Apple has 435 Million iTunes Accounts

Apple says it now has 435 million accounts for iTunes. That also implies that Apple has active credit card information for all or most of those accounts. Think e-commerce.

Apple launches iPhone 5

The new Apple Phone 5 features a 4-inch 1136 x 640 display in a 16:9 aspect ratio, LTE support and a design that’s thinner and lighter than prior models. Apple was able to improve the battery life however; key for LTE devices. No surprise. Full video here.

3 Hong Kong Offers WhatsApp without Impact on User Data Cap

Mobile operator 3 Hong Kong will offer its subscribers a WhatsApp Roaming Pass for $8 ($1 USD) a month that gives them unlimited access to WhatsApp services without counting it against their data caps, or a $48 ($6.19 USD) daily pass offering unlimited WhatsApp use and 5MB of service in 78 destinations around the world.

You might wonder why a mobile service provider would promote a service that competes directly with its own messaging service. The answer is that so many people are doing so that 3 might as well try and extract some revenue from the service in an indirect way, namely by allowing usage of WhatsApp without counting the usage against a customer's data cap.

When "Unlimited" Makes Sense

From a consumer standpoint, there often is little to no actual difference between an"unlimited" and a "big enough" service plan for voice, messaging or Internet access. The reason is simply that most people don't actually use enough of any of those apps to "need" unlimited usage.

On the other hand, there frequently are good reasons for a service provider to offer "unlimited" access to voice, messaging or Internet access. That especially is the case when the carrier's own usage statistics indicate that most people will not use unusual amounts of capacity, whether that is voice, messaging or Internet access.

Under such conditions, provider safely can offer "unlimited" service with no danger of unusual stresses on the network.

In other words, "unlimited" is an excellent marketing platform when a service provider knows it can safely make the offer. And, in most cases, it is a good bet.

The overwhelming majority of customers on AT and T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon networks studied by  NPD Connected Intelligence  don't even use 2 GBytes worth of mobile data per month, which suggests most consumers do not need “unlimited” service plans.

NPD Connected Intelligence tracked users on 1,000 Android smart phones as part of the study.

T-Mobile USA has users who consume more, though. Some 11 percent of T-Mobile USA customers use more than 3 GBytes per month, compared to four percent of AT&T and Sprint customers who consume more than 3 Gbytes a month. About three percent of Verizon customers use more than 3 Gbytes a month

NPD Connected Intelligence analyst Eddie Hold says Apple iPhone usage is pretty similar to that of Android users.

And even when customers had unlimited data plans, most didn't take advantage of it, the study suggests.  "In general, Sprint's usage is the same as the other networks and less than T-Mobile USA," Hold said.

Wi-Fi might now be a major part of the usage pattern, as it is possible users now know how to use offloading techniques to protect their mobile data usage buckets.

On average, smart phones are making eight Wi-Fi connections per day and offloading as much as 35 percent of total data consumption to a Wi-Fi network, while heavy users offload as much as 70 percent , according to Devicescape.

Devicescape surveyed one million smart phone devices as part of its study.

A couple of conclusions might be drawn. At the moment, most users don’t consume all that much data, so the value of an “unlimited” plan is questionable. On the other hand, “unlimited” is a useful marketing platform.

The other potential conclusion is that people might be using more data than is fully captured by their mobile usage in a typical month.

20% of U.S. Mobile Phone Owners Pay More Per Month for Their Phone Service Than Groceries

Some 21 percent of U.S. adults using mobile phones say they pay more for their mobile phone service plan in a typical month than they do for groceries.

When asked which other typical expenses they spend less on their mobile phone service, 33 percent of respondents said water, gas and electric bills, 57 percent said their mobile bill was bigger than their cable TV bill, and 71 percent said their mobile service cost more than their Internet access service.


Nearly half (46 percent) of mobile phone owners surveyed pay $100 or more per month for their mobile phone service. Some13 percent pay $200 or more per month.

The survey was conducted online within the United States by Harris Interactive on behalf of CouponCabin.com from September 4th to 6th, 2012 among 2,310 U.S. adults ages 18 and older.

Can Amazon Do Next-Day Delivery? Same Day? To How Many Customers?

The distinction between online commerce and physical retailing has been shrinking for some time. Mobile commerce apps and services provide one example of how that is playing out. But so is a warehouse strategy Amazon is undertaking.

Amazon expects that by building many more warehouses, in major metropolitan areas, it can cut delivery times from two days to one day. In some cases, some day, "same day delivery" might even be possible, though that seems largely out of reach for the moment. 

The new warehouses will allow Amazon to cut as much as a day off its two-day shipping times, said Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO.  In at least some cases, Amazon might be able to offer same-day delivery, which would be a serious matter for other place-based retailers. 

“We want fast delivery,” Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO says. At a minimum, “we can work on making it the next day.”

Economics Don't Work for Over-the-Top HBO

HBO has about 29 million consumers paying $7 to $8 a month, on average, to watch the channel on their cable, telco or satellite TV service. Full retail prices are higher, but there is heavy promotional activity, so average revenue per customer is lower than posted retail. 

That often leads potential over the top customers to ask why HBO couldn't just offer a streaming, over the top service for perhaps $8 to $10 a month. 

HBO Senior Vice President of Digital Platforms Alison Moore says the numbers don't work. 

“Here’s the thing: it’s math,” Moore said about the possibility of splitting HBO into a standalone, over the top service. 

HBO currently has about 29 million subscribers, and reportedly receives around $7 or $8 per subscriber per month. So could a separate, over the top service be sold for about the same price? That's the rub. 

That figure doesn’t include all the other operating cost needed to support delivery of all those streams, including all the content delivery network and other costs, including sales, marketing, and support. 

Going direct to online customers by pitching HBO GO over-the-top would mean losing the support of its cable, satellite, and IPTV distributors. So the bottom line really is that HBO would lose more from its main distributors than it can make from over the top, in all likelihood.