I would guess that despite its popularity in some niche markets, most analysts, users, and perhaps even employees of Microsoft would have to admit that the company’s Windows Phone 7 operating system has failed (so far) to make any sort of indelible mark on the mobile world.

While certainly not for a lack of effort, Nokia’s Lumia 900 is currently selling well in North America thanks to competitive pricing and a hard marketing push, the truth is that to date no Windows Phone has come anywhere close to seeing widespread popularity, and most carriers aren’t willing to take the chance that AT&T recently did in actively pushing the Windows Phone brand.

I have no doubt that there are some out there, Microsoft included, that are saying, “just hold on a minute, give WP time to gain a foothold,” but from my perspective if the Windows Phone brand was going to be a hit, we would have seen some evidence of it already. It also looks like I’m not alone in my impatience, as Microsoft is already seeing some of its original WP partners abandoning ship.

If there’s one thing that Microsoft’s Windows Phone project has shown us all, it’s that big budgets, big dreams, and unlimited opportunity does not guarantee a successful product. To date Microsoft has poured a great deal of money into its foray into the mobile world, and has seen little in return. In fact, as the writers here at theTelecomblog have noted before, Microsoft makes more money of licensing deals with competing OS brands than it does with its own WP platform.

Although I can’t quite put my finger on why Microsoft’s Windows Phone has, to date, been nothing short of a failure (nor would I have enough room in this blog forum to articulate it all even if I could put my finger on it), it seems obvious to me that unless Windows Phone 8 is truly revolutionary, blowing away all our expectations, if WP was going to be a success we would have seen its popularity trending upwards.

As I mentioned, there are many in the WP ecosystem that remain steadfast supporters of Microsoft’s OS, stating that given a little more time the WP franchise will be a success. To wit, they point to the initial struggles of Android and iOS, both of which endured glacially slow starts as they tried to break into the competitive mobile market. The difference, however, is that both those operating systems showed continued growth, while Microsoft hit the market with a flourish followed by a steady downward slide.

Further, I think many industry analysts knew when Microsoft first launched its WP platform that success would, at least at first, come from secondary markets, places where Microsoft has always been a strong performer. The problem with WP, however, is that it has struggled in those very markets, failing to even overtake its older brother, Microsoft’s antiquated and obsolete Windows Mobile platform.

In the end, it seems that I’m not along in my critique of Windows Phone, with original WP partner LG stating in an earnings call that it will no longer be developing WP devices. With that in mind, while I remain cautiously optimistic that Microsoft will be able to revive its flagging Windows Phone brand, the information collected to date does not bode well for any long term success, pointing instead to yet another high budget, well-intentioned failure.

Device Proliferation in Android Ecosystem

While some of the greatest strengths of Google’s free open source Android platform are its versatility and accessibility, the resultant fragmentation of the OS is also one of its greatest weaknesses. While it’s great that developers, carriers, and basically anyone who knows to fiddle with OS code can shape Android into their own unique creations, there’s also the issue that Google has little control over what Android looks like when it hits an actual mobile device, meaning that developers program without knowing what sort of Android device to program for.

App developer Open Signal Maps (OSM) offers a useful little app that assists users in finding where the strongest and weakest cell signals are, but as an aside it has also managed to compile a tonne of information about what kind of Android devices are loose in the Android ecosystem.

Now, after six months of amassing data, OSM has compiled that information into several useful diagrams, dramatic visualizations of just how diversely populated the Android universe really is.

According the OSM website, the project began 6 months ago, with the company having now compiled data from 681,900 unique devices and has sorted the information based on device model, brand, API (version of Android) and screen size, presenting its findings in several charts and diagrams (click here to see them all)

While the map is clear evidence of the proliferation of Android devices, the findings show what many of us in the tech world already know, Samsung clearly at the top with its Galaxy line of mobile devices (accounting for 40 percent of OSM’s app traffic) followed by the lesser lights HTC and Motorola, which themselves are followed by a myriad of other unique Android devices. 

In fact, as the above diagram shows, beyond the major Android players, the platform ecosystem fragments into minute particulate, with the study logging approximately 1,300 unique devices that accessed the app only once (this would include unique Android models and small market Android phones like the Hungarian Concorde Tab, which showed up once)

Of course you could remove those 1,300 unique devices to get a better picture of the Android world, but truth be told you’d still be left with some serious fragmentation.

