Mobile commerce in the U.S. continues to grow, with Amazon leading the way. “But when it comes to mobile, Amazon’s ambitions are anything but limited to ecommerce,” reports Business Insider.
Amazon’s mobile ambitions include tablet and smartphone sales, software sales, media sales and mobile ads.
The company’s new Kindle Fire will compete with the Nexus and iPad mini while the Amazon Appstore continues to do well and will likely expand as more devices are released and apps are created for them.
As the Kindle Fire continues to expand its user base, media sales are likely to climb as well, with growing sales of ebooks, MP3s, movies and TV shows.
“Amazon continues to push forward with the makings of a smartphone platform… the beginnings of a platform strategy are coming together: a recent purchase of 3D mapping startup UpNext, last year’s acquisition of voice recognition software creator Yap, and the launch of a prepaid wireless service in Japan,” notes the article.
And as many companies are struggling to figure out monetizing mobile ads, Amazon is likely to be at the forefront.
According to a new study from Forrester, e-commerce businesses should consider focusing less on social media. Fewer than one percent of 77,000 online transactions could be traced back to popular social media networks like Facebook and Pinterest.
“E-commerce websites still convert more highly than any other channel, accounting for 30 percent of transactions. Thus it’s smart for retailers to promote their domain names as much as possible,” writes Mashable.
After direct visits, organic search and paid search are the two largest drivers of new customer purchases, accounting for 39 percent of such transactions.
The Web is still a useful tool for “spear fishers” — people who know exactly what they want and search for that item alone. “For repeat shoppers, e-mail is the most effective sales influencer: Nearly a third of purchases from repeat customers initiated with an e-mail,” explains the post.
“Social media’s potential as a shopping portal has yet to be realized,” suggests Mashable. “Less than 1 percent of transactions from both new and repeat shoppers could be linked to social networks, Forrester found.”
“The researcher believes social media can still be a powerful marketing tool, and that social media’s influence on purchase behavior likely can’t be measured in the 30-day attribution window the report examined.” It’s worth noting that small businesses, not included in the study, may have better results with social media as a sales driver.
As smartphone adoption expands, users are not only switching their consumption of content over to mobile, but also increasing how much they consume. A new report from BI Intelligence shows how mobile technology has enticed consumers to “access more media than they otherwise would.”
Digital consumers tend to read more than print-only readers. The report found that 41 percent of tablet owners access books on their device.
Access to music is a primary motivation in adopting smartphones. “The percentage of all U.S. mobile users listening to music on their phones increased from 12 percent in September 2009 to 27 percent in May,” explains Business Insider. “Mobile digital music has not made up for the stagnant record sales, but it has helped fueled the rise of mobile-focused music companies. Mobile now accounts for 70 percent of Pandora’s traffic.”
Mobiles have also increased news consumption significantly, expanding the U.S. digital news audience by 17 percent last year. “Mobile readers go to news sites more often, spent more time per visit, and read more articles per visit than desktop readers,” notes the article.
Additionally, mobile users are increasingly watching long-form videos (not just YouTube clips) and using their devices as second or third screens.
Consumers are often disappointed when it comes to their favorite brands’ mobile-optimized sites, according to a study commissioned by Google.
While 72 percent expect sites to work well on their mobile devices, almost all consumers have discovered sites that are not mobile-friendly.
More than half of consumers say a bad site hurts their perception of the brand and forces them to shop elsewhere, and 67 percent say that an optimized site encourages purchases.
“While some [of the findings] seem obvious, the data provide a wake-up call,” notes Jason Spero, Google’s head of global mobile sales and strategy.
Consumer expectations seem rather simple. For example, 76 percent merely want the sites to fit the mobile screen.
“Seventy-six percent of consumers said they want to be able to find a company’s location or operating hours,” reports Adweek.
“Sixty-one percent said they’d like to click a button to call a company, and 54 percent would like the ability to send an email,” explains the article. “And while the user may be visiting a brand’s mobile site, 53 percent said they’d like to be able to download its mobile app through the site.”
