Mac Users do "Think Different"

The NPD Group says consumers who own Apple Mac computers are much more likely than PC users to pay to download music. According to NPD, in the third quarter of 2007 half of all Mac users had paid to download music tracks from sites like iTunes, but just 16 percent of PC owners had done so.

And while Mac users were more likely to pay to download digital music than their PC-using counterparts, they were also more likely to purchase CDs.

“There’s still a cultural divide between Apple consumers and the rest of the computing world, and that’s especially apparent when it comes to the way they interact with music,” says Russ Crupnick, NPD Group VP. “Mac users are not only more active in digital music, they are also more likely to buy CDs, which helps debunk the myth that digital music consumers stop buying music in CD format.”

According to NPD’s consumer panel data, unit-volume sales share for Apple computers increased from nearly six percent in 2006 to almost nine percent between January 2007 and October 2007.

Overall, more than 32 percent of Mac users report purchasing CDs in the third quarter of 2007, compared to just 28 percent of PC users.

In addition to purchasing CDs and downloading music, Mac users are also more likely to listen to music and watch videos on their MP3-players and computers.

While 34 percent of Mac users had uploaded music to their MP3 players, just 16 percent of PC users had done the same. Mac users are also much more likely to listen to music files on their computers (56 percent) than are PC users (31 percent).

Qwest Really Isn't Interested in IPTV

Qwest Communications International Inc. no longer will pursue cable franchise agreements with Colorado cities or build community-wide TV service in areas where it's recently won franchise approval. That's more confirmation of Qwest's strategic direction in video, which is to rely on its partner DirecTV for linear TV services.

Though Qwest plans to upgrade its broadband capacity in 10 major markets and 10 smallers ones in the company's 14-state service area, that is solely for the purpose of broadband-based services other than entertainment video.

Qwest still supports the idea of statewide television franchises. But it won't seek such a franchise.

Nokia N96: N95 in a New Shell?

This image, from Mobile-Review.com, strike some people as looking like an N81, but larger. To others it resembles an N95. No specs available yet, it seems.

Digital TV Transition: Not Y2K

In February 2009, all over-the-air analog TV broadcasting will be shut off. Some observers are concerned that consumers aren't acutely aware of the coming changes, resulting in massive disruption of the TV experience on the day of the analog broadcasting shut off.

Maybe not. The only potentially-affected customers are those who rely solely on over-the-air signal reception. Customers of cable, satellite or telco TV services won't have to do anything. To be sure, cable, satellite or telco TV providers will have to supply a new digital decoder if one is not already in place. But the point is that the providers will take care of their own customers, and that's 85 percent to 90 percent of all TV viewers.

Of those customers who have over-the-air connections, those who have bought TVs with digital tuners will not notice anything other than universally-better pictures. So the real issue lies with a single-digits number of viewers who have analog-only tuners.

By the time the transition nears, every mass market electronics retailer will have taken steps to push the sale of digital decoders. So this will not be anything like a feared "Y2K" event.

Low Awareness of Google Apps?

In a recent survey, NPD asked PC users whether they had heard about online, browser-based office productivity applications like Google Docs & Spreadsheets or other similar Web-based apps.

About 94 percent say they never have heard of Web-based productivity suites. About half of one percent have substituted Web-based productivity suites for desktop software such as Microsoft Office.

Google Docs and Spreadsheets perhaps is the most visible of the Web-based suites. But apparently a long ways from being a mainstream application.

EComm: The Trillon Dollar Market

I usually don't "plug" conferences. But EComm, to be held in March, is an exception, in part because it is a "bottoms up" meeting being organized by people in the IP communications business, not by a well-established conference producing organization.

The other reason is that I am primarily a "content" person, most interested in the intellectual capital being created at such meetings, not the important but more pointedly commercial aspects of trade shows. I respect the folks over at STL (Telco 2.0) for this reason as well.

Lee Dryburgh, who is pulling this together, shares a perspective on what is happening in the trillion-dollar-annual-revenue telecom business. "The first wave of the democratization of communications was market liberalization," Dryburgh notes. "The second wave was VoIP."

"Yet VoIP as a standalone product is not viable long term (consumer attraction is drifting away from "standalone telephony") and VoIP is unlikely to ever be highly profitable," he insists. "In short, VoIP is something 90s which has had little consumer success since."

"The third chapter onwards is far more exciting and profitable," Dryburgh believes. "It is this chapter onwards that eComm seems to track, promote and highlight."

"The third chapter takes VoIP as one building block of many to be fused together into "application experiences"; largely social applications or business efficiency products (or both)."

I happen to agree with him, and lots of us do. You should really check this out:

http://www.ecommedia.com

(I apologize for this not being a hot link, but I have never been able to figure out how to do that, despite following the instructions. Just a dumb end user problem.)

Or click on the new "Related Article" field at the bottom of the post. I've had to play with the HTML, which, as a Mac person, I really hate. I need to enhance it a bit, but that might take me a year...really....

If the future of the global telecom industry is a concern you share, be there.

FTC Okays Google DoubleClick Buy

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission will not try to block Google's acquisition of online ad-serving vendor DoubleClick, the agency said Thursday.

The commission voted 4-1 to approve the deal after an eight-month investigation. "After carefully reviewing the evidence, we have concluded that Google's proposed acquisition of DoubleClick is unlikely to substantially lessen competition," the majority wrote in a statement.

The commission downplayed concerns brought by some privacy groups. Privacy concerns are "not unique to Google and DoubleClick," and "extend to the entire online advertising marketplace," commissioners wrote.