Thirty-four percent said they’ve scanned a QR code, and 27 percent have read online reviews from their devices before making purchase decisions.
Monday, July 16, 2012
55% of U.S. Smart Phone Owners Compare Prices Inside Stores, Study Finds
Some 55 percent of smart phone owners said they’ve used a mobile device to compare prices between retailers, while inside retail stores, according to Emphatica.
Thirty-four percent said they’ve scanned a QR code, and 27 percent have read online reviews from their devices before making purchase decisions.
Thirty-four percent said they’ve scanned a QR code, and 27 percent have read online reviews from their devices before making purchase decisions.
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
Carrier Ethernet Growing at 17% Annual Rate
U.S. enterprises and consumers are expected to spend more than $47 billion over the next five years on Ethernet services provided by carriers, according to a new market research study from The Insight Research Corporation.
With metro-area and wide-area Ethernet services readily available from virtually all major data service providers, industry revenue is expected to grow from nearly $5 billion in 2012 to reach just over $11 billion by 2017.
However, year over year spending growth is expected to gradually stall and by 2017 the annual revenue growth rate will be half of what it is today, Insight Research says. Growth is generally moderating gradually, for a number of reasons.
For starters, the installed base of revenue is growing larger, so it is harder to maintain higher growth rates. Also, at some point, most U.S. cell sites will have been converted to carrier Ethernet.
Pricing pressures will continue as competition remains significant in the market, and as Ethernet displaces most private line and frame relay services.
According to the study, Ethernet's central driver continues to be its ability to meet seemingly endlessly growing bandwidth demands at lower cost and with greater flexibility than competing services.
A major growth driver in years past had been the large-scale migration of wireless backhaul cell sites from TDM to Ethernet, and though still a contributory growth factor, backhaul growth will start to moderate as LTE deployments are completed.
"Wireless backhaul had been a major factor in this fast-growing telecommunications services sector, but with much of the conversion of TDM to Ethernet completed, we are forecasting that spending on Ethernet will moderate," says Robert Rosenberg, president of Insight Research. "Over the five year forecast period we project a compounded annual revenue growth rate of 17 percent, with growth slowing by 2016 to be more in the range of 12 to 15 percent.”
With metro-area and wide-area Ethernet services readily available from virtually all major data service providers, industry revenue is expected to grow from nearly $5 billion in 2012 to reach just over $11 billion by 2017.
However, year over year spending growth is expected to gradually stall and by 2017 the annual revenue growth rate will be half of what it is today, Insight Research says. Growth is generally moderating gradually, for a number of reasons.
For starters, the installed base of revenue is growing larger, so it is harder to maintain higher growth rates. Also, at some point, most U.S. cell sites will have been converted to carrier Ethernet.
Pricing pressures will continue as competition remains significant in the market, and as Ethernet displaces most private line and frame relay services.
According to the study, Ethernet's central driver continues to be its ability to meet seemingly endlessly growing bandwidth demands at lower cost and with greater flexibility than competing services.
A major growth driver in years past had been the large-scale migration of wireless backhaul cell sites from TDM to Ethernet, and though still a contributory growth factor, backhaul growth will start to moderate as LTE deployments are completed.
"Wireless backhaul had been a major factor in this fast-growing telecommunications services sector, but with much of the conversion of TDM to Ethernet completed, we are forecasting that spending on Ethernet will moderate," says Robert Rosenberg, president of Insight Research. "Over the five year forecast period we project a compounded annual revenue growth rate of 17 percent, with growth slowing by 2016 to be more in the range of 12 to 15 percent.”
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
Digital Local Media Ads to Grow 13.1% in 2012, According to BIA/Kelsey
Mobile search will grow faster, at 77.2 percent. Online video will grow 51.6 percent and social will grow 26.3 percent.
Compound average growth rates between 2011 and 2016 include:
* newspapers – online revenues: 5.0 percent
* radio – online revenues: 11.8 percent
* television – online revenues: 12.8 percent
* digital out of home: 11.7 percent
* online: 9.4 percent
* mobile: 44.9 percent
* Internet Yellow Pages: 12.5 percent
* email, reputation and presence management: 14.9 percent
* social media: 21.0 percent
* online video: 36.7 percent.
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
Devices Now Becoming a Way for Application Providers to Connect Consumers with Apps
“We always wanted to be in the hardware business,” Google Chairman Eric Schmidt says. That comment, whether fully accurate as a description of Google's thinking or not, does seem to describe current thinking in much of the applications business.
