Posts tagged iPhone
Forget the iPhone and Google phone, Skinput is coming. And you already own the handset.
Mar 5th
It is widely accepted that mobile phone users have graduated from simple voice and text handsets and hence we have smartphones almost taking over the world. But as you may well know, everything is just a trend until something better comes along. Enter the Skinput.
Chris Harrison an American university student, with help from Microsoft’s research lab, has created a system that allows people to use their own hands and arms as touchscreens by detecting the various ultralow-frequency sounds produced when tapping different parts of the skin.
Skinput uses microchip-sized “pico” projectors to allow for interactive elements rendered on the user’s forearm and hand.
An armband houses the projector along with an array of sensors which collect the signals generated by the skin taps and then calculates which part of the display you want to activate.
The result is an always available, naturally portable body interface. The acoustic detector can detect five skin locations below the elbow with an accuracy of 95.5%, which corresponds to a sufficient versatility for many mobile applications, according to the researchers. Does this mean that users will have the potential to become walking billboards?
It good news for those who always want to stay connected. According to a Tellabs survey conducted by The Nielsen Company, two-thirds of mobile users around the globe are interested in “smart” services that would feed them information based on personal preferences, location, time of day and social setting.
Demand for iPad higher than it was for the iPhone. Price or curiosity?
Feb 26th
There is more demand for Apple’s forthcoming iPad then there ever was the iPhone, according to new research.
Is this surprising? Yes. Why? Because all the reports that were flowing out of newsrooms immediately after Steve Jobs introduced the new product where negative.
“It doesn’t have this…it doesn’t have that…” Bla bla. The critics were wrong. People still want the iPad.
As I have said before, consumers are curious about Apple. It seems to be able to do no wrong and what the bloody hell would you want a camera on a tablet computer for anyway? Research has backed me up:
A new survey from RBC/ChangeWave reveals that 13% of consumers were either somewhat or very likely to purchase the iPad, compared with the 9% who gave the same reply for the original iPhone in a similar survey conducted prior to its launch.
Mike Abramsky, RBC analyst, said that while he does not expect feverish initial launch lines such as the iPhone attracted, “the data portends well for healthy initial iPad uptake.”
The reason?
The iPad’s unexpectedly low price point – starting at $US499.
Only 8% appear unwilling to pay Apple’s indicated iPad prices, according to the survey, that well below 28% who balked at initial iPhone pricing.
But perhaps the high demand is also due to people’s curiosity over what exactly the iPad will do and how it will enrich their lives. Tablets have been around for years, so why all the hype now?
Consumers have been told that not only will the iPad change the way we consumer media, it will revolutionise our use of the internet…of how we use technology! It will make our lives easier and I guess you’d be crazy not to buy into that when it’s for such a low price.
Top planned uses for the device among buyers includes surfing the internet (68%), checking e-mail (44%), and reading e-books (37%).
The iPad may have greater potential than first touted and gives further weight to Apple’s predictions that the iPad will be in the hands of more than 10 million consumers by the end of the year.
Better fix those censorship rules then guys.
Too sexy for Apple?
Feb 22nd
Believe it or not but Apple has finally got something wrong, upsetting customers - and no, I’m not talking about the iPad.
Apple has begun enforcing stricter policies around apps available from its app store in a move that could see some apps removed entirely.
While the tech giant has so far only removed adult-themed apps, some games have also been removed.
Techcrunch reports that no more applications with “overtly sexual content” will be allowed, however, the criteria in which apps on the Apple store will be measured remain unclear.
The policy is expected to alarm some developers, and like other attempts to censor internet content, could see some apps banned for no reason at all - or at least in a case of misunderstanding (think of how in India you can’t look up ‘sex discrimination laws’ because the search term ‘sex’ is banned.
The news has already prompted many scathing opinions and blog posts on Mac enthusiasts sites such as cultofmac.com and 9to5mac.com. Blog posts on the sites are warning developers to make sure they don’t feature any “sexy women in apps” deeming the bans “ridiculous”.
