The future of the mobile industry is pretty clear- it’s all about data. Data revenues have allowed U.S. carriers to keep subscriber ARPU’s relatively stable in the face of 30% declines in voice revenues over the past five years. Look no further than Verizon Wireless’ recent announcement to allow unlimited Skype-to-Skype voice calls over its 3G network to see the future revenue prospects of voice, now a commodity service. Data revenues, in contrast, are expected to continue their explosive growth, more than doubling by 2013 according to a recent Telecommunications Industry Association report. It’s no coincidence that over the same period smartphone sales are projected to account for more than 40% of all wireless devices sold domesti

I spotted a surprising article today over at Gizmodo.  It was surprising not for the fact that it deemed talked about piracy in general, but the attitude it treated piracy.  The story focused around Apple App Store piracy, which it found in general to be at about 10% or less for most apps, and deemed it not a big deal. Here’s the money quote: At first I found many developers' silence on the issue curious. But after talking to a few, and finding out the scale of the problem, it makes sense: An app developer has nothing to gain by taking their fight public — Apple is clearly aware of the issue, and it's not like you can somehow convince hardcore pirates to start paying for all the dozens of apps they steal, because they we

I was living in Europe in 2000 when the first WAP phones (Wireless Access Protocol) were introduced.  These phones were so over hyped.  They were going to bring the Internet to your mobile phones ushering in the era of “m-commerce.”  Gag. I had just returned from living in Japan where I witnessed the hugely successful launch of i-mode by NTT DoCoMo so I knew the potential that the mobile web would ultimately bring, but I saw so many flaws in the launch of WAP.  But like lemmings, every company in the market rushed to proclaim they were launching WAP versions of their products. I was attending a major industry conference in Barcelona at the height of the WAP excitement.  I was on stage in front of several hund

Om Malik thinks so.  I’m not so sure. Om talked to Hulu CEO, Jason Kilar at the DLD conference in Munich this week and talked specifically about the iPad plans for the popular destination site for Heritage Media video. Of course, Jason, who graduated from the Jeff Bezos School of Management, and like his former boss plays his cards close to the vest, didn’t reveal anything specific. When I asked Kilar if he was going to make a special version of a Hulu app for the iPad, Kilar said: “We are very big believers in mobile and we don’t think about (just) one device only.” My translation: Expect Hulu to be on multiple platforms such as the iPhone and Android. I would expect the Android version to show up first because it s

My first impression of Apple iPad is that its low price of $499 is due to the fact that it's basically a storefront for Apple's iTunes and iBooks online store. It looks like there is no Adobe Flash video support, or Microsoft Silverlight video support, which means no Hulu, no BBC iPlayer, no Netflix Direct. You won't be able to stream video from anyone but Apple. Belt-and braces DRM... By using the iPhone OS and its own proprietary hardware, Apple has managed to build a solid belt-and-braces digital rights management (DRM) system, that is the platform itself. Applications and media designed to run well on the iPad will be optimized to run on the Apple iPhone OS and also, on its proprietary hardware, the A4 microprocessor. This provid

The iPad is here and it’s a really big iPhone.  Yeah, that’s right, John Furrier called it last month. We’re about halfway through the announcement right now, and Steve Jobs has spent most of his time during the keynote on the couch demonstrating a variety of apps from the App Store, which falls in line with exactly what John predicted as well. We’ll have more analysis later today, I’m certain.  For now, here’s the facts as given out at the event today. - Apple sold our 250 millionth iPod last quarter. - Last quarter alone they had 250 million visitors to their stores. - App store: over 140,000 applications on the app store. - Ended their holiday quarter $15 billion dollars in revenue. - Apple also n

I was thinking about all the devices that we need to purchase and maintain - it gets expensive. Beyond the fiscal concerns, one of things that turns me off about netbooks is the idea of having another device to maintain and try to synchronize. Obviously that will become easier with time and as cloud personalization services emerge, but for now, it is a pain. Having two pc's sounds like a pain to me, but I have already gotten used to having a smart phone. So why not have the smart phone be your netbook? Smartphones are now pretty much as powerful as many netbooks, and with the rapid pace of innovation in smartphones there is no reason why the phones coming out this year should not be able to do everything that one should desire from a netb

While the media has enjoyed positioning the recent launch of Google’s Android-based Nexus One “superphone” manufactured by HTC as a direct competitive threat to Apple’s iPhone, I agree with Bill Gurley of Benchmark Capital that this is the wrong question to try to answer as Apple and Google are taking very different approaches to the mobile market. Apple, as in the personal computer market, has focused on developing the most well designed, highest grossing margin, products they can imagine at the expense of market share. Google on the other hand, by open-sourcing the Android operating system to handset and device manufacturers for free, is aiming to become the most widely used mobile operating system at the expense of Microsoft�

iSites is one of a handful of companies that are offering services that let you build iPhone apps quickly in minutes. Ben Parr wrote about this yesterday over at Mashable: iSites, a new service launching today, allows you to take your website’s RSS feed and data and quickly transform it into a full-fledged iPhone app. It was created by Genwi, a service that combines aspects of RSS reader, social network and news filter. The product is very straightforward: For just $25, iSites will create a customized iPhone and Android app for you (note: android apps will publish starting in February). The first step is to add some of your feeds. The primary one should be your blog or an RSS feed, but you can also add your Twitter, Flickr, YouTu

Google's Android cell phones are quickly closing the gap on Apple's iPhone, according to new research from eMarketer. In the fourth quarter, the proportion of potential smartphone buyers who said they were going to purchase an Android jumped from 6% to 21%, surpassing blackberry for the first time, while interest in buying the iPhone dipped. For more details on what the Smartphone wars might look like as Google and Apple continue their ascendancy in the entertainment business, check out my analysis in this week's New Media Minute.