Archive for February, 2010
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.
Location-based mobile advertising enters a new era
Feb 25th
Location-based mobile advertising. There’s been a lot of talk, but not a lot of action with only a few brands taking advantage of the tool to drive footfall into their stores.
But if a new experiment from North Face takes off we could see a significant uplift in the practice.
The outdoor apparel retailer is to send mobile users text messages whenever users are near a store – the first time the brand has targeted customers depending on their physical location.
The tech involves ‘geo-fencing’, which draws a virtual perimeter around a particular location, and is being managed by Placecast, a location-based mobile ad company in San Francisco.
In urban areas, the fences are up to half a mile around stores, and in suburban areas they are up to a mile around stores. When a mobile user enters the geo-fenced area they receive a text message is sent - but only if they have opted in to receive messages.
Placecast uses the phone’s GPS signal and location data provided by carriers to companies to determine the location of users.
For now, according to the New York Times, the North Face will send texts about promotions, like a free water bottle with a purchase, and new arrivals, because the company’s gear is heavily seasonal.
A text message might say, for example, “TNF: The new spring running apparel has hit the stores! Check it out @ TNF Downtown Seattle.”
But as things develop, the retailer plans to eventually send branded texts when people arrive at a hiking trail or mountain to alert them about weather conditions or logistics for a ski competition.
According to Forrester Research advertisers are projected to spend $561 million on mobile this year and $1.3 billion by 2014. And location-based marketing will play a major role.
North Face’s experiment has set a new benchmark for mobile advertisers and others brands are jumping on board with five more companies working with Placecast on similar campaigns.
Our lives may never be the same again. So next time you leave a gig and receive a message from a local restaurant, you’ll know why.
10 Things about the apple ipad
Feb 25th
The what? The Apple whodjimmy? The iPad? What, you hadn’t heard? Oh, they did some launch thing over in the States on Wednesday…
OK, so you can hardly have missed it, but here’s what I think are the headline points to bear in mind…
…but firstly, a quick overview of the device itself:
It weights 1.5lb (680g or so) so it’s pretty light, it’s half an inch thick, 9.5 inches high, and 7.5 inches wide…
…it comes with either a 16gb, 32gb or 64gb solid state drive, all models connect with Wi-Fi, you can upgrade to 3G (so you can use a phone network, though you don’t need to have a contract, it’s pre-pay)…
…it runs all the existing iPhone apps, there”s a bespoke version of iWork (Apple’s ‘Office’ equivalent) you can buy as apps too…
…and it works just like a big iPod Touch or iPhone, really.
(stats from Mashable)
So, what’s important about it?
1. It’s cheap.
Trust the Scottish fella to focus on that.
Seriously though, of all the things mentioned yesterday, this to me is the thing that makes me think it’ll take off.
At a mere $499 for an entry model iPad, it’s already positioning itself as a device between a smartphone and laptop.
It’s not aiming to replace more expensive laptops, but to do something different in between. And I think that $499 is low enough for people to go and get one ‘just to see’.
Of course, netbook manufacturers, who led the way in producing small cheap machines whose purpose of existing was the access the internet wherever and whenever, are sitting this morning wondering where to go now.
And they’re not the only ones…
2. Apple have made their own chip for it
UPDATED
Now, you may know that every Mac ships with an Intel chip nowadays, and they’ve spent a while shifting all the Mac OS X operating system across to work on the Intel architecture, and as this article points out they’re not likely to want to shift over again any time soon.
Intel doesn’t yet have a proven track record in mobile chips currently (though have just contributed to their first Smartphone, the LG GW990), so Apple needed another option for the launch of the iPad…
However, it’s interesting news that the chip was made in-house, rather than sourcing another supplier. Yet perhaps it’s a move as you’d expect would have been the eventual step for a company who likes to do it all in-house.
Maybe at some point in the long term, they expect to make all of their own chips… which might cause a wee headache to some chip manufacturers…
3. Bye bye e-books
…though not as much of a headache as the e-book boys have right now.
