Cablevision Throws Down The Broadband Gauntlet: 101 Mbps Downstream

[Posted by Doug Williams]

Yesterday, Cablevision announced the roll-out of its new Optimum Online Ultra broadband service, with speeds of 101 Mbps downstream/15 Mbps upstream for $99.95 without a bundle.  There is a lot to like about this announcement:

• Significant speed increase:  Cablevision already offered a 30 Mbps tier, so offering a 50 or 60 Mbps tier would have been a marginal improvement in the consumer's experience.  By leapfrogging to the 101/15 tier, Cablevision can now boast of a greater than 3X improvement in the end user experience.
• Attractive pricing for wideband:  The sub-$100 price point without a bundle is in line with or below other carriers' 50 Mbps speed tier offer.  Yes, it's more than what most consumers are willing to pay for today, but it should give pause to Cablevision customers thinking of switching to Verizon's FiOS 50/20 tier.
• Fantastic marketing strategy: Not only does Cablevision get to wear the Fastest Download Speed crown for the time being, but it's decision to offer 101 Mbps instead of 100 Mbps is downright brilliant. This "Price Is Right" strategy may allow them to keep the title longer, as competitors eyeing the 100 Mbps tier will now be forced to rethink whether they stick with 100, match the 101 (which would look a bit silly), or jump to 110 or 120 in order to differentiate themselves.

Just having a wideband offer is beneficial, but will consumers buy it?  That's the subject of a recent report I wrote entitled "The Shift From Broadband To Wideband," which M&SView and JupView clients can find here on the Forrester.com website.  I will be delivering a Teleconference on this topic on Wednesday, May 13 at 11am EST.  M&SView and JupView clients can register for it here.  Hope to see you there!

Mobile Applications See More Traffic Than Mobile Web Sites - No Kidding

Social networking is the type of application that lends itself to frequent usage. A high percentage of young adults and teenagers check one or more (but typically one) of their social networking sites more than once a day. Sites that see repeated use are well-suited for applications on cell phones. Any brand or company thinking about high levels of engagement with their customers should probably be considering how applications fit into their mix within their mobile strategy.

FierceMobile Content had this post today:

Social networking giant MySpace reports its mobile usage increased roughly 450 percent in 2008, with users now generating 7 billion mobile page views per month. Speaking here at the Nokia Developer Summit 2009 in Monte Carlo, MySpace vice president and general manager of mobile operations John Faith added that in the last year, mobile traffic increased from 10 percent of all MySpace traffic to more than 35 percent--moreover, the company anticipates that sometime within the next few years, 50 percent of all users will access MySpace via mobile.

"We've seen greater user engagement in MySpace mobile applications than we have on the mobile web," Faith said. "Smartphones are creating a culture of expectations among users." In November 2008, MySpace announced its integrated mobile app customized for Research In Motion's BlackBerry smartphones generated more than 400,000 downloads in its first seven days of release, an all-time high for both MySpace and RIM in terms of first-week downloads.

According to Faith, 32 percent of MySpace's mobile page views derive from users accessing profiles--19 percent originate from users browsing photos, while another 19 percent are devoted to reading messages. By contrast, friend requests make up just 1 percent of mobile views.

Making Money on iPhone Applications (Stanza)

Ok, I admit that I used the word "iPhone" in the title to seek attention, but it is true. My first experiences with Stanza were on my iPhone. A friend suggested that I download the application. Free download. I often asked, "what is the business model?" Selling the technology is one possibility. The creators of Stanza have made a lot of money on an iPhone application. See release.

More seriously, it is an interesting play for Amazon. Heavy users of a service/function on a portable device - whether a PND, MP3 player, etc. - lean towards buying dedicated devices. I have a Kindle, and I love it. I have the Kindle application on my iPhone, but I don't use it. Casual users of these services will buy and use devices that are multi-purpose. Moreover, users don't want to worry about file formats. Lexcycle fills in some of these gaps.

Content players need distribution, content strategies and business models that span the range of portable devices. Adoption outside of laptops and cell phones is limited today, but devices such as portable media players, netbooks, etc. are filling in the space in-between. 

Mobile strategies extend beyond a cell phone presence - more so for media companies today than those in other industries.

One Billion Application Downloads

Last week, the number of downloads to Apple's iPhones and iPod Touches finally topped one billion. That is an impressive number coming from approximately 30 million devices in the market. 

The word "iPhone" in the title of any newspaper article or otherwise turns heads and sells. I would offer, however, that the impact of the iPhone and its potential have been under-hyped.  I believe that the impact on the industry is comparable to that of SMS.  May not seem that way today, but it will in the course of time.

