Is RIM Done?

Mobile Operators to take on Banks, Credit Card Companies

Its quite natural for mobile operators to attempt this feat.
Especially when the banks sit largely idle.

Amplify’d from www.bloomberg.com

`Mega' Payments Race Pits Google, Visa Against Phone Operators

Deutsche Telekom AG, France Telecom SA and other mobile operators, who lost the battle for online applications stores to Apple Inc. and Google Inc., say they have a fighting chance of winning the corner convenience store.

The stakes for losing out on this business development are huge, with NFC payments -- which could potentially replace many cash registers and credit cards -- likely to account for a third of the $1.13 trillion global market in mobile transactions by 2014, according to IE Market Research. Read more at www.bloomberg.com

HTC Flyer Tablet: Joanna Stern Goes Hands On

Another example of Android momentum - and functional fragmentation.

Amplify’d from www.engadget.com

A closer look at the HTC Flyer's screen, stylus, and Scribe

It's really too early to make a call on what HTC is doing with the stylus and Scribe -- it's certainly unique and it seems like a very useful solution for those that love to take notes with a physical pen. Ultimately, however, our concerns are centered around the fact that Android was built around a finger and that virtually no apps out there right now take advantage of the pen input. However, if HTC can manage to build out the inking software experience and integrate it throughout the OS, we're sure those who still believe in the power of the pen and want to use a tablet as a content creation device will be all over this. Read more at www.engadget.com

New Norton Mobile Security Apps

Package that permits users to remotely locate, lock and even wipe the memory of their mobile device via text message.

Amplify’d from www.pcworld.com

New Norton Mobile Security Apps Seek to Eradicate Smartphone Theft

Norton announced results of a Strategy One survey conducted last September that suggest one in three U.S. citizens have had their cell phones lost or stolen.

Digging into the Strategy One survey results, it seems Miami is a hotbed of mobile misfortune, with 52 percent of those surveyed reporting a lost or stolen smartphone during their lifetime. Following close behind are New York and Los Angeles with 49 percent and 44 percent respectively, proving major metropolitan areas are no slouch when it comes to smartphone skullduggery.

The survey dovetails nicely with the announcement of Norton Mobile Security 1.5, a security package that permits users to remotely locate, lock and even wipe the memory of their mobile device via text message

Norton has expanded their stable of retail partnerships across the globe to include Best Buy Canada, European retailer Dixons Retail, Kingston Digital and the Brazilian ISP UOL Inc Read more at www.pcworld.com

Mobile Security: IBM Teams with Juniper. Enterprises take note

Security threats are on the rise. The new target - mobile.
For enterprises, the connected culture of employee's and the trends around the consumerization of IT influence new business drivers for enterprise business management risk.

Mobility is changing the game. Enterprises need to be more diligent about the affects of operational, reputational ,asset and talent risk that is rising because of the mobiles ubiquity.

This move by IBM and Juniper should bode well for enterprises by removing some of the procurement risk, higher cost of ownership and scale issues that exist in many point solutions products in the marketplace today. Juniper's SaaS for mobile, as it continues to develop, should provide the extensibility and rich feature set that enterprises should expect from a cloud solution.

Amplify’d from www.networkworld.com

IBM, in mobile security drive, teams with Juniper on smartphone protection services

IBM Security Services said it would team with Juniper Networks to offer managed services for Apple iOS, Android, Symbian, Blackberry OS and Windows through the Juniper Networks Junos Pulse Mobile Security Suite. The service, IBM says integrates policy-based enforcement that prevents smartphones from accessing key corporate resources unless required security policies and applications are in place.

Meanwhile IBM said it is researching and prototyping technologies to manage security and compliance challenges involving mobile smart phones, such as Android-based devices. With one such prototype system, using a single management platform, organizations will be able to extend management across any mobile device on their network, IBM stated. Customers will quickly be able to remotely set policies, monitor employees' devices to identify potential data compromise and wipe data off the devices if they are lost or stolen, IBM stated. Read more at www.networkworld.com

Sprint Makes Progress - Continued Emphasis on PrePaid and Wholesale

Net addition breakdown:
Sprint added 58K net postpaid subscribers to the network in the 4th quarter, beating analyst expectations of 17K by 3x.

In comparison Verizon Wireless had 872,000 additions in the fourth quarter while AT&T had 400,000. Sprint Still as a lot of work to do.

