Technology News and IT Business Intelligence

The Federal Communications Commission is expected to deliver the National Broadband Plan to Congress tomorrow, and today the commission released an executive summary of what the document will contain.
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski called it, “An action plan, and action is necessary to meet the challenges of global competitiveness, and harness the power of broadband to help address so many vital national issues.”
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After several years of nearly continuous iPhone TV advertising, commercials have seemingly vanished from U.S. primetime TV — I can’t find them. Have you seen any lately?

I’m not a big TV watcher, but my fav shows typically are chock full of iPhone — “There’s an app for that” — commercials. While I DVR every show, I still pay close attention to the advertising. What can I say? I’m a sucker for clever marketing. In watching primetime programming over the last 10 days, I started noticing iPhone commercials for their sudden absence.

This morning, as a check against my memory, I scanned through Tuesday’s two-hour “American Idol” premiere and the audition follow-up the following night; last week’s “Heroes”; last night’s “Human Target” series premiere; and the two-hour season debut of “24.” There’s not an iPhone commercial — or for any other Apple product — in any of the TV shows. Apple has heavily advertised in these shows before. Suddenly, why not now?

One answer isn’t rocket science: Apple’s January 27 “Come see our latest creation” event, for which invites went out this morning. I didn’t get an invite, but one of my peers received one and forwarded it. Could Apple be clearing way for a new advertising campaign, possibly supporting whatever is announced in 9 days? 

Stephen Baker, NPD’s vice president of industry analysis, isn’t so sure. “I don’t know if I would read anything into the advertising thing,” he told me this afternoon. “January is not a great time to be advertising electronics.” 

I told Baker that in scanning for ads, I saw plenty for AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, BlackBerry, Motorola Droid and Palm Pre. All the shows had “Windows 7 was my idea” commercials, too. 

“They’ve got something to sell,” he rebutted. “January is kind of a funny month. There are a lot of good advertising vehicles — American Idol, football playoffs and such. But it’s kind of a funky sales opportunity.” By comparison, it’s presumed that if Apple launched a tablet on January 27 it won’t ship for several weeks or months. “They aren’t going to be spending a lot of money advertising this thing if comes out in May or June,” he said. 

Baker speculated that Apple could be saving up some ad spending for the Winter Olympics, which opens on February 12. But he did observe that “for phones you kind of advertise all the time because there isn’t as much seasonality as other categories, because of the contract thing.” 

So what does it mean that everyone but Apple is advertising phones or wireless services. I’ve got a few ideas — in attention to what Baker offered — and not all have to do with whatever will be Apple’s “latest creation”: 

• Apple is in a natural marketing break, preparing to launch a new iPhone advertising campaign ahead of Mobile World Congress, which commences February 15 and where will be competitor announcements.
• Apple pulled back iPhone advertisements to avoid getting caught in the mud slinging marketing battle between AT&T and Verizon over 3G coverage and 3G reliability.
• Rumors are true that iPhone OS 4.0 release is imminent. Apple is strategically pulling back advertising to promote the new thing, assuming there are compelling to new features.
• Most all the rumors are wrong about Apple’s “latest creation” — that it is as much mass-market telephony device as tablet, or something else — and it’s ready to launch soon.
• Related: Unexpectedly, iPhone 3GS’ successor is ready to announce, if not release, so Apple temporarily pulled back marketing to later promote the new smartphone.

Please feel free to throw in your speculation in comments about the reasons for why iPhone advertising has entered a lull. With so many ridiculous rumors out there about Apple’s new product, maybe Betanews readers can come up with something sensible, too. 

Print advertising continues, by the way. The Jan. 16th-22nd, 2010, The Economist features a full-backpage advertisement for iPhone 3GS and the App Store. Page 28 of yesterday’s Sunday The New York Times features the identical advertisement. Companies typically negotiate deals for ads print months in advance, purchasing them in bulk. 

I instant messaged Apple PR asking for confirmation and comment about iPhone advertising pullback. I’ll update the post when and if it comes.

An offshoot of RFID known as near field communication (NFC), along with the latest Android phones and Apple’s iPhone, are now helping the US to catch up to Europe and Asia in mobile shopping and mass transit applications, said analysts and other experts at this week’s National Retail Federation (NRF) conference in New York City.

Among the ever escalating numbers of smartphones available in the US, Apple’s iPhone still leads the way in those as well as other mobile application areas, noted David Dorf, director of retail technology at Oracle.