Here is a partial list of what it has accomplished so far. Apple has:

- Taught carriers that they don't need to own the end customer experience to profit from those customers.
- Demonstrated that consumers will pay for an experience that is unique and extraordinary.  
- Shown carriers that they do well serving the average customer, but aren't equipped to serve each segment best.
- Taught consumers how to download applications to their cell phones.
- Taught consumers that their cell phones could do more than voice calls or text messaging
- Created a platform and a business model that is truly compelling to developers.
- Taught US consumers what "3G" is and accelerated demand for it.
- Weren't afraid to leverage their existing 60+ million billing relationships
- Shown us we don't need "open" for a great consumer experience
- Have ever consumer brand in the country thinking they need an iPhone application

I look forward to 3.0 and its possibilities.  I don't think enough is being said about what Apple has achieved.

Mobile is Changing the Lives of Your Customers

Think back to mid-nineties. How many of you had cell phones? They were more of a luxury item for most of us. Towards the end of the nineties they became a nice-to-have. Now, if you walk out the door and you don't have your phone, you go back inside and get it.

In the mean time, cell phones have become pervasive in regions around the world where no one thought the economics would make sense. When I visited western Kenya in 1996, I met some Masai warriors - a group of nomads living much as they did 200 years ago. They have herds of cows and goats. They live in huts with no running water or electricity.

When I returned 10 years later in 2006 (and took this photo), they were still living in huts without running water or electricity. However, they all had cell phones and were using them to make phone calls, send text messages, etc.

Cell phones are no longer used simply for talking or texting in Africa let alone in the US, Asia and Europe where we have access to high speed wireless networks and affordable data plans. Cell phones are changing the lives of your customers. You need a strategy to engage with them on their cell phones.

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Why the iPhone presages the end of the TV Remote Control

by James McQuivey, Ph.D.

I've spent some time using Verizon's new system for controlling my DVR using the PC. It's an immense time saver. It's being billed as a great way to schedule DVR recordings from the office -- which it can certainly do -- but it's really useful for doing things quickly that normally require tedious hours with the remote control. Things like picking your list of 20 favorite channels from the 599 available channels without scrolling through them all. Or setting your parental controls, or even deleting hours of HD DVR recordings to make room for American Idol, er, I mean, some show much more sophisticated than that.

It has worked so well that I've also played with the Boxee iPhone application that can control my Boxee-hacked Apple TV. This is different from Verizon's Web app in that it can control the box live, so you can use the virtual keyboard to search Hulu or the touch screen to pick what you want to watch next. Very nice.

Read my OmniVideo blog for some more detail, but all of this experience has led me to wonder just how long we'll need those funny infrared remote controls. Because once we have more and more mobile Web applications to manage our consumer devices, we won't mind if we lose that 50-button remote between the couch cushions. Right?

Sure, in my house, my teenagers may engage in a round of dueling mobile phones to control whether we're going to watch The Office or Battlestar Galactica (Still can't get over that finale, wow!), but etiquette for that sort of thing will eventually emerge. What I'm most interested in is how far beyond simple device control this can go. From my blog, for example, I envision:

Want to play Uno on the TV? Okay, you might prefer harder fare when you think of card games. Either way, we can’t play card games at our house until the little ones are in bed because they gnash and tear at the cards. In fact, we can’t play card games at our house after they go to bed because of aforementioned history of gnashing and tearing has depleted our card reserves. But in a mobile-controlled TV world, bent cards are a thing of the past. Imagine if each player could employ their own mobile phone as their hand. The TV can keep the draw pile, the tableau, or whatever else the game requires.

What ideas do you have for how far this could go? One reader on my blog suggests a family calendar app where we can add items or detail with our mobile phones. Go one step further -- what if we used our phones to upload pictures of the 5th grade string ensemble performance to the concert's entry on the calendar app, making the family calendar both a planning tool and a family history center. Your ideas?

Innovation by Orange

[Posted by Thomas Husson]

Many recent innovations in the mobile space are led by new entrants such as Apple or Google. However, let's be fair with telcos. They invest significant amounts of money in R&D and have very creative staff. There has been some skepticism in the industry on selected Orange services such as Pikeo, Djinngo (ex Bubbletop) or Soundtribes where Orange was trying to "reinvent the wheel" without partnering with the right Internet players. However, these services have never been really marketed and does not prevent strategic partnerships to be signed. Orange in particular has many Orange Labs worldwide and is driving innovation.

