Mobile payment methods have been widely adopted in Europe and Asia, and soon will become more widespread in North America, allowing consumers to pay businesses or other consumers from their mobile devices.  But mobile security technology is in its infancy, and lags behind the security solutions available for PC platforms.  Most financial services companies still rely on basic multi-factor authentication to validate mobile user access to cash and stock accounts, because it is it involves little in the way of innovation or investment on their part.  Remember…these are the same people who brought us the “great recession”, so their approach should not fill us with confidence. 

At a recent USENIX Security Symposium, the leader of (Google) Android security, Rich Cannings, said that “The smartphone OS will become a major security target.”   Rich is correct:  The number of smartphones is on the rise, and these devices are capable of holding lots of sensitive personal and business data.  It will take a third-party approach by consortiums like the FSTC and innovation from the technology industry to ensure that effective security solutions are available for mobile devices.

The alliance provides Visa with a strategic development partner for its suite of mobile services, including mobile payments, mobile money transfer, mobile transaction alerts and mobile marketing offers. Monitise delivers expertise that facilitates customized development of mobile financial services for a broad range of handsets that exist in the marketplace.  Through detection of phone make, model, screen size, browser type and multimedia capabilities, Monitise is able optimize the user experience for Visa mobile payments and related services. The two companies will work together to increase speed to market of unique payment and related services including mobile user enrollment services, application development and channel management.

Over the last two years, Visa has worked closely with critical mobile industry stakeholders, including network operators, handset manufacturers, technology providers and industry groups to integrate the their  electronic payments services with mobile technology.   Although the deal was not described as being exclusive, it effectively locks out competition from other mobile payment platform vendors such as Mobile Money Ventures, ClairMail, and Obopay, which made a similar deal in June with MasterCard.

Apple has cut the price of the entry-level iPhone 3G (with 8 megabytes of memory) from $199 to $99, making it much more accessible to a broader set of consumers and more competitive at the mid-to-lower end of the smartphone market.   This is an aggressive cut which is intended to sustain iPhone market momentum during a period of recession and increased competition.  I estimate that this cut could potentially increase iPhone adoption by 50%, with the major limiting factor being iPhone’s carrier exclusivity deals, i.e., availability in the U.S. only on the AT&T mobile network.

If keyboard style is your primary decision-driver when choosing a new handset, then Palm has just taken that criteria off the table.   But keyboards will play a backseat when it comes to choosing a Palm Pre or some other smartphone from Apple, Nokia, Samsung, or RIM.  Palm will have to get its applications store ramped up to compete with the iPhone’s 40,000 mobile applications.  And in order to accomplish that goal, Palm will need to get its webOS developers kit, dubbed Palm Mojo, into the hands of third-party application developers…many of the same individuals and companies that have created games, productivity and business tools for the iPhone.

MobiTV is taking advantage of the current jump in interest by extending its many offerings to include an on demand video service model that requires payment, with free live broadcast feeds from basic television channels in the US, including news, sports, and regular programming.  Additionally, MobiTV is working on a model with capabilities similar to a DVR device which was shown at the National Association of Broadcasters in the beginning of 2009.  Sounds promising…now, if we could just do something about that tiny video screen!

As part of a multi-year network build-out plan with Cisco, the WiMAX service, named CLEAR, will be available in major metropolitan areas across the United States.  Clearwire’s open all-IP network, combined with significant spectrum holdings, provides substantive network capacity to deliver next-generation broadband access.  In addition, Cisco is aiming to introduce its first mobile WiMAX device later this year. 

Clearwire currently provides mobile WiMAX services in a limited number of cities in the U.S…mainly tier 2 and 3 markets.  Somewhat contradictory CLEAR and Clearwire websites present different and confusing market coverage information.  The largest U.S. metros currently served appear to be Seattle, Atlanta, and Portland.  However, Clearwire has aggressive plans to enter 80 U.S. markets by the end of 2010, and ideally those will include the largest metros in the country.

In contrast, competing LTE technology from Verizon and others is targeted at the largest U.S. metros where the incumbents already provide service and there is the greatest concentration of mobile subscribers.  In these markets, it will be a race to see who will be the first to deliver reliable, truly broadband, mobile service.  But incumbents such as Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T have a distinct advantage even if they lag, as they have secured many customers on yearly contracts and have an established retail and e-commerce channel to provide a wide choice of handset upgrades and incentives for their captive customer base.

WiMAX has struggled to find broad acceptance, and this announcement breathes some new life into the technology.  At the same time, this appears to be a challenge for Cisco, as they are not playing from an established position of strength in the mobile communications market.

To put 303,000 text messages into perspective: that’s more than 10,000 text messages a day, 421 messages an hour and seven texts a minute.  Mom and Dad are extremely thankful for unlimited text messaging…could also have been a record-breaking cell phone bill in the making.

It should be noted that the texting teen has a 40 hour / week job, and is getting straight A’s at school.  I thought I was good at multi-tasking, but this is an activity level that I could not match (nor do I really want to).

You can read the KCRA news story here.

In the U.S., Verizon Wireless is definitely on a roll.  Verizon Wireless had 86.6 million customers at the end of the quarter, an increase of 28.8 percent year over year.  This number includes 13.2 million net total customer additions, after conforming adjustments, from the acquisition of Alltel.  In the first quarter, data revenues were nearly 28.0 percent of all service revenues, up from 23.0 percent in the first quarter 2008.  Additionally, the company announced the awarding of LTE equipment contracts, of which Alcatel-Lucent was a major beneficiary.

ALU, last week, signed two agreements totaling $1.7 billion with China Mobile (world’s largest mobile operator with 400 million subscribers), and China Telecom.  We expect to see mobile infrastructure spending to increase in China by more than 10% this year in contrast to a forecast global decline. 

How much decline will be clearly determined when, in the next few weeks, we receive more Q1-09 results from the mobile equipment vendors.

In February of 2007, Cox began operations as an MVNO, selling mobile service provided by Sprint.  A year later, Cox announced that it would build out its own cellular network.    In 2006 Cox and a group of cable companies purchased Cellular Spectrum at a cost of $2.4 billion.  Cox’s Spectrum licenses cover the areas around San Diego, Atlanta, New Orleans, Las Vegas, and Omaha, as well as much of Kansas and southern New Mexico.

Wireless phone service will add to Cox’s video, phone, and Internet services, which will head off competition from AT&T and Verizon, who have been lately offering video as well as phone services.   The move by companies such as Cox into triple- and quad-play offerings is good news for telecom infrastructure vendors who have encountered sluggish growth over the past few quarters.  Scientific Atlanta (now Cisco) provided some of the early mobile backhaul infrastructure for Cox, and the two companies continue to work together.