Tag: personal

Digital Commerce 2.0: Disrupting the Californian Giants

Introduction

In this briefing, we analyse the Digital Commerce 2.0 strategy and progress of the incumbents – the big five Internet players in this market – Amazon, Apple, eBay/PayPal, Facebook and Google.

STL defines Digital Commerce 2.0 as the use of new digital and mobile technologies to bring buyers and sellers together more efficiently and effectively. Fast growing adoption of mobile, social and local services is opening up opportunities to provide consumers with highly-relevant advertising and marketing services, underpinned by secure and easy-to-use payment services. By giving people easy access to information, vouchers, loyalty points and electronic payment services, smartphones can be used to make shopping in bricks and mortar stores as interactive as shopping through web sites and mobile apps.

This executive briefing considers how the rise of smartphones and the personal data they generate is disrupting digital commerce, and explores the mobile commerce strategies of the big five, their strengths and weaknesses and their areas of vulnerability.

Digital Commerce Disruption

Today, California is undoubtedly the epicentre of digital commerce. Amazon, Google, eBay/PayPal, Facebook and Apple are the leading brokers of digital commerce between businesses and consumers in most of the world’s developed economies. Each one of them has used the Internet to carve out a unique and lucrative role matching online buyers and sellers.

But digital commerce is changing fast, forcing these incumbents to innovate rapidly both to keep pace with each other and fend off a new wave of challengers seeking to take advantage of the disruption resulting from the widespread adoption of smartphones, and the vast quantities of real-time personal data they generate. Smartphones with touchscreens, full Internet browsers and an array of feature-rich apps, are turning out to be a game changer that profoundly impacts the way in which people and businesses buy and sell: Digital commerce is moving out of the home and the office and on to the street and in to the store.

As they move around, many consumers are now using smartphones to access social, local and mobile (SoLoMo) digital services and make smarter purchase decisions. This is not a gradual shift – it is happening extraordinarily quickly. Almost 70% of Americans used their mobile devices to look up information while in retail stores between Thanksgiving and Christmas 2012, according to a survey of 6,200 people by customer experience analytics firm ForeSee.

At the same time, the combination of Internet and mobile technologies, embodied in the smartphone, is enabling bricks and mortar businesses to adopt new forms of digital marketing, retailing and payments that could dramatically improve their efficiency and effectiveness. The smartphones and the data they generate can be used to optimise and enable every part of the entire ‘wheel of commerce’ (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: The elements that make up the wheel of commerce

Digital Commerce 2.0 Wheel of Commerce

Source: STL Partners

The extensive data being generated by smartphones can give companies real-time information on where their customers are and what they are doing. That data can be used to improve merchants’ marketing, advertising, stock management, fulfilment and customer care. For example, a smartphone’s sensors can detect how fast the device is moving and in what direction, so a merchant could see if a potential customer is driving or walking past their store.

Marketing that makes use of real-time smartphone data should also be more effective than other forms of digital marketing. In theory at least, targeting marketing at consumers in the right geography at a specific time should be far more effective than simply displaying adverts to anyone who conducts an Internet search using a specific term.

Similarly, local businesses should find sending targeted vouchers, promotions and information, delivered via smartphones, to be much more effective than junk mail at engaging with customers and potential customers. Instead of paying someone to put paper-based vouchers through the letterbox of every house in the entire neighbourhood, an Indian restaurant could, for example, send digital vouchers to the handsets of anyone who has said they are interested in Indian food as they arrive at the local train station between 7pm and 9pm in the evening. As it can be precisely targeted and timed, mobile marketing should achieve a much higher return on investment (ROI) than a traditional analogue approach.

Although the big five – Amazon, Google, eBay/PayPal, Facebook and Apple – are the leading brokers of “traditional” online commerce, they play a far smaller role in brokering bricks and mortar commerce: Their services are typically used to provide just once element of the wheel of commerce. Consumers shopping in the physical world tend to use a mix of services from the leading Internet players, flitting between the different ecosystems. As they shop, they might use Google Maps to locate a store, Facebook to canvas the opinion of friends and Amazon to read product reviews or compare in-store prices with those online. They might even use Apple’s Passbook to redeem a voucher or PayPal to complete a transaction at point of sale.

Although they are all involved to a greater or lesser extent, none of the big five has yet secured a strong strategic position in this new form of digital commerce. Each of them risks seeing their position in the broader digital commerce market being disrupted by the rise of SoLoMo services that seek to meld merchants online and offline sites into a coherent proposition. As the digital commerce pie grows to encompass more and more bricks and mortar commerce, the big five may see their power and influence wane.

As it becomes clear that smartphones and personal data will transform the consumer experience of bricks and mortar shopping, the leading internet companies are being challenged by telcos, banks, payment networks and other companies racing to sign up merchants and consumers for nascent commerce platforms. In most cases, these new entrants are focusing on digitising traditional commerce, but will inevitably also have to compete with Amazon, Google, eBay/PayPal, Facebook and Apple in the online commerce space – consumers will want to use the same tools and platforms regardless of whether they are in the armchair or walking down a street. Similarly, a merchant will want to use the same platform to support its marketing online and in-store, so their customers can redeem vouchers, for example, digitally or in person.