I spoke about this a while back in the ‘Kindle Killer? Why Bother?‘ post…
“Winning the eBook war is a little like becoming the king of the
dinosaurs… it may be good for a while, but something big’s
coming to make you all extinct…”
Well, here it is.
Mashable’s got a list of 4 reasons why the Kindle’s dead, and 4 reason’s why it’s not that you could read.
But to save you the trouble, the reasons ‘not’ are pretty lame. So the future’s not looking great for the Kindle, but what about the much vaunted thought that…
4. “…it’ll save the newspaper industry!”
Let’s be honest; Apple haven’t exactly made it their mission to save the existing media industries.
Just look at music… it’s not like the iPod & iTunes did anything to preserve the existing model for the music industry; if anything, it hurried the mass population into a new way of behaving that could only hasten the industry’s model decline…
“I can pay much less for music, and only pick the songs I really wanted”.
In that light, can you really see the iPad preserving the income levels that the newspaper industry like to imagine a daily read of their paper is worth?
No, neither can I.
Sure, there will be a subscription model that’ll make a little money. Micropayments too, maybe, through iTunes.
But it won’t be anything near the level that newspaper owners think it should be; people will think…
“I can pay much less for news, and only pick the bits I really wanted”
5. It’ll have a big impact on TV
We like having lots of TVs in our home. Living room, then bedroom, then kitchen… the family could quickly disperse to the different rooms around the house to watch whatever they wanted.
The iPad is reportedly an excellent TV & movie device (it’s HD quality, of course). You can sit with it on your knee wherever you are (at home, on a train, in an airport, in the back seat of a car)…
…so watching content will be great; using a service like the iPhone TV Catchup anywhere you’ve got wi-fi would be a joy, much more so than it is on the iPhone.
But despite the ability to watch live TV like this, I think it’s still bad news for traditional linear TV viewing, and advertising by implication.
People will have another option to watch whatever they want wherever and whenever. It’ll encourage more use of downloading programming, which may have all the pre-rolls and whatever you like, but will not replace the money brought in by the traditional ad-break on TV.
And if content creators think they’ll switch to a revenue stream funded by ‘pay-per-show’, then they better be prepared to sell it cheap; already Apple clearly want to half the price of TV content on iTunes.
Finally, of course, we know that ‘two screen’ viewing is really coming into it’s own of late; sitting on the couch with your smartphone or laptop, with the TV on at the same time.
But if the device you hold is bigger. brighter, better, easier to surf… then less of your attention is going to be pointed at the screen in the corner of the room. The TV may be on, but the advertising will be increasingly ignored.
6. A new era of gaming
The iPhone was a huge success when it came to games. So much so, that it kinda caught Apple by surprise (they’ve never been that good on gaming, let’s be honest).
What was apparent that people really did want to play more intricate, complex games on a touchscreen platform…
…but in such a cramped space such as the iPhone, that made it hard; at times it seemed half the screen was taken up by virtual buttons.
But with a bigger device, you get more ‘game’ screen, and less pressure to squeeze in fiddly virtual buttons. Control gestures can be bigger, more natural.
And of course you’ve still got the accelerometer to control things by tipping and turning the device.
When games developers are set loose on the new SDK (Software Developer Kit) for the iPad, we’ll start seeing some amazing, ground breaking games.
Which brings us nicely to the next point…
7. The apps maketh the device
When the first iPhone launched, sure, there where a few things you could do with it.
But it was only when the thousands of developers populated the iPhone with the 100,000+ apps that everyone’s really been able to make it their own personal, perfect device. And now you can get all the iPhone apps on the iPad.
(BTW – Letting those developers in, whilst maintaining a level of control to keep quality at a decent threshold, was the smartest thing Apple may have done with the iPhone, IMHO)
But now there’s a whole new device to play with.
The gestures are based on hands, not thumbs. The viewing can be for many eyes, not just yours. The holding position is more book & magazine, less phone and iPod.
As Bryce says here, the iPad is about “packaging a new user experience which really comes down to the
software’s gesture interface, the SDK and the underlying hardware that
powers it all.” (HT David Cushman)
It’s not just a ‘big iPhone’; I think that’s just a lazy (if not snarky) observation to make.
