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DOJ Sets Sights on Verizon, M-Health Innovation, and 700,000 Daily Android Activations

December 21, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Verizon's Big Spectrum Deals Spark DOJ Antitrust Probe
Over the last month, the Dose has been keeping tabs on Verizon's purchases of Advanced Wireless Spectrum (AWS), including a $3.6-billion deal with "SpectrumCo" and a $315-million deal with Cox Communications. The fact that both deals were "pending government approval" didn't raise any major flags when the stories originally broke, but now it turns out that approval will not be as promptly forthcoming as initially assumed. The Justice Department has opened investigations into whether the deals concentrate too much control of the limited available spectrum into the hands of one company and whether the cooperation deals between Verizon and the cable companies constitute violations of antitrust law.

Qualcomm, Verizon, Zephyr Technology Partner on M-Health Monitoring
Patients with congestive heart failure in rural Arizona are receiving the latest innovation in mobile health technology: a Motorola Droid X, loaded with software to help monitor, record and report health issues to their doctors. The device will be able to take readings from a variety of medical equipment, such as wireless blood pressure cuffs and pulse oximeters, and report the data to doctors in hospitals. The project is aimed at helping patients without ready access to medical facilities get better care, while cutting down on unnecessary and costly physician visits.

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Filed Under: Android, Google, m-health, Mobile, Mobile Innovation Tagged With: ,

Uncle Sam’s New Focus on "Socialytics," Verizon Reaches A 4G Milestone, and Angry Birds Theme Parks

December 15, 2011 by Leave a Comment

2011: The Year Mobile Took Over the World
Check out this awesome video from MobileFuture. It recaps the the major trends in the mobile sector over the past year and features some predictions about what's coming. Some highlights from the video: 1 billion apps are downloaded globally each month, and US mobile data demand is predicted to rise a whopping 1,800% in the next four years. Short, smart, worth watching.

US Government to Increase Emphasis on Connecting With Citizens Via Social Media
2011 has seen the emergence of mobile as a tech industry powerhouse, and social media has played a huge role in this growth. According to a report from IDC Government Insights (an IT consulting firm for the US government), 2012 will feature a much greater focus on connecting the government to the American people, including the mobilization (no pun intended) of social media analytics, or "socialytics," as a way to help civilian governments improve quality-of-life issues such as human services and economic growth.

Galaxy Nexus Finally Hits Verizon Stores
The wait is finally over. Samsung's Galaxy Nexus, the flagship phone for Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich," is finally available from Verizon in the US. It comes in at a pricey $299 with a contract update, but seeing as this phone is the hottest Android device currently on the market, that may just be worth it. Check out this report from Gigaom, which features a video detailing all the specs for the Galaxy Nexus and the Ice Cream Sandwich upgrade.

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Filed Under: analytics, Android, Ice Cream Sandwich Tagged With: , ,

AT&T Spends Big on New Spectrum, US Data Revenue Continues to Grow Strongly, and More

December 13, 2011 by Leave a Comment


AT&T Claims Integrating Qualcomm Spectrum Could Cost $1-2 Billion
AT&T is currently awaiting FCC approval of a $1.93 billion deal that would allow it to begin integrating Qualcomm's 700 MHz spectrum into its 4G LTE network. AT&T estimates that the new spectrum would allow significantly faster downlink speeds and would vastly increase the coverage of its LTE network. However, the company estimates that the infrastructure upgrades could cost up to $2 billion, and would not be ready until 2014. With the potential cost reaching up to $4 billion, this is surely not an undertaking that AT&T is going about lightly.

U.S. Mobile Data Revenue Tops $17 Billion in Q3
Fueled by Verizon and AT&T, who together represent 69% of all US data revenue, mobile data services brought in $17 billion last quarter. This puts the industry on pace to hit a whopping $67 billion by the end of the year, and represents a 21% year over year increase in Q3, further proof that mobile as an industry continues to grow at an impressive (and profitable) rate.

This data and much more come from a report by Chetan Sharma. For a comprehensive look back at mobile in Q3, the MobileDose team highly recommends checking the report out.

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Filed Under: analytics, m-marketing Tagged With: , ,

Mobile Payments, Starbucks and Carrier IQ Update

December 7, 2011 by
Mobile Payments Aren't Always Mobile

A comScore report found that 56 percent of mobile users prefer to shop while in their house. Most of this m-commerce traffic comes from tablets. Common purchases are digital items such as songs, eBooks and magazines. Two-thirds of mobile shoppers said that they also buy daily deals, gift certificates, electronics and clothing. Only 42 percent said they did their shopping while at random places or at work. Here are more mobile trends from JiWire.


