Why Maps Matter to Apple

Apple's recent introduction of its own "maps" app didn't go as well as Apple, or its users, would have preferred. 

The reasons why Apple wanted to control its own app are clear enough, though. 

Most people use map apps (about 89 percent of respondents to a Yankee Group survey say they have done so). 

More important, though, are the potential advertising implications. Mobile ads associated with maps or locations are estimated to account for about 25 percent of the roughly $2.5 billion spent on mobile ads in 2012, according to Optus Research, up from 10 percent in 2010. 

That is expected to grow as the number of location-aware software apps grows. But more than ad revenue, Apple is going after the map market to have more control over a key asset in the widening smartphone war. 

Maps are related to "location," and location is the key to the value of mobile advertising and promotion. 

Google Maps is used by more than 90 percent of U.S. iPhone users. So engagement is an issue as well. 

Many Telcos are Delveraging, Softbank Will Have to Load Up on Debt to Buy Sprint

Most leading telcos in Western Europe now are attempting to delverage and clean up balance sheets. But Softbank, which had debt load issues of its own, and cleaned them up, now faces the possibility of taking on a bigger debt load again to buy Sprint and control Clearwire.

It's a risk Softbank appears to be willing to take in pursuit of growth Softbank cannot find in its home market.

Mobile Service Providers Will Lose $54 Billion Worth of Text Messaging Revenue by 2016

Ovum forecasts that by 2016 mobile operators will have lost $54 billion in text messaging (short message service, or SMS) revenues from over the top social messaging services on smart phones.

That would be more than double the $23 billion mobile service providers are expected to have lost by the end of 2012. 

Ovum analysts believe that collaboration with handset manufacturers is imperative if operators are to remain relevant and competitive in the messaging industry.

Service providers in Europe and Asia-Pacific will be affected the most, Ovum says. What remains unclear is whether Rich Communication Suite (RCS) will allow operators to slow the rate of displacement. 

About 75 percent of Dutch smart phone owners have WhatsApp installed on their device, with more than 80 percent of these using the app at least once per day, Ovum notes. 

This translates into a presence of more than 5.5 million smart phones in the Netherlands. Among iPhone users, WhatsApp has about 90 percent penetration. 

Can Rural or Small Mobile Companies Really Compete?

It remains a challenging prospect for any smaller or non-dominant mobile service provider to compete with the likes of AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint or T-Mobile USA, for lots of reasons. Still, some 62 percent of independent telcos surveyed by the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association say they are now providing wireless service to their customers.

Of course, in a scale business, the respondents worry about competition with the larger mobile companies, of course. 

Some 92 percent of respondents cited competition from national carriers as their chief concern. Negotiating roaming agreements also remains challenging, with 69 percent of respondents saying that negotiating data roaming and in-market roaming agreements with other carriers is moderately to extremely difficult.


About 38 percent of the respondents not currently offering wireless service indicated 
they are considering doing so.  Some 53 percent have previously considered offering 
wireless service and deemed it not feasible, while nine percent have never considered offering wireless services. 


Survey respondents serve an average (mean) of 9,968 wireless subscribers with an average of 38 cell sites.  A few larger respondents skew these numbers upwards, though. 

The median number of wireless subscribers is 1,601 and the median number of cell sites is nine.  

The average customer’s monthly wireless bill is between $50 and $60, and the typical 
customer uses just over 600 minutes monthly

NTT Docomo to Launch Global Mobile Wallet in 2013

NTT Docomo will be launching its mobile wallet service on a global basis in 2012, in partnership with Japan's MasterCard, allowing NTT Docomo customers to make purchases at merchants supporting MasterCard's PayPass terminals.

The service will leverage a new generation of mobile phones that support both near field communications and the embedded Sony FeliCa chips used to power NTT Docomo's  existing Osaifu-Keitai service.

Want More Efficient Spectrum Use? Don't Tax It

Efforts to repurpose spectrum (either using intra- or inter-firm transfers) face a number of significant hurdles, including primarily the need for government approval. That often means concessions that essentially are a tax on the process of moving spectrum from lower-value purposes to higher-value purposes.

In its Taxation by Condition:  Spectrum Repurposing at the FCC and the Prolonging of Spectrum Exhaust, Phoenix Center economists. discuss how the regulatory process often acts like a “tax” on private transactions in the form of value-extracting mandatory and voluntary conditions.  

Conditions are a form of a tax (or operate in the same manner as a tax) in that they reduce the value of the transaction to the parties involved.  

When viewed as a tax, the implications of the regulatory process become readily apparent.  When you tax something: (1) you get less of it; and (2) you can affect what types of transactions you get.  

“Taxing” efforts to move spectrum to higher-valued uses is a particular bad policy when facing a spectrum shortage, the  Phoenix Center argues.

"PayPal is not a Mobile Wallet Company"

With the caveat that "what a thing is" is different from "what a thing does," and with the further caveat that marketers and public relations personnel have the job of trying to shape and define companies and their products, it is perhaps noteworthy that a PayPal "spinmeister" argues that PayPal is "not a mobile wallet or mobile payments company."

To be sure, that is completely true in the "what a thing is" sense. PayPal has been in the payments space for a long time. It can be used in a "mobile wallet or mobile payments" application. 

In part, any PayPal insistence that it is "not just" a mobile payment or mobile wallet" company is correct. But the language might arguably also be called an attempt by PayPal to separate itself from many other firms that provide some of the same functions as PayPal.

That tactic is an old one. Whether true or not, marketers often try to use language to position products and companies as "more comprehensive" or somehow "qualitatively different" than those of competitors. 

But there might be something else at work, as well. PayPal's real objective is to extend its operations and revenue from the online space to the "real world" retail space. 

"We are on the brink of another game changing revolution that will change shopping more in the next few years than the Internet changed retail because it will affect all our purchases," says Anuj Nayar, PayPal  senior director, global communications. 

"At PayPal we have had a digital wallet for 14 years, we are just updating it to let our customers shop wherever they want, not just online."

So the possible importance here is a shift of much market thinking from "payments" or "mobile" to "commerce."