The internet giants are, of course, expanding their SoLoMo propositions to cover more of the wheel of commerce. Amazon, for example, is pursuing this market through its Amazon Local service, which emails offers from local merchants to consumers in specific geographic areas. Google is combining its Search, Maps, Places, Offers and Wallet services into a local commerce platform for merchants and consumers. But global Internet companies based on economies of scale can find it hard to develop commerce services that take into the account the vagaries of local markets.

There is much at stake: Merchants and brands spend hundreds of billions of dollars across the various elements of the wheel of commerce. In the U.S., the direct marketing market alone is worth US$ 139 billion (more than three times the U.S. online advertising market, according to some estimates (see Figure 4).

Figure 4: A breakdown of the U.S. direct marketing and advertising market

Digital Commerce 2.0 US Direct Marketing and Advertising Market

Source: STL Partners

Another way to view the strategic opportunity is to consider the vast amount of money that is still spent on paper-based marketing in local commerce – householders still receive large numbers of flyers through their door, advertising local businesses. Moreover, many merchants still operate crude loyalty schemes that involve stamping a paper card.

Closing the loop: The importance of payments

One of the most important battlegrounds for the big five is the transact segment of the wheel of commerce. Although this segment is only half the size of the promote segment in terms of revenues, according to STL’s estimates (see Figure 5), it is strategically important. Merchants and brands want to know whether a specific marketing activity actually led to a sale. By bridging the online and offline worlds, mobile technologies can close that loop. If a consumer uses their smartphone to research a product and then pay at point of sale, the retailer can see exactly what kind of marketing results in transactions.

Note that payments itself is a low margin business – American Express estimates that merchants in the U.S. spend four to five times as much on marketing activities, such as loyalty programmes and offers, as they do on payments. But Google and Facebook, as leading marketing and advertising brokers, and some telcos, are moving into the payments space to provide merchants with visibility across the whole wheel of commerce.

In general their approach is to roll out digital wallets that can be used to complete both online transactions and point of sale transactions (either using a contactless technology, such as NFC, or a mobile network-based solution). The term digital wallet or mobile wallet generally refers to an application that can store debit and credit card information, loyalty points, electronic vouchers and value. A digital wallet can reside in the cloud or on a specific device or a combination of the two. The big five each have their own digital wallet.

Although Apple and Facebook have only enabled the use of their wallets within their online walled gardens, they are both gradually extending their transact propositions into bricks and mortar commerce.

Figure 5: The relative size of the segments of the wheel of commerce

Digital Commerce 2.0: Segments and Sizes

Source: STL Partners research drawing on WPP and American Express data

Digital wallets could be the key to unlock a broader and much more lucrative digital commerce proposition. Instead of asking merchants to pay per click, a digital commerce broker could ask them to pay per transaction – a no-risk and, therefore, very attractive proposition for the merchant.

Typically designed to support approximately half of the wheel of commerce (the promote, guide and transact segments), the digital wallet is widely-regarded as an important strategic platform. The theory is that digital wallet suppliers will be well-positioned to interact with consumers while they are shopping, brokering targeted offers and promotions.

Three of the big five – PayPal, Amazon and Apple – have each already signed up tens of millions of users for their online wallets, primarily because they reduce the number of keystrokes and clicks required to complete a transaction online. These Internet players are now weighing up how best to deploy these wallets at point of sale in physical stores. The leading online digital wallet, PayPal, faces increasing competition from leading players in the financial services industry, including Amex and MasterCard (see Figure 6), as well as innovative start-ups, such as Square.

Each of these players is taking a different approach, using different technologies to enabling transactions in store. They are also having to compete with other wallets from companies outside the financial services sector, such as Google, telcos and even retailers.

Figure 6: Examples of financial services-led digital wallets

Digital Commerce 2.0: Financial Services Wallet Examples

Source: STL Partners

In the transact segment, Google, the leading broker of search-related advertising, is scrambling to catch up, rolling out Google Wallet both to compete with PayPal online and enable payments at point of sale using Near Field Communications (NFC) technology. But the software has been through several iterations without gaining significant traction. At the same time, telcos, such as AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile in the U.S. (the partners in the Isis mobile commerce joint venture), are developing mobile-centric wallets that use NFC to enable payments at point of sale, supported by the SIM card for authentication. Major retailers are also rolling out digital wallets either individually or as part of a consortium. Figure 7 compares three of the mobile-centric wallets available in the U.S. market.

Figure 7: Examples of Mobile-centric wallets in the U.S.