The pulling of apps is in response to what is being dubbed as “sexy apps”, which also includes porn.
The move comes at a rather convenient time, with many touting that the clean-up attempt is to ready the market for its iPad, which is due to hit stores next month.
The iPad is expected to be popular with schools - carrying textbooks.
It seems that no medium is safe from censorship these days. And it isn’t necessarily a bad thing. For years, the internet has known no or little inhibitions - there were no clear boundaries and anything and everything was available for download. We called it freedom. And until the internet giants got on board with censoring content available through their sites, there was no way to apply any laws on the world wide web as it isn’t confined to any one jurisdiction.
But the question is now, how much power should these ‘internet giants’ have over what content can and can’t be seen - and furthermore, what is too “sexy”?
Media rivals fear the great (free) power of the BBC
Feb 18th
The BBC is gearing up for the launch of its first iPhone app, which will also include the iPlayer catch-up service in what is the latest example of traditional media outlets embracing mobile and digital.
In a bid to capture audiences that have started consuming content in different ways, the BBC will launch applications based on its news, sport and iPlayer video services and will offer the content free.
But the move could put more strain on mobile networks that have struggled to handle the amount of data traffic, particularly bandwidth-heavy services such as video.
To be honest, it’s about time catch-up services caught up with smartphones (iPhone, Androids). However, the move is touted to intensify the debate about paid-for content.
However, rival media outlets have suggested that the BBC’s plans for a range of apps is a demonstration of the corporation exceeding its remit.
By offering free news and sports service, rival media groups will find it difficult to compete, generate advertising revenue and sell their paid-for apps.
The Newspaper Publishers Association told the Financial Times that the BBC’s apps would “strangle an important new market for news and information” and so “reduce members’ ability to invest in quality journalism”.
Britons already pay for the BBC through a license fee and programmes are ad free, so it will indeed be hard to compete with.
Meanwhile, we are all waiting to see what newspapers and magazines can offer on the iPad platform – the perceived silver bullet that will save the media industry. Time will tell…
Windows Phone 7 – in detail
Feb 15th
Following reports yesterday that Microsoft was to launch a challenger to the smartphone market currently dominated by Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Andriod and RIM’s Blackberry, the tech giant has unveiled the details of its closely kept mobile secret.
At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Microsoft showed off Windows Phone 7 for the first time. The handset will pull together content from social networking sites and other web services on a scale unseen on competing platforms and will most likely pose a serious threat to its competitors RIM, Apple and Google.
Why?
It’s flashy and new and has been designed with the user in mind, making all those things we use our mobile for more accessible, easier to use and to navigate.
Previous Windows Mobile versions were scrapped to make way for a completely new design that integrates Microsoft’s Zune music player and the Xbox Live gaming service.
The tech giant is ready to hit the smartphone market big time and has already secured partners including Samsung, HTC, HP, Sony Ericsson, Dell, LG and Toshiba.
At the Windows Phone 7 unveiling, Joe Belfiore, VP for Microsoft’s Windows Phone division, said the explosion of applications and web services available on mobile phones meant devices had become far too complex claiming that that phones had started to resemble PCs but “a phone’s just not a PC – it’s a smaller, more intimate device”.
Microsoft wanted a smart design that would separate applications and bring together some of the key things that are most important to people.
It’s five key hubs, that feature on a completely new interface with a ‘start’ page based around live ‘tiles’ representing the most common tasks include people, pictures, office, music + video and games.
The ‘people’ tile is all of a users contacts from Outlook, social networking sites and web mail services – pulled together with thumbnail images into one interface. People the user has recently communicated with rise to the top and for each contact the phone can display their recent activity on various social networking sites.
Under the ‘pictures’ tile is all of the users photos taken with the phone, synced from a PC or uploaded to social networking sites. Photos uploaded by friends to their social media profiles can also be accessed.
