May 2014

Opposing tech groups settle lawsuit

Two competing technology industry trade groups have resolved a lawsuit over lobbyists who moved from one organization to another.

Details about the deal were not disclosed, but executives expressed hope that the resolution between TechAmerica and the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) would settle a fracture that had erupted in the tech lobbying world. Both trade groups pledged to put the matter behind them and refocus on the needs of their members.

"ITI is committed to focusing on the vibrancy of the technology sector and the dynamic future that [information and communications technology] innovation brings to consumers around the world,” CEO Dean Garfield said in a statement.

His firm represents tech giants like Apple, Google and Microsoft. “To ensure continued success in achieving this vision, ITI and TechAmerica have agreed to the resolution of pending litigation between them and have entered into a confidential agreement to resolve all claims, without any admission of wrongdoing,” Garfield added. TechAmerica head Shawn Osborne added that the deal “is in the best interests of our members.”

Smartphones and Emerging Markets: Making the Mobile Revolution Sustainable

[Commentary] Mobile technology is now a ubiquitous part of our daily lives, whether we’re texting friends, checking the headlines, or mobilizing a protest. While smartphone technology remains most prevalent in the “developed” world, this is rapidly changing as the cost of devices drops, making smartphones more accessible to the growing middle classes in emerging markets (check out the $25 smartphone Mozilla showed off at Mobile World Congress in February).

Feature phones -- cellphones not connected to the Internet -- are already revolutionizing the lives of farmers, educators and health-care providers in the developing world. With the power of the Internet at their fingertips, individuals, families and entire communities will be further empowered.

Right now, emerging-market consumers conserve their Internet activity for opportunities when they have access to a wireless network, which may be once a week or less. Even if they have access to a wireless network, the high cost of data plans bars many people from accessing the Internet via their phone. In parallel to innovating down the cost of smartphone devices, we also have to tackle the critical issue of insufficient network infrastructure in the developing world.

The real challenge has to do with sustainability: Mobile network operators (MNOs) need to develop business models that allow them to profit from bringing data networks to poor and remote parts of the world. I believe the best form of smart, sustainable development comes from incentivizing existing, scalable business models.

One way to catch these consumers as their spending power grows could be for MNOs to partner directly with advertisers or application developers; this is already happening in the developed world, where phone carriers and makers have deals with certain search engines or map applications. Even if young users in Kenya or Ghana don’t have the money to spend on products just yet, as the consumer class in emerging markets grows, they will be extremely valuable to any business looking to hook a new generation of buyers.

[Eberhard is CEO and Founder, Mobile Accord]

Silicon Valley Buys DC a Drink at Annual Party Weekend

Silicon Valley companies may not like official Washington sometimes, but they’re increasingly happy to throw it a party. Google, Facebook, Microsoft and a handful of other tech companies are hosting bashes as Washington politicians and journalists party during White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner weekend, an annual schmooze- and selfie-fest that started with a dinner and has grown into a four-day party marathon.

Nine parties are planned, including an event at the Institute for Peace co-sponsored by Google and Netflix which will include actors from Netflix’s “House of Cards.” Across town, Microsoft and AOL are helping sponsor a “New Media Party” that will feature craft cocktails, “spheres over the dance floor enabling guests to download music” and miniature talking robots.

For firms like Google and Facebook, the parties represent a chance to gin up some goodwill among lawmakers, administration officials and journalists. Other tech companies, such as BuzzFeed and Yahoo, are using the weekend to draw attention to their burgeoning new media operations.

Al Jazeera journalists to be tried on World Press Freedom Day

Three journalists working for Al Jazeera’s English channel will appear in court on World Press Freedom Day. They are charged with aiding members of a “terrorist organisation”, with the Egyptian government saying they operated without proper accreditation.

The state prosecutor accused them of publishing lies and supplying equipment and money to Egyptian nationals who were allegedly members of the banned Muslim Brotherhood.

There have been allegations of torture, with some detained journalists saying they had been physically abused and not been treated for their wounds. A fourth Al Jazeera journalist, Abdullah Elshamy, has been on a hunger strike for 100 days. He was arrested in August, without trial. He will also appear on World Press Freedom Day, where the judge will decide to either extend his incarceration or release him.

Samsung closing gap on Apple in tablet market

When it comes to tablets, Apple remains the dominant leader, but rival Samsung is catching up. Apple iPad sales fell from 19.5 million during the first quarter of 2013 to 16.4 million during that period in 2014. At the same, Samsung grew its tablet sales from 8.5 million to 11.2 million during the first quarter of 2014, according to figures released by IDC, an analysis firm.

Those sales caused Apple's share of the tablet market to fall from 40.2% in 2013 to 32.5% in the first quarter while Samsung grew its share of the market from 17.5% to 22.3%.

During the period, Samsung released a handful of new tablets, including the Galaxy NotePro and Galaxy TabPro, with numerous productivity features that were aimed toward professionals. The company also packaged its tablets with other devices and products in numerous carrier promotions. The tactics seem to be paying off.

"Samsung continues to work aggressively with carriers to drive tablet shipments through attractively priced smartphone bundles," IDC said in a statement.

The whole market struggled with sales during the first quarter of 2014. According to IDC, tablet sales grew only 3.9% from 2013. Along with Apple, Asus and Amazon also saw their tablet sales decrease compared with 2013.

