Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Six iPhones Sold for Every Nokia N8

A Morgan Stanley survey of 150 handset retailers in five countries in Europe shows N8 sell-through of one for every six Apple (AAPL) iPhones that are sold, notes Morgan Stanley analyst Patrick Standaert.

Surprisingly, perhaps, Standaert thinks that is a "win" for Nokia. That is more a measure of low expectations for Nokia than anything else, one might argue.

Twitter's Major Publishing Dilemma

Twitter has the potential to be much more, and everyone there knows it. It has millions of dedicated users, but it also has tens of millions who can't quite figure out what the value is.

The problem, of course, is that while Twitter makes it nearly effortless for folks to publish their own thoughts, it has done far too little to help those same folks glean value from the thoughts of others.

At its core, publishing is about determining signal from noise. And that might be among Twitter's greatest opportunities. Traditionally, publishing has been able aggregating the "good stuff," the "stuff you need to know," from all the rest. Even online, even in the context of social networking, that mission remains. Twitter already is part of the "media" ecosystem. The issue is whether it can become a bigger part of that ecosystem.

U.S. Smartphone Battle Heats Up:Apple and Android are "Most Desired" Platforms

When mobile users who planned to upgrade to a smartphone in the next year were asked about their next phone, Apple’s iOS and Android were tied for “most desired” operating system.

Click image for a larger view.

Among users planning to get a new smartphone, current smartphone owners showed a preference for the Apple iPhone (35 percent), while 28 percent of both smartphone and featurephone planned smartphone upgraders indicated they wanted a device with an Android operating system as their next mobile phone.

Featurephone owners planning to get a smartphone are less likely to have made up their mind about the OS they will choose: 25 percent were “not sure” what their next desired OS might be compared to 13 percent of smartphone owners. Those over 55 were markedly less certain than younger mobile users, with 27.8 saying they weren’t sure what kind of device they wanted next, compared to 12.2 percent of those 18 to 24.

Apple’s iPhone and devices with the Android operating system were the “most desired” among likely smartphone upgraders, with Apple showing a slight lead among those age 55 , 18 to 24, and 25 to 34.

U.S. Smartphone Battle Heats Up: Which is the “Most Desired” Operating System? | Nielsen Wire

According to October 2010 data from The Nielsen Company, 29.7 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers now own smartphones that run full operating systems.

The most popular smartphones are the Apple iPhone and RIM Blackberry, which are caught in a statistical dead heat with 27 percent of smartphone market share in the U.S. Twenty-two percent of smartphone owners have devices with the Android operating system.

F.C.C. Chairman Has Plan to Regulate Internet Broadband Providers

"Thwarted by the courts, by lawmakers on Capitol Hill and by some of his fellow commissioners, the Federal Communications Commission chairman will try again on Wednesday to devise a new strategy for regulating broadband Internet service providers," the New York Times reports.

But think about the statement: "Thwarted by the courts, the Congress and even fellow FCC commissioners." The FCC's authority is delegated to it by the Congress, which has not expressly done so. The courts supposedly only "interpret" the laws passed by Congress, and do not "make" law. Many would say the courts overstep their bounds, but for the moment just consider that the courts have ruled that the FCC has no authority to regulate broadband access.

Beyond those issues, which one might argue represent an unconstitutional overstepping of delegated authority, 37 Senators and 171 members of the House of Representatives already have sent the FCC a letter saying that the decision rests with Congress, not the agency.

Some would argue the key issue here is not disagreement over the specific proposals; it is that the FCC has no authority to act, administratively, to make law that is the province of the Congress.

Vodafone and T-Mobile Germany Plans:Alot Like Clearwire

In some ways, Vodafone and T-Mobile are planning on attacking the 4G consumer in much the same way Clearwire did in the United States. Both firms will start in rural areas before tackling metro markets, and both are focusing on dongle sales for connecting PCs, rather than voice services.

Vodafone plans to offer a Samsung dongle with tiered monthly plans costing between 42.50 and 72.50 EUR. The top rate provides users with up to 30 GBytes of data and peak download speeds of up to 50 Mbps. That’s starting with the small city of Rammenau, east of Dresden, where Vodafone hopes to get subscribers who still can’t get fast broadband access at home.

Moreover, the plan is to initially cover several hundred towns in rural areas and then expand the network to 1,500 locations by next spring.

T-Mobile has a similar strategy. It is aiming at rural users first and then expand to cities. The T-Mobile offer will be called Call & Surf via Funk and will start selling from next April. For 39.95 EUR per month, users get a fixed-line access alongside the LTE connection.

In all three cases--Clearwire, Vodafone and T-Mobile--4G is seen as a product competing with fixed-line broadband for PCs, not a product competing for mobile or smartphone customers.

Shai Berger Pitches Fonolo to Investors

http://www.shaiberger.com/2010/11/video-pitching-fonolo-on-the-pitch/ You have less than 10 minutes to convince three potential investment groups your idea is among those they should fund. This is how Shai Berger, Fonolo founder, handles the task.

Costs of Creating Machine Learning Models is Up Sharply

With the caveat that we must be careful about making linear extrapolations into the future, training costs of state-of-the-art AI models hav...