OSM’s conclusion is that while the mobile world, particularly developers, often bemoan Android’s fragmentation—given the fact that you never really know what sort of Android device to program for—there seems much that can be celebrated. For instance, the fact that Android is so versatile means that it has been able to circle the globe faster than most other smartphone platforms; evidenced by the 195 different countries OSM has collected data from.

Further, from a developer’s standpoint, with Android having infiltrated various global markets the benefit is that more people will be able access your software, an entirely untapped market unavailable on other platforms.

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Written by: Matt Klassen. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.com by: RSS, Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube.

The explosive proliferation of smartphones and tablets has meant that more and more people are joining the Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) bandwagon, carrying their mobile devices to work. While BYOD supporters claim it increases employee productivity and satisfaction, there’s no doubt that it poses a significant challenges for the enterprise as far as security and compliance are concerned.

Till date, the BYOD paradigm has received a mixed response in the enterprise space. While some organizations strictly forbid employees from carrying their personal mobile devices to work, others negate the security threat by blocking specific applications and ports.

In its IBSG Horizon Study released yesterday, Cisco states that a majority of organizations allow employee-owned devices in some form in the workplace. As many as 76 percent organizations agree that BYOD was somewhat or extremely positive for their companies and challenging for their IT departments.

The survey covered 600 U.S. IT and business leaders and the objective was to uncover the advantages and challenges in BYOD adoption in the enterprise. 95% of survey respondents acknowledged that their organizations permit employee-owned devices in some way, shape or form in the workplace. The study also indicates that the average number of connected devices per knowledge worker is expected to reach 3.3 by 2014, up from an average of 2.8 in 2012.

IMO, the key finding of the IBSG Horizon Study is that BYOD is here to stay and there’s no shying away from it. Seizing the opportunity, Cisco announced the launch of a set of Smart Solutions that are designed to help businesses gain the benefits of increased mobility in the workplace while reducing the associated complexities. The networking giant says these solutions will be a part of its ‘Cisco Unified Workplace’ portfolio which is targeted at creating an environment where workers can access all the people and resources they need for their jobs from anywhere and on any device.

“As the number of devices being brought into work increases, organizations need a comprehensive mobility strategy,” Padmasree Warrior, senior vice president and CTO for Cisco, said in a statement. “By leveraging the intelligent network, organizations can now provide their employees with the benefits of working anywhere, any time: in other words, ‘work your way.’”

Interestingly, the survey indicates that despite the explosive growth of mobile devices, desktop virtualization still rules the roost in the enterprise  - 98 percent of respondents admitted they were aware of the technology and 68 percent saying that most knowledge worker jobs are suitable for desktop virtualization.

To sum it up, BYOD is an opportunity with its own challenges and it will be interesting to see how the enterprise makes the most of it.

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Written by: Gaurav Kheterpal. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.comby:RSS,Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube.

The Facebook initial public offering could very well be the business event of the year. The social networking giant is expected to debut its IPO on Friday and, at that time, could become among the world’s newest $100 billion companies.

Back in February, Facebook was valued somewhere in the neighbourhood of $75 to $100 billion. Now, Mark Zuckerberg’s baby has increased its value estimations and jacked the price of the IPO. It also ended its much-publicized “road show” early, all the while brimming with an almost absurd level of confidence over how the IPO will play out. Heck, Zuckerberg didn’t even think he had to go to the first major briefing.

Is the company being too cocky? It’s hard to say. Investors are, for all intents and purposes, in a veritable “frenzy” over the IPO and Zuckerberg has to be loving every minute of it. Facebook now expects to move shares at around $34 to $38 each, up from the previous estimations of $28 to $35 per share. At this point, the expectation is that around 180 million shares will be moved from the company. Zuckerberg and existing stockholders will be putting an extra 157 million out in the wind, so things could prove extremely lucrative for Facebook in a hurry come Friday.

Facebook has 33 underwriters, like Morgan Stanley, and really didn’t need to do much to woo investors during its “road show” of presentations over the last while. Zuckerberg was criticized during the “road shows” for not taking the process seriously. He would characteristically arrive to meetings in hooded sweatshirts.

Regardless of Zuckerberg’s youth, it doesn’t appear that it’s going to hurt. When Facebook hits the NASDAQ on Friday as FB, trading is expected to be frenetic. The social networking giant that some discard as merely a conduit for “mindless chatter” has seen mind-numbing growth in revenue and users over the years. It is, along with Google, probably the most visited website on the planet.

The trouble for Facebook could begin when the dust settles and the party guests have gone home. After all, the company will have to generate value of some sort for investors – and it’ll have to grow even more. According to an Associated Press-CNBC poll, Facebook is a “passing fad.” If (some say “when”) users decide to move to greener pastures, the social networking site will be left holding the bag. And that bag will be filled with annoyed investors.