Data transmission just got a whole lot faster. The record for capacity on conventional optical fiber has been defeated 10 times over.
Four organizations teamed up to test a new technology that enables 1 petabit — 1,000 terabits or the equivalent of 5,000 HDTV two-hour long videos — to be transmitted each second over a 52.4 km length of 12-core optical fiber.
The Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) along with Fujikura Ltd, Hokkaido University and the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) demonstrated this new ultra-large capacity transmission.
The breakthrough could have a dramatic effect on broadband services, an area increasingly stressed by expanded smartphone traffic.
“Efforts to increase the capacity of optical networks to accommodate surging traffic demand have largely focused on driving down infrastructure costs by using more efficient optical communications equipment to support more widespread deployment of broadband services without changing the structure of optical fiber itself,” NTT’s press release states.
“With further cooperation and development of these technologies that exploit the freedom of optical fiber spatial structures, optical amplification, and spectrally-efficient transmission technologies, this will open the way to even longer distance transmission and very large capacity optical networks that support the continued rollout of broadband services in the years ahead,” suggests the release.
Free Internet advocates and privacy protectors hail Do Not Track, while advertisers claim it will destroy the Internet as all content is supposedly funded through tracking-based ads.
“But according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), the online advertising industry had revenue of $31.7 billion in 2011, and only about 15 percent of that, $4.9 billion, came from online behavioral advertising (OBA), ads that target consumers through personal information-powered tracking techniques and that are causing the privacy controversy,” writes attorney and privacy advocate Sarah A. Downey for TechCrunch.
Do Not Track is even less influential when you consider not all Internet users enable the tool; websites have no obligation to respond to a Do Not Track signal and most ignore it; Do Not Track doesn’t mean advertisers aren’t collecting and selling your data — they’re just not targeting you with ads; and finally, 80 percent of the money advertising makes from targeted advertising goes to improving targeted ads, NOT to content providers.
As the ad revenue increased 530 percent since 2002, people have become increasingly concerned about tracking, with 68 percent saying they’re not okay with tracking-based targeted ads and another 71 percent saying they’re very concerned about their information being sold or shared without their permission.
“We repeatedly hear that users want to understand what data is being collected, by whom, and how these companies might ultimately use it,” explains Downey. “These questions are the real unknowns that consumers care about and that advertising companies can’t answer. What is all this data they’re collecting, and where is it all going?”
Downey suggests that most advertising “doesn’t pose any privacy threat because it’s contextual, meaning it’s based on where the ad is placed, not on who sees the ad,” and recommends starting a dialogue on the issue.
If Microsoft succeeds in convincing the browser industry that its “Do Not Track” is the right way to go, “Facebook’s new FBX ad exchange could be ‘marginalized dramatically’ — and the web ad exchange business generally could be destroyed,” reports Business Insider.
“Real-time bidding on ad exchanges that target people via cookies is currently a $2 billion business, according to Bloomberg,” explains the article. And Facbook, through its FBX, is expected to capture a full $1 billion of that market in time.
But not all think it will work out that way for Facebook. “Eric Wheeler, CEO of social ad targeting company 33Across, and Jason Bier, chief privacy officer of ValueClick, both told me they regard IE10 and its default DNT position as a fundamental threat to FBX and the online ad business generally,” notes Business Insider.
If that same sort of default DNT position were to be adopted within Firefox and/or Chrome, “then any company that relied on cookies serving data collected from other websites — so called ‘third-party data’ — could go out of business,” the article explains.
Ad exchanges are used more frequently by small businesses than by large media publishers, which prefer to sell directly to clients. “I’m quite scared for small businesses out there,” says Bier. “They’re going to get destroyed. Facebook will survive this. Small businesses won’t.”
Most consumers that “Like” brand pages on Facebook save money, according to research from Lab42. The market research company surveyed 1,000 social media users on their Facebook brand interaction habits.