Digital Commerce 2.0: Mobile Centric Wallets

Source: STL Partners

Contents

  • Executive Summary
  • Introduction: Digital commerce disruption
  • Closing the loop: The importance of payments
  • Internet players’ mobile commerce strategies
  • Amazon – impressive interconnected flywheels
  • Apple – slowly assembling the pieces
  • eBay and PayPal – trying to get mobile
  • Facebook – the rising star of mobile commerce
  • Google – try, try and try again in transactions
  • Conclusions
  • Mobile commerce is still up for grabs
  • Competition from telcos and banks
  • Areas of vulnerability

 

  • Figure 1: The mobile commerce strengths and weaknesses of the Internet players
  • Figure 2: The unfulfilled gap in the digital commerce market
  • Figure 3: The elements that make up the wheel of commerce
  • Figure 4: A breakdown of the U.S. direct marketing and advertising market
  • Figure 5: The relative size of the segments of the wheel of commerce
  • Figure 6: Examples of financial services-led digital wallets
  • Figure 7: Examples of Mobile-centric wallets in the U.S.
  • Figure 8: Google’s big lead in mobile Internet ad spending
  • Figure 9: Google handles one third of all digital advertising
  • Figure 10: The mobile commerce strategy of leading Internet players
  • Figure 11: How the fundamental Amazon flywheel increases working capital
  • Figure 12: How the Amazon Payments flywheel has evolved
  • Figure 13: Deals on display in the Amazon Local app
  • Figure 14: Apple’s Passbook app stores vouchers and loyalty cards
  • Figure 15: Facebook’s daily active users continue to grow
  • Figure 16: Facebook’s mobile daily active users
  • Figure 17: How consumers can redeem a Google Offer
  • Figure 18: Who is best placed to win in facilitating local commerce?
  • Figure 19: Google Wallet no longer needs to work directly with banks
  • Figure 20: The mobile commerce strengths and weaknesses of the Internet players
  • Figure 21: The unfulfilled gap in the digital commerce market
  • Figure 22: Internet giants and start-ups best placed to be infomediaries
  • Figure 23: How Telefónica compares with leading Internet players

 

Digital Commerce 2.0: New $50bn Disruptive Opportunities for Telcos, Banks and Technology Players

Introduction – Digital Commerce 2.0

Digital commerce is centred on the better use of the vast amounts of data created and captured in the digital world. Businesses want to use this data to make better strategic and operational decisions, and to trade more efficiently and effectively, while consumers want more convenience, better service, greater value and personalised offerings. To address these needs, Internet and technology players, payment networks, banks and telcos are vying to become digital commerce intermediaries and win a share of the tens of billions of dollars that merchants and brands spend finding and serving customers.

Mobile commerce is frequently considered in isolation from other aspects of digital commerce, yet it should be seen as a springboard to a wider digital commerce proposition based on an enduring and trusted relationship with consumers. Moreover, there are major potential benefits to giving individuals direct control over the vast amount of personal data their smartphones are generating.

We have been developing strategies in these fields for a number of years, including our engagement with the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Rethinking Personal Data project, and ongoing research into user data and privacy, digital money and payments, and digital advertising and marketing.

This report brings all of these themes together and is the first comprehensive strategic playbook on how smartphones and authenticated personal data can be combined to deliver a compelling digital commerce proposition for both merchants and consumers. It will save customers valuable time, effort and money by providing a fast-track to developing and / or benchmarking a leading edge strategy and approach in the fast-evolving new world of digital commerce.

Benefits of the Report to Telcos, Other Players, Investors and Merchants


For telcos, this strategy report:

  • Shows how to evaluate and implement a comprehensive and successful digital commerce strategy worth up to c.$50bn (5% of core revenues in 5 years)
  • Saves time and money by providing a fast-track for decision making and an outline business case
  • Rapidly challenges / validates existing strategy and services against relevant ‘best in class’, including their peers, ‘OTT players’ and other leading edge players.


For other players including Internet companies, technology vendors, banks and payment networks:

  • The report provides independent market insight on how telcos and other players will be seeking to generate $ multi-billion revenues from digital commerce
  • As a potential partner, the report will provide a fast-track to guide product and business development decisions to meet the needs of telcos (and others) that will need to make commensurate investment in technologies and partnerships to achieve their value creation goals
  • As a potential competitor, the report will save time and improve the quality of competitor insight by giving a detailed and independent picture of the rationale and strategic approach you and your competitors will need to take


For merchants building digital commerce strategies, it will:

 

  • Help to improve revenue outlook, return on investment and shareholder value by improving the quality of insight to strategic decisions, opportunities and threats lying ahead in digital commerce
  • Save vital time and effort by accelerating internal decision making and speed to market


For investors, it will:

  • Improve investment decisions and strategies returning shareholder value by improving the quality of insight on the outlook of telcos and other digital commerce players
  • Save vital time and effort by accelerating decision making and investment decisions
  • Help them better understand and evaluate the needs, goals and key strategies of key telcos and their partners / competitors