When the developers are let loose on it in anger and start releasing proper iPad apps will we understand exactly what it’s capable of…
…and where it’s going to be of most use, like in…
8. Work
I think there’s terrific opportunities to adopt the iPad (and the new generation of devices it will no doubt spawn from competitors) more in a work scenario.
Which Apple do too, given that they’ve launched special bespoke versions of the ‘iWork’ tools (Keynote, Numbers and Pages) as $9.99 apps for the device.
Now, as John Griffiths points out here it’s really at odds with the Microsoft Office charging model (who every time charge hundreds of dollars to upgrade to the next version of Office).
Though Apple of course want you to buy the new sausage, so give you the sizzle for virtually nothing.
But I was talking to Mike at Made by Many about this, and we agreed there’s huge potential for a device like the iPad to move into healthcare, education as well as traditional business.
It could represent a new way of accessing, creating and sharing information. Of course, you wouldn’t expect to walk into an NHS hospital and see all the Doctors accessing patient information on iPads, but there will be alternatives that are cheap enough to make widespread rollout possible.
The iPad will change the perception of what is possible & desirable from a device in the workplace, creating opportunities for many other manufacturers too.
9. Some folk are pretty disappointed
It’s well known that techy, bloggy types want the moon on a stick. For over six months, speculation has been rife about what the iPad ‘may’ be able to do.
Of course, when it doesn’t arrive, people get all disappointed… and start making (inevitable) Downfall versions of Hitler being told about it…
Sure, there’s no camera, no Flash support (Apple are clearly trying to kill Adobe’s Flash too, just for kicks), no multitasking (so you couldn’t run Spotify at the same time as a Keynote app, for instance)…
…but the overall disgruntlement is, I think, misplaced. Take this for instance…
“I still can’t believe this! All this hype for something so
ridiculous! … I want something new! I want them to think differently!
Why oh why would they do this?! It’s so wrong! It’s so stupid!”
It’s not a reaction to the iPad this week. But to the original iPod, back in 2001 (via ReadWriteWeb). The first generation iPhone, when announced, faced similar disappointment and derision from within the techworld.
And look how they turned out…
10. The Market and Stephen Fry are impressed
Have a look at the Apple Share price over the last 6 months or so, ever since the rumour machine really started cranking up…
Not bad, huh? The market clearly thinks Apple are onto a winner…
…as does Stephen Fry, who was there, and is in the Guardian today saying…
“There are many issues you could have with the iPad. No multitasking,
still no Adobe Flash. No camera, no GPS. They all fall away the minute
you use it. I cannot emphasise enough this point: “Hold your judgment
until you’ve spent five minutes with it.”
No YouTube film, no
promotional video, no keynote address, no list of features can even
hint at the extraordinary feeling you get from actually using and
interacting with one of these magical objects.”
I can’t wait to try it.
So there you have it, the Apple iPad. Personally, I think it’s going to cause big ripples across many markets, and you know what, that’s how I like things. Change is good. The iPad is great.
Location, location, location based services are all the rage
Feb 25th
Charley Hayes, a public relations practitioner and social media strategist at Onlinefire, says that Location Based Services are set to take off in 2010.
In 2009 we saw the rise of user-friendly location-based services (LBS), but in 2010 location-sharing is set to come into its own.
This year, PRs who are in the know will be actively exploring the opportunities that GPS-aware services can offer, devising new and creative ways to capture consumer attention in a far more tailored and targeted way than ever before.
Last year saw the emergence of LBS and social community integration. South African social network The Grid launched Mobikasi, a 24-episode, location-based documentary about youth culture in Soweto. Content was geo-tagged to the location where it was shot, enabling viewers to explore Sowetan culture by travelling through a mobile street map and watching video clips. This marriage of LBS and crowd-sourcing was hailed as the next generation of mobile social media.
In fact, the recent explosion of mobile applications has brought the advent of location-based app integration. Layar is a great example of this new trend. Winner of the Vodafone Mobile Startup Challenge in September 2009, the Layar browsing application is a mix of location-based technology and augmented reality. Combining a handset’s camera and GPS functionality, the mobile application overlays information relevant to digitally tagged real-world locations or items – from coffee shops to museums.
