November 2011

The 10 Most Popular Mobile Purchases

Tablets may be good for watching movies or reading books, but it looks like consumers are increasingly using it for something else, too: shopping.

According to a study from mobile ad network Jumptap and comScore, 63 percent of tablet owners have made a purchase with their device, as opposed to just 31 percent of mobile owners. That compares to 83 percent of PC owners who have completed a purchase on their laptop or desk computer. Among consumers aged 18 to 34, the gap between PC and tablet shopping is even narrower with 79 percent saying that they’ve made tablet purchases and 89 percent indicating that they’ve used their PC for shopping. Mobile purchasing also skews male. Jumptap’s study also found that consumers appear to be more willing to use their mobile devices for banking.

Jumptap’s study looked at the most popular mobile purchases:

Event tickets; daily deals: 38 percent of mobile device owners have made these purchases (tie)
Apparel or accessories: 36 percent
Travel; physical copies of books, video games or movies: 33 percent (tie)
Consumer electronics (TVs, etc., but excluding mobile phones): 32 percent
Flowers and gifts; toys: 30 percent (tie)
General services (photo printing, shipping services, etc.): 26 percent
Consumer packaged goods; sports and fitness: 25 percent (tie)

FCC Seeks Comment on Spectrum Bridge’s Spectrum Database System

The Federal Communications Commission’s Office of Engineering and Technology (OET) is requesting comment on the recently completed 45-day public trial of Spectrum Bridge Inc.’s database system designed to support the operation of unlicensed transmitting devices in broadcast television spectrum bands (TV bands database system).

In a Public Notice released September 14, 2011, DA 11-1534, the FCC announced that, beginning September 19, 2011, it was conducting a 45-day public trial of Spectrum Bridge Inc.’s TV bands database system. This trial allowed the public to access and test Spectrum Bridge’s database system to ensure that it correctly identifies channels that are available for unlicensed TV bands devices, properly registers facilities entitled to protection, and provides protection to authorized services and registered facilities as specified in the rules. Participants were encouraged to report any inaccuracies or other issues with any aspect of the database system to Spectrum Bridge. Spectrum Bridge has provided a summary report on the trial of its TV bands database system to OET that identifies: (1) problems reported and their disposition; and (2) descriptions of changes made to the channel availability calculator or registration systems. The FCC is requesting that interested parties submit comments on the trial and this report.

Remember the "borderless" Internet? It's officially dead

From the perspective of the recently introduced Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which would set up US website blacklisting, require search engine censorship, and divide the Internet into "domestic" and "foreign" sites, the sorts of Internet arguments being made in the late 1990s don't sound like something from a foreign country so much as something from a foreign planet.

An important strain of thought in the mid-1990s was "cyberlibertarianism," a view that saw the Internet as something truly novel in world history. This exceptionalist position led to arguments that governments should leave the 'Net alone; existing law stopped at the modem jack, and beyond was a new realm called cyberspace that would solve its own problems. "You claim there are problems among us that you need to solve," wrote rancher, EFF co-founder, and Grateful Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow in a 1996 manifesto to governments. "You use this claim as an excuse to invade our precincts. Many of these problems don't exist. Where there are real conflicts, where there are wrongs, we will identify them and address them by our means." The conflicts would be worked out based on the Golden rule -- the only one recognized by "all our constituent cultures." The Internet was its own place, and needed its own government. As for all the horrific stuff that humans get up to in every place they have so far lived, Barlow downplayed it. "All the sentiments and expressions of humanity, from the debasing to the angelic, are parts of a seamless whole, the global conversation of bits,” Barlow wrote. It simply wasn’t possible to “separate the air that chokes from the air upon which wings beat.” Incredible sentiments when considered 15 years later -- but perhaps understandable when coming from someone like Barlow. What was more surprising was that the most famous Internet case of the era went even further.

About 27% of Pay-TV Customers Also Subscribe To Netflix: Study

More than a quarter of all U.S. subscribers to cable, satellite or telco TV services (27%) also are Netflix members, representing an incremental "cord throttling" threat to traditional providers from over-the-top video, according to a study by research firm NPD Group.

Almost half of pay-TV subscribers -- 46% -- also pay extra for premium movie channels or sports tiers, and 24% watched movies via both paid and free video-on-demand from their providers. On VOD usage, Comcast leads the industry with 41% of subscribers using video-on-demand, followed by Verizon's FiOS TV at 38% and Time Warner Cable at 20%. At the same time, those customers are also increasingly watching TV programming and movies from other sources, including Netflix, Hulu and YouTube, according to NPD senior vice president and entertainment analyst Russ Crupnick. Overall, 10% of pay-TV subscribers streamed movies for free, and the same percentage streamed TV programs for free, with the networks themselves the most popular sources for free online TV viewing.

