Amazon Smart Phone on the Way?

Topeka Capital Markets analyst Brian White thinks Amazon will start selling its own phone later in 2012, and that it could prove to be “more sophisticated than many smart phones on the market,” Forbes reports.


The logical approach would be to optimize the device for content consumption, especially Amazon-provided content, the way the BlackBerry was optimized to support email. 


He adds that “longer term” it might also make sense for the company to make a move into the television business, as well. 


Apple's move into the smart phone business might have seemed dangerous at the time, but at least Apple always has been a manufacturer of computing devices, and a smart phone is a computing device that handles voice communications. 


Google's move into mobility was less logical, it can be argued, except as a key platform for mobile advertising, and is the mirror opposite of Apple's strategy, which is to merchandise content to sell devices. Google wants to "give away" or merchandise mobile software and phones to sell advertising.


Amazon's move into the e-reader and tablet businesses was a similar "make devices to grow the market for our content" strategy. A smart phone would make sense for similar reasons, as smart phones have become major content consumption platforms. 

Many Emerging Market Social Networks are Indigenous

Around half of the world’s top ten mobile social networks don’t have developed countries as their home bases, Tomi Ahonen says. 

97% Growth of Mobile Payments, Through 2015?

Global mobile payment transactions are expected to grow 97 percent per year, over the next three years, reaching a value of £591 billion by 2015, according to a report by KPMG. 
That forecast is based, in part, on KPMG’s view that near field communications will be adopted at significant rates, both by consumers and retailers.

But KPMG still believes other methods will have wider use. “Today, premium text messaging dominates mobile payments, but by tomorrow contactless and cloud-based services will dominate, with an expected market share for contactless of 37 percent by 2015," says David Hodgkinson, senior manager in KPMG's customer and channel consulting team.

"TV's Still Going to Look a Lot Like TV Five Years from Now"

Bismarck Lepe, Ooyala president of products, apparently does not believe the television medium will be all that different in five years, especially as related to the way television is produced, namely that TV is about storytelling. Whether the business will change is a separate question. 


TV still is primarily "storytelling," he argues, and lots of observers would say all the "interactive features" once touted for television have failed to take hold for several reasons, among them the key insight that storytelling is not necessarily "improved" by allowing viewers or listeners to change plot lines, for example. 


A couple of decades ago, there was much more interest in interactive television features that might allow such changes, as well as more advertising and multimedia features. But those efforts failed. 


Even arguably "less ambitious" efforts to create standards for interactive TV ads likewise have failed. 


As it turns out, at least so far, television remains a "lean back" consuming experience. Consumers do not, at least not yet, have much interest in "lean forward" television, a stark contrast with much use of the Web or video gaming, for example.


That's one reason why many believe the big changes to come might not be about the television format (linear storytelling), but more about the way television is purchased, packaged or delivered, the big change being a shift to online delivery using the Internet. 

What is less clear are the business models and retail packaging of video content. There will gradually be additional ways to consume video paid for as part of a subscription, typically on PCs, tablets or smart phones, though the geographic coverage might well be restricted (within the home, in some cases). But that capability will be a feature of a video subscription, not an alternative.

New payment methods, on the other hand, might play a bigger role, some argue. But that doesn't change the fundamental nature of the experience, the way the product is designed, or necessarily the delivery channel. 

Verizon Ends "Naked DSL" Sales

Verizon Communications in early May 2012 will stop offering "naked DSL," (high-speed Internet without landline phone service). Starting May 6, 2012, new customers won't be able to sign up for DSL without also getting a wired voice service, which adds about $5 to the monthly bill before taxes.


That change, in itself, might not be a huge deal. Only about 10 percent of Verizon's DSL subscribers use the stand-alone service, Verizon says. So the overwhelming percentage (90 percent)  of Verizon customers already buy broadband with voice service.


True, the change will affect packaging for all new broadband access customers, as well as customers making changes to their existing broadband service, such as migrating to higher speeds. Over time, that should shrink the percentage and number of naked DSL customers. 


You might ask " what's the point?


The incremental revenue shift would appear to be relatively slight.


The larger point, though, is the huge importance legacy voice revenue holds for Verizon, and other incumbent telcos.


Circuit-switched voice will in 2012 represent fully $132 billion in fixed network revenues for U.S. telcos, the Telecommunications Industry Association estimates.


Total fixed network revenue will be about $176 billion.


So circuit-switched voice will represent 75 percent of total fixed network revenue. In any business, the best results often are obtained when executives focus on the few activities that deliver the biggest returns.


Voice drives 75 percent of current revenue, even if slowly declining. So anything Verizon can do to protect that specific revenue stream affects total results more than any other single revenue source.

Social Sharing as Helpful as Google Search in Shopping

A new study suggests social sharing of information and opinions about products on Facebook is both a mainstream activity and a significant influence on shopping behavior. The study, conducted by Sociable Labs, found that 62 percent of online shoppers have read product-related comments from their friends on Facebook. 


The top value to shoppers in reading social sharing is that it “helps them discover a product they might want to buy, the study suggests. 


About 75 percent of shoppers who read social sharing comments have clicked on the product link in their friends’ Facebook posts, taking them to the product page on a retailer’s website. Some 53 percent of the shoppers who have clicked through to the retailer’s site have made a purchase, the study found. 


A core reason for these actions is that shoppers see social sharing as one of the most helpful tools for finding the right product to buy, the study suggests. 


Some might say a key finding is that Google search and Facebook comments by friends are far and away the "most helpful" sources of information by respondents, rated about twice as helpful as advertising. 

Too Early to Say Much about New iPad Behavior

On the opening day, the iPad represented 0.52 percent of total iPad network traffic. That figure peaked at 2.28 percent on day three, and then declined to 1.92 percent of traffic by day six. In contrast, the iPad and iPad 2 each had 45 percent or more of total iPad traffic, Jumptap says in its latest MobileSTAT Report. 

But it's too early to conclude much of anything about either iPad traffic or users. Still, observers will be watching for any signs of new user behaviors, especially any related to the higher-definition Retina display, which could have important ramifications for online and mobile video, as well as mobile and Wi-Fi network usage. 


A slight dip in iPad 2 traffic immediately after the new iPad was released might indicate that many early buyers of the new iPad also own iPad 2 devices. The suggestion is that they started using the new iPad and so were not using their iPad 2 tablets.