Sprint also added 646,000 net prepaid subscribers in the quarter and and 393,000 wholesale subscribers for a total of 1.1 mil new subscribers.

Churn: Sprint's continued to make improvements postpaid churn for the quarter at 1.86 percent, compared with 2.11 percent for the year-ago period and 1.93 percent for the third quarter of 2010. I worry that postpaid churn may have been held artificially high as some subscribers may have held off moving from Sprint in anticipation of the Verizon's iPhone.

Hesse also cracked the door of a roadmap to support LTE more than he has before. Frankly, i think this is a

Amplify’d from www.fiercewireless.com

Sprint turns the corner, adds 1.1M net subscribers

Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S) continued its turnaround, adding 1.1 million total net subscribers in the fourth quarter, including net postpaid additions of 58,000 subscribers--the carrier's first net postpaid additions since the second quarter of 2007

Sprint added 704,000 net retail subscribers and 393,000 wholesale subscribers.

a major reversal from net postpaid losses of 504,000 customers in the year-ago quarter. Sprint said its CDMA network added around 453,000 total subscribers and its iDEN network lost 395,000 customers. Sprint added 646,000 net prepaid subscribers in the quarter. Sprint served 49.9 million customers at the end of the fourth quarter, including 33.1 million postpaid subscribers, 12.3 million prepaid subscribers and approximately 4.5 million wholesale and affiliate subscribers on Sprint's CDMA network.

Network modernization:

The carrier selected Alcatel-Lucent (NASDAQ:ALU), Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC) and Samsung for its network modernization project, which will cost $4 billion to $5 billion, and is expected to take three to five years to complete and includes the deployment of new multi-mode base stations.

The company plans to phase out iDEN cell sites in 2013.

Hesse said that if Clearwire (NASDAQ:CLWR) uses Sprint's modernized network, which allows it to deploy LTE, it could result in significant cost savings for both companies.

fourth quarter that smartphones accounted for 69 percent of all handsets sold or upgrades

the cost of service for smartphone customers is rapidly increasing relative to non-smartphone customers,

print is still exploring deploying LTE, and weighing the benefits of using it vs. WiMAX. He said Sprint has the necessary spectrum of its own to deploy LTE should it decide to do so. Hesse said Sprint may announce a decision on any potential 4G strategy change by the middle of the year or earlier.

postpaid average revenue per user remained flat on a quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year basis at $55. Prepaid ARPU for the quarter was around $28, down from $31 in the year-ago period and flat from the third quarter of 2010.

ARPU:

Churn:

Sprint's postpaid churn for the quarter was 1.86 percent, compared with 2.11 percent for the year-ago period and 1.93 percent for the third quarter of 2010. Read more at www.fiercewireless.com

First Data Launches Mobile Banking Triple Play using mFoundry Technology

Leading consumer and small business mobile banking solutions will provide triple play access today and 4screen access tomorrow (Internet TV's).
Anything else, handicaps the conveniences required by consumers.

Amplify’d from www.mfoundry.com

First Data offers the Mobile Manager – mBanking solution as a fully hosted and integrated service. This results in substantially lower costs for a financial institution than developing a solution in-house. Since launching Mobile Manager – mBanking at the beginning of 2011, First Data has signed 60 financial institutions for the service.

First Data‘s Mobile Manager – mBanking product enables financial institutions to offer all three modes of mobile banking: SMS, mobile web, and downloadable applications, including a uniquely branded iPhone® app available through the App StoreSM online store. First Data plans to roll out the same capabilities for Android™ phones, with availability in the Android Market during the first half of 2011.

First Data’s Mobile Manager – mBanking offering uses technology from mobile provider mFoundry. Read more at www.mfoundry.com

Mobile BI is going to big - ReadWriteWeb Recommends 10 iPad Apps

To attract and retain great talent, enterprises are compelled to give employees the tools that empower them to be successful. Mobile Business Intelligence tools are one of those tools that need to be included in the enterprise arsenal.

Our colleague Howard Dresner over at Dresner Advisory Mobile BI Survey picked up the importance of mobile BI over a year ago. He's got an update due out soon.

Amplify’d from www.readwriteweb.com

Gartner predicts that by 2013, 33% of business intelligence functionality will be consumed on mobile devices. And it seems that these sort of forecasts are usually over-aggressive, our commenters seem to agree that Gartner's forecast is a bit too modest. BI going mobile quickly, and tablets are leading that movement. Read more at www.readwriteweb.com

Fascinating Stat and Lesson for the US About Mobile Payments in Africa

The more Kenyans used the system they started sending smaller and smaller transactions. The lesson? Fixed transaction fee's are really problematic in mobile payments. I suspect this is a lesson that will not be unique to Africa.

Amplify’d from blogs.worldbank.org

Are mobile money transfer costs too high?

Kenya’s Central Bank Governor Njuguna Ndung’u recently urged the country’s mobile money transfer (MMT) operators to reduce their transaction fees. According to the Governor, “There is no way one can send 50 Shilling at 35 Shillings”. This translates into a seemingly exorbitant 70 percent fee for a small transaction equivalent to less than $1. Safaricom, the telecom operator that offers M-Pesa service (a highly successful Kenyan venture with more than 13 million clients), and other Kenyan MMT operators, however, maintained that the services they provide represent value for money. So are mobile money transfer costs too high?

Before we answer this question, it’s worth pointing out that even if mobile money transfer costs are fixed, average costs expressed as a share of the amount sent can rise if the average size of transactions falls. That is what happened with M-Pesa. M-Pesa charges a fixed fee per transaction within pre-specified fee brackets (see tariff poster). As the use of M-Pesa spread, Kenyans started using it for smaller and smaller transactions. The average amount sent through M-Pesa declined from the equivalent of about $50 in March 2007 to less than $30 by March 2009. The fees charged by M-Pesa, including withdrawal charges, expressed as a share of the average amount, rose correspondingly until mid-2008 (see chart). Because the average transaction size fell to the lowest fixed fee bracket in mid-2008, there was a downward jump in the fee. Then average costs rose again up until March 2009.

Chart 1: Mobile money transfer fees rise with a decline in transaction size

With the expansion of mobile money transfer services to remote, rural areas in Kenya (a country where the average monthly income is $63), it is possible that the poorest are using M-Pesa to send and receive even smaller amounts. For example, for sending 800 Kenyan shilling (equivalent to about $10) through M-Pesa, the average transfer fee including withdrawal charges rises to 7 percent for transfers to recipients who have an M-Pesa account (and to 9.4 percent for unregistered recipients). Mobile money transfer costs relative to the incomes of the poorest could be much higher than what the average cost implies.

Whether mobile money transfer costs are reasonable, transparent and affordable is important in the quest for increasing financial inclusion of the poor. Increased competition and technological advancements will no doubt put downward pressure on mobile money transfer costs in a dynamic industry. A relevant question is the break-even point for providing these services for the operators. An earlier analysis by Ratha and Riedberg of the cost structure of the cross-border remittance industry concluded that the overall international remittance costs (including staff, infrastructure, marketing, and compliance) could be as little as $3 per transaction.  A similar analysis of the cost structure of the mobile money transfer industry could provide policymakers guidance on the feasibility of reducing costs further.

Note: Transfer fee includes charges to send money and the fee for a registered receiver to withdraw cash. Sources: Pulver, Jack and Suri 2009 and Safaricom’s tariff poster. Read more at blogs.worldbank.org

Olympics will be a big test case for mobile payments

Handset variety remains a big issue, one that isn't going to go away fast.

Some interesting stats in the article about the ongoing trail in Spain the includes Telefonica and Visa.

Amplify’d from www.mobileeurope.co.uk

London to lead way in NFC mobile payments

Spanish NFC trial shows elements are coming together, partners claim

the 2012 Olympics would push the introduction of the technology into the London market, making it the first mass market deployment outside of Japan and Korea.

Telefonica is currently trialling an NFC mobile payments scheme in the resort town of Sitges, just south of Barcelona. The trial is a joint effort between Telefonica, Visa and La Caixa.

80% of those who signed up have used the service at least once. 52% of users use the phone at least once a week. The remaining 48% use it only every 15 days or less. On average users made seven purchases in the first three months of the trial, across three different retailers.

The average value of a purchase has been €31

Payments over €20 require the user to enter a PIN

ary Carol Harris, Head of Mobile Payment Business Develeopment, Visa Europe, said that handset availability is still “one of the bigges

Mary Carol Harris, Head of Mobile Payment Business Develeopment, Visa Europe, said that handset availability is still “one of the biggest nuts to crack” Read more at www.mobileeurope.co.uk