The report indicates that about half of consumers value a brand’s Facebook page more than the company’s own website. Overall, 87 percent of surveyed individuals report they liked at least one brand on Facebook.
The largest motivation for liking brands is to save money, according to the report, as 34 percent like the pages for “Promotions/discounts” and 21 percent like the brands for “Free giveaways.”
But while consumers love printing coupons and saving money, brands need not overdo their Facebook activity; 73 percent of people have unliked a brand, and the largest reason to do so is because a brand posts too frequently.
Brands can gain more Facebook fans by posting more giveaways and coupons, posting less often overall, and letting Facebook users hide that they like the brand. The last item is the trickiest for the brands, as companies want information to be public. But many people are embarrassed to like certain brands, and privacy can help increase the total number of fans.
New technology called WebRTC — also known as RTCWEB (Real Time Communication on the Web) — “is poised to send a virtual tsunami through the mobile communications industry, likely changing the landscape for a good long time,” writes Erik Lagerway for GigaOM.
The premise behind WebRTC is to put voice and video services technology inside browsers and devices so that “when a developer wants to enable voice or video calling, they can use the code that is already there,” explains Lagerway. “The only way to do that on a mobile device today is with a stand alone app, which is not easy.”
Lagerway, who co-founded Hookflash and calls himself a “serial Voice-over-IP entrepreneur,” has worked with teams that have developed voice and video apps.
He believes that “WebRTC could take a great deal of heavy lifting out of the equation for developers and end up becoming the common denominator in the new mobile network.”
“The WebRTC open standards project has been in progress for more than a year now, and there are plenty of early demos of WebRTC already,” he writes.
“I think we will likely see some production deployments of WebRTC in the next six to nine months, when Firefox and Chrome for Android support it in a production version of their browsers. And Google seems primed to deploy it to their large user base on Hangouts.”
In a sign of the shifting entertainment landscape, an online-video series funded by YouTube is being turned into a syndicated TV show to run on ABC stations.
The healthy-cooking series “Recipe Rehab” was launched on YouTube in April on Everyday Health Inc.’s YouTube channel. It will now produce 30-minute episodes to appear on “nearly all stations affiliated with Walt Disney Co.’s ABC,” reports the Wall Street Journal.
This is not the first time a successful YouTube program has made the jump to TV. The character “Annoying Orange” first appeared on YouTube and then made its way to the Cartoon Network.
“But ‘Recipe Rehab’ is the first program from a YouTube-funded channel to air on broadcast TV, a sign that the Google site is attracting professional-grade content,” writes WSJ.
For YouTube, this is an example of its business model at work. The site has “showered dozens of video creators, including Everyday Health, with more than $150 million in cash advances to spur high-quality content for the site, to lure more viewers and bigger advertisers,” explains the article.
It is YouTube’s hope that these moves will challenge the traditional supremacy of TV and cable in the eyes of advertisers.
Kevin C. Tofel, writing for GigaOM, highlights several themes that emerged during the recent Mobilize 2012 event.
“Don’t count out HTML5 just yet,” he writes. Although going with HTML5 didn’t work out for Facebook, it could still have an impact.
“The ‘point of sale’ is now everywhere.” Tofel notes near-field communication (NFC) payment methods and successful companies like Square, which touts mobile payments made by 35 million unique American users.
“Video is becoming a primary mobile activity.” Tofel writes that “the granddaddy of all video sites, Google’s YouTube, is now delivering 25 percent of its content to mobile devices and the figure is likely to rise in tandem with mobile broadband subscriptions.”
“Connected homes will only appeal if the solutions are simple and add value.” Improvements are likely to be made, enabling easier, more centralized home connections.
“Developers needs to consider the broadband their software needs.” Of this, he writes: “Third party apps that eat through gobs of mobile broadband could be passed over for similar apps that use less data.”
According to new research from NPD Group, a la carte movie rentals (or iVOD) are very popular on cable VOD, which added up to nearly half of all such transactions in the first half of 2012.
