Smart Phones Will Grow Share of Smart Devices Through 2016

Smart phones now account for 59 percent of connected device shipments, and will grow 15.8 percent annually, to reach nearly 63 percent of smart device shipments by 2016, Forrester Research says.

Tablets will grow the fastest, though, rising from a 10 percent share in 2012 to 13 percent by 2016.

PC share will drop from 31 percent to 24 percent during the same time period. 

App Users Younger, Wealthier

Among U.S. mobile device users, those who use apps tend to be younger and more affluent than those who stick just to the web,  Forrester Research says. 

Nearly a third of those who use mobile apps fall between the ages of 23 and 31, and another third are in the 32 to 45 category. So roughly 66 percent of app users are younger than 46. 

Usage varies by OS, however, and Apple’s iPhone app audience are generally younger and better off financially, while those on Android tend to be older and less moneyed.

Tough Economy Affecting Cable, Mobile in Opposite Ways

Between 2007 and 2011, U.S. consumer spending generally shrank, as a response to the Great Recession and anemic recovery since 2008.

But though spending dropped overall, there was one area where spending actually rose: telecom services.

As you might guess, the growth was driven by mobile services, and most would attribute those gains to the attractions of smart phones such as the Apple iPhone. 

U.S. consumer spending on phone services rose more than four percent in 2011, the fastest rate since 2005, according to Department of Labor statistics. 

Families with more than one smart phone sometimes pay more for mobile service than they pay for cable TV and home Internet access. 


The tough economic conditions are not helping cable companies, though.

“The real important economic stats for us in terms of potential wind at our back really relate to improvements in occupied housing, improvements in the unemployment stats, increases in disposable income and increases in consumer confidence,” according to Time Warner President and Chief Operating Officer Robert Marcus. “To tell you the truth, we really haven’t seen a whole lot of meaningful improvement in those stats across our footprint.”

Of course, as happy as mobile service provider executives might be about the revenue growth, the cost of subsidizing those smart phones creates operating margin issues. Still, the numbers speak for themselves: consumers are making cuts elsewhere to fund mobile services.

Other purchasing categories, including cars, clothing, entertainment and food consumed away from home have suffered, in comparison.

The big issue is how long that growth trend in mobile spending can continue.

Kindle Fire HD Generates 11% of Kindle Fire Web Traffic After 1 Week

The new Amazon Kindle Fire HD was released Friday, September 14^th, 2012 and seems quickly to have made a mark on bandwidth consumption. 

After only five days, the Kindle Fire HD represented 11 percent of all Kindle Fire Web usage, according to Chitika

Service Providers to Challenge Game Console Market

AT&T, Verizon Communications, Time Warner Cable Inc., Comcast and Cox Communications are gearing up for a push to deliver video games directly to televisions, Bloomberg :reports, a strategy shift that poses a threat to traditional consoles such as the PlayStation, Wii and Xbox, and shows how ecosystem partners increasingly find themselves competitors as well.

With cloud gaming, consumers will be able to avoid buying Sony’s PlayStation 3, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 or Nintendo’s Wii, and play using generic controllers connected to their set-top box or TV. Some carriers are looking at software that turns smartphones into controllers.

There still are a few technical upgrades required to set-top boxes, such as more powerful graphics processors. But none of that is a show stopper.

Media CEOS Bullish on Tablets, Mobile

CEOs from global entertainment and media companies are bullish on mobile and tablets for future growth, a study by Ernst & Young suggests.

Some 79 percent of CEOs said tablets would have the greatest impact, while 62 percent said smart phones would also be influential. 



Mobile devices also are expected to be the biggest drivers of growth in content consumption over the next three years. 

How Long Can Separate Regulation of Broadcasting, Cable, Communications Continue?

It long has been a fixture of regulatory policy that different media have had distinct regulatory frameworks. In the U.S. market, the fundamental frameworks include unregulated “media,” partially regulated broadcasting and cable; and heavily-regulated common carrier services.

That “regulation by function” made sense at the time. As all networks become multi-purpose networks, the logic of regulating networks “by function or media type”  is subverted. That necessarily raises huge issues that affect the foundation of contestant business models.

In a simple way, the issue is whether stricter common carrier rules should be applied to "less regulated" media, or whether less regulation should be applied to common carrier services.

Also, some would argue, the growing instability of all legacy revenue models, across print, video, music, audio, television and communications industries means that regulation has to incorporate, as a primary objective, the fostering of innovation and investment in network facilities, as there is much less certainty than in the past. 

Greater risk, all other things being equal, means less investment.
A new International Telecommunications Union broadband report incorporates a healthy measure of those perspectives.

“Service providers have struggled with legacy inherited laws and regulations that award licenses per service, and many companies have taken the issue to court – for example, cable TV companies seeking to provide telephone service over their networks, and telephone companies wanting to upgrade their networks to offer video programming services and compete with the cable companies,” the ITU report says.

“More modern approaches to regulation may be needed – such as converged regulation, simplifications to the licensing regime or unified licensing, where one unified license can allow any telecommunication company to provide any service, as long as consumer rights are protected, and the competitiveness of markets is not threatened,” the International Telecommunications Union broadband report suggests.

The historic division between regulation of communications and separate regulation for broadcasting was acceptable in the past when spectrum and telecommunications were clearly divided, and regulation of content was a major focus of any broadcasting agency, the ITU says.  

With the shift of virtually all networks to Internet Protocol, virtually all networks can deliver any type of media. And that complicates any efforts to regulate media, broadcasting and communications separately.

The ITU study notes that policy-makers and regulators now must “stimulate”  demand for broadband and in promote investment in infrastructure. That also requires a “balance” of technologies and policy approaches appropriate to specific situations, including more wireless effort.

The growth rate in global mobile  data traffic is projected to grow 60 percent annually from 2011 to 2017, which will result in a 15-fold increase in traffic by 2017, mainly due to video traffic.

“Such an explosion in data traffic requires more spectrum,” the ITU says.  In this regard,
policy-makers and regulators can help to create a supportive environment and encourage
investment and ensure sufficient availability of quality spectrum, the ITU says.