Including Everything Blog

Archive for the ‘Mobile’ Category

Verizon Wireless responded today to a lawsuit filed by AT&T earlier this month that accused Verizon’s “There’s a map for that” marketing campaign of misleading consumers about AT&T’s 3G coverage in the United States.

In a nutshell, Verizon said AT&T’s request to have the ads pulled is without merit. From the court filing (PDF):

AT&T did not file this lawsuit because Verizon’s “There’s A Map For That” advertisements are untrue; AT&T sued because Verizon’s ads are true and the truth hurts… AT&T now is attempting to silence Verizon’s ads that include maps graphically depicting the geographic reach of AT&T’s 3G network as compared to Verizon’s own 3G network because AT&T does not like the truthful picture painted by that comparison.

In the court filing, Verizon outlines the reasons that AT&T’s arguments are without merit. They include:

• Because the ads are truthful, AT&T is attacking them under faulty theories, including a claim that they are misleading. But Verizon says there’s no real evidence – aside from an AT&T commissioned survey – that proves that consumers are misled by the ad.
• There is no emergency that would require the court to issue an immediate restraining order – as AT&T has requested – without giving Verizon the opportunity to conduct its own research and present evidence to prove that consumers are not being misled.
• The harm to Verizon and the public, in general, caused by pulling the ads is greater than any alleged harm being inflicted on AT&T.

Read more about this topic by Sam Diaz at ZDNet

Google announced today on its blog that it has acquired AdMob (www.admob.com), a popular mobile display ad company, for $750 million. Google has already built their own platform for AdSense on Mobile devices, but this acquisition gives Google access to AdMob’s more than 15,000 mobile websites and applications.

Despite the tremendous growth in mobile usage and the substantial investment by many businesses in the space, the mobile web is still in its early stages. We believe that great mobile advertising products can encourage even more growth in the mobile ecosystem. That’s what has us excited about this deal.

Though perhaps the most visible, AdMob is not the largest mobile ad network. According to an August compilation of Nielsen data by Mobile Marketer, here’s the reach of each of the top mobile ad networks (monthly unique users):

1. Millennial Media: 45.6 million
2. Yahoo!: 36.1 million
3. Google: 31.9 million
4. AOL/Platform-A’s Third Screen Media: 28.6 million
5. AdMob: 25.7 million
6. Microsoft: 25.4 million (doesn’t include the new Verizon deal)
7. Jumptap: 23.4 million
8. Quattro Wireless: 23 million

You can find more information about this acquisition at google.com/press/admob

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General rules:

1. **Only for US readers**
2. Contest Starts June 13th 2009 and Ends July 15th 2009
3. Each entrants will get one unique number. The list of all the entrants will be posted at the end of the contest period
4. Two winners will get a 6 month GPS navigator service
5. The winner will be selected using Random.Org and announced here with a specific blog post

Check out the blog contest and enter to win!

Read more About Blog Contests online.

Related Information:

Recently I’ve had the opportunity to play around with Twitter API and several services/software pieces that integrate with Twitter.  Until recently, I hadn’t run into any issues with the limitations of the Twitter API and how many connections a user is allowed access to in a given window of time.

So why couldn’t Twitter release a premium level of its service that grants paid users a greater level of access to the platform, additional features, more API connections, etc?  This seems the logical next step.  The main service would remain free as it always had (even I didn’t need to upgrade until now), but a handful of the Twitter power users would benefit from near-real-time Twitter updates with applications such as TweetDeck and mobile devices for the iPhone or BlackBerry such as Tweetie, Twitterific and TwitterBerry.

Here is some simple math that I’ve worked out.  The numbers seem fairly reasonable so far and I welcome comments on this model.  TwitDir reports 3,328,420 twitterers that they know as of today.  I’ll use this as the base number for my calculation.  If we estimate that there are 3.3 million Twitterers out there sharing ideas, and only 5% of them are power users that require a more powerful level of Twitter power (166,421), paying only $2.99/mo…

Users:	3,328,420
5% paying:	166,421
$2.99/mo	$497,598.79
$4.99/mo	$830,440.79

That’s almost a half a million dollars of revenue for Twitter and all they had to do was scale up a few servers and spend a few hours coding the management/login area for users.  Hardly anything else needs to change.  The infrastructure has already been layed out and is operational.  If they wanted to, they could charge $4.99/mo for a different tier of service and offer other incentives to those users that required even more.

I’ve found myself leaving TweetDeck open on both my Mac (home) and Windows PC (work) and constantly use Tweetie on my iPhone.  There go all my API connections for the hour…they’re used up in about 30 minutes even with moderate usage.

The bottom line, would we pay for this service?  Is it so necessary to the way that we network now that users would jump into paying for it, or do we only use it now because it’s free?  My vote is for the same level of service to remain free, but offer additional options to their already-ginormous user base.

Comments welcome.

After much talk, Apple is finally considering the tethering option with AT&T to allow connection to the internet on computers using the iPhone as its source of Internet connection.  An interview at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco confirms that this is on the horizon, as AT&T Wireless CEO Ralph de la Vega said Apple and the wireless carrier are working on an official tethering application that will be coming “soon.”  No official timeframe for this has been given.

I’ve witnessed the speed of the internet on a laptop using a jailbroken iPhone lately, and I must say…it’s fast.  The iPhone 3G is connected to one of the quickest carrier networks out there (second only to Sprint’s WiMax I believe), and I’ve seen DSL rivaling speeds.

It’s been said that the carrier will also be likely to charge additional fees for the service or to use the application to cover costs.  I’m sensing this idea of “double dipping” starting to pop up again.  I posted about this a week ago with Verizon trying to do this with SMS messaging not originating from mobile devices.

Read:  Verizon to stunt mobile growth for a few bucks?

I mean, they’re already billing you for so-called “unlimited” data.  This has been discussed for many months in relation to various carriers (not just AT&T) and is starting to irritate the hell out of consumers.  You have a sales guy in the retail store telling you it’s “unlimited data” and signage all over the store also stating the term “unlimited”, yet we have the carrier’s terms and conditions for service stating something like this…

If you are on a data plan that does not include a monthly megabyte allowance and additional data usage rates, the parties agree that AT&T has the right to impose additional charges if you use more than 5 GB in a month.  Prior to the imposition of any additional charges, AT&T shall provide you with notice and you shall have the right to terminate your service.

Increasingly, Internet providers across the country are placing such limits on the amount of data users can upload and download each month, as a way to curb a small number of “bandwidth hogs” who use a lot of the network capacity. For instance, 5 percent of AT&T’s subscribers take up 50 percent of the capacity, spokesman Michael Coe said Tuesday.

To that I say:  ”Why did you say it was unlimited, then?”.  This screams false advertising, doesn’t it?  Let’s just call it what it is.  I sense a class action lawsuit coming of many.