Unintended Consequences of Regulator Policy Decisions

Telecom policy makers always face tough choices when designing national communications policies. Because “for every public policy there is a corresponding private interest,” no single set of policies will universally be seen as “fair.” What helps big carriers often hurts smaller carriers. What favors mobile operators can disadvantage fixed network providers.

And, even where rules only affect a single provider, such as LightSquared or Dish Network, the affected providers might not think government rules are especially fair. And there always is a risk of unintended consequences, even when a policy is well intentioned.

Something like that, with price implications for lighter mobile data users, arguably has happened as an unintended result of an apparently unrelated decsion by the Federal Communications Commission regarding Verizon’s purchase of 700-MHz spectrum.

The FCC decided that Verizon was violating the “open access” rules of the 700 MHz spectrum licenses it purchased in 2008 by charging customers an additional $20 per month to tether their smartphones to other devices.

Verizon paid the fine and allowed tethering on all new data plans. Perhaps it is not a major issue, but one result of that ruling is that Verizon Wireless essentially has abandoned the “light user” part of the postpaid mobile broadband market, according to the Technology Policy Institute.

Basically, Verizon and T-Mobile USA offered lighter users the more-expensive data plans, before the decision. Afterwards, Verizon became the highest-priced alternative for light data users.

You might argue that the changes are completely coincidental. You might argue the changes do not reshape the market. 

But it is possible to argue that a decision ostensibly related to “open access” caused the leading mobile service provider to change its retail packaging in ways that made it the sole “high price” provider in the market where it had been within $5 to $10 a month of all the other leading providers. 

That's an unintended consequence, you might argue.

Search Can Predict Smart Phone Launch Success

Google says search predicts smart phone sales with over 90 percent accuracy.

In its "2012 Smartphone Launch Predictor" study, Google found that an extra 1,000 news stories in the weeks before launch will likely lead to a nine percent boost in smartphone sales.

About 52 percent of purchase-related searches occur before launch (and over one third of general smartphone searches).

An extra 25,000 mobile searches will likely increase smartphone sales 17 percent. One month after launch, those searches boost sales 20 percent.

Tablets a Nightmare for Microsoft?

Are tablets potentially a nightmare for Microsoft and other leaders in the PC market? Some think that could happen. The indicators include a shift of buyer spending towards tablets, and away from PCs.

At work, there is a trend of workers substituting tablets, smart phones and Apple PCs for Windows machines. Office suites can be sourced online, at free or low costs. Developer attention is shifting to iOS and Android.

And then there are the questions about Windows 8 and Windows Phone. Those fears might be overblown. But the data points seem to suggest there is legitimate danger. We will know more as Windows 8 rolls out, and as Windows Phone efforts intensify in 2013. 

Digital Wallet Value Proposition Might be Clearer for Online Payments

New markets often do not develop as proponents originally envisioned, at least in part because end users and customers often decide that the value represented by an innovation is different than what was intended by the developers. At least where it comes to products or services they never have seen before, people are unpredictable. 

That might also be true for "mobile wallets" and "digital wallets," which generally are seen as innovations for retail checkout and shopping. But it might turn out that people find more value for online shopping and checkout. 

Today’s consumer types in an average of 44 fields when shopping online, and V.me gets you down to five or six, Visa says. 

Smart Phone Becomes “Primary” Screen for Teenagers, for First Time

Once upon a time, the movie theater was the primary content consumption screen, followed by the television. These days, a smart phone, tablet or PC increasingly is likely to have become the primary media consumption screen for a significant percentage of users, a study by Orange suggests.

The “Orange Exposure 2012/2013” study shows a  stark contrast in mobile media habits between teenagers and adults, for example.

For teenagers, the mobile phone is the primary screen, for the first time, not the TV or PC.

Also, adults are using multiple screens more interchangeably than ever before, choosing the most suitable screen for any particular situation, Orange says.

In the United Kingdom, 83 percent of teenagers have a smart phone and 95 percent have one in Spain. In addition, 92 percent of teenagers in the United Kingdom say mobile is a “way to always have a media device at hand” and 55 per cent of teenagers in the UK say that they prefer their mobile over other screens.

Consumers also are increasingly using their mobile or tablet to replicate the same experience on their PC, about  62 percent of consumers in the United Kingdom agree. Consumers also are multitasking. Some 90 percent of consumers access the internet at the same time as watching TV,  in the United Kingdom. 

es the tablet device is designed to be used as a content consumption device.

At the same time as interchangeable usage is occurring, larger screens on smart phones are making accessing multimedia easier, and “smaller” sized tablets are increasing their portability. In Spain, 16 percent of tablet owners also own the more portable Samsung Galaxy Tab, for example.

The percentage of people primarily accessing mobile media ‘out and about’ on both their mobile and tablet has significantly increased across all markets.

In the United Kingdom 58 percent of respondents say they use their devices to access content and media while out and about.

Tablet use to access content and media “out and about” has grown from 11 percent of users in 2011 to 21 percent in 2012 in the United Kingdom.

And though some would say tablets are not a substitute for a PC, about 75 percent of tablet media users want to “find the same things on their tablet as on their PC,” the study also found. That doesn’t mean people believe they can “work” on a tablet in the same way as on a PC.

But where it comes to content and information, they do expect they will be able to consume all the same content they would expect to get on a PC.

Tablet devices arguably also are used as commerce platforms. Some 62 percent of tablet users have used their tablet to pay, redeem or reserve something over the last six months.  

Some 58 percent of tablet users paid for something online. The point is that tablets and smart phones are changing user behavior.

Freemium Apps Grow Google Play Revenue 350% in 2012

Freemium app revenues in both iOS and Google Play stores have, over the last two years,  more than quadrupled, for both Google Play and the Apple Store. 

In 2012, global "freemium" app revenues on Google Play have grown 3.5 times over 2011, App Annie says, Those revenues include content or virtual goods sales inside the free to use apps and advertising. 

Premium revenues (paid apps)  for both app stores remained relatively flat in 2011 and 2012. 

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Value and Data Consumption are Not Closely Correlated, for Smart Phone Users

Though it is helpful in some ways to know how much total bandwidth is consumed from fixed devices, on fixed networks, compared to mobile devices on mobile networks, volume of data is not a reasonable proxy for value.

The reason is that the value of the mobile applications is very high, even if total consumed bandwidth is relatively low. And it appears the value of many different Internet applications is one reason so many people have embraced smart phones.

On the other hand, few of the popular activities really consume all that much bandwidth, and many of the activities have a real-time focus. The value comes largely from the context, the ability to get information immediately and use it to direct one's activities.