The Office’ tile is pretty self-explanatory, it allows users to view and edit documents or make voice, text and picture notes.
Every Windows Phone 7 will essentially be a Zune music player, with users able to sync music and videos using PC software similar to iTunes under the ‘music + video’ tile. Third-party music and video applications such as Pandora are also integrated.
Lastly, finally finding a way to take Xbox to the next level, under the ‘games’ tile users will be able to play games against other Xbox Live users.
Microsoft has said a key priority with the new operating system was maintaining consistency in design. Each Windows Phone 7 device will have three buttons on the front - Start, Search and Back. The tile menu interface will also be virtually the same on all handsets.
The built-in calendar pulls together appointments from both web-based personal calendars and from Microsoft Exchange, while addresses and phone numbers are automatically hyperlinked. Clicking on an address brings it up on Bing Maps.
The maps feature is interesting, and will be a major competitor to Google Maps. By simply typing “sushi” into the search function – which is of course powered by Bing – the user is shown all of the sushi restaurants in the immediate area plotted on a map. From that screen the user can get directions, ring a restaurant or read reviews.
The web browser is based around the same code as the desktop Internet Explorer, and there is full support for multi-touch gestures such as pinching to zoom. But just like the iPhone, Adobe Flash support won’t be present at launch.
So that’s it. It all looks pretty simple to use, and smart too. But one burning question remains: what about apps?
With the actual launch to consumers still so far away, Microsoft said it would reveal more details about the applications that will be available on the platform at its Remix conference later this year.
How to successfully market an iPhone app
Feb 15th
Maria Mandel, senior partner at Ogilvy & Mather, New York, says that while marketing tools have expanded, the rules are still the same.
Marketing for iPhone apps is similar to marketing other products, although the marketing tools available have expanded recently - especially in the area of social media. The steps are still the same: develop a product that your customers need or would like to have (iPhone app), create and deliver a strong marketing message to attract a following, and continue to develop new products/features and upgrades to retain existing customers.
Step 1: Develop Key Value Proposition
What sets your iPhone app apart from all your competitors? Why would your target audience want it? You have to come up with ways to be unique. There are three key questions that you should attempt to answer as you define your iPhone app’s unique value. The answers to these questions become the basis of your marketing process:
1. What’s unique about your iPhone app? List all the features and functions that are unique to your app. This list will help you develop a marketing message for your app and keep you focused during app development.
2. Who is your target audience?
3. Who are your competitors?
Step 2: Deliver Your Message to your Targeted Audience
Demand for your app is created when you help a prospective customer see that you have a solution to their problem.
Delivering your message happens when you create powerful descriptions and visuals for your app on the AppStore and on your app’s own website and email distribution list. You must think in terms of showcasing your app on the AppStore and on a corresponding website/email. The email communications and website can be used to show videos of your app, provide additional screen shots and other content. Always display a “download now” button prominently on your own site that directs to your app on the AppStore.
Social media marketing can help you generate buzz for your app. Take a look at using Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and other social media tools to help get the word out about your app.
Step 3: Marketing Your App
With the right message and the right audience combined with the right marketing tools and methods, you can create marketing campaigns that will be extremely effective in reaching your ideal audience.
For every app you see – there are hundreds of thousands more that you don’t. While interactive content discovery is, for the most part, driven organically, the initiation of mass access to the content through intermediary media (blogs, newspapers, content aggregators, word of mouth) is only ensured through a strategically planned approach that includes both paid and unpaid media tactics targeting your audience. Paid awareness (mobile display ads, in-app ads) then become not only a driver of adoption/download but a highly unique showcase of the brand. Organic seeding is effective as well as public relations.
Maria consults across the Ogilvy group on emerging communication platforms such as broadband, mobile marketing, gaming, digital out-of-home, community marketing and advanced TV. She is the executive director of Digital Innovation & Digital Lab NA.