Sony has for decades argued that ownership of content was important for selling TVs. Apple found that iTunes enabled it to create a dominant position in the MP-3 player market. The App Store has been crucial for iPad and iPhone sales, in the same way that the Android Market and Google Play have been important for sales of Android devices.
Amazon's content richness is a key reason for the success of the Kindle Fire. So though it might not be a feasible strategy for every application provider, it certainly seems true that an integrated device plus content and software strategy makes increasing sense.
In other markets, the success of the Square mobile software that turns a tablet or a smart phone into a retail point of sale terminal provides another example of how hardware enables a software or service business.
And Oracle has seen value in bundling hardware with enterprise applications.
Sony has for decades argued that ownership of content was important for selling TVs. Apple found that iTunes enabled it to create a dominant position in the MP-3 player market. The App Store has been crucial for iPad and iPhone sales, in the same way that the Android Market and Google Play have been important for sales of Android devices.
Amazon's content richness is a key reason for the success of the Kindle Fire. So though it might not be a feasible strategy for every application provider, it certainly seems true that an integrated device plus content and software strategy makes increasing sense.
In other markets, the success of the Square mobile software that turns a tablet or a smart phone into a retail point of sale terminal provides another example of how hardware enables a software or service business.
And Oracle has seen value in bundling hardware with enterprise applications.
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
Sprint Accelerates Roll-Out of Long Term Evolution Network
Sprint appears to be accelerating its deployment of its new 4G Long Term Evolutiion network, announcing availability in 15 cities where it had promised availability in just five cities. Those cities include:
Atlanta
Athens, Ga.
Calhoun, Ga.
Carrollton, Ga.
Newnan, Ga.
Rome, Ga.
Dallas
Fort Worth, Texas
Granbury-Hood County, Texas
Houston
Huntsville, Texas
San Antonio, Texas
Waco, Texas
Kansas City, Mo.-Kan.
St. Joseph, Mo.
Atlanta
Athens, Ga.
Calhoun, Ga.
Carrollton, Ga.
Newnan, Ga.
Rome, Ga.
Dallas
Fort Worth, Texas
Granbury-Hood County, Texas
Houston
Huntsville, Texas
San Antonio, Texas
Waco, Texas
Kansas City, Mo.-Kan.
St. Joseph, Mo.
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
Now TV Moves Users Closer to Internet TV Delivery
Dish Network CEO Charlie Ergen has said that, if he were starting today, he probably would not choose to launch a video entertainment service using satellites, and might opt for a "Netflix" style, over the top over the top delivery method.
In the United Kingdom, BSkyB, the dominant satellite video service provider, is going to try something similar, if restricted for the moment to movie fare.
Instant access to hundreds of the latest titles on Sky Movies, with new and exclusive premieres available each Friday, at least a year before any other online subscription service, as BSkyB launches Now TV, without a contract, using online delivery, not a satellite connection.
Now TV is launching in the United Kingdom on PC, Mac and selected Android smartphones; on iPhone, iPad within the next month, on XBox later in 2012. That is not entirely revolutionary. Online delivery of movie content is fairly well established.
The next big breakthrough will come when single TV episodes, an entire TV series or a complete TV channel or network can be purchased separately, with online delivery, without the requirement for first buying a standard TV service.
In the United Kingdom, BSkyB, the dominant satellite video service provider, is going to try something similar, if restricted for the moment to movie fare.
Instant access to hundreds of the latest titles on Sky Movies, with new and exclusive premieres available each Friday, at least a year before any other online subscription service, as BSkyB launches Now TV, without a contract, using online delivery, not a satellite connection.
Now TV is launching in the United Kingdom on PC, Mac and selected Android smartphones; on iPhone, iPad within the next month, on XBox later in 2012. That is not entirely revolutionary. Online delivery of movie content is fairly well established.
The next big breakthrough will come when single TV episodes, an entire TV series or a complete TV channel or network can be purchased separately, with online delivery, without the requirement for first buying a standard TV service.
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
It Isn't Yet Clear How Visa-MasterCard Settlement Affects Mobile Payments
Though it is not a specific issue in the developing mobile payments business, historically hostile retailer relationships with credit card issuers continue to underpin retailer interest in rival methods of processing payments.
The big hope, of course, is that new mobile payment systems will allow retailers to process payments at lower cost than traditionally has been the case. To be sure, friction between participants in any ecosystem can get testy when one participant's revenue stream is another participant's cost.