The advancement of LBS can be seen with the growing popularity of companies such as Foursquare and Gowalla, which enable consumers to tag and share content quickly and easily within social communities. The technology not only enriches existing core services, but also creates a more dynamic and compelling consumer offering.
The delivery of highly personalised brand messages, in the most relevant and creative way possible is the keystone of social media PR and the development of LBS looks set to raise the bar in 2010.
Charley Hayes is a public relations practitioner and digital PR specialist with wide ranging client experience; from technology to travel and sports to drinks, in both business-to-business and consumer sectors. A social media strategist at Onlinefire, Charley has worked across online PR campaigns for Virgin Media, Panasonic and the Post Office.
Google in trouble again. Microsoft dobbed.
Feb 24th
Google yesterday took the wraps off its new publisher-side ad platform, combining its ad and search technologies with DoubleClick’s. Today, it has been met with a frosty reception from the European Commission over several competition complaints from rivals.
Google’s combined DoubleClick and Google Ad Manager product is designed to ease the complexity publishers face in serving ads, managing ad network relationships and maximizing revenue from inventory sold directly and through ad nets or exchanges, says Google’s blog.
New features include an open API that lets publishers tie in third-party applications like forecasting and workflow tools, integration with the DoubleClick Ad Exchange and new yield-optimization features.
But the European Commission is now considering complaints from three online companies regarding Google practices including its search rankings, which could stop the search giant dead in its tracks.
The complaints from UK price comparison site Foundem and French legal search engine ejustice.fr allege that Google’s search algorithm demotes their sites in web search results because they compete with Google.
Microsoft-owned Ciao has also complained to European authorities about Google’s standard terms and conditions, which has led Google to tell some reporters that it believes Microsoft has fuelled the complaint fire.
Google has been plagued by regulatory scrutiny in recent years. Most recently, the US Department of Justice has challenged Google’s settlement with book publishers and authors groups to create an online digital archive. The US Federal Trade Commission is also seeking more information on the competitive impact of its proposed $750 million purchase of mobile advertising company AdMob.
Now, the European Commission has written to Google to find out how its search functions work.
But Google is betting publishers will want the simplicity of a single provider to manage their inventory and provide monetization options through either its AdSense ad network or the DoubleClick exchange.
Google said on its blog, “We see an opportunity to improve ad serving even further by combining Google’s technology and infrastructure with DoubleClick’s display advertising and ad serving experience. Since we acquired DoubleClick in March 2008, our engineering and product teams have been working with online publishers to tackle the obstacles that prevent them from maximizing revenues from their websites.”
Either way you look at it, this is a sign of many more battles to come when it comes to the search giants. But is Google really doing anything wrong? Perhaps its competitors are just jealous…
Twitter clocks up 50m tweets. What does that mean for marketers?
Feb 24th
Twitter, which has only been around since 2007, now racks up more than 50 million tweets a day. That means 50 million visits a day to a site that has yet to figure out how to monetize. But on the plus side, those numbers mean an opportunity for advertisers to get in front of 50 million people. How? Simple.
For the past few years, advertisers’ exposure on social networking sites has been seen as essential. But perhaps it’s not about advertising, per se. Perhaps it’s not about talking either. If there are 50 million tweets, someone is listening, and wouldn’t you want someone to be listening to nice things about you?
One marketer has suggested to me that Twitter should be about getting consumers to talk to each other – not a place for brands to preach to them.
It’s an interesting thought. So I decided to listen into the conversation and see if customers really were talking to each other.
To do this, go to www.search.twitter.com and you come across a ‘Google’ search-like box. Type in a brand or company. I typed in ‘Coca-Cola’, for example.
Then I was presented with a page full of tweeters who had tweeted about ‘Coca’Cola’. Funnily enough, almost none of the tweets were from Coca-Cola itself or stories about Coca-Cola. People are genuinely talking about it.
Another example. I typed in ‘Google’. Given the news that the EU is going to invest the search king following the catastrophic launch of Buzz. I found a few links to news stories, but again, consumers were actually talking about Google, or at least mentioning the brand, in actual conversations.