The Starbucks Mobile Experience
Starbucks is doing mobile payments right. They have 3 million mobile transactions a month and 26 million since January of this year. More than 9,000 Starbucks locations accept payments using their app. Only 5 percent of gift-card transactions are done with the app, but the trend is growing.

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Filed Under: Android, m-commerce Tagged With: ,

Verizon’s Blocks Google Wallet, Releases New Devices, While Samsung Wins a Legal Victory over Apple, and More

December 6, 2011 by


Verizon To Release New Tablets, Smartphones in Time for Holiday Season
Verizon is slated to release several new devices in the upcoming weeks, including hotly anticipated smartphones and tablets from Samsung and Motorola.

  • Motorola's Droid 4 is set to be released on December 8. It is the latest in the popular line of Motorola Droid smartphones, following on the heels of the Droid RAZR. The Droid 4 comes equipped with 4G LTE capabilities as well as a sliding full-QWERTY keyboard.
  • Samsung's Galaxy Nexus, which includes an NFC chip, is coming on December 9. The device has been one of the most sought-after releases of the season, after the phenomenal success of earlier Samsung devices like the Galaxy S II.
  • Motorola's new 4G LTE tablet, the XYboard, will be released in Verizon stores sometime later this month. As the MobileDose team reported in November, the tablet has already been released in Europe as the Xoom 2. It is available as an 8.2 inch and a 10.1 inch tablet.

Samsung Wins Big Over Apple in Patent War

Last week a California judge denied Apple's request for a preliminary injunction against Samsung, which means that the Korean company will continue to be allowed to sell 3 of its popular Galaxy smartphones in the US. A similar legal victory is expected in a lawsuit Apple has brought against Samsung in France, and the handset maker has now announced that it has secured $200 million in funding for its legal battles against Apple (although the source doesn't mention from where). These victories are both only for preliminary injunctions, and the two companies are currently involved in over 20 legal disputes in 10 countries, so Samsung still has a long way to go before its out of the legal woods.

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Filed Under: Android, Apple, Droid, Galaxy, tablets, Yahoo Tagged With: , , , , ,

Disabling Carrier IQ, Google’s Indoor Mapping Plans, and Verizon Spends Big on New Spectrum

December 2, 2011 by

How To Guide For Disabling Carrier IQ Rootkit
The MobileDose team has been covering the Carrier IQ keylogging scandal all week. In case you've missed it, Carrier IQ is a hidden app included in the firmware for millions of smartphones and tablets running Android and iOS, that can record keytaps, in what is possibly a gigantic breach of US wiretapping law. Here is a how to guide for finding and neutralizing Carrier IQ on both iOS and Android devices, including a link to a search app from developer who originally discovered the problem, Trevor Eckhart. Be aware, this fix is not a guarantee, and it is likely that carriers will address the problem in the near future, considering the ever increasing scale of this scandal. Thanks to Rob Goff for the link.

Google's Newest Mapping Venture: Google Indoor Maps
Google has begun the latest step in its nefarious plan for world mapping domination: it is encouraging users to add interior floor plans to Google Maps, attempting to capitalize on crowdsourcing to create a map of the world so complete, even grandmothers will never be able to get lost in the mall again! Potential uses for the new feature include mapping large commercial spaces like malls, arenas, and museums, but also more private establishments such as college campuses or large office buildings.

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Filed Under: Android, Apple, Google, LTE Tagged With: , ,

Verizon and AMEX rub shoulders on mobile payments

August 1, 2011 by Leave a Comment

What most of the initiatives lack, of course, is real money sitting on both sides of the table that incent both parties to make something happen, in a given timeframe.
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Filed Under: Daily Insights and Observations, mobile payments Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Apple iPhone to land at Sprint?

July 7, 2011 by Leave a Comment

That’s the speculation by a Citadel Securities analyst.
As Verizon ends its unlimited data use plans for new customers, Sprint stands alone as the only national carrier to offer an unlimited data plan. The Citadel analyst makes a good point in saying that Verizon’s move to tiered plans puts Sprint in a prime position to snap up disenchanted smartphone users.