"The rise of large-screen phones and consumers who are holding on to their existing tablets for ever longer periods of time were both contributing factors to a weaker-than-anticipated quarter for tablets and 2-in-1s," Tom Mainelli, IDC program vice president of devices and displays, said.

Big circ gains for NY Times and USA Today

Newspaper circulation isn’t what it used to be. And neither are the tools used to measure it.

The latest batch of circulation numbers from the Alliance for Audited Media came out, and it’s difficult to cull any significant meaning from them because of all the changes that have been made to the means by which circulation is measured.

Many of the changes reflect the new way people read papers, both in print and digitally. But they also provide some loopholes that help certain papers claim big circulation gains that, when you look more closely at them, don’t always hold up.

The most significant example during the six months ended March 31, the data comes from USA Today. The paper saw an incredible 94 percent gain in Monday through Friday circulation, to 3,255,157. But that surge includes 668,054 branded editions, which AAM defines as a publication that publishes at least weekly, publishes on the same paper stock as the newspaper, contains editorial content and represents itself as a newspaper. Branded editions might include a weekly Spanish-language edition or a coupon supplement.

In USA Today’s case, it’s a condensed edition of the paper, dubbed a butterfly edition, that’s distributed in dozens of Gannett publications across the country each day. USA Today’s gains also include more digital non-replica editions, or users of the paper’s apps.

The New York Times saw big gains during the March 31 reporting period as well, also thanks to branded editions. Its Monday through Friday circulation jumped 15 percent, but again, it included 126,162 branded editions for the first time. The Times counted the international edition of the paper as a branded edition in its figures. Still, even without the branded editions, circulation would be up 8 percent, with digital accounting for the bulk of those gains.

Indeed, nearly every paper that reported improvements during the reporting period got them from a bump in branded editions.

WSJ/NBC Poll Suggests Social Media Aren't Replacing Direct Interactions

Social media and online networking have exploded over the last 15 years, but they don't seem to be replacing direct social connections among neighbors or family members around the dining room table, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll has found.

More than two-thirds of Americans have a social media profile and shop online, and more than 60% pay bills online, the survey found. But people are still nearly as likely to have frequent family dinners as they were 15 years ago. The poll findings paint a broad portrait of how Americans live and communicate with each other, and how their interactions have changed since 1999, when similar lifestyle questions were asked by Wall Street Journal and NBC News pollsters.

Bill McInturff, the Republican pollster who conducted the survey with Democrat Fred Yang, said the results seemed to counter the widespread concern that the proliferation of online connections was undermining direct social contact.

Despite the growth of online culture, the poll found that 58% said they had a family dinner at least five times a week -- about the same as the 60% who said so in June, 1999. Married couples with children were the demographic group most likely to have family dinners.

Looking beyond family life, the poll found that 69% of Americans said they knew their neighbors well, compared with 73% who said so in 1999. Neighborliness didn't seem to diminish among people who make connections through social media. Among adults between 18 and 49 years old, 68% of people with a social media profile said they knew their neighbors well, compared with 57% of people without a social media profile.

CBS, BuzzFeed, Sky News Journalists Detained In Ukraine

A group of Western journalists from a number of news outlets was detained by pro-Russian militants in Eastern Ukraine.

CBS reporter Clarissa Ward and her news crew, along with BuzzFeed's Mike Giglio and reporters from Sky News, were held, blindfolded and interrogated for hours as they attempted was traveling to Slavyansk, a city that Ukrainian troops are trying to retake from pro-Russian groups. Ward told "CBS This Morning" that the group was stopped at a checkpoint and detained.

More And More People Say Media Freedom In Their Country Is Declining

In anticipation of World Press Freedom Day, a new poll by Gallup found that people around the world think their media is becoming less free. Out of adults polled from 132 countries, a median of 26 percent of people said they did not have media freedom in 2013.

A median of only 63 percent said that they felt a lot of freedom, representing a new low since 2010.

Of the countries polled, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Chad, Gabon and Syria had the lowest perceived media freedom, respectively, according to their residents. 69 percent of adults polled in the Congo said that the media is not free -- a 21 percent change since 2010. Syria, the fourth most unfree nation on the list, was the deadliest place for journalists in 2013 for the second year in a row, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. At least 70 journalists were killed in 2013 worldwide, 29 of whom died covering the crisis in Syria.

On the opposite end, the Netherlands, Finland and Germany had the highest perceived media freedom, with 95 percent of residents in the Netherlands reporting strong media freedom. 85 percent of Americans reported feeling free, while 14 percent said they did not.

GON, baby, GON? Or new life for muni broadband?

[Commentary] Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler spoke forcefully at the annual NCTA Cable Show in Los Angeles. Most observers focused on his Open Internet remarks, but Chairman Wheeler also made waves by asserting an FCC power to overrule state laws that limit the ability of cities and towns to build their own networks.

In recent years, at least 20 states, after witnessing a number of failures of such municipal networks, enacted limits on such government owned network (GON) ventures. This list failures or aborted launches is long, and growing -- Chicago, Seattle, Tacoma, Utah’s UTOPIA, Minnesota’s FiberNet, the Northern Florida Broadband Authority, Burlington, Vermont, and Philadelphia and Orlando’s abandoned Wi-Fi networks, to name a few. So the financial case for GONs is not a strong one.

The bottom line is that until the FCC, states, and localities do a lot more to remove the remaining barriers to broadband investment, we shouldn’t be using scarce tax dollars to build duplicative networks.

[Swanson is president of Entropy Economics]

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