Mobile

Google now activating 200,000 Android units a day

Submitted by eacastel on Thu, 08/05/2010 - 11:52

From TechCrunch: Remember back in the day when Google was only activating 100,000 Android units a day? You should — it was May. By June, that number had jumped to 160,000 units a day. And today it now stands at 200,000 Android units activated a day. That’s pretty incredible.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt revealed as much during a sit down with a group of journalists after his panel at the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe, CA. When asked about how the Android platform is doing, Schmidt was practically glowing. He cited the recent quarterly shipment numbers (the ones showing total shipments passed those of the iPhone in the U.S.) and said that he just checked their own internal numbers this morning.

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Amazon excels in mobile commerce

Submitted by eacastel on Mon, 08/02/2010 - 12:24

Have you ever bought something from amazon.com using your mobile device? Try it. It is convenient and easy and does not take more than 2 minutes. As a matter of fact, during the past 12 months, Amazon has sold one billion dollars through mobile devices.

"The leading mobile commerce device today is the smartphone, but we're excited by the potential of the new category of wireless tablet computers," said Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in a statement accompanying the company's release of second-quarter results.

Buying from Amazon (and soon others) with your mobile means not having to find time to log into the computer, etc. Just pick up your phone and type amazon.com. Enter your search item and you will be re-directed to your item or near matches. Select your item, click add to shopping cart, check out with 1-Click. Your purchase should arrive within 3 days.

Sales of Wired's iPad version beat their print counterpart

Submitted by eacastel on Tue, 06/08/2010 - 10:50

A historic turn of events for the print publishing business was reached recently as sales of the iPad version of Wired Magazine beat the print estimates of 80,000 copies.

Several sources confirm that 79,000 copies of the digital version of the magazine have already been sold. Both the print and the iPad versions cost $4.99.

Yes, this is the right magazine for the demographic but the mobility of the tablet device such as the iPad and coming mobile technologies such as the new iPhone 4G should now be clearly seen as the next step for the print industry.

Considerations on geofencing and location-based SMS

Submitted by eacastel on Mon, 06/07/2010 - 14:46

As location becomes more and more relevant for users, businesses and advertisers, I am picking up a thread here from Carlo Longino/MobHappy.com and Matt Silk/Mobile Demystified that sheds light on the subject of location via SMS, still the most ubiquitous way to reach consumers on a mobile phone.

On the value to consumers of location-based ads

Multichannel 2010 is the “New Black"

Submitted by eacastel on Mon, 06/07/2010 - 13:52

Marketers are expanding their focus to include more ways to digitally and directly reach consumers, so their vendors must follow suit. It’s just smart business.

Nearly every major email service provider has announced social media integration plans in one form or another, and most have selected a mobile partner or are building messaging into their platforms.

In general, and in particular for direct marketers, mobile continues to represent tremendous opportunity. As we’ve seen with these acquisitions, the appetite for social and digital media technologies is growing.

We regularly make the point that marketers should have a multichannel strategy – one that includes email, online, mobile and social media. The more opportunities you have to reach a customer, the more opportunities you have to engage with them.

Gap app taps into mobile marketing

Submitted by eacastel on Thu, 05/27/2010 - 22:09

NPR's Marketplace's Steve Henn reports on one company that's diving right in.

STEVE HENN: If you locked a mad scientist in a room and asked her to create the ultimate marketing device, she might come back with something that would follow you around, track your desires, slip into your pocket and would always be on. In short, she'd hand you a cell phone.

LISTEN to the rest of the story on the NPR podcast here.

GQ sells 365 iPad mags as app download averages revealed

Submitted by eacastel on Tue, 05/18/2010 - 13:37

Apple’s iPad hasn’t saved publishing just yet, with Conde Naste revealing just 365 sales of its iPad-edition of GQ, while fresh research claims the average iPhone app sells 101,024 copies. [Via 9to5 Mac]

GQ's VP/Publisher Pete Hunsinger says: “This costs us nothing extra: no printing or postage. Everything is profit, and I look forward to the time when iPad issue sales become a major component to our circulation.” GQ is about to be joined on the iPad at Condé Nast by Glamour / The New Yorker / Vanity Fair and Wired.)

UPDATE: On May 18, GQ announced that it has sold a total of 57,000 copies of its magazine in the App Store since December. [From Peter Kafka - "GQ’s iPad App Does…Okay"]

Study: How consumers use the mobile internet

Submitted by eacastel on Sat, 04/24/2010 - 15:19

MediaPost’s Research Brief recently highlighted a survey from Ruder Finn on how Americans use the mobile internet. The post is worth a quick read and provides some insight on how people use their phones (which is helpful for crafting a mobile strategy).

You can read the full post here.

The survey, the Mobile Intent Index, showed the driving factor behind people using their mobile phones to go online is immediacy. And that people use their mobile phones as a “social connector” – with 91 percent of mobile users going online to socialize, compared to the 79 percent of traditional internet users.

See this interactive full study: Ruder-Finn’s full results here.

SMS still reigns supreme in mobile

Submitted by eacastel on Fri, 04/23/2010 - 12:52

Over at AdWeek, Simon Vella makes some excellent points in his op-ed “Forget Apps, Text Still Reigns in Mobile.”

He notes: "Nearly every cellphone in the U.S. is capable of text messaging and because it’s used for regular personal communication, it’s always top of mind in terms of general daily use. By comparison, only 18% of all phones in the U.S. are smartphones. Further, Juniper Research forecasts that smartphones worldwide will account for just 23% of all new handsets sold per annum by 2013, hardly representing the mass market for general consumer goods and services."

Mary Meeker: Mobile innovation will leave desktop web in the dust

Submitted by eacastel on Thu, 04/15/2010 - 18:39

Mary Meeker, an analyst with Morgan Stanley who’s an expert on Internet and mobile trends, gave a fast-paced talk at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. It was packed with more points and more data than I can cover in a short post, but the big point was that the mobile internet is taking off — just like the desktop internet a decade or so ago, but much faster.

Meeker was speaking at Atmosphere, a conference that Google is hosting for chief information officers, so she concluded by offering four big ideas for CIOs:

1. “The desktop internet ramp was just a warm-up act for what we’re seeing happen on the mobile internet.”
2. The pace of mobile innovation is “unprecedented, I think, in world history.”
3. Consumer companies are taking the lead over enterprise companies.
4. “It’s more important than ever to listen to employees” about where to take your IT department.

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