Is Microsoft cool enough to have its own mobile phone?
Feb 15th
It’s Mobile World Congress this week and the perfect time for new players to enter the market. But can tech giant Microsoft pull it off?
Do you remember the days when software and technology companies would only really offer one product, but that product would actually be really good? Everyone would have it and it just became the norm. Microsoft loved those days, the days before it had so many competitors, days when it didn’t have to ‘cool’, it was just geeky.
Now, brand is more important than ever, and even more important for companies is that they now need to be seen with their fingers in many pies - that they’re down with the kids.
Microsoft will this week unveil the Microsoft Windows 7 for Mobile operating system, but what’s even more interesting is it will also be unveiling Windows 7 Mobile handsets.
Microsoft has been pretty busy these past couple of years - busy competing that is.
You have to remember that Microsoft could once do no wrong. It’s products weren’t very sexy but they certainly made our lives easier. But the company perhaps become a little complacent, it took its eyes off the ball and started building Xbox.
Then it had to play catch-up, that’s what Zune was all about. Bing is more about looking for other revenue streams while it watches Apple steal away customers (although Microsoft still has a ninety-something share of the OS market, people are switching because Apple is cooler).
So now it is building a mobile phone. This is perhaps Microsoft’s last chance to really hit the market place big time and offer something unique that will finally set it aside from it’s competitors such as Google and Apple.
The phone, which looks similar to a Blackberry, will have to be a ‘must have’ item. But will it be hot and sexy enough to attract consumers to camp out at mobile phone retailers to be first to have one?
Microsoft’s decision to enter the mobile phone market reflects a broader push inside the company to bring a bigger element of ‘cool’ to its brand - which is usually known as ‘functional’ (I am here reminded of those Window 7 ads…there was no one cool in those, just people functioning, often stupidly).
But it’ll have to go some way to convince consumers.
Microsoft’s early lead in smartphone software was built on its strong practical appeal to corporate IT departments, which wanted to move applications they had developed for other Windows operating systems on to mobile handsets.
It’s popular with the geeks - but even they are losing interest. The company’s share of the smartphone business has withered as consumers have turned to cooler handsets and often kept these for work as well.
According to comScore, Microsoft’s share of smartphone software had slipped to 18% in the US in the final quarter of last year, while Apple’s iPhone claimed 25% of the market.
There certainly is a lot of ground to catch up on for Microsoft. The handset won’t just have to ‘wow’ consumers, it’ll have to shock them. And the ad campaign will have to be a hell of a lot better than those Windows 7 ads.
The Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree – the tablet I mean
Jan 27th
While everyone eagerly awaits Apple’s new product launch tonight, we cast your mind back to the very first tablet device – the Newton
In my excitement in waiting for Apple’s announcement of its new “exciting product” tonight (27/01), I was doing some digging on the internet trying to learn all I could about this proposed tablet (by the way, I prefer the name iPad, it goes well with iPod, iPhone – see, all P’s). But one thing that I had forgotten about was Apple’s Newton – a tablet like device the tech giant produced in 1989.
I barely remember 1989, and I certainly wasn’t tech savvy back then. If I really think about it, I didn’t have a phone, an MP3 (or a walkman I suppose), a personal computer or even a Gameboy. I don’t actually remember anyone back then needing as much technology as we carry around with us today.
So, this is precisely why the Newton failed. There was no need for it.
For those of you who don’t remember or were perhaps too young (yes, I fall into the latter category) I’ll give you a quick rundown of the Newton.
The Newton platform was an early personal digital assistant hardware/software platform developed by Apple that included that fun colourful Apple logo.
Most Newton devices were based on the ARM 610 RISC processor and all featured handwriting recognition software – back then, this was cool. The Newton project was a PDA platform. Newton was intended to be a complete reinvention of personal computing. For most of its design lifecycle Newton had a large-format screen, more internal memory, and an object-oriented graphics kernel.