Digital Commerce 2.0: Report Content Summary

  • Executive Summary. (9 pages outlining the opportunity and key strategic options)
  • Strategy. The shape and scope of the opportunities, the convergence of personal data, mobile, digital payments and advertising, and personal cloud. The importance of giving consumers control. and the nature of the opportunity, including Amazon and Vodafone case studies.
  • The Marketplace. Cultural, commercial and regulatory factors, and strategies of the market leading players. Further analysis of Google, Facebook, Apple, eBay and PayPal, telco and financial services market plays.
  • The Value Proposition. How to build attractive customer propositions in mobile commerce and personal cloud. Solutions for banked and unbanked markets, including how to address consumers and merchants.
  • The Internal Value Network. The need for change in organisational structure in telcos and banks, including an analysis of Telefonica and Vodafone case studies.
  • The External Value Network. Where to collaborate, partner and compete in the value chain – working with telcos, retailers, banks and payment networks. Building platforms and relationships with Internet players. Case studies include Weve, Isis, and the Merchant Customer Exchange.
  • Technology. Making appropriate use of personal data in different contexts. Tools for merchants and point-of-sale transactions. Building a flexible, user-friendly digital wallet.
  • Finance. Potential revenue streams from mobile commerce, personal cloud, raw big data, professional services, and internal use.
  • Appendix – the cutting edge. An analysis of fourteen best practice and potentially disruptive plays in various areas of the market.

 

Digital Commerce: Time to redefine the Mobile Wallet

Summary: The ‘Mobile/Digital Wallet’ needs to evolve to support authentication, search and discovery, as well as payments, vouchers, tickets and loyalty programmes. Moreover, consumers will want to be able to tailor the functionality of this “commerce assistant” or “commerce agent” to fit with their own interests and preferences. Key findings and next steps from the Digital Commerce stream of our Silicon Valley 2013 brainstorm. (April 2013, Executive Briefing Service, Dealing with Disruption Stream.)

Who is best placed to win in local commerce April 2013
  Read in Full (Members only)   To Subscribe click here

Below are the high-level analysis and detailed contents from a 35 page Telco 2.0 Briefing Report that can be downloaded in full in PDF format by members of the Telco 2.0 Executive Briefing service and the Dealing with Disruption Stream  here. Digital Commerce strategies and the findings of this report will also be explored in depth at the EMEA Executive Brainstorm in London, 5-6 June, 2013. Non-members can find out more about subscribing here, or to find out more about this and/or the brainstorm by emailing contact@telco2.net or calling +44 (0) 207 247 5003.

To share this article easily, please click:

 



Introduction

Part of the New Digital Economics Executive Brainstorm 2013 series, the Digital Commerce 2.0 event took place at the InterContinental Hotel, San Francisco on the 20th March and looked at how to get the mobile commerce flywheel moving, how to digitise local commerce, how to improve digital advertising and how to effectively leverage customer data and personal data. The Brainstorm considered how to harness telco assets and capabilities, as well as those of banks and payment networks, to deliver Digital Commerce 2.0.

Analysis: Time to redefine the wallet?

The Executive Brainstorm uncovered widespread confusion and dissatisfaction with the concept of a digital or mobile wallet. Some executives feel that a wallet, with its connotations of a highly personal item that is controlled entirely by the consumer and used primarily for transactions, may be the wrong term. There is a view that the concept of a digital wallet may have to evolve into a more multi-faceted application that supports authentication, search and discovery, as well as payments, vouchers, tickets and loyalty programmes.

Moreover, consumers will likely want to be able to tailor the functionality of this “commerce assistant” or “commerce agent” to fit with their own interests and preferences, rather than having to use an inflexible off-the-shelf application. This gateway application may also act as a personal cloud/locker service, providing access to the individual’s media and content, as well as enabling them to control their privacy settings. In other words, ultimately, consumers may want an assistant or agent that amalgamates the personalised discovery services offered by apps, such as Google Now, online media services, such as iCloud, and the traditional functions of a wallet, such as payments, receipts, coupons and loyalty programmes.

Business model battles

The Brainstorm confirmed that the digital commerce market continues to be held back by the slow and familiar dance between the established interests of banks/payment networks, telcos, and retailers. Designing business models that sufficiently incentivise each partner is tough: big retailers, for example, are likely to resist digital commerce solutions that don’t address their dissatisfaction about transaction fees – there was some excitement about digital commerce solutions that workaround the major payment networks’ interchange systems.

Some of the participants in the Brainstorm held strongly entrenched views about which players can contribute to growth in digital commerce and should therefore benefit most from that growth. The arguments boiled down to:

  • The banking ecosystem believes it is well placed because of the requirement for transactions to be processed by entities with banking licenses and that comply with know your customer (KYC) regulations.
  • Telcos believe that, as digital commerce-related data travels over their networks, they will understand the market better than other players.
  • Retailers believe that they have the customer relationships and that digital commerce offers opportunities to strengthen those relationships and reduce the costs of transactions.

The length and complexity of the digital commerce value chain raises significant questions about whether one entity could and should own the customer relationship and manage customer care across the whole experience. Moreover, there may be a disconnect between elements of the value chain and the overall value proposition. For example, individual retailers may wish to offer fully-customised digital commerce experiences delivered through their own branded apps, but consumers may not want to see the complexity of the existing marketplace, in which they are asked to register and carry multiple loyalty cards, continue in an increasingly digitised world.