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Written by: Jordan Richardson. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.com by: RSS, Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube.

Somewhere along the line things went sideways for AT&T’s public image. Seemingly gone were the days of old reliable Ma Bell, a company that instilled a sense of confidence and comfort in the American public, an entity that was as American as baseball or apple pie, gradually replaced in this modern age with a company plagued by its deplorable customer service, persistent network issues, and faceless and aloof corporate interactions with its loyal subscriber base.

But according to the annual satisfaction survey regarding wireless carriers released by The American Customer Satisfaction Index it looks like the times are changing, as AT&T has finally learning that, lo and behold, customers are important! In fact, for a company that has perpetually found itself at the bottom of the list, the country’s second largest wireless carrier now finds itself within striking distance of the top spot (currently occupied by Sprint Nextel), a previously unimaginable situation given AT&T’s reputation.

The paradigm altering survey results don’t stop there, however, as it turns out that among the major American wireless carriers AT&T is the only one to have improved its overall customer satisfaction rating, proof at least that when you’re at the bottom there’s nowhere else to go but up…perhaps hell has indeed frozen over.

Truthfully I don’t know what AT&T has changed in its general approach to customer relations that has allowed for this dramatic turn of events, but the country’s second largest wireless carrier scored an impressive 69 out of 100 in the survey, a dramatic 5 percent increase for the previous year. While admittedly that increase still places AT&T in a tie with its estranged former bedfellow T-Mobile for third place, it’s not far off from the top, with Verizon holding the second spot with a 70 percent satisfaction rating and Sprint Nextel capturing the top spot with 71 percent satisfaction.

While this survey bodes well for AT&T’s revamped focus on the customer, it also shows a disturbing downward trend for Verizon, who dropped 3 points this year and saw its third consecutive year of losses in its customer satisfaction rating.

“New fees for phone upgrades and a surge in traffic accessing data has increased Verizon’s revenue, but at the expense of customer satisfaction,” ACSI founder Claes Fornell explained in the report. “Verizon’s prices have gone up, but its reliability has not improved. Plus, bandwidth is increasingly challenged by Verizon’s nearly 110 million users.”

AT&T is not the only one to benefit from the cracks in Verizon’s previously solid satisfaction rating, however, as this year’s results are the culmination of an impressive comeback for Sprint Nextel, which only 4 years ago (2008) scored an embarrassing 58 on the same satisfaction survey.

But as I mentioned, AT&T is the only carrier among the Top Four to actually experience an increase in its satisfaction rating, as along with Verizon’s aforementioned 3 point slide Sprint fell 1 point as did T-Mobile.

In the end, while we wait till next year to see if these numbers evidence a systemic change or are simply an aberration, you can bet that both Sprint and AT&T will latch on to their newfound gains in customer satisfaction with all the marketing gusto they can muster, while Verizon, the once great champion of customer service, will try to get its customers to focus on anything but just how unsatisfied they really are.

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Written by: Matt Klassen. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.com by: RSS, Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube.

Mobile payment seems to be the flavor of the season in Canada. In April, the federal government abolished the penny, thereby laying the ground for the much-anticipated mobile payment revolution. Last week, MasterCard published the MasterCard Mobile Payments Readiness Index (MPRI) which indicates that Canada is one of the most ‘prepared’ markets for adoption of mobile payments.

Canadian banks and Credit Unions on Monday presented a blueprint that will enable consumers to pay for goods with a tap of their smartphones. On the same note, Rogers yesterday announced an agreement with CIBC to launch Canada’s first mobile payment solution, allowing Canadians to pay with their CIBC credit card at the checkout counter using their Rogers “Near Field Communications” (NFC)-enabled smartphones.

Rogers has been actively pursuing mobile payments since last year. The mobile wallet uses NFC and a CIBC application loaded onto your phone will use existing “tap and go” hardware already installed at various merchants across the country. This service will store your credit card information on your smartphone and will be accessible using the CIBC app.

Mobile wallet will initially be available only to Rogers BlackBerry customers who own a CIBC MasterCard and Visa credit-card customers. Rogers says it’s working aggressively to enable mobile wallet on other smartphones and devices. The service is free, at least for now, for both merchants and customers.