I saw recently some interesting demos of products and services to be launched by Orange:

• 24/24 Actu is a search engine focused on news and aggregating press articles, TV and radio sources. Available in beta and in French only for now, the service is a mix of Google news and blinkx. More info here
• Remote Media. Simply use your mobile phone as a remote control to connect all you home networks and equipments. You can listen to your music on your connected Hi-Fi, live radio or any other DLNA standard equipment. You can select the pictures or videos you would like to see on your TV from your PC or your external hard drive / media center. To be launched in France in 2010
• Orange TV on iPhone. It is good to see an easy-to-use mobile TV service. Interesting also to see that with Liveradio, operators are using the Apple App Store distribution channel. More info here. Launched on April 7th.
• Orange Application Shop. Orange just launched its own shop last week in France. The aim is not to have the widest catalogue possible but to optimize use for specific devices. The race for the home screen is now launched with other stores even though they are likely to co-exist. Here Orange can offer support from the Orange Partner community. This is early stage though and a new version of the Application Shop will be launched in Q4. To know more about application stores and the difficulty to replicate Apple's success, read Forrester's latest research here.  
• Instant Messenger on your SIM card. A free application directly embedded on your SIM card, working on any device, compatible with MSN / Windows Live. Aimed at targeting youth communities in emerging countries. To be launched in Kenya in May 09 and then in Mauritius and Bostwana in Q3 09
• Secure Health offering for GPs and physicians. A tool to store your patients' details and to exchange with your peers.
• A new conferencing tool offering from Orange Business Services. Virtual meetings, telepresence and "distant face-to-face meetings" make lots of sense in the context of companies reducing travel expenses.

When presenting its 2012 plan, Orange also insisted that it will adjust its organization and processes to make sure 100% of its new offerings are tested in 2 real-life client test centres with a thorough simplicity score methodology. That's a challenge for such a large organization but definitely a step in the right direction.

 

How Central Should E&SR Be To Your Product Strategy? Ask Your Customers

 [posted by Sally M. Cohen]

Last week, we published an important new report about Environmentally & Socially Responsible (E&SR) product strategy, which introduced a framework for parsing different approaches to E&SR consumer products. The Centricity Model Of E&SR Consumer Product Strategy identifies four levels of product strategy, based on how central a role E&SR plays. The approaches range from Level 1, the most explicit -- a flagship "green" product -- to a very implicit Level 4 approach in which consumers may not even recognize a product's socially responsible features.

 

We see examples of companies approaching E&SR consumer product strategy at each level of the Centricity Model in the market today. What's more, we see companies simultaneously operating at multiple levels by launching flagship products that loudly tout E&SR features while quietly making all products in their portfolios more environmentally responsible.

The model invites self-reflection -- How central is E&SR to my consumer product strategy today? And, more importantly, self-evaluation -- How central should E&SR be to my products tomorrow and beyond?

The answer to this longer-term question should come from an important source: your customers. Are your customers die-hard environmentalists or are they more mainstream consumers who are equally concerned with the health of the planet as they are with the health of their families? How important is it to your customers that the E&SR products that they buy send a message to other consumers through distinctive design or branding? Are your customers actually seeking out a "greener" dishwasher, or are they simply more focused on cutting their household water and energy bills?

Crafting a winning E&SR consumer product strategy means closely aligning your approach to E&SR -- product, positioning, and messaging -- with your customers' needs. The best way to do that -- and to find the answers to the questions above -- is to talk with your customers. If you're not sure what to say, Forrester can help.

For more information, Forrester clients can see the report, "Environmental And Social Responsibility In Consumer Product Strategies."

Apple TV vs. Roku vs. SlingBox -- How I spent my sick days

 by James McQuivey, Ph.D.

I confess I spent much of a recent illness on the couch watching movies and catching up on TV shows. I still claim it was time spent on your behalf, gentle reader, because in the process I put some of my video gadgets to the test, trying to see which one would earn the majority of my viewing. I post the results in greater detail on my OmniVideo blog, feel free to read that post to find out which box I like best and why. But what I found more interesting than which box occupied my time, was the realization that I am starting to develop specific habits for meeting my content needs.

Here's what I mean: Imagine you feel an urge to watch some video right now, this very instant. What are the first two or three ways you imagine satisfying that need? Okay, go ahead and imagine you're at home if you're not, so you'll have some options to consider. Here are some options that may come to mind:

• Live (linear) television. 
• A DVR 
• Your PC 
• Some other set top box 
• Your game console 
• Other... 

There are many options, but I'm only interested in the first few that came to your mind. For me, it's PC, DVR, and Roku box. Live television almost never came into the picture unless I was truly out of good stuff to watch (okay, so I did watch that whole hour of DIY live, but I was feverish). I paid close attention to these urges while I was lying around recovering and it turned out to be rather consistent. Even if I was in front of the TV, the PC was still my first choice because it gave me more control and choice since I don't have unlimited DVR space.

I don't claim to have bellwether habits, so I can imagine your list is different from mine. But pay close attention to your list! Because it is the aggregation of all our emerging lists that will eventually set some behaviors in stone. I have a hunch the PC is slowly rising on most of our lists. How about yours?