While the traditional players jostle for the best positions in the value chain, the door is wide open for market entrants to come with radically disruptive business models. Although telcos have the customer data to be play a pivotal role in digital commerce, other players will work around them unless telcos are prepared to move quickly and partner on equitable terms. In many cases, telcos (and other would-be digital commerce) brokers may have to compromise on margins to seed the market and ultimately gain scale – small merchants (the long tail), which have highly inefficient marketing today, have a greater incentive than large retailers to adopt such solutions. Participants in the Silicon Valley Brainstorm thought that either established Internet players or a start up would ultimately win over the banks and telcos in local commerce.

Who is best placed to win in local commerce April 2013

Consumers are most likely to adopt digital commerce services that offer convenience and breadth. Therefore, such services need to act as open and flexible brokers, which enable a wide range of merchants to use application programming interfaces (APIs) to plug in vouchers and loyalty schemes quickly and easily.

Mobile advertising – still very immature

Immature and messy, the mobile advertising market is still a long way from being as structured as, for instance, television advertising, in terms of standardising metrics for buyers and creating an efficient procurement process. The Brainstorm highlighted the profusion of different technologies and platforms that is making the mobile advertising market highly-fragmented and very resource-intensive for media buyers. In many cases, the advertising industry may be struggling to differentiate between mobile networks, mobile users and mobile devices. For example, a consumer using a tablet on a sofa may be seeing the same adverts as a smartphone user travelling to work on a train.

In essence, the creatives working in advertising agencies are not certain what messages and formats work on a mobile screen, as buyers don’t have reliable ROI data and the advertising networks continue to struggle to deliver precise targeting, stymied by multiple barriers, such as privacy fears, walled gardens and bandwidth constraints. As a result, there is widespread dissatisfaction among both media buyers and consumers with mobile advertising. The mobile advertising market needs robust tools and processes – standardised, proven formats and reliable, trusted metrics – to will enable brands to purchase advertising at scale and with confidence.

Some media buyers are looking for solutions that make the delivery of digital advertising more transparent to consumers, so they have a clearer understanding of why they are seeing a particular advert.

To address these issues, telcos, looking to broker advertising, need to create better platforms that are easy for media buyers to access, offer precise targeting and provide transparent metrics that are straightforward to monitor. Despite the formation of telco marketing and advertising joint ventures in some markets, such as the U.K., some advertising executives believe telcos don’t see a big enough revenue opportunity to build these platforms.

Instead of brand building and customer acquisition, which is the traditional use of mass advertising, it seems likely that the mobile channel will be used primarily for customer loyalty and retention. So-called active advertising (advertising that is designed to enable the individual to complete a specific task) may be well suited to mobile devices, which people typically use to get something done. As attention spans are short and screen space is limited in the mobile medium, the advertising value chain will need to change its mindset to put the needs of the consumer, rather than the brand, front and centre.

Big data – how to monetize?

The Brainstorm reinforced the sense that big data/personal data has the potential to create exceptional insights and disruptive new business models. But most people working in this space only have a high-level, theoretical view of how this might happen, rather than a collection of compelling case studies and use cases. Finding big data projects offering a respectable return on investment is going to be a hit and miss affair, requiring an open mind and the patience to experiment.

Although self-authenticated data could potentially make advertising and marketing more efficient, it may also increase transparency for consumers: The Internet has given consumers more control and is driving deflation in many sectors. The rise of personal data could have negative implications for companies’ profit margins as consumers use vendor relationship management systems to systematically secure the best price.

Many start-ups seem to still be pursuing advertising-funded business models, but big data and personal data business models may depend on a different approach. They should be asking: “How do you fund a search engine that is not ad-funded and can social networks not be ad-funded?” Computational contracts, which machines can execute and people can actually understand, could be part of the answer. Rather than trying to infer interests and movements, a social network might explicitly ask the following question. “If you give me your location and the brands you like, I’ll give you two coupons a day.” This is basically the Placecast model, which seems to be gaining traction in some markets. In any case, telcos and banks could and should use transparent and user-friendly privacy policies as a competitive weapon against Facebook and Google, which currently dominate the online advertising market.

The concept of companies interacting with individuals through the web presence of their objects, such as their car, their bike or their pet, seems sound. Both individuals and companies could benefit from a two-way flow of information around these objects. For example, a consumer with a specific make of printer or camera could benefit from personalised and timely discounts on accessories, such as cartridges and lenses.

Next steps for STL Partners

We will:

  • Continue to research and explore ‘Digital Commerce’ at our Executive Brainstorms, with particular emphasis on practical steps to create the Digital Wallet, enable ‘SoMoLo’, and the key role of personal data and trust frameworks;
  • Look further into the needs and applications of ‘Big Data’ into the field, as well as continuing our involvement in the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) work on Trust Networks for personal data;
  • Publish further research on the business case for personal data, and a full Strategy Report on the Digital Commerce area.