“Canadians are embracing new technologies at an accelerated pace and we know they’re interested in using their smartphone for mobile payments,” said Rob Bruce, President of Communications, Rogers Communications. “We’ve been laying the foundation for mobile commerce and the ecosystem is ready to give Canadians the convenience, security, and peace of mind they deserve,” said Bruce. “Today’s announcement with CIBC represents an important first step toward a whole new world of mobile transactions which is a key growth area for the company.”

Rogers claims there are no security concerns as its mobile wallet complies with the mobile payment guidelines issued by the Canadian Bankers Association – an umbrella body that represents banks operating across Canada.

As I’ve mentioned in my earlier posts, Rogers holds several “firsts” in the Canadian wireless arena.  It was the first carrier in North America to roll out an HSPA+ network with speeds up to 21 Mbps. Subsequently, it became the ‘first Canadian Carrier‘ to launch LTE. The company scored another first last year when it launched a ‘Smart Home Monitoring Service‘ – a security system that allows homeowners to control appliances remotely using a smartphone. Therefore, it’s no surprise that Rogers has now emerged as the first wireless carrier to introduce a mobile wallet in Canada.

As for CIBC, it was the first Canadian bank to offer mobile banking back in 2010. CIBC says it plans to offer mobile wallet for debit cards later this year. Both companies claim it’s a win-win situation for everybody. It opens up an alternate revenue stream for Rogers.  CIBC hopes this new offering will give it a competitive edge over rival banks. As for customers, they don’t need to carry their credit cards with them all the time.

To see the Rogers Mobile Wallet in action, see this video.

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Written by: Gaurav Kheterpal. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.comby:RSS,Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube.

Bell Mobility and its parent company, BCE Inc., has been hit with a $100 million class action lawsuit pertaining to its prepaid wireless services. According to the suit, Bell’s expiry dates on its prepaid wireless services are illegal.

The Toronto law firm of Sack Goldblatt Mitchell LLP on behalf of Elliot Lake’s Celia Sankar is bringing the suit. Sankar claims that Bell, along with Virgin Mobile and Solo, engages in “unfair practices” involving prepaid wireless services. The suit also alleges that it is a breach of contract to “seize” credit balances that aren’t used by the aforementioned expiry dates.

Bell says that there is “no merit to the suit,” adding that they will defend against it.

“It is often the only option for youth, new immigrants, workers on minimum wage, the unemployed, people on disability, and seniors on fixed incomes,” Sankar said in a statement about the lawsuit. “These are the people who can least afford to have their funds forfeited or to have their mobile services cut off.”

Sankar is the founder of the DiversityCanada Foundation, a non-profit group that promotes social justice causes. According to the suit, Sankar has had her credit balance seized on at least two separate occasions.

The case, which still has to be certified as a class action suit to head to trial, alleges that Bell’s tactics regarding prepaid wireless services violate Ontario’s Consumer Protection Act. According to Sankar’s interpretation of the Act, payments for prepaid wireless services count as gift cards and therefore cannot have an expiry date.

The statement of claim (PDF) can be found, along with other information, at a website set up by the legal firm handling the case.

“The Consumer Protection Act exists to prevent companies from engaging in ‘unfair business practices’ that harm their customers,” says lead counsel Louis Sokolov. “We are asking the Court to decide whether Bell’s systemic practice of seizing credit balances is unlawful. If it is, then the practice must stop and the money must be returned.”

According to the outline of the suit, much of it hinges on manual pre-payments. The lawsuit describes these as “consumer transactions” under the Act, calling them “future performance agreements” and, as such, subject to the same legal umbrella as gift cards or other similar transaction agreements. In that the expiry of said “future performance agreements” is illegal under the Act, Sankar could very well have a reasonable case against Bell.

There’s also the matter of “unjust enrichment” detailed in the suit. As the lawsuit says, “There is no juristic reason justifying Bell retaining the amounts in question.” For Bell to profit from unused prepaid wireless services seems more than a little sketchy from a legal standpoint.

Further to this case, it would seem that such a class action suit, if accepted by the courts and tried successfully, could have lasting implications for the rest of Canada’s telecommunications providers and their prepaid wireless services.

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Written by: Jordan Richardson. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.com by: RSS, Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube.

If you want more people to see that pointless update of yours, does Facebook have a deal for you! The company is testing a new feature called “Highlight,” a paid option that will allow users to share their inane thoughts with more people. While I would guess that Facebook will continue to follow the marketing plan of anyone peddling their highly addictive wares, offering its basic networking services for free, with the company on the verge of going public expect it to find ways to extract more revenues out of its greatest resource…you.