Relationships between video subscription providers and the programming networks provide one clear example. But that also is the case in the retail payments business. A revenue stream for an issuing bank and a payment network is a direct cost to a merchant. And those costs might be changing.
Visa, MasterCard and their issuing partners have reached a legal settlement with merchants regarding interchange fees (fees charged by issuing banks for use of a credit card), and the implications for mobile payments are not yet completely clear.
Nor are the legal challenges entirely over. The National Association of Convenience Stores, for example, seems intent on continuing the fight against the settlement, even though plaintiffs and Visa and MasterCard have agreed to a settlement.
The lawsuit by merchants claimed Visa and MasterCard were in collusion to keep those rates higher than would otherwise be the case.
To settle the suit, merchants will be compensated in three ways. First, Visa, MasterCard and their issuing partners will make a $6.05 billion cash payment to merchants to compensate them for previous interchange charges.
Second, Visa and MasterCard will lower card acceptance fees by 10 basis points for a period of eight months, providing $1.2 billion in additional relief to merchants.
The third part of the settlement may have the largest impact on consumers' day-to-day shopping experiences, some think. Merchants will now be permitted to charge higher prices on transactions paid for with a credit card, a practice that had been prohibited by the networks' earlier terms.
The mobile payments business could be affected in a number of ways. In most cases, mobile payment transactions are based on payment of such fees. For consumers, there are few immediate effects, since the fees are paid by retailers, not end users directly (though the total cost of operating a retail outlet, including such fees, is built into retail prices).
Lower fees will reduce the mobile payments revenue opportunity, and also make harder the task of creating a value proposition that is easy to understand. Lower revenue might also reduce the incentive for issuing banks, and the payment networks, to spend so much on mobile payment systems.
On the other hand, should the uncertainty be cleared up, it also is possible issuing banks and payment networks could move with more assurance on mobile payments, since they would have greater understanding of the revenue part of the operations.
Less revenue from interchange also will continue to spur thinking about other ways revenue can be earned, and that should help mobile wallet efforts, which are expected to rely on loyalty programs, advertising and promotion revenue streams.
The big hope, of course, is that new mobile payment systems will allow retailers to process payments at lower cost than traditionally has been the case. To be sure, friction between participants in any ecosystem can get testy when one participant's revenue stream is another participant's cost.
Relationships between video subscription providers and the programming networks provide one clear example. But that also is the case in the retail payments business. A revenue stream for an issuing bank and a payment network is a direct cost to a merchant. And those costs might be changing.
Visa, MasterCard and their issuing partners have reached a legal settlement with merchants regarding interchange fees (fees charged by issuing banks for use of a credit card), and the implications for mobile payments are not yet completely clear.
Nor are the legal challenges entirely over. The National Association of Convenience Stores, for example, seems intent on continuing the fight against the settlement, even though plaintiffs and Visa and MasterCard have agreed to a settlement.
The lawsuit by merchants claimed Visa and MasterCard were in collusion to keep those rates higher than would otherwise be the case.
To settle the suit, merchants will be compensated in three ways. First, Visa, MasterCard and their issuing partners will make a $6.05 billion cash payment to merchants to compensate them for previous interchange charges.
Second, Visa and MasterCard will lower card acceptance fees by 10 basis points for a period of eight months, providing $1.2 billion in additional relief to merchants.
The third part of the settlement may have the largest impact on consumers' day-to-day shopping experiences, some think. Merchants will now be permitted to charge higher prices on transactions paid for with a credit card, a practice that had been prohibited by the networks' earlier terms.
The mobile payments business could be affected in a number of ways. In most cases, mobile payment transactions are based on payment of such fees. For consumers, there are few immediate effects, since the fees are paid by retailers, not end users directly (though the total cost of operating a retail outlet, including such fees, is built into retail prices).
Lower fees will reduce the mobile payments revenue opportunity, and also make harder the task of creating a value proposition that is easy to understand. Lower revenue might also reduce the incentive for issuing banks, and the payment networks, to spend so much on mobile payment systems.
On the other hand, should the uncertainty be cleared up, it also is possible issuing banks and payment networks could move with more assurance on mobile payments, since they would have greater understanding of the revenue part of the operations.
Less revenue from interchange also will continue to spur thinking about other ways revenue can be earned, and that should help mobile wallet efforts, which are expected to rely on loyalty programs, advertising and promotion revenue streams.
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
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