To read the note in full, including the following sections detailing additional analysis…

  • Closing the loop between advertising and payments
  • First stimulus presentation
  • Second stimulus presentation
  • Innovation showcase
  • Brainstorm
  • Key takeaways
  • Advertising & Marketing: Radical Game Change Ahead
  • First and Second stimulus presentations
  • Final stimulus presentation
  • Brainstorm
  • Key takeaways
  • Session 3: Big Data – Exploiting the New Oil for the New Economy
  • Stimulus Speakers and Panellists
  • Stimulus presentations
  • Voting, feedback, discussions
  • Key takeaways

…and the following figures…

  • Figure 1 – Customer Data is at the centre of Digital Commerce
  • Figure 2 – What will North American consumers value most from digital commerce?
  • Figure 3- Leading players’ strengths and weaknesses upstream and downstream
  • Figure 4 – The key elements of the digital commerce flywheel
  • Figure 5 – Vast majority of commerce is still offline
  • Figure 6 – Linking location-based offers to payment cards
  • Figure 7 – Participants’ views on likely winners in ‘local’ digital commerce
  • Figure 8 – Mobile ad spend doesn’t reflect the time people spend in this medium
  • Figure 9 – What does the advertising industry need to do to stay relevant?
  • Figure 10 – Why personal data isn’t like oil
  • Figure 11 – A strawman process for personal data
  • Figure 12 – A decentralised architecture for the Internet of My Things
  • Figure 13 – Kynetx: companies can connect through ‘things’

…Members of the Telco 2.0 Executive Briefing Subscription Service and the Dealing with Disruption Stream can download the full 35 page report in PDF format here. Non-Members, please subscribe here. Digital Commerce strategies and the findings of this report will also be explored in depth at the EMEA Executive Brainstorm in London, 5-6 June, 2013. For this or any other enquiries, please email contact@telco2.net / call +44 (0) 207 247 5003.

Background & Further Information

Produced and facilitated by business innovation firm STL Partners, the Silicon Valley 2013 event brought together 150 specially-invited senior executives from across the communications, media, retail, banking and technology sectors, including:

  • Apigee, Arete Research, AT&T,ATG, Bain & Co, Beecham Research, Blend Digital Group, Bloomberg, Blumberg Capital, BMW, Brandforce, Buongiorno, Cablelabs, CenturyLink, Cisco, CITI Group, Concours Ventures, Cordys, Cox Communications, Cox Mobile, CSG International, Cycle Gear, Discovery, DoSomething.Org, Electronic Transactions Association, EMC Corporation, Epic, Ericsson, Experian, Fraun Hofer USA, GE, GI Partners, Group M, GSMA, Hawaiian Telecom, Huge Inc, IBM, ILS Technology, IMI Mobile Europe, Insight Enterprises, Intel, Ketchum Digital, Kore Telematics, Kynetx, MADE Holdings, MAGNA Global, Merchant Advisory Group, Message Systems, Microsoft, Milestone Group, Mimecast, MIT Media Lab, Motorola, MTV, Nagra, Nokia, Oracle, Orange, Panasonic, Placecast, Qualcomm, Rainmaker Capital, ReinCloud, Reputation.com, SalesForce, Samsung, SAP, Sasktel, Searls Group, Sesame Communications, SK Telecom Americas, Sprint, Steadfast Financial, STL Partners/Telco 2.0, SystemicLogic Ltd., Telephone & Data Systems, Telus, The Weather Channel, TheFind Inc, T-Mobile USA, Trujillo Group LLC, UnboundID, University of California Davis, US Cellular Corp, USC Entertainment Technology Center, Verizon, Virtustream, Visa, Vodafone, Wavefront, WindRiver, Xtreme Labs.

Around 40 of these executives participated in the ‘Digital Commerce’ session.

The Brainstorm used STL’s unique ‘Mindshare’ interactive format, including cutting-edge new research, case studies, use cases and a showcase of innovators, structured small group discussion on round-tables, panel debates and instant voting using on-site collaborative technology.

We’d like to thank the sponsors of the Brainstorm:
Silicon Valley 2013 Sponsors

Personal Data 2.0: Industry fails Carrier IQ test

The debacle with Sprint, AT&T and T-Mobile US over Carrier IQ’s phone monitoring software highlights the pitfalls and opportunities of recording user behaviour, controlling mobile broadband networks and working with personal data – a key enabler of the new digital economy and new telco business models. This is our analysis of the issues and key lessons. (December 2011, Executive Briefing Service)

Carrier IQ Smartphone Eye image Dec 2011 Telco 2.0

Read in Full (Members only)   To Subscribe click here

Below is an extract from the 15 page Telco 2.0 Report that can be downloaded in full in PDF format by members of the Telco 2.0 Executive Briefing service here. Non-members can subscribe here or for other enquiries, please email contact@telco2.net / call +44 (0) 207 247 5003.

To share this article easily, please click:



Introduction

Telco 2.0 were talking to the World Economic Forum’s Re-thinking Personal Data project team – discussing the new white paper coming out for Davos which is all about putting the user in control of their personal data to unleash a new wave of innovation around this emerging asset – when we heard about the debacle with Carrier IQ.