It’s become so ingrained in our digital existence, I truly wonder what the estimated 800 million Facebook users would do if the social networking giant started charging money to utilize its services, as I have to think that Highlight is but the tip of the iceberg for Facebook’s plans to cash in on social networking addiction.

While the impetus behind a strategy to offer users a paid Highlight feature isn’t all bad—consider a call for blood donors, a lucrative apartment rental or any other important announcement bound by time constraints—the execution of the feature almost certainly will be, bringing to mind dark visions of my news feed cluttered with yet more mindless chatter that people are, sadly, willing to pay to share.

As one might guess, this whole project started with a focus on advertising. This past February Facebook unveiled its “Premium Ads” feature, ostensibly a double dip feature that allows Facebook to charge companies for posting ads and then charge them again for people to actually see them. The goal of the new advertising feature was to offer businesses a way of spreading their brand farther than the estimated 16 percent of the targeted demographic that actually sees the ads in the first place.

The goal of such a revamped advertising system is simple, as Facebook is poised to go public potential investors want to see additional revenue streams, hence the beta testing of these new pay-to-be-social feature, and its certainly the motivation behind Highlight as well.

Facebook’s official explanation on its website is as follows:

“We’re constantly testing new features across the site. This particular test is simply to gauge people’s interest in this method of sharing with their friends,” which basically means that by adding a new paid share option Facebook is essentially telling users, “Not too many people see your very important Facebook updates. So pay us and we’ll make sure they do. Or at least we’ll try.”

In the end, being a company that appeals to the masses don’t expect any sort of exorbitant fees associated with the new Highlight feature. Instead, as Facebook moves forward as a publicly traded company look for it to make money the same way it always has, by nickel-and-diming its clientele.

That means that with the social network looking to continue to increase its revenue streams expect to pay a little for many of the new things Facebook will roll out over the next little while, a strategy that will unquestionably result in big dollars for the company and its investors. Truth be told though, if people fall for this cash grab ruse they deserve to be charged extra…now only if I could make money off having to read the upcoming deluge of updates.

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Written by: Matt Klassen. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.com by: RSS, Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube.

Time and again, we at TheTelecomBlog have questioned why the so-called mobile payment revolution is taking longer than anticipated to arrive. However, things seem to be finally moving and the abolishment of penny is already being viewed as a strategic move to facilitate mobile payments.

Last week, MasterCard published the MasterCard Mobile Payments Readiness Index (MPRI) which indicates that Canada is one of the most ‘prepared’ markets for adoption of mobile payments. And yesterday, Canadian banks and Credit Unions presented a blueprint that will enable consumers to pay for goods with a tap of their smartphones.

Needless to say, this is a huge step forward as Canada prepares for a widespread adoption of mobile payments.

The mobile payment guidelines were issued by the Canadian Bankers Association – an umbrella body that represents banks operating across Canada.  The Association maintains that its voluntary guidelines adhere to common same security standards used by chip-enabled credit and debit cards and existing wireless point-of-sale terminals at retailers. The guidelines document titled ‘Mobile Reference Model’ defines a framework for how mobile payments can work with existing systems such as contactless readers already widely installed across Canada.

“Canadians are looking forward to being able to pay at point-of-sale with their mobile device, and today’s announcement of guidelines for mobile payments in Canada brings this closer to making it a reality,” the CBA said in a statement Monday. “The payment ecosystem takes the co-ordination of many parties to function effectively. It is hoped that providing early clarity on industry participation in the ecosystem will help stabilize and build efficiencies into the future deployment of mobile payments in Canada.”

The association has also established a protocol for secure payment information exchange across various stakeholders including banks, card providers, merchants and wireless providers. The guidelines include near-field communication (NFC) which is fast emerging as a popular mobile payment mechanism worldwide.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, the end goal, is to transform Canada into a cashless society; one where transactions are safe and secure, where our finances are less prone to thievery, and where my pockets are no longer weighed down will scads of copper pennies. While we are not there yet, I believe this is another massive step forward in the right direction.

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Written by: Gaurav Kheterpal. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.comby:RSS,Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube.

As our own resolute expert Matt Klassen reported on May 8, Yahoo sprawled headlong into a sticky situation when it was revealed that CEO Scott Thompson “doctored” his resume. It turned out that he claimed an undergraduate degree that he didn’t actually have.

Fast-forward a few days later and it looks like Thompson has been shown the door by Yahoo in an effort to do damage control. The trouble with Thompson is, plainly, that he made a big mess for the distressed company.

Charged with changing Yahoo’s fortunes, Thompson, the company’s fourth CEO in less than five years, demonstrated an incredible lack of judgement and fundamentally had to go. Yahoo had no choice, especially with a swarm of heated shareholders at their heels.