The project, however, missed its original goals to reinvent personal computing and then to rewrite contemporary application programming. Apple was also scared that the device would interfere with Macintosh sales and the Newton was scrapped.
It has now been hailed as the “grandfather” of the iPhone – a device that was clearly before its time.
Fast forward 20 years and we are eagerly awaiting a bigger and better Newton. Steve Jobs himself did say that the company had been working on this new product for the past 10 years, but that he had always had it in his mind.
So what will make a tablet like device a success today?
1. Our incessant need for technology
2. Advertisers
Android vs the iPhone - who wins?
Jan 25th
Google’s Android is proving more popular than Apple’s iPhone. Here’s why.
Android is winning in the popularity stakes over its rival iPhone, according to a new report from mobile entertainment site Myxer.
According to the report, Android has pulled far ahead of the iPhone in terms of traffic. Visits from users on the Android operating system grew almost 350% from December 2008 to December 2009, compared to iPhone visits which grew 170%.
But which phone will win customers over in the end?
Both the iPhone and the Android platform are designed for easy internet browsing but the Android wins out here. According to new data from Nielsen and compiled by eMarketer, owners of Android phones are the most likely to use their device’s internet functionality. Ninety-two percent of Android users say they take utilize their phone’s web connection, compared to 88% of iPhone owners.
If Android owners are slightly more web-enabled, iPhone fans are slightly more social. As recent comScore data demonstrates, iPhone users come out on top when it comes to most advanced social-oriented phone activities - everything from sharing photos to spending time on social networks and blogs.
And to the most important point for marketers, apps. You’d expect to see iPhone owners using and downloading apps more often than Android users given the 100,000 options at their fingertips. But Android owners come out just ahead in the relative realm of application usage: 76% of them say they utilize apps, according to Nielsen, while 74% of iPhone owners say they make use of their mobile programs.
The two smartphone platforms are neck-in-neck when it comes to using most of the so-called “advanced functions” - and practically every other mobile phone system is struggling to keep up.
What Apple’s purchase of Quattro really means
Jan 8th
Search giants are scrambling to protect revenues and tap into new areas of advertising
Apple has confirmed it has acquired the agency Quattro Wireless. Is it odd that a primarily tech company has acquired an ad agency?
My answer is no. Apple has gone to great lengths to establish itself as not just a tech giant but also a media company over the past few years – iSlate anyone?
It’s acquisition of Quattro (which was a reported $US300m)spells the next phase in its advertising strategy and ambitions to bolster its advertising capabilities across its iPhone platform and therefore implement a new revenue stream.
However, Apple is probably less interested in profiting from ads than in making the iPhone the most attractive device for developers to build applications. It should also attract new brand advertisers that have previously been cautious of mobile marketing.
Quattro has an ad serving, tracking and analytics platform to help advertisers engage with mobile consumers. Its Q Elevation platform can be used to target ad campaigns based on consumer demographics, location, time of day and other factors.
Mobile advertising is considered a hot market because of the potential to reach consumers on devices that they carry with them everywhere and personalise.
The market for mobile advertising is still relatively untapped, with effective approaches just beginning to emerge as spend on the medium expected to grow to £1 billion by 2013, as smartphones become increasingly popular.
Apple could be using the advertising platform to generate more revenue from the iPhone, and potentially from the tablet computer it is rumored to be developing and launching later this month.
Also, keep in mind that this isn’t Apple’s first attempt to get in the ad game. The tech giant also reputedly wanted to purchase mobile ad company AdMob, only to have it snatched out from under its nose by Google.
Google bought AdMob in November for $U750 million. However, the deal is currently being investigated by US antitrust regulators, and two consumer groups have called on the government to block it.
Here’s an interesting pattern: Apple launches iPhone. Google buys AdMob. Apple buys Quattro. Google launches Nexus One.
The two are heavily pitted against each other. We’re excited to see what will happen next.
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