Carrier IQ is a company which has reportedly been behind “invasive” software installed on some mobile phones, notably Android smartphones supplied by Sprint, AT&T and T-Mobile in the US. A widely-seen video by researcher Travis Eckhart shows the software apparently capturing keystrokes, website details and SMS’s sent and received on his device.

Travis Eckhardt’s YouTube Video of Carrier IQ

NB Please see our User Data and Privacy research category for further analysis.

The story so far

A festival of finger-pointing

Device vendors and operators around the world have been issuing statements of clarification or denial about their use of similar capabilities – although the careful wording of many press releases hints at the complexity of unravelling what is really in today’s smartphone software, who agreed to install it – and exactly how it is configured and used.

After a false start in which Carrier IQ (CIQ) tried to suppress some of Eckhart’s early findings with an injunction, it has belatedly embarked on a PR charm-offensive to salvage its reputation. We have also seen some more measured and probing analysis of the offending software’s capabilities, after a few days of shrill – and somewhat unfair – rhetoric.

What is known is that the company has embedded its products on around 150m shipped devices, although with wide variations in actual implementation and usage. It seems that most but not all of these devices have been smartphones, sold through operator channels as tailored variants rather than “vanilla” open-retail versions. In general, the software is intended to “improve the customer experience”, by reporting to the operator on various parameters, such as network coverage, failed connections and – most controversially – the user’s behaviour and application usage. Theoretically, this type of monitoring should help the operators fix holes in their networks, or diagnose other problems when the customer calls in for support. Other benefits are possible too – watching which applications are active can help identify which are hogging battery power, for example.

(It should be noted that this on-device monitoring concept is not new – a now-defunct company called IntuWave had a broadly similar solution for Symbian handsets as far back as 2003, while Nokia’s own “360” function also monitors user behaviour of its phones, but with permission. Apple has various reporting functions on its devices, but typically with user opt-out. It is also widely suspected that various security agencies have some smartphone surveillance capabilities).

The problem is that there is a fine line between “monitoring”, “diagnosis” and “surveillance”. The semantics tend to reflect the knowledge and permission of the user, as to what data is being collected and when, and for whom. There is also a distinction between collecting information, transmitting it, storing it and actually “mining” it – and whether it is anonymised or not.

In general, the installation of CIQ has been at the behest of specific operators customising phones sold to their subscribers – typically part of the software “stack” that might also include various additional apps or functionalities. The telcos tell their device suppliers to install the software either at the factory or further down the distribution chain and define “profiles” about what information they want to receive and when. A good analysis of the architecture is given by security analyst Dan Rosenberg .

A selection of previous industry data gaffes

Monitoring of user data is not an issue confined to handsets either – use of Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) capabilities for various use-cases in telco networks has been so controversial that some vendors now use euphemisms instead. The 3GPP standards body has now re-grouped and re-branded various policy and control technologies as the more benign-sounding “traffic detection function” (TDF). Various analytic solutions also exist for operators’ BSS/OSS systems – Telco 2.0 has long discussed the valuable information on subscribers collected by telcos, as well as the huge privacy issues surrounding its exploitation.

The recent Dutch implementation of some of the most draconian Net Neutrality laws in the world stemmed not from fears about the “purity” of the Internet, or even competition issues – but instead because the Dutch people resented the use of DPI to watch (and charge for) different applications in their Internet access data stream. It was the perceived invasion of privacy by KPN – perpetrated on one of the world’s most libertarian-minded populations – that was the trigger for discord. Previously telcos have fallen foul of similar concerns with the use of the notorious Phorm platform, used to deliver advertising based on an ISPs’ observations of their users’ web browsing behaviour.

What does Carrier IQ technically do that’s worrying?

It’s important to understand what people are actually objecting to about CIQ. No-one’s demonstrated that it sends back key-logger information. But they have demonstrated that it keeps everything it collects in a plain text file on the device in user-space. This means that any other application on the device can both read and write to it – and this is potentially very worrying, as explained in Appendix 1: An explanation of the technical risks.

Why the Carrier IQ issue has ‘blown up’

Although arguably exaggerated, several unfortunate issues have compounded each other in this case, to raise the current CIQ debate to public prominence and outrage:

Carrier IQ’s mistakes

While it is possible to feel a degree of sympathy with the embattled people at Carrier IQ, who were ostensibly just providing a service the operators had asked for, we believe they have made two key errors:

  • Carrier IQ’s initial response to their accuser was unnecessarily litigious – and Eckhart’s involvement of the Electronic Frontier Foundation guaranteed a much wider audience than might have otherwise occurred. Too many techno-illiterate lawyers under-estimate the power of blogs, Twitter and social media to bring issues such as this to wide awareness in a matter of hours.
  • The implementation of the software (on the Android phone in the now-infamous video) seems to be collecting far too much data for the purpose the operator seems to need. Even if the unnecessary data is just collected and then discarded, its initial all-encompassing capture looks both suspicious and poorly-conceived in terms of software security best-practice. (For instance, a cache of the logged data could be a goldmine for a handset thief, even if it doesn’t get sent to the operator).

Operators’ mistakes

  • Various operators have been using Carrier IQ (or equivalents) without clearly telling their customers what they were doing. A vague mention of “collecting data” in the fine-print of the terms and conditions is not enough.

Paranoia feeds the Media

  • Various journalists and bloggers seem to have sensationalised the story without full understanding of what the CIQ software was actually doing.
  • In these days of editorial and journalistic cut-backs, the mainstream media can be tempted to run with ‘scary’ tech stories based on stories getting attention online and via Twitter, and in timescales which make it hard to verify or unravel the technical twists and turns of complex stories.
  • Many consumers don’t read past the headline, and those that do may only read the first paragraph of an article, so any caveats or explanations that are actually carried in the detail are often lost.

The “fog of war”, industry panic and opportunism

  • The “fog of war” in terms of Carrier IQ rumours over the last few days has brought many operators and device vendors to deny publicly any involvement in using the technology. This can be seen as both a defensive response about a perceived risk to Xmas-season sales – but also as an opportunistic offensive move against some operators / vendors that are more directly embroiled in the “scandal”.
  • Android devices have software from multiple sources and in multiple layers – from Google, the handset vendor (e.g. Samsung, HTC) adding their own tweaks, operators adding customisations such as Carrier IQ or other elements and so forth. It can be difficult to work out exactly who is responsible for what functionality – hence some public statements from Carrier IQ executives expressing bemusement about the extent of data collected in this instance. (There is a suggestion that the “debug mode” of the software was the problem, not the normal usage mode). Generally, Apple and BlackBerry devices are more homogenous, although both companies do slightly-altered variants for favoured operator customers.

Result = Industry Failure

The net result is that the Carrier IQ brand is now seen as “toxic” in the eyes of many in the industry, irrespective of the benefits that some of its capabilities bring.

More worrying perhaps has been the inability of the industry as a whole to deal with these issues without panicking and resorting to a playground farce of finger-pointing.

It is at best careless, and in some cases illegal to treat personal data without appropriate care, protection and respect. But it is downright irresponsible to collectively risk the chance to develop a useful, legitimate and valuable ‘Personal Information Economy’ (PIE), which would benefit consumers, telcos, and other players alike, for the sake of some relatively minor corporate tit-for-tat in the media.

This is why we think our research on this topic, and the work we’ve been contributing to at the World Economic Forum on ‘Rethinking Personal Data’ is so important, and why consumer groups, telcos and other industry players need to get fully engaged to develop and adopt workable principles and practices on personal data.

Winners and Losers

In terms of losers, the obvious one is Carrier IQ itself, which seems to have made several poor decisions and has been overwhelmed by events – even if it has been unfortunate in the manner that everything has blown up, perhaps beyond the level which is truly proportionate.

Certain operators (notably Sprint) are likely to be doing some serious back-pedalling here. Samsung and HTC, as leading Android vendors have some questions to answer, but are likely to pass the buck to the operators and Carrier IQ itself. Huawei is also an (announced) user of Carrier IQ, notably for its mobile broadband devices such as USB dongles. The press release from February 2011 shows a strong awareness of privacy issues, as well as the notion of opt-in from individual users. Given the company’s troubles in getting its network products accepted by security authorities in the US in particular, this association might be problematic.

One beneficiary of this is likely to be Apple. Apple knows that it “owns” the whole software stack, so does not need to get embroiled in ‘finger pointing’ such as is going on between operators, Samsung, HTC and Carrier IQ. Apple is also not keen on customising the software stack for operators, and his episode will give it another excuse to push back against operators which want to be able to perform customisation.

BlackBerry is perhaps in the same situation, while Nokia/Microsoft are in a good position to take the moral high ground as well. (All this assumes, of course, that they don’t also have privacy skeletons in their closets – although both Apple and Google have dealt with such issues – much better – in the past).

To read the note in full, including the following additional analysis…

  • What should Telcos and others do?
  • Putting the user in control of their data – the World Economic Forum (WEF) guidelines
  • Dos and Don’ts of implementing software that use personal data
  • How to address and respect privacy concerns
  • Managing personal data across the business
  • Using ‘Intelligent Software’
  • An explanation of the technical risks

…Members of the Telco 2.0 Executive Briefing Subscription Service can download the full 15 page report in PDF format here. Non-Members, please subscribe here or please email contact@telco2.net / call +44 (0) 207 247 5003.

Organisations, people and products referenced: 3GPP, Android, Apple, AT&T, BlackBerry, Carrier IQ, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Facebook, Google, HTC, Huawei, IntuWave, KPN, Microsoft, New Digital Economics, Nokia, Onavo, Openet, Phorm, Samsung, Sprint, Symbian, T-Mobile, Travis Eckhart, World Economic Forum (WEF).

Technologies and industry terms referenced: analytics, Deep Packet Inspection (DPI), Net Neutrality, personal data, smartphones, SMS, traffic detection function (TDF), WiFi.