Blog articles from 07/2011

Verizon will soon start selling a Home Monitoring Control service, and Bright House will soon start selling a more premium home-monitoring and security service, staffed and connected to police and fire departments. "The more services they can get someone to sign up for, the stickier that customer is to them," said Bill Ablondi , director of home systems research for the Parks Associates market research firm. Having a phone company take over home automation makes some sense,...

Parks Associates Analysts, Pietro Macchiarella and Heather Way, provide insight on social game advertising opportunities for ZDNet Asia . Social game ad revenue will grow through brand integration within gameplay and branded virtual good offerings. Parks Associates' In-Game Advertising industry report will offer further insight on the ever-expanding gaming ad market.

Join Parks Associates for the complimentary Webcast The Impact of Cloud Services and Improved On-Device Content Experiences July 28th at 1 p.m. Central, hosted by LEVEL Studios. Join speakers Daniel Blackburn, Vice President, Mobile and Tom Kotlarek, Vice President, Technology, LEVEL Studios and Kurt Scherf , Vice President, Principal Analyst, Parks Associates as they discuss how new and converging device categories are making it difficult for manufacturers to understand...

Receiving live TV on a mobile phone, tablet, or computer is a popular feature throughout Western Europe, with 30% of broadband households highly interested in these TV Everywhere services. Connected Consumer in Europe surveyed 10,000 broadband households across France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the U.K., providing a detailed picture of the broadband home in each of these nations. The study examined services received and desired, digital product ownership and purchasing, demand for...

Microsoft plans to open 75 new Microsoft stores in the next two to three years. A map of the locations show that many will be concentrated in the northeastern United States, California, and Florida. The company also plans to open stores outside the United States as well. Currently, Microsoft has 11 stores open in the United States. This will not be easy for Microsoft. They will be chasing Apple , which has more than 320 stores, including 86 abroad. The irony here is that...

News last week that a consortium of companies - among them Apple and Microsoft - outbid Google for a number of Nortel patents related to the smartphone industry. We can talk about business models all we want (subscriptions, microtransactions, virtual goods, transactional payments, advertising, etc.), but it appears that the new business model for wireless players is patent litigation. This is related to yesterday's Fierce Wireless article about Microsoft wanting $15 from Samsung...

Great conversation on the Wednesday panel at CONNECTIONS™ : Technical Support as a Value-added Service . Some key points from this and follow-on discussions: iTOK shared the data point that 30% of incoming calls convert to paid users, and of those, 80% become subscribers. PlumChoice is handling the technical support calls for its Home Monitoring and Control solution (per Eric Bruno's keynote). Dell is offering premium phone support in the U.S. and China,...

Revenues for U.S. consumer and SMB technology support services will grow nearly threefold in the next five years, with U.S. households accounting for over 40% of the $30 billion market. The firm's new research reports - Consumer Technical Support Services: Overview and Opportunities for SMB Technical Support – find broadband service providers in particular driving this market. Major retailers and OEM efforts are also important in promoting technical support services to a wider...