Mobile Marketing More Used than Mobile Payments, at the Moment

At least so far, use of mobile devices to "pay for purchases" remains a less frequent activity than using devices to compare prices or check product reviews, as you might expect at this point in the development of a range of mobile commerce, mobile advertising and mobile operations options for retailers and consumers. 

When asked whether they have used a mobile to compare prices and look at product reviews while out shopping, 61 percent of U.S. respondents 18 to 34 and  51 percent of U.K. respondents reported they had done so.

But there are key age differences.  Only a minority of shoppers in older age group brackets said they had done so, Econsultancy reports. 

The results also suggest the importance of mobiles when shoppers are out and about. When asked what they would do if a particular store did not have what they were looking for, 45 percent of U.K. respondents and 46 percent of U.S. respondents indicated they would try and find the item at another store.

Some 32 percent of U.K. respondents would go home and then search online, while 32 percent of U.S. respondents would do the same. About five percent of U.K. respondents would use their mobile device to try and find the item, while eight percent of U.S. respondents said they would try that approach. 

Shoppers are turning to their phones for price comparison and reviews while out shopping, according to the survey. The survey found half of U.S. shoppers have used their mobile to compare a price or read a review when out shopping, along with 43 percent of U.K. shoppers.

Dish Talks to Viacom About Over the Top Delivery, Not Tied to Subscription

Dish Network Corp. reportedly is talking to networks such as Viacom, Univision and Scripps Networks Interactive about licensing some content to a new Dish over the top video offering that would not require purchase of a Dish Network video subscription, Bloomberg says. 

That would be a break with "TV Everywhere" packages that require customers to buy a linear video subscription first, before being able to use the TV Everywhere feature. 

The expectation is that Dish could create lower-cost online services that virtually any U.S. consumer with broadband access could buy. The issue is whether an appealing package, costing perhaps $20 a month, for users watching on tablets and smart phones, for example. 

35% of Smart Phone Data is Consumed Using Wi-Fi

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. 

You might think such statistics point to heavy smart phone data consumption, but that seems not to be the case. 

The overwhelming majority of customers on AT&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. 

From a consumer standpoint, there often therefore 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. 

The "Real-Time Cloud" has Implications for Mobile, Fixed Service Providers

The coming era of" real-time cloud" services will have clear implications for access providers. Real time services include apps such as voice and video, for example, as well as any number of business processes. If those services are hosted in the cloud, one would have to assume the existence of access mechanisms that can support real-time applications well.

One also would assume real time cloud services would be consumable by any device with Internet access, especially mobile devices, with low latency a virtual requirement for user experience. And, of course, any real time cloud environment would be ideal for over the top real time applications.

That means more competition for carrier-supplied voice and messaging. 

52% of U.S. Households are "Mobile Only" or "Rarely Use" Landline Phone

Just over 38 percent of U.S. consumers surveyed by iGR indicate they do not have a landline phone, with service from any telco, ISP or cable company (they are mobile only households). 

Of those respondents who do buy fixed network telephone service, just 24 percent of consumers said they use their landline phone "a lot." 

Another 23 percent said they use it "sometimes."


About 14 percent reported having a landline they used "rarely or never." Add that to the 38 percent of wireless-only households and a majority of U.S. households might now be functioning exclusively or nearly exclusively in mobile mode. 

The 38 percent of mobile-only users are more likely to be under 35 years old, as you might expect. 

At the moment, a higher percentage of households headed by older people use landline phones. There are at least a couple of ways to characterize that finding. One might argue that users find new uses for landline phones as they get older. 

Or, one might argue that a shift of demand is taking place, and that older consumers are heavier users of landline phones out of habit. In that view, younger users will not suddenly find themselves "needing" fixed lien phone service as they get older. 

The analogy here might be cable TV service. Decades ago, many observers would have questioned why a household would pay for TV when they could get it free over the air. For some decades after the adoption of cable TV began, one could still see a demographic difference in adoption rates, with the older demographic groups adopting at lower rates than other households. 

To use the somewhat non-artful phrase, "some people don't buy my product, but they're dying." 

Survey respondents over 55 years old were 76 percent more likely to say they have a landline they "use a lot," for example. compared to all other users. But that might be a strong habit originally developed at a time when the only phones were fixed network devices. 

Millennials have grown up in a world where "everybody" uses a mobile for voice and messaging, and where that is seen as the preferred mode of communicating. 

The annual survey by the Centers for Disease Control found in 2011 that 32 percent of homes are wireless only. The cord cutting trend seems less advanced in Canada, though, where a recent survey found about 15 percent of homes had cut the cord and become mobile-only households.

"Closed Versus Open," "Context or Distribution" Debates Never Die

Remember "Videotext?" Few now do. Before there was a public Internet, before browsers and the World Wide Web, AT&T and other telcos, as well as cable companies were experimenting with what we might today call multimedia.

And the approaches illustrate how some fundamental business and technology challenges oscillate over time, but never really are firmly settled. The "Viewtron" system was closed. The service providers were in charge of programming the service just as video entertainment service providers select which channels to carry. 

At the time (early 1980s), that might have appeared the only feasible way to aggregate and present electronic content on a widespread basis, as the PC had yet to clearly emerge as a mass market device. 

Later, we saw the first iteration of the "open versus closed" approaches to software or hardware platforms, a debate that never seems fully settled. 

Likewise, executives and observers of the video entertainment business have in the past argued about whether "content or distribution is king," a phrase that nicely captures the characterization of influence within the ecosystem. At times, it has seemed as though either content or distribution were "king." Recently, Apple's products have been the chief examples of instances where "distribution" (device ecosystem, in this case) seemed to be paramount. 

Apple also has emerged as the chief exemplar of the "closed" approach to development of software and hardware, at least in terms of end user experience. Recently, Android has emerged as the latest example of an open approach. 

It often seems, for a time, that one approach has decisively "won." In the PC era, it seemed open had clearly beaten closed. In the early mobile era, closed seemed to be the only model. In the smart phone era, open is emerging again.

In the video entertainment business, content initially was king. But with the advent of cable TV, power shifted towards distribution. With the arrival of the Internet and broadband, influence is shifting back towards content. 

The point is that these debates never are "finally" settled. Perhaps the reason is that a variety of business strategies will work. 

Amazon Could Be Working On A Square Competitor

As each new mobile payment service launches, the number of suppliers offering lower transaction fees grows. The latest rumor has Amazon readying a mobile payments product that could compete with Square, Intuit GoPayment and PayPal Here, TechCrunch reports.

Amazon is said to be targeting smaller chains of retailers, a logical positioning given the value of a smart phone or tablet dongle approach for a smaller retailer.

Amazon could be offering significantly lower credit card processing fees for merchants as part of its pitch. Rumors are that Amazon could be offering a rate as low as 1.9 percent. Current offerings include fees of around 2.7 percent.

Such a move would put Amazon into the physical retailing environment in a new way, and also shows why growing competition in the payments processing business is leading to lower fees for retailers who use the services. 

A survey by the National Retail Federation in 2011 found that while only six percent of retailers said they used mobile point-of-sale devices, half of the respondents said at the time that they planned to adopt such devices over the next 18 months.