However, the problem with Twitter is that it is time consuming. I am on Twitter (here!) but I rarely go on to check on tweets because before I can get to the bottom of the list they are updating. These 50 million tweets are a lot to keep track of.
But perhaps it’s worth keeping in mind though, that the best way to use to site isn’t to preach, but instead listen and just be happy that consumers are talking about you. That, is free.
Moreover, Twitter attracts a number of influential users, including Google’s Eric Schmidt and Microsoft’s Bill Gates. Today we hear that the Dalai Lama even has an account on the microblogging site.
Just imagine if you could get those guys to talk about you.
How to target men using fashionable technology
Feb 23rd
What’s the best way to market the latest technology? Make it look fashionable of course.
The excitement of Apple’s new iPad set many hearts a-flutter. Financially, it is predicted to be another Apple money spinner.
Industry analysts Gartner Research expect the iPad to inject rocket fuel into the sleepy tablet PC market once it actually goes on sale at the end of March, boosting tablet sales from 1 to 9 million by the end of the year.
But how many so-called gadget fans are really in it for the technology? Are some more concerned with image over function, perhaps ageing Baby Boomers wanting trendy gadgets to stave off looking middle aged?
A survey of over 500 users by global news website OneNewsPage asked if some gadgets such as iPhones and Playstations look inappropriate in the hands of older consumers.
It’s worth noting that most who took part in OneNewsPage’s survey were strongly into their technology.
Forty four per cent of respondents claimed they ‘always’ buy the latest gadgets as soon as they go on sale.
But it was a close contest on the question of age. Fifty two per cent agreed that keeping up with latest gadgets is a sign of desperation, while 48% disagreed.
Over half (55%) felt gadgets were like clothes, and consumers needed to buy the right ones for their age.
Indeed, 63% felt that once a person turns 40, no gadget is ever going to make them look ‘cool’.
The survey found that 44% agreed with the statement that people over 40 on a Playstation was “plain wrong”. And 40% felt similarly about the over 40s using iPhones.
Meanwhile, research from Microsoft Advertising has laid bare the depth of British men’s love affair with technology.
The report, entitled ‘PFM Unplugged’, reveals that the UK’s Pre-Family Men (PFM) – young males who have completed their education but not yet started a family – are heavily engaged in technology and always online.
PFM are interacting with technology in some way during every waking hour (anyone who has a boyfriend knows that). They are the first generation to have grown up with the internet, and with the majority (99%) claiming to go online either every day or nearly every day and half using their mobile phones to do so.
The research shows that they are increasingly reliant on the Internet for entertainment, information and communication, with 80% going so far as to state that they would be lost without it.
In fact, the internet is the technology 57% of PFM are most attached to, closely followed by mobile phones (49%) and TV (46%).
PFM are apparently never ‘doing nothing’, and even downtime is filled by some activity, more often than not facilitated by technology. It’s also often also the first thing they think about when they wake up with a quarter of PFM admitting to checking their email and 18% looking at social networking sites on their mobile phone before they get out of bed in the morning.
Despite the popularity of social networks and the perception that traditional social email is dying, email remains the most valued online tool amongst PFM, with 52% of respondents rating it above all others (compared with 25% for search and 12% for social networking sites) and 87% stating their use of email had stayed the same or increased over the last year. 94% use email at least once per day, compared with 60% that go on to a social network.
Technology is fuelling the blurring of work and play as modes of behaviour overlap. While 43% of the men surveyed admitted occasionally browsing the internet during afternoons at work, PFM is also checking his work email in the evenings, on his way to and from work and before he gets out of bed in the morning.
Online video content is an important source of entertainment for PFM and it’s no longer just limited to short clips- 73% of PFMs will watch video-on-demand (VOD) at least once a week with nearly half watching full length TV programs. Catching up on TV shows they’ve missed and watching archive shows were the main drivers to viewing online and the majority (59%) viewed on a laptop.
The ‘PFM Unplugged’ report from Microsoft Advertising also provides advertisers with a series of recommendations on how they may reach and engage with PFM based on the insights uncovered in the research. You can download it here.
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…
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