Yahoo did not give a reason for Thompson’s departure, but, with inaccuracies sitting impertinently on Thompson’s biography page on the company website and with the Securities and Exchange Commission, it’s not hard to determine the cause for this speedy dismissal.

For the record, Thompson’s biography featured two degrees from Stonehill College, a school located near Boston. It was claimed that he held a degree in computer science and a degree in accounting. “Activist hedge fund manager” Daniel Loeb was the shareholder who found out that Thompson did not hold the degree in computer science. Loeb, who now sits on Yahoo’s board, dropped the bomb on May 3 via a letter.

Thompson “apologized for the error” on May 7, insisting to anyone who would listen that he had no plans to resign. He didn’t explain how the “error” occurred. Loeb, meanwhile, pressed Yahoo’s board for internal documents pertaining to the research the company did on the new CEO. On May 10, Thompson insisted that he didn’t supply the deceptive information. Three days later, he was fired.

As Matt documented, the company initially stood by their man and even had the gall to call the deception an “inadvertent error.” Employees, shareholders and the general public raised all sorts of criticism over Yahoo’s non-handling of the situation, so there really was only one move to make.

Ross Levinsohn will step in as the interim CEO. The head of Yahoo’s content and advertising avenue will become the fourth person to run the company in just eight months.

In an interesting adjunct to this story, Yahoo director Patti Hart was apparently documented as holding a degree in economics and marketing in a company regulatory finding. As the Thompson trickery came into play, Yahoo admitted that Hart actually didn’t hold the degree they said she had. Instead, she holds a bachelor’s in business administration from Illinois State – with specialties in marketing and economics, but no degree. Hart, says Yahoo, will step down at the still-unscheduled annual shareholder’s meeting.

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Written by: Jordan Richardson. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.com by: RSS, Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube.

It has become the preferred communication medium for an entire generation and a veritable cash cow for mobile operators, but according to the numbers, the popularity of the ubiquitous text message may actually be on the decline.

More to the point, while many see tech giants Apple and Google presenting the greatest respective threats to the current revenue streams of the world’s mobile operators, it seems that many have underestimated the power of Facebook in the mobile sphere, as the social networking giant is quietly establishing itself as a dominant player and more time on Facebook means less time text messaging.

According to telecommunications research firm Stand Consult, operators are steadily losing SMS customers to the social network, meaning that while those customers are still buying smartphones and signing contracts, they are avoiding what has to this point been the largest revenue stream for carriers, which begs the question, how do you solve a problem like Facebook?

As the numbers game goes, figuring out the deleterious effect Facebook is having on SMS traffic is as simple and straightforward as it gets: The more time smartphone users spend accessing Facebook on their smartphone, the less time they have to fire off inane texts to one another.

According to Stand Consult, of the some 800 million people globally who access Facebook, just over half (some 425 million) access the social network from their mobile devices. In fact, measuring by minutes of use Facebook, “probably transports more mobile traffic, number of messages and time spent online than the world’s largest operator.”

Truthfully, this news comes as little surprise to me, given the fact that Facebook has become an effective way for people to communicate with all of their contacts, be it family, friends, business contacts, or customers. For people that want or need to remain constantly connected, the text message simply doesn’t suffice; they need the comprehensive social network that Facebook provides.

The conclusion, carriers much change their SMS strategy or risk losing a valuable revenue stream, something carriers here in North America did ages ago. As with most studies in the telecom and tech worlds, this study from Stand Consult requires a little interpretation, as while I can’t argue with the findings that time on Facebook deters users from texting, the situation is much less dire for carriers here in North America.  

The fact of the matter is that many of us simply don’t pay separately for SMS capability anymore, with operators bundling unlimited texting into comprehensive rate plans wherein it seems to most users that texting is simply a free feature on their smartphone. That means that regardless of how much time you spend text messaging, you’re still paying for the service. Should interest in text messaging decline to the point where subscribers actually want to stop paying for it, well that will certainly be another story.

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Written by: Matt Klassen. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.com by: RSS, Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube.

Cisco’s been on a roll off-late – scooping up Lightwire, NDS, ClearAccess, Truviso and investing $100 million in a networking startup called Insieme. The networking giant also unveiled a new line of Linksys Smart Wi-Fi Routers with app-enabled capabilities for consumers to power and enjoy their connected homes of today and tomorrow.