The more than 10,000 iPhone apps online in Apple’s App Store already include some photo-oriented “vision” apps. Examples include an app from Sears which helps you to locate a product in stores based on an uploaded product photo, and one from Wal-mart that allows you to use a picture of a room in deciding what size HDTV to buy.

With the recent entrance of Motorola’s Droid and Google’s Nexus One, for instance, apps of this kind are also headed to the open source Android platform, said speakers in an NRF panel session.

Developers are at work, too, on location-aware apps that will use GPS to send you discount coupons based on where you happen to be, and on augmented reality apps combining a mobile phone’s camera view with multiple layers of related information.

Meanwhile, commuters in New York City and San Francisco have been taking part in NFC trials involving the use of software-based token applications that bill their credit cards for mass transit use.

Participants have been able to hop aboard trains and subway cars simply by waving their phones in front of contact-less NFC readers near turnstiles in mass transit stations, said Sahir Anand, research director for retail, hospitality and Consumer Product Group practice at the Aberdeen Group analyst firm.

The United States has long lagged behind some other parts of the world — most notably Japan and the Nordic countries — in mobile shopping and mass transit apps, pointed out Mohammad Khan, president and founder of ViVOtech. But with the advent of new smartphones and NRC, the US is getting poised to “leapfrog ahead,” Khan contended.

As one big barrier to progress, Khan cited the roles that US wireless carriers traditionally play in determining which apps will be offered on phones running on their networks.

In Japan, smartphones use the high-bandwidth, government-operated NTT Dokomo network. In some other countries, people typically buy unlocked phones independently of mobile carriers, and then configure their phones to specific wireless networks.

But in the US, many people purchase locked phones direct from carriers such as AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile, getting subsidies on the phones in exchange for inking long-term service contracts.

Instead of collaborating in spurring mobile commerce, US mobile network gatekeepers are “fighting with each other,” Khan acknowledged.

Moreover, the US mobile carriers vary greatly among each other in terms of coverage areas and available bandwidth.

Apple is also a “gatekeeper” of sorts, Khan suggested, speaking with Betanews after the presentation. But he also pointed to a difference. Apple gives developers the freedom to develop myriad apps for iPhones, so long as the apps abide by Apple’s guidelines, Khan said.

The fact that the iPhone runs in the US only on AT&T poses another challenge. “But we’re seeing that this will change over the year ahead,” he predicted.

Also over the coming year, the first crop of augmented reality mobile apps will make an appearance, permitting smartphone users to access “layers” of discount coupons, reader reviews of products, and in-depth product information based on where they’re located, according to Oracle’s Dorf.

Augmented reality apps will also make use of video cameras and compasses in the information overlays. Users will be able to attach and tag information, and to tell other people about where they’ve been. “This will create a new sort of digital signage,” said Dorf.

A software company named Layar has already produced an augmented reality browser which works with the mobile phone’s camera view. Developers have now used the browser to attach a layer of information about architectural landmarks from Wikipedia.

But Randy Vanderhoof, executive director of the Smart Card Alliance, maintained that NFC will help overcome traditional limitations of cellular networks in the US by letting developers create location-based shopping apps that run on private local wireless networks.

NFC is designed to eliminate the need to own a specific type of smartphone or subscribe to a cellular service with specific geographic coverage if you want to use mobile apps.

Under this kind of scenario, when you enter a retail store and wave your phone at a contact-less reader, the retailer will offer you coupons and buying recommendations based on where you’re located — and possibly on your history of past purchases at the store, as well.

In an earlier trial on San Francisco’s Bay Area Transit (BART) system, for example, participants got coupons to Jack-in-the-Box restaurants.

Another NFC application, previously tested in New York City, will receive a commercial rollout there later this year, according to the Aberdeen Group’s Anand. With the commercial launch, access to the smartphone system will expand beyond the Citibank customers who took part in the earlier trial to include customers of all banks, he elaborated.

Vanderhoof told Betanews that, despite reports to the contrary, security and privacy risks around NFC are practically nonexistent, since information can only be intercepted within a four-foot range between the smartphone and the contact-less reader.

In contrast, panelists didn’t exactly deny that there are some security and privacy threats attached to mobile apps running on the mobile Internet.

But on the other hand, losing your smartphone might pose much less of an identity theft hazard than losing your wallet. Unlike a walletful of credit cards, smartphone apps are surrounded by protections such as encryption and password authentication, the NRF audience was told.

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