“Apple’s digital storefront managed 8 percent share — less than Comcast (23 percent), DirecTV (14 percent) and Time Warner Cable (9 percent) drew individually,” reports Variety.
“Verizon finished just behind iTunes with 7 percent, but telco iVOD is growing faster year-over-year than the entire category, 24 percent to 15 percent,” notes the post.
The NPD research does not include subscription VOD services like Netflix or electronic sell-through.
“When it comes to paying for on-demand movies on an a la carte basis, cable companies are by far the primary conduit, due in large part to their widespread penetration and usage in Americans’ homes,” says Russ Crupnick, senior VP of industry analysis for NPD Group. “Even as iVOD, and VOD from satellite-media companies and telcos grow in popularity, cable companies continue to dominate the VOD movie rental market.”
Barnes & Noble announced its plans to launch a new video service in the U.S. this fall for Nook tablets (followed by a holiday release in the UK).
Nook Video will be a streaming and download service that offers film and TV content from HBO, Disney, Sony, Starz, Viacom and Warner Bros. Other top studios will reportedly be joining soon.
Barnes & Noble is also developing free apps that will allow users to access the service on other tablets, smartphones and connected TVs.
Content downloaded from the Nook Store will be stored in a cloud-based digital locker, allowing users to stop and resume viewing from any supported device.
“Nook Video will also integrate a customer’s compatible physical DVD and Blu-ray Disc purchases and digital video collection across their devices through UltraViolet,” explains the press release.
“Customers will soon be able to easily link their UltraViolet accounts to the Nook Cloud allowing them to view their previously and newly purchased UltraViolet-enabled movies and TV shows across Nook devices and Nook Video apps, as well as through third party applications,” adds the release.
Approximately 90 U.S. television stations are already transmitting Mobile DTV signals.
The Open Mobile Video Coalition held a press conference on Capitol Hill announcing that local Mobile DTV will roll out by 130 stations in 50 markets during the next few months.
Speakers at the event included several politicians; Derek McGinty of WUSA-TV in Washington; Lynn Claudy, senior VP of technology for NAB and Eric Moreno, senior VP of corporate development with Fox Networks.
“Among Moreno’s points of discussion was the advent of the new Samsung Galaxy S Lightway 4G handset, the first smartphone to come with a preloaded Dyle TV app,” reports TVTechnology.
“It is available in 12 markets where TV stations are now transmitting Dyle-branded signals, that costs north of $400; as well as what are known as ‘dongles,’ which the industry will rely on to further boost the use of the technology.” The small plug-in antennas from Belkin and Elgato will run about $100.
It will cost approximately $125,000 for stations to set up for Mobile DTV transmissions.
“There are 64 million iPhones and iPads in use in the U.S.,” Moreno explained. “If you reach 1 percent penetration, you’ve got yourself a business.”
“This is the culmination of a number of years of work from disparate sectors of the television industry,” added Claudy, “that marks the start of a new broadcast service. Now we have to convince the entirety of the industry to use it and the market to adopt it.”
Even as people in the U.S. struggle to find jobs in the tough economy, some employers can’t fill positions that require technical skills.
“There is a serious skills gap in the country. Not enough students are majoring in STEM fields — Science, Technology, Engineering and Math,” reports the Wall Street Journal. “As a result, their skills don’t match those needed for the jobs that are most in demand.”
The article summarizes the thoughts of MIT professor Richard Larson, who thinks that widespread literacy in STEM is “as important to our 21st century information economy as basic reading-writing literacy has been to the industrial economy of the past two centuries,” notes the article.
“The ‘engineering mentality’ and approach are needed in virtually all aspects of society,” says Larson. “This is good news for both men and women whose career goals are more towards societal improvement than techno-gadget creation.”
“We all need STEM thinking skills,” suggests Larson. “But perhaps the most important reason for everyone to become STEM literate is to build a more informed citizenry. In that way we individually and collectively become better decision makers about all the options that our world and we face. STEM is not only for Ph.D. researchers. It’s for all of us!”