All in all, it’s been an impressive third quarter for Cisco. The networking giant last Thursday reported record net sales of US$11.6 billion for the quarter ending April 28, up 6.6 percent from the year-earlier period. Net income rose as well but all positives were overshadowed by weak projections for the current financial period, as Chief Executive John Chambers pointed a “cautious” spending environment.

And when a company like Cisco raises such concerns, a sharp slowdown in technology is likely to further rattle investors already worried about a volatile global economy.

Despite the overall cautious outlook, one must take notice that the latest quarter marks Cisco’s second straight quarter of improved earnings, which follows a yearlong streak of year-over-year profit declines. CEO John Chambers attributed the weak outlook to a growing proportion of customers who are waiting longer to close deals and spending less money because of growing concerns about the economy, particularly in Europe.

“We delivered solid results this quarter with record revenue and non-GAAP earnings per share,” he said. “We are successfully executing against our long-term strategic plan of growing profit faster than revenue, and in a cautious IT spending environment, we continue to outperform our competitors.”

Despite the overall cautious outlook, Cisco says it is benefiting from telecommunications and other companies’ need for more robust networks to support mobile and cloud computing. The company’s product segment saw revenue rise 5% while its services segment’s revenue increased 13%. Over the years, Cisco’s outlook has been widely seen as a trendsetter for the broader technology industry and it’s no surprise that the networking giant’s remarks hit the shares of arch rivals Juniper Networks and Brocade Communications in after-hours trades.

Analysts believe Cisco is also facing increased competition from HP, a company that hit rock bottom last year and it can only go up from there. However, the fourth quarter has typically been the company’s busiest period, so it will be interesting to see how things pan out over the next few months.

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Written by: Gaurav Kheterpal. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.comby:RSS,Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube.

While corporate America wonders about the security of the cloud, the business collective may have another cloud-related concern to deal with in the near future: taxation. To the point, while technology companies that offer cloud services are showing themselves to be particularly adept at managing their tax burden–as dealing in the digital world offers said companies a unique opportunity to seek out tax havens as their base of operations– the same cannot be said of many companies that utilize those cloud services.

As it stands, however, cloud computing currently finds itself in a nebulous taxation purgatory, a temporary waiting place out of reach of an antiquated taxation system that’s currently ill-equipped to properly determine who to tax for cloud transactions that may be occurring on third party servers on the other side of the world.

But by its very nature purgatory is a temporary state, and according to a recent survey conducted by international auditing firm KPMG (PDF), almost half of all those using the cloud have not thought about the impending tax implications, meaning that when this taxation limbo comes to a crashing halt, many of us simply won’t be ready.

According to the study, 45% of the surveyed American businesses that utilized cloud services had no notion of the looming taxation issues, nor had any knowledge if anyone in their respective corporations were aware of such things. Simply put, for many, the cloud looks all new and shiny, the latest technological tool to help manage the information burden, but there are dark sides to this cloud, particularly related to security and taxation.

So as the cloud inexorably rolls in, the bottom line is that the service’s ambiguous tax state won’t last forever, meaning that all users of the cloud, particularly those of course who will be using cloud services for business purposes, “need to plan their operations and activities carefully to manage their exposure while gaining the desired benefits from this new technology.”

According to the study, companies transitioning to a cloud-based business model will need to take several issues into consideration, most importantly the tax laws of one’s local country, the source of the cloud income or payments, and the location of the servers (as this may present other challenges should those servers be in a country with a different taxation model).

Such foresight is important, the KPMG study explains, because “organizations that proactively manage and plan for the tax issues associated with operating in the cloud may unlock significant value for their organization.”

“Significant tax issues for both providers and users of cloud do exist and are multiplied when the transactions cross multiple borders,” says Steven Fortier, principal-in-charge of KPMG’s US Tax Cloud Initiative. “Companies should expect additional scrutiny as tax authorities become increasingly aware of the tax implications associated with the switch from traditional IT service provision and software licensing to a cloud-based IT model.”

In the end, the inexorable advance of the cloud offers a veritable new horizon of business opportunities, but with such opportunities comes serious issues and if history has taught us anything its that companies need to be prepared to manage things like security and taxation before they find themselves exposed, vulnerable, and possibly out of business.

Retailers who don’t utilize smartphone apps are in danger of losing out on valuable business, according to a study conducted by ABI Research. Despite the growing strength of ecommerce and the importance of a business’s web presence, the study, conducted across America in December 2011, found that retailer-branded smartphones apps actually drove consumers into the brick and mortar retail locations and, once there, successfully encouraged consumers to spend more money.

