1/3 of U.S. Survey Respondents Want an Apple iPhone 5

About a third of survey respondents to a recent Toluna QuickSurveys poll say they want an Apple iPhone 5. The survey also indicated that 56 percent of BlackBerry users are looking to replace their smart phones and 32 percent of Android users are also looking to switch devices. 

Must Telcos Embrace Over the Top Partners?

Virtually every telco in the world sooner or later will have to deal with over the top competition, even if the immediate threats are seen in some "developed" markets, the simple reason being that broadband Internet access makes such competition technologically possible for the first time. 

“Operators need to be more realistic and recognize that the OTT community is a meaningful threat to revenues,” says Nicole McCormick, Ovum senior analyst 

“The erosion of messaging revenues is already a reality in markets such as China and South Korea, and this is a harbinger of similar changes elsewhere," says McCormick. "Operators need to re-evaluate their business models, and decide on the degree to which they should compete or collaborate with content providers and OTT players.”

That also means virtually every service provider sooner or later has to have a strategy about dealing with over the top competition. One common strategy is to essentially fight OTT competition by adding more value to legacy services, using a combination of packaging, pricing and features. 

The less taken path, at least so far, is to actively embrace OTT services. That might not be so rare in the future, though it might be more common for service providers to craft ways of structuring access plans, rather than sponsoring OTT apps directly. 

Some service providers might craft access plans that exempt use of some specific OTT apps from a user usage allocation, for example. Apple FaceTime usage might be one example, but others will try to do similar things with messaging or entertainment video, perhaps offering unlimited usage or generous usage in exchange for payment of a specific app fee. 

Tablets are "Transforming" Content Consumption, Study Finds

Tablets are transforming the way content is consumed and challenging the usage patterns for personal computers, according to J.D. Power and Associates, confirms. 

U.S. tablet owners spend 7.5 hours per week browsing the Internet, watching videos, listening to music, and reading books on their device, compared with spending 9.6 hours per week on a personal computer for the same activities.

Tablet owners who also have a smartphone spend 40 percent more time browsing the Internet on their tablet than on their smartphone. Similarly, they spend 56 percent more time using gaming apps on their tablet than on their smartphone.

All of that suggests the reasons why it would be reasonable to expect a decline in PC sales over the coming years. PCs will be used for work tasks and content creation. Tablets and smart phones will increasingly be used for content consumption. 

Smart Phone Sales Have Been a "Replacement" Market since Before 2010

Smart phone shipments have largely been a replacement market since at least 2010, when roughly two thirds of smart phones were shipped to users who were replacing a smart phone, rather than users who were getting a smart phone for the first time.

In facgt, NPD DisplaySearch has downgraded its 2012 forecast of new purchases from a range of 220 million to 230 million to the new estimate of 177 million. Those figures represent devices sold to new smart phone buyers. 

The volume of replacement phones sold to users who already have smart phones is expected to increase significantly, reaching 567 million in 2012, and nearly double that number by 2016, according to Hiroshi Hayase, NPD DisplaySearch VP.  

Smartphone Shipment Forecast

Source: NPD DisplaySearch Smartphones: Displays, Designs and Functionality

Google Announces Kansas City 1-Gbps Construction Schedule

The Google Fiber Blog now confirms that 180 fiberhoods throughout Kansas City will be wired with ultra high-speed Google Fiber, and also says that includes residents in 89 percent of Kansas City, Kan. and central Kansas City, Mo. fiberhoods.

The first fiberhood to receive Fiber will be Hanover Heights in Kansas City, Kan. Hanover Heights actually qualified within two hours of availability and presently has the highest percentage of homes within a neighborhood that are pre-registered to get Google Fiber. 

Google also now has a rough construction schedule. 

Google Announces Kansas City 1-Gbps Construction Schedule

The Google Fiber Blog now confirms that 180 fiberhoods throughout Kansas City will be wired with ultra high-speed Google Fiber, and also says that includes residents in 89 percent of Kansas City, Kan. and central Kansas City, Mo. fiberhoods.

The first fiberhood to receive Fiber will be Hanover Heights in Kansas City, Kan. Hanover Heights actually qualified within two hours of availability and presently has the highest percentage of homes within a neighborhood that are pre-registered to get Google Fiber. 

Google also now has a rough construction schedule. 

Isis Delays Launch, Again

Isis, the mobile payments venture owned by AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile USA, is delaying the launch of its mobile payments service for the second time this year, an Isis executive says. No reason was given for the delay. 

Some might speculate that Apple's decision not to support near field communications in the iPhone 5 is a factor for Isis. 

But Apple's "go slow" approach to mobile payments is not unusual. Apple wasn't the first firm to make a PC, wasn't the first to make an MP3 player or the first tablet or a smart phone. It still isn't immediately clear how mobile payments creates a huge new device market for Apple, and that tends to be the way Apple approaches new markets. 

Delays aren't unusual for large proposed mobile payment services. Telcos in the Netherlands have delayed their mobile payments launch as well. There also have been delays in  Australia, the United Kingdom and Singapore. 

There are plenty of other reasons for delay. Mobile payment is a complex ecosystem with uncertain value for many key participants in the ecosystem and lots of confusion about which consortia might emerge as clear winners. That Apple iPhones don't yet support NFC is but one of the problems. 

"Closed loop" systems that might work only at Home Depot or Starbucks, and do not require use of NFC or other relatively rare features, are logistically easier to launch, precisely because the universe of merchants, terminals, apps, payment processors, devices and users is contained.