No End In Sight To Escalating Sports Rights: Financial Analysts

In this economic ecosystem, competition means higher prices. That's the world of sports rights, which financial analysts -- David Bank, managing director, Globe Media and Internet Research, David Joyce, media industry analyst, Miller Tabak and Craig Moffett, senior vice president and senior Analyst, US Telecommunications, Cable and Satellite Broadcasting, Sanford Bernstein -- expatiated upon during a panel at the Sports Business Journal-Sports Business Daily's Sports Media & Technology 2011 conference.

During "A View from Wall Street, The State of Media Rights," the trio discussed some of the dynamics surrounding how the nation's economic doldrums are compromising consumers' ability to pay their bills, including their monthly video fees, yet the price for the games/sports some love to watch continues to spiral upward. To that end, one of the key takeaways emanated from what Bank called deltas between the national economy, the advertising economy and TV economy. "National television is still the healthiest part of the advertising economy, and sports is even more healthy. You don't get fired for buying that," said Bank, who pointed to broadcasters gaining retransmission-consent and reverse affiliation revenue as other streams helping to secure sports rights.

Moffett, however, believes the upticks can't be sustained for much longer.

Coalition To Fight ICANN's New Domain Name Plan

Nearly 90 industry groups and companies announced they have formed a new coalition to try to block a plan, to allow for the introduction of an unlimited number of new Internet addresses.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the nonprofit group that manages the Internet's "top level" domain name system, plans to vastly expand the domain name space from the 22 groups of names such as .com now available to Internet users to almost any name such as .bank or .angrybirds. The Coalition for Responsible Internet Domain Oversight says that ICANN's domain name plan will have costly implications for trademark owners, who could be forced to register their names in every new domain name launched or offer their own Internet address. The coalition also argues that ICANN has not taken their concerns seriously enough and failed to follow the consensus-driven process ICANN is supposed to use when enacting such new proposals. ICANN is currently slated to begin accepting applications under the new domain name program in January.

The book is great technology, but it’s not good for everything

Printed books may have been groundbreaking technology 500 years ago, and they still have plenty of value as an information-distribution platform — but they are no longer good for every purpose, Matt MacInnis of digital textbook publisher Inkling told attendees at the GigaOM RoadMap conference in San Francisco. When it comes to learning and exchanging information about a topic, MacInnis said, multimedia platforms like the tablet are a better solution. And as books increasingly go digital, traditional bookstores will have to emphasize the social aspects of books and reading if they want to survive.

Why we need to take computers out of computing

Computers — the boxes that we consult in the form of tablets, mobile phones and desktops — are wonderful, but they take away from what it is to be human and to really connect with one another. So the challenge and opportunity that lies ahead is how to get the computers out of computing, said Mark Rolston, the chief creative officer at frog.

Speaking at the GigaOM RoadMap conference in San Francisco, Rolston took the audience through a vision of omnipresent computing. “The room is the computer,” he said, as he described putting something like Apple’s Siri voice recognition system into an earpiece, and then being able to interact with a projector in a room to create a screen wherever the user needed one. “Computing is decoupling. Most computers are composed machines, but if you can image a case where they are externalized resources in a room,” he said. “I can talk at it and wave at it, and maybe I have a keyboard or maybe there are screens or cameras around, but [the computers] compose in the moment as we need them, and they are no more ornate than we need.” So today, if you have an iPad, that’s all you have. But if computing is decoupled from computers, then it becomes more flexible, and available to become whatever the user needs for the function they need to fulfill. However, if computing is decoupled from the computers, input becomes more challenging. Now that computers have eyes (Kinect for example) and ears (Siri), designers — such as those at frog — have to figure out how to use the human body as an input device.

CBSi Chief: Staying off Hulu was the right strategic decision

CBS has been a bit of a black sheep over the last several years, as it was the only one of the major broadcasters not to join the Hulu consortium and make its shows available on the video site. But at GigaOM RoadMap, CBS Interactive president Jim Lanzone said he believed that keeping those videos on its own site was the right strategic decision. Lanzone pointed to CBS.com’s success as the top-ranked network site for 35 months in a row as proof that keeping viewers on its properties was the right move. Not just that, but CBS’ success in digital can be measured in real dollars. Lanzone said that ad yields on digital viewership are comparable to what the network gets from its TV broadcasts.

As China PC sales grow, more plan to buy Apple

A new Morgan Stanley survey found that Apple is the most desirable brand of computer in China right now, beating out local heavyweight Lenovo.

China became the biggest buyer of personal computers as of August, according to IDC, so that’s great news for Apple. The Morgan Stanley survey of over 1,500 respondents spread across 16 Chinese cities found that Apple was picked as the brand of choice for people’s next computer purchase 21 percent of the time. That compares with just five percent who currently own an Apple computer. Lenovo still remains the top choice for consumers’ next purchase, but it dropped from 31 to 23 percent. If laptops are considered alone, Apple exceeds Lenovo as the next purchase of choice, with 22 percent of respondents choosing Cupertino’s products over Lenovo’s 21 percent. Aside from being high on consumer t0-buy lists, Apple also ranked as the most desirable PC brand, according to the survey. It achieved a weighted score of 66 percent, with Asus in second at a close 65 percent.

Benton

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