By John Dring As mobile commerce grows in familiarity, with 3G and Smartphones providing a realistic and useable experience and online sites being optimised for smaller screen mobile and tablet access, we become more comfortable with the fact that it’s secure to pay-by-credit card on the mobile channel the same as on the web.  The encryption security is the same, the merchant is the same, the entry on your statement is the same and so on.  But with this confidence comes the increasing number...

Here’s a summary of the latest blogs this summer: What’s the biggest motivator for pursuing Value Added Services according to 220 telecom execs? – Highlights 6 global VAS market trends from our recent surveys Do mobile operators stand a chance against the banks and credit card companies in mobile payments? Our recent global survey may tell. – Based on interviews with 220 telecom execs about mobile payments market trends across 18 countries 2 Simple ways for service providers to capitalize...

In our last blog, I shared highlights from another survey we conducted with market research firm Coleman Parkes – focusing on the answers to the mobile payments questions.  This time I’ll highlight the results that focused on value added services (VAS) in general.  Again, between the 2 surveys, they conducted telephone interviews with 220 telecom execs from 18 countries: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, Poland, Russia, Spain,...

We just conducted another survey around global mobile payments market trends.  This follows our recent mobile VAS survey that we conducted in APAC in May.  Again we used market research firm Coleman Parks and interviewed 85 telecom executives in 11 different countries. We combined the relevant questions from the APAC survey with the mobile payments survey to summarize the findings by region below.  We define mobile payments as anything that can be billed by an operator.  Segments include, but...

Many online merchants and web sites are embracing social media to increase sales and traffic.  Facebook’s offers APIs that allow web developers to add the Like Button on their sites and pull customer profiles to create more personalized interactions.  Twitter exposes APIs that allow developers to add the Tweet and Follow buttons to their websites to expand content distribution and their audience. This spring I blogged about how service providers could harness social media to grow revenues and...

We recently published a report summarizing a survey we conducted with 120 telecom execs in 7 South East Asian countries.  We commissioned market research firm Coleman Parkes to conduct the survey and together analyzed the results with industry analyst and blogger Mobilegroove.com.  We identified 3 key take-aways that are unique to SE Asia, versus developed markets: VAS is important to operators and will contribute significant revenues, but the main drivers are customer experience & stickiness. ...

After a month hiatus of blogging, due to travel, I’m happy to share with you the results of a survey we recently conducted with market research firm Coleman Parkes.  We surveyed 120 telecom execs throughout SE Asia about their take on the future of value added services.  Markets covered were Australia, Indonesia, India, Malaysia, Thailand & Vietnam.  Here are some key findings: 62% of all operators say that value added services is important to their company. 14% of operator revenue is...