Filed Under: Apple, Daily Insights and Observations Tagged With: , , , , ,

5 Things To Consider Before Buying A Verizon Iphone

January 12, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Limited International roaming, and short shelf life are among the topVerizon iPhone

via My Forbes Things Mobile Column

Amplify’d from blogs.forbes.com

Verizon’s iPhone: 5 Things Enterprise Executives Should Consider
Here are five things to consider:
  1. Limited International Roaming Support: The Verizon iPhone can technically roam to other CDMA properties (about 40 countries), including Latin America, China, and Korea but not Europe and many other key international regions.
  1. No support for Verizon’s new 4G LTE network. For AT&T or Sprint converts, this means data in the low speed lane.
  1. Wi-Fi Hotspot support. The only new (and certainly cool) feature  in the announcement. Using the handset as a WiFi hotspot is a very convenient feature. But buyer beware, if you use the handset in this mode you cannot receive calls.
  1. Limited shelf life? Apple is expected to release a new handset this summer that will support the new high-speed networks and other rumored innovations.  You may well have handset envy in 6 months.
  1. Termination fee’s and two year contract locks. For consumers and enterprise executives alike, the cost of switching out of an active contract on AT&T or Sprint is high. And the cost of upgrading to the iPhone 5 this summer may be high without incentives which today don’t seem to be on the radar.

The Verizon iPhone is not the dream phone at all.
The handset is old phone (especially in mobile terms) on an aging network –EVDO is several years old and as mentioned, Verizon is touting its new LTE which isn’t supported by this new handset.

I would be very surprised if AT&T does not counter the one new feature – hotspot capability – on its own network. It just seems like a no brainer. The AT&T offering would not be handicapped by lack of simultaneous voice and data support.

This is a good win for Verizon.  It’s an interesting, if not uncharacteristic distribution response by Apple and likely signals the company’s worry about the wide distribution play of Android.

At the end of the day, the Verizon iPhone appears that it may have a limited shelf life. The real news here is that as the era of handset exclusivity fades, Carriers are increasingly going to be forced less on glimmer and more about performance.

Read more at blogs.forbes.com
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Filed Under: Daily Insights and Observations, iPhone, Verizon Wireless Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Are Mobile Payments Poised to Explode in 2011?

December 2, 2010 by 2 Comments

The Street.com is out today with an article citing some striking, if not misleading numbers about mobile payments. http://ow.ly/3iOb.

Aside from the fact that virtually no infrastructure is in place to support NFC payments there are other issues with the article.

Point 1. Bill pay via mobile banking applications on smartphones today, while interesting in of themselves from a retail banking standpoint, are at best an orphan cousin to what mobile payments via cell phones will be, especially using a technologies like NFC. Thus the value and transaction forecast should not be commingled, nor are they an indicator of what consumer traction mobile payments may get in 2011.

Point 2. Just because handset and chip manufacturers forecast upwards to 50mil handsets with NFC capability, there again is little correlation to what that may mean in terms of transaction volume or value. Its simply is a single data point, that indicates that handset technology is available with varying degree’s of capability. If you have covered this market long enough, you’d know that handset tech was never the barrier. In fact, as price sensitive as handset builders are to component costs, there isn’t is a single manufacture that I can find that says despite the cost of NFC in handsets to be well in excess of $1.00, that it is now, or was a fly in the ointment.

In 2011, you can be sure, that lacking infrastructure, consumers who are early adopters in 2011 of contactless stickers on phones and NFC in the handsets, will be replaying the exact same capability that 60 mil or so consumers have had in their hands with contactless plastic. I’ll guess that 50% of that 60 mil didn’t know they had contactless and of those that did less than 20& used the capability with any regular frequency.

So where does that leave us? We still lack a trusted business model between the banks, acquirers, merchants, processors and the carriers. We still lack point of sale devices that have any capability beyond simple RFID contactless (the dumb cousin of NFC). And we have three major carriers (AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile), jumping on a credit card rail (Discover) putting together infrastructure that in theory at least, is built from the ground up to support mobile payments of some sort.

Where I think this leaves us is that a significant portion of these new NFC enable handsets will actually be used my merchants as portable point of sale devices.  And perhaps a great percentage of the population will start using their contactless plastic cards to check out via phones use in alternative check out queues.

Make no mistake about it, 2011 will be the year of news and noise about mobile payments. And there will be a lot of money put into 3 places-Specialized applications for mobile handsets, Alternative payment infrastructures and new payment cloud solutions that will be built by CSP (probably the wireless carriers) that will looked to usurp the 4 party communication and switch network run by the incumbent processors today.

There is no question that mobile payment initiatives will be bigger news (and noise) but lets not get ahead ourselves…

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