Between Brackets

DM2PRO and Quattro Wireless (the last one recently taken over by Apple) published an interesting study (via Mobile Marketing Watch) end of last year that reports on current strategies and future plans of advertisers, agencies, and developers with respect to mobile and social apps in the US.

Interesting to see is that a significant number of parties plan significantly more mobile apps in 2010 as well as an increase in budget reserved for launching apps. As preferred platforms, both RIM and Android are mentioned, but iPhone still leads the pack in everything.

As the report concludes correctly, this flood of extra apps will mean that promotion of an app will become more and more essential in order to stand out of the crowd.

From a post on pinchmedia.com we learn that: on average an application on the App Store earns the developer $8,500 (not monthly, not yearly, but in total)

So unless you’re lucky you’re not earning a lot

Of course (just as with AdMob reports) we need to be careful and remember that PinchMedia only covers a slice of the market (those apps that include their software). But still, it’s interesting.

Seems that the only Smart Phone platform that didn’t grow the second half of this year in the states is the WinMo platform. This is according to a survey from ComScore.

The good news is that the smartphone market keeps on growing and that we’ll see more feature rich phones. This will drive the adoption of mobile internet, which we think is a good thing

Nokia may well have the intention of selling off its handset business according to this article.

The iPhone (almost?) de-throwned Nokia as the most profitable handset manufacturer. But an even greater threat may be the Android phones.

Maybe the maemo OS may bring new live to the company (Symbian really is dated now). And then again, maybe Nokia does need to transform itself as IBM did a couple of decades ago.

Great times ahead.

No more tying

In September the ban for tying will be lifted in Belgium. This will result in an incredible price drops in many industries and especially in the telecom market. Where we will start seeing interesting offers as of then.
At least that’s what many hope for. Some think the iPhone will become less expensive.
Personally, I’m not sure the tying ban was the primary reason for slow adoption of new technologies. It may be one piece of the puzzle, but lack of competition and lack of big international players certainly are other pieces.

Take the G1 phone

If T-Mobile had been active in this country, we wouldn’t have had to wait until now to have a Google phone (at least officially).

Take the Kindle

And if Amazon decides to launch the Kindle on the European market, then we’ll again have to wait longer than other countries, since they’ll probably start the roll-out with a pan-European operator (none of which are active on the Belgian market -we’ll maybe Mobistar).

Open up

I hope the Belgian market will op up thanks to the lifted ban. But as I said, I’m afraid that’s only one piece of the puzzle.

Toyota targets iPhone owners with a mobile Prius promotion (via Mobile Marketer)

They use a mobile website to offer product features, price info, etc. and the obvious dealer locator. It is understandable that they target mobile users, and especially iPhone owners as these people are typically doing more of their regular information look up with their phone. What is a bit weird though, is that they use a mobile website since a mobile website provides an experience that is quite different from the typical apps iPhone users expect. Perhaps it has something to do with timing, and Toyota feels the same way, as they announce the arrival of a real app in the near future.

What is interesting though is that they are really focusing on product information, to assist the customer with his/her buying process. Once they switch over to an app, they offer the consumer a buying assistant always on hand. However, now that they have established this relationship, and the consumer decides to buy a Toyota Prius, this particular app loses most of its value.

It would therefore be a good idea if Toyota built an after-sales app as well and pro-actively assisted the the consumer replacing the one app with the other. This app could offer maintenance advice, options that can be added to the car later on,info about Prius owner clubs or events, and any other information relevant to a Prius owner. They could even offer some mileage tracking features which could be fed back as a great source of actual usage data. By offering 2 apps instead of one, each app has its specific focus, and they can continue the relationship they built with the consumer, learn more about his/her needs and improve the product experience significantly.

According to a poll among 147 executives in the mobile industry, N-Gage is a dodo and jME is on its way out (even if this is an April’s fool joke, it is clear that N-Gage and jME are in trouble and are loosing ground fast to new contenders).

The new stars at the gaming firmament are -tatataah-: iPhone and Android.

It is clear that Nokia has to address the -lack of an- App Store phenomenon asap. They must make it super easy to buy and install games. Furthermore, they need to make sure consumers can re-install and play their games on any of their Nokia devices (now a game is bound to a specific device and when you buy a new phone, you need to buy and install all your games all over again)

The iPhone proved that people do want to access the internet when the experience is fun and easy and now accounts for 50% of mobile internet traffic in the US.

But now the Android is starting to show up in the statistics. According to AdMob stats already 5% of all mobile internet usage in US comes from Android handsets.

These figures are from AdMob and they don’t include traffic to sites that don’t serve AdMob ads… But they are an indication.

Independent Artist Geoff Smith set up a site ringtonefeeder.com where he publishes ring tones for the iPhone as an RSS stream. You can subscribe to his service and will receive a new ring tone every week, which is automatically synched to your iPhone by iTunes.

Here’s an example of an iPhone ring tone Geoff made. Folllowed by a short on how the service actually works.
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Lately I’ve been playing around with the latest iPod touch a lot. It’s a very nice device (a bit too brittle to travel with for me). The integration with the AppStore is amazing. Searching for new software, paying for it and then installing it is a breeze (watch your wallets!).

But, what irritates me is that even though we’re supposed to be living in a globalized world not everything is available globally.
Take for instance the iFood Assistant from Kraft. It is an advertisement tool from Kraft (for which you have to pay in order to use it!) that supposedly helps people prepare fantastic meals. I say “supposedly”, because I can’t install it and test it for myself (without performing any tricks).

If you look for it in the AppStore you won’t find it (that is, if you’ve said you’re located in Belgium). When you try to download it via iTunes it becomes apparent why.

When will global companies stop acting childishly local. I understand they have local regulations to take into account (which doesn’t apply in this case I believe). Or that they need to tune some stuff to the local flavors. But, if you advertise something on the internet (global reach), then either clearly state it is not available globally (and mention why) or make it globally available.

PS: when I wanted to leave a comment on the site and specified a valid e-mail address the Kraft site told me to specify a correct e-mail. So I couldn’t leave them a comment