 2011, the show buzz was all about fourth generation networks (4G) and Long Term Evolution. In 2012, there was a much-greater focus on the experiences mobile networks can offer. 


That's a significant change. From a marketing standpoint, it means more attention will be paid to what a 4G network means for users, other than "faster" access. For an industry that worries rightly about becoming a commodity supplier of simple "access" services, that is a useful change.