If nothing else, the study is clearly evidence that both the use of mobile wallets and the use of smartphones as a mobile coupon and advertising delivery system are certainly on the rise. Of course it also speaks volumes to the mindset of the average American consumer, mindless drones seemingly enslaved by the commands of the ubiquitous mobile device, but enough of that.

Simply put, if you’re a retailer and what to drive up sales in this modern digital age, hire someone to design an app that advertises deals and suggests products your customers might like. Do that and your business will likely succeed, do it not, and you’ll likely be left wondering where all the customers have gone.

The study itself, conducted late in 2011 and covering a relatively minuscule survey demographic of 2000 people, asked the respondents a variety of questions related to their overall mobile device usage, including what sort of device they used and what they used it for.

The study found that of the 2000 respondents (of which 965 were smartphone users) who said they had downloaded a retailer-branded app, noted that “the app caused them to visit the store more (45.8%), buy more of the store/brand’s products and services (40.4%), tell a friend about their store shopping experience (35.8%), and encourage friends to visit the store (30.8%).”

While such results no doubt make the smartphone app seem like the magic bullet for retailers, the keen observer will note one glaring statistical omission in that data, the percentage of the 2000 respondents who actually had downloaded a retailer-branded app. It turns out that among the 2000 respondents; only roughly 25 percent of them said they had downloaded a smartphone retail app.

The survey conclusion notes that despite the fact that the positive responses among that 25 percent were still high, as the number of consumers who download apps goes up, it is expected that the positive feedback related to those apps will actually go down.

Further, the study also found that almost 40 percent of those who did download a retailer-branded app had also downloaded apps from that retailer’s closest competitor, meaning that downloading apps demonstrates little about consumer loyalty, but says lots about the ever-present desire to save money. 

In the end, the results of the survey don’t really come as much of a surprise to me. In a marketplace that is increasingly becoming mobile it’s important for retailers to make the switch, to increase both their web and mobile presence to connect with potential consumers where they are. What I did find interesting, however, is the ability of a retailer’s mobile presence to actually drive foot traffic into a brick and mortar store, something I would have thought counter-intuitive with the exponential growth of ecommerce. So with that said, despite the statistical ambiguities of this study, if you’re looking to increase consumer awareness, look to increase your mobile presence first.

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Written by: Matt Klassen. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.com by: RSS, Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube.

With numerous “advances” like mobile payments seeming inevitable markers on the technology landscape, opportunities for criminals to take advantage of our weaknesses persist. And Canada, apparently one of the most “prepared” markets for the aforementioned mobile payments, is fast becoming a veritable hotbed for cybercriminals.

According to research from San Diego-based Websense Inc., the Great White North is home to a throng of malicious websites and other criminal opportunities.

Of course, Canada’s rise in the world of cybercrime follows a worldwide trend as criminal activities increase with new “advances” in tech. “Things are getting worse – simple as that,” said Patrik Runald, the Websense’s director of security research.

Among Websense’s findings in the first quarter of 2012 was that Canada ranks number two in the world with respect to phishing sites, putting it ahead of nations like Russia in the category. Things are so “ripe” for phishing in Canada that the country now hosts 170 percent more of the sites than during the same period of time last year. If there’s anything for Canadians to take solace in, it’s that the United States has worse numbers for the quarter.

In terms of malicious websites, those have increased by 239 percent since the same period last year.

Even with the increases in numbers and malicious sites, Canada still enjoys a position at sixth place in terms of cybercrime – the same position as last year.

It’s hard to say who is being targeted by the phishing sites in Canada. That the sites are being hosted in the country doesn’t necessarily mean that more Canadians are falling victim to cybercrime, although the risks are certainly increased. According to Runald, scams purporting to be from the likes of Canada Post and TD Canada Trust are in the wind.

As far as what’s being done about cybercrime in Canada, the picture is as dismal as it was last year when Websense reported on the subject. Canadian companies are still less than aware of the issue than they should be, for one thing, and there hasn’t been the level of cybercrime crackdowns as there have been in other countries. The lack of effective legislation, ironic as that may sound in the face of the Tories’ tough on crime policies, also makes Canada  ideal for cybercrooks.

There are ways for consumers to protect themselves from cybercrime, of course, but the continued evolution of the threats makes it hard to keep up even for the most informed among us. While the rush to arm ourselves with the latest and greatest in tech may be compelling (and profitable), it is important to remember the other side of the coin when charging jubilantly toward the “latest and greatest.”

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Written by: Jordan Richardson. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.com by: RSS, Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube.