I will go further and predict that Android is going to continue to wane and shrink. Where I disagree with you Adrian is that Windows Phone is going to emerge powerfully in ’12 – ’13. The smartphone OS battle is long from being decided, and MSFT is best positioned to pick up share. The numbers may not be great yet, but there are reasons why that will change.

For all the iPhones out there, there are X million blackberry and other handsets that are controlled by corporate IT departments; many companies aren’t even putting corporate data on smartphones yet in any significant way otherwise for security reasons and the fact that apps need to be ported to mobile OSes. Many are still waiting to see what MSFT does.

Once WinPhone comes out on more desirable handsets, corporate IT will offer them as options, and, coupled with its integration with Win 8 server, its xBox control capability(which is becoming a cable box this year in a big way), it is going to become a juggernaut. While (Andriod) ICS is a strong step in the right direction, it is struggling on even the Xoom tablet and Galaxy Nexus with respect to app stability. No one wants to use apps that are unstable. Version Hell is a very real Android phenomenon.

WinPhone desperately needs more storage or seamless cloud storage to offer a combined 64 GB of storage (or 32 GB onboard plus 25 GB SkyDrive which is close) to be a serious competitor. Hopefully Nokia and HTC will wake up and realize they will be better off with better spec’ed WinPhones.

I have to say, this particular argument for why people use Facebook is really tired, and based on the (IMHO) antiquated concept that overemphasizes the importance of “belonging” as a significant driver for meaning. It is the same anthropology that dismisses faith in God as stemming from the same place. But I digress.

This is also only a literature review (no primary research) and it seems to come from 2009 sources. Lots has happened in the Soc Media world since 2009. Its like talking about the stock market without mentioning mortgage backed securities and TARP.

Facebook usage is far too widespread and its user base way too diverse to draw these kinds of conclusions. A full sixth of the planet is on Facebook and 50% visits daily. That is unfathomable, and no one would have ever predicted it.

Most important, Facebook offers people a way to be MORE efficient with their relationships. These days, for those in a person’s tight circle, a wall post is etiquette for letting them know about important things, much easier than blast email or dialing for dollars. For people like me who only have about 450 friends and acquaintances, it helps me stay in touch with some folks lightly, and others know about everything they post. It is easier to manage more relationships with Facebook.

Finally, it is a permanent address. You can move as many times as you want and change all your contact info, and you are still reachable via Facebook. It is the Uber Persistent Yellow Pages. That in and of itself is more important than being validated by Like buttons.

That said, we do not need more social networks, other than certain special interest ones. Google+ is baffling to me. If you don’t trust Facebook, how do you EVER in God’s name trust Google with your info? They would sell their mom’s molars for cash.

Interesting, but I disagree. What do you think?

Just yesterday, a study was published in Telemedicine and E-Health that featured the findings of the Mayo Clinic in Arizona, C3O Medical Group in Ojai, CA and UCLA Medical Center in West Los Angeles. They asked what is helping and impeding the use of robotic telemedicine in emergency and critical care applications in these institutions. They found that “Administrative Burdens” and “limits on reimbursement” are the primary culprits impeding the use of telemedicine.

The sad thing is, the authors are not shocked. Noted as the biggest issues are:

• Licensing restrictions
• Admin burden of giving physicians credentials and privileges to practice telemedicine and make sure malpractice insurance is in place
• Limitations in billing and reimbursement.

No one is surprised because the practitioners of healthcare in the US are not in charge. Neither are the providers of technology that enable them. Our US healthcare system is now run by an “Administrative Financial Complex” (compare to the Military Industrial Complex of Ike Eisenhower and Oliver Stone fame) which has now become self-aware like SkyNet in the Terminator movies and is now nearly solely focused on insuring its own survival and growth. We collectively marvel at how our health insurance rates continue to rise meteorically, while healthcare practitioners, institutions and and consumers keep getting squeezed.

The Great Sucking Sound You Hear is Administration Vacuuming Healthcare Dollars

In 1992, Ross Perot talked about the “great sucking sound” of jobs being drawn overseas for cheap labor. Today the great sucking sound is generated by the healthcare insurers, the Administrative Financial Complex which is charged with topline growth by Wall Street, and whose growth comes at the expense of our US healthcare system. While you can argue whether the sound levels are increasing or decreasing, they are way too much for our system to handle, and something HAS to change. Either something will change or it will break. And we really don’t want it to break.

Health insurers are necessary and are an important part of the checks and balances that are built into a managed care methodology for making decisions on healthcare. However, it should not have the power it has, primarily because it is not first interested in better more affordable care; it is interested in growth.

Not Many Answers Here, Which is the Big Problem

This is however, not a problem easily solved. Charging the Government with this responsibility is not going to make things better, absolutely for sure. Conservative political forces have no interest in non-market based solutions, which is smart, but not going to enable limits on topline revenue insurer growth. Liberal political forces have little credibility with the private sector, and have a poor rapport with healthcare providers as well.

Somehow, we have to find a way for those who invest in healthcare insurers to receive gains when company leaders reduce the size of their companies, reduce the amount of raw dollars that flow into them from premiums and create new efficiencies in the US healthcare system. This is not impossible, but will require the ourage to to do battle with some of Washington’s most powerful lobbies, the will to espouse politically dangerous ideas such as being against the growth of healthcare insurers and numbers and estimates to persuade. Who has the most to gain from doing this?

The answer is the healthcare provider community coupled with the providers of tools and technology enablement; they together stand to gain the most from a new schema and likely have their own lobby as well. A well-conceived effort to craft a way for a special class of organizations to trade on their cost containment and efficiency achievements to be qualified, along with a commitment to sensible limits (higher than CMS guidelines but sensible just the same) on the cost of care and some financial modeling would be a great place to begin the debate. Given something that really makes sense, the more results oriented members of our government would take it from there.

One Last Thing…

Harkening back to the article that began the conversation, a significant factor in the stunted use of telemedicine is the fear of litigation, or the risk-reward equation. It is out of balance and must be corrected. This means that we also have to simultaneously pass tort reform as well. That has proven to be a tough nut to crack, but with the combined juggernaut of the above proposal, maybe now is the time to roll the whole thing through the process. It may just be the most important thing we do for our future.

I have had my Facebook page for some time now, and have been watching the young CEO receive a significant amount of fame, money and power in a very short period of time. I even saw the movie and really enjoyed it (as an entrepreneur, it was very energizing). The character I saw in the movie was nothing like the individual I have been watching in interviews and in the media. Maybe he isn’t the smoothest operator in interviews, but he is the real item.

As we learned from Spiderman several years ago, “along with great power comes great responsibility”. This, in fact, is what Mr. Zuckerberg owns and carries with an ease that I have not witnessed among men for some time. This is no exaggeration. He has had a devotion to all the right values and ideals when you are talking about what it means to operate a business with such significant influence.

• He is committed to the social experience. First and foremost, he wants to mirror how people interact with each other in person.
• He jealously guards open infrastructure and wants to enable entrepreneurs.
• He is not chasing after the most lucrative option (they would be public already if that were so).
• He is more interested in Facebook itself than who it makes him or how much it makes for him.

For the man who owns most of the website where 250 million people use it every day, these are important values.

I can’t help thinking about Bill Gates when I think of Zuckerberg. While Bill Gates was an aggressive business man when it came to protecting his Windows base and through bringing more and more functionality into the operating system, Bill Gates has always been a committed proponent of collaborative computing and what contribution his operating system could make to society as well. It is his largest contribution to the world (aside from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation).

(Update) Mark was raised Jewish, but most of what we find online seems to indicate he claims to be an atheist. While a disappointment for me personally, it would be my hope he would correct this to say he is agnostic, as atheism is extremely unreasonable (it makes a claim that you can know for sure there is no God which makes no sense at all).

He may be surprised to find out many of the values he is committed to are important to God as well.

What do you think? Do you think I am fooled, or do you agree? Do you think he is like Gates in this context?

Day 1 of CES 2012 was nearly impossible to reach the levels to which it was promoted (OK, hyped). But there was still a ton of great stuff to get pretty excited about. Among the things that were notable (from companies big and small in no particular order):

• An incredible 55″ OLED 3D display from LG, the best standard HD image at the show
• A nearly equally impressive 84″ 4K passive 3D display that was literally breathtaking (yes, even after following tech so closely)
• An 8K (yes, full 7680 x 4320, astounding) display from sharp that measured 85″ large and was insanely clear (no word on when we may see one in the wild)
• The announcement of the Nokia 900 to debut on AT&T’s 4G LTE network “in the coming months”.  Featuring a 4.3 inch display and LTE, it only has 16GB of storage and a single core processor.  It really needs more space.  However, it is still a very impressive handset.
• A new automobile mount from a new company that was very impressive, along with a clever camera case which enabled the shooting of video while holding the phone horizontally

Check out our first video of our visit to the event, and stay tuned for more to come!  We will be posting more with respect to Microsoft, healthcare technologies and Sony as the week finishes out.

We are heading out this year to make some sense of the general direction, and look for signs that the past trends of product introductions and big focal points of CES having not been the market successes that everyone hoped for is a thing of the past.

One thing is for sure; Microsoft is in a good place. Kinect, a big highlight product at CES last year, has done extremely well. The tech giant is well positioned for 2012. We are excited to see what else they are bringing to Vegas.

Follow us this week as we post videos and what we think is the best of what is coming and not just more of the same.

I read what was a very insightful article about how market researchers responded to the question, “Which are better, IDIs or Focus Groups?”  As has happened since the genesis of marketing research, people like to talk up what they know.  The problem is, this serves your clients’ purposes only when your flavor is what they need.

Bottom line, both are important, and both have their best use cases.  Each are indispensable when they are needed.  Some are absolutely unacceptable when contraindicated (a scenario not mentioned is when your client’s targets  are competitors in their market, it is tough to sit in a room with your competitors and talk about your strategic plans).

The article is here for your review, taken from Quirk’s December issue.

Qualitatively Speaking: The focus group vs. in-depth interview debate

By Carey V. Azzara

If  debate is healthy, you might describe the debate over qualitative methods as positively athletic. There are plenty of opinions regarding which qualitative approach provides the best results. You, no doubt, have your own opinion.

To explore the reasons professionals feel strongly about the merits of focus groups (FGs) versus in-depth interviews (IDIs), we asked 20 of them when and why they choose to use FGs versus IDIs. The themes that emerged from our asynchronous debate process are illuminating.

In general, there were three, somewhat predictable, positions: one-on-one interviews are superior to focus groups; focus groups are superior to one-on-one interviews; align the research approach with the research objectives.

Each person who took one of the first two positions gave well-thought-out reasons for his or her choice. It typically related to the specific research problem they faced. Another reason for a preference was skill. Practicing what you know how to do best makes sense. Many professionals are better at one approach than another; this factor obviously plays a role in the choices practitioners make.

Aligning the approach with the objectives was an overarching theme even among professionals who strongly favor one technique over the other. Thus, our next questions are, what are the “when and why” answers experts gave? And, can we create a concise best-practice statement from the collective wisdom of 20 practitioners?

Arguments for in-depth interviews

IDIs provide the best opportunity to explore decisions and compare differences and similarities among reference group members. When the research objective is to understand individual decision processes or individual responses to marketing stimuli (e.g., Web sites) IDIs are typically the choice. IDIs allow detailed exploration of a single respondent’s reactions without contamination. They are particularly valuable when researchers want individual reactions placed in the context of the individual’s experiences.

A preference for IDIs is likely when group interactions are unimportant or detrimental. A few scenarios are:

• when it is easier to reach target respondents with IDIs;

• when there is a better cost-benefit for IDIs;

• when it is preferable to collect responses without the group influence factor;

• when probing and/or laddering techniques are part of the data collection process;

• when project objectives require a direct correspondence of specific findings to specific respondent segments; and/or

• when a device or process is being tested for usability.

Additionally, if the topic is highly sensitive (e.g., serious illnesses) use of IDIs is indicated. Subjects which are highly personal (e.g., bankruptcy) or very detailed (e.g., divorce decrees) are best probed deeply with IDIs.

Sensitive subjects are also a factor in business research. Topics with competitive consequences are sensitive areas (for example, companies consider information-technology practices proprietary, especially security technology). In addition, businesses are wary of participating in FGs with competitors (such as when participants are from the same vertical industry, etc.).

A preference for IDIs was evident when:

• working with small populations, especially if geographically-dispersed;

• avoiding operational pitfalls is a concern (e.g., the threat of 60 percent of a group cancelling or possibly inviting the wrong people; it’s easier to recover from one bad-fit IDI than a FG with eight people); and

• you need deep layers of information from probing (e.g., interviewing “experts”).

In the final analysis IDIs are a practical approach and typically easier to manage. However, it’s important to distinguish between the ease-of-use factor versus the better-approach factor!

Arguments for focus groups

Several versions of the following comment were typical: “My rule of thumb is to assume focus groups and switch to IDIs only if necessary.” A basic question is, “Will the group dynamics add to the findings?”

There are triggers to suggest when to do groups versus using other qualitative approaches. FGs are particularly compelling:

• when consensus or debate is required to explore disparate views;

• to generate opportunities for point-counterpoint discussion and resolution;

• as an excellent approach for broad, exploratory topics, and as a mechanism for helping people generate and share their ideas;

• when the interaction between the participants sparks a discussion that illuminates a topic, draws out latent issues;

• when you want people to work in teams;

• when the rich quality of respondent interactions is needed or you are exploring common trends; and/or

• when you are early in the exploration of a concept or topic, as group dynamics are powerful in the discovery process.

Focus groups have an advantage when trying to engage clients (decision-makers) in the research process. When research sponsors take time to view focus groups it expedites their buy-in, moving the study to final recommendations faster. You are less likely to “lose” your client in the course of two or four hours compared to the time associated with IDIs. For some practitioners focus groups were preferred when speed is important, but apply caution here: advocates of IDIs use this argument too. FG practitioners believe IDIs take longer to execute than FGs and are harder and more time-consuming to analyze.

Focus groups of no more than eight respondents was a recommendation echoed by several practitioners. Triads and mini-groups were suggested as alternatives for generating ideas while allowing in-depth questioning. Mini-groups are well-suited to obtaining reactions to product stimuli and generating refinements. Contrary to most opinions, sensitive issues are not only okay in groups, but may be explored as well as or better than in IDIs, because respondents engage when discussing their condition or issue with others in the same boat.

Finally, the statement, “I favor the group situation; people are forthcoming among peers when attention is focused on many rather than one,” depicts a popular position.

Two themes

Two themes emerged that we can use to construct a best-practice statement. The first is characterized by the mantra, “Objectives drive design.” Evaluate critically the research objectives and apply the approach most likely to provide insights. A good practitioner chooses the best method for the work and the selection process requires understanding the merits of all available approaches.

A key question is whether the objectives are individual in nature (e.g., decisions, preferences, usability) or group-oriented and benefit from participants’ discussion or perhaps arguments (e.g., concept exploration).

The second theme is summarized by the simple comment, “Why not use both?” Designing qualitative research using IDIs and FGs provides the best of both worlds – and it’s not a cop-out! IDIs provide depth of questioning and personal information while FGs help us understand the social context of issues. The methods are complementary.

For business decision makers, combining the benefits of IDIs and FGs is a great solution if the budget supports it. In fact, perhaps the only real argument against this approach is concern about exceeding a project’s budget.

Can it go up 30& again this year? I don’t think so.

What do you think? Possible?

A recent find online speaks of an expected smaller increase of 7.2%. As much as I think it shouldn’t increase at all (because they have already received their pay in full), I may be excited about this.

We shall see…

Like Ron Burgundy, this is kind of a big deal.  This is going to help people spend money more easily and create new opportunities for employment. 

If I was in the retail business (and we are, indirectly!) I would like this.

The global mobile payment market, consisting of digital and physical goods purchases, near field communications (NFC) and mobile money transfers, will be worth $670 billion in 2015, according to a July 2011 white paper from Juniper Research. Data from “Mobile Money Goes Mainstream” indicates this figure will be more than double current levels.

Regardless of who is right here, it is going to be big.  I agree.  What do you think?