Friday, March 25, 2011

Alcatel-Lucent Ventures on Mobile Payment Challenges

 Brian Stout, Alcatel-Lucent Director, Alcatel-Lucent Ventures, talks about the challenges of offering a mobile payments solution. 


"It really is about consumer adoption," says Stout. "How do you replace the leather wallet?" As simple a question as that might be, the answers are complex because the existing business already is complex, and might be disrupted if a mobile can displace a credit card or debit card.


Mobile operators, merchants and banks all have customer relationships, but who owns the customer in a mobile payments context?  And make no mistake: changing the status quo is really key. Mobile operators want to lower churn and get revenue from non-traditional means. Merchants want loyalty. 


"Our vision is that you have to create value beyond payment," says Stout. And the whole business has to get to critical mass as well. 



Beyond payment, there are other values. Can you replace library cards and other information vehicles? Mobile payment systems will  have to integrate with existing back office and customer care systems; support multiple stored-value accounts;  cash, loyalty points, coupons and other offers. 


Digital signage apps also are part of the ecosystem, says Stout. Advertising, location services, voice and social media also will be part of the solution. 

Mobile Shopping: Before, During, and After a Sale

It might be easy to miss the full extent of the growing role mobile devices are playing in the "shopping" process because so much attention is rightly focused on mobile payment or social shopping (Groupon, LivingSocial). In the former case you have the actual payment transaction, in the latter case the inducement to buy something.

The more subtle roles are played as people first become "searchers" before they become shoppers, looking for information first, before the intention to buy something has surfaced. To the extent that involves mobile search, recommendations and so forth, mobile as a venue for advertising and marketing is the issue.

Then, as searchers shift to the "shopping" mode, direction, location and mapping move to the fore. Then mobiles get used inside retail outlets for comparison information, further detail on products and possibly, exposure to any offers that might be current.

The point is that the ways people use their mobile devices before they get to a store is part of the shopping process, and creates business potential for different entities in different parts of the mobile ecosystem. Once a product is purchased there are other ways mobile can be used for supporting customer service, creating social reviews or supporting repeat behavior.

Mobile payments and social shopping are only two of the salient ways mobile is used in the shopping process, and only part of the ecosystem of activity growing up around mobiles.

Social Shopping $4 Billion in 2015

U.S. consumer spending on deal-a-day offers, social shopping, mobile coupon services such as Groupon or LivingSocial, will grow from $873 million in 2010 to $3.9 billion in 2015, representing a 35.1 percent compound annual growth rate, according to BIA/Kelsey.

But it also is possible the market could grow faster, to as much as $6.1 billion by 2015 (47.4 percent CAGR), while a very conservative outlook pegs the space at $2.1 billion (19.7 percent CAGR).

Thursday, March 24, 2011

SMB Market a New Battleground for Local, Online, Mobile Spending


Local media companies now are focusing on small local businesses for revenue growth. Companies like Groupon went from zero to more than $400 million in a year’s time just by targeting smaller businesses, for example.

A Borrell Associates survey of 2,872 small and medium size businesses found that they plan to increase their ad budgets 4.5 percent in 2011, but their online budgets 29 percent. The biggest gainers: email and social media advertising, including spending on their own websites.

Nexus S for Sprint 4G Network

Google Voice Works With Virtually all Sprint Handsets

HTC "Flyer" Tablet

Tablets now are available in form factors ranging from five inches to about 10 inches. The new HTC "Flyer" is a seven-inch device. http://news.yahoo.com/s/digitaltrends/20110324/tc_digitaltrends/handsonwiththehtcflyersprintevoview4gauseful7inchtablet?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Many Winners and Losers from Generative AI

Perhaps there is no contradiction between low historical total factor annual productivity gains and high expected generative artificial inte...