Archive for February 15, 2010
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.
Google – Buzz or Boredom?
Feb 15th
From Bruce Townsend, Actinic
Google seem to have created a bit of a buzz lately with a product called… well, Buzz. But is it any good, and should marketers pay it any attention?
Google Buzz is essentially a feed reader, and a pretty basic one at that; in fact it seems to be derived from Google Reader, which has been around for a few years now.
With Buzz, though, Google have done some clever things. They’ve included support for media; given it a particular focus on social networking sites; and made it easy to add feeds from the main ones. They’ve also integrated it with Google Mail. So now you can check your emails and view posts from all the people you are following, all in one place – including picture feeds from Flickr and Picasa, and video from YouTube.
They’ve also branded and marketed it quite neatly. Coupled with its profile within Google Mail, this has grabbed a lot of attention and made it the talked-about application of the moment.
Being a feed reader, information does only flow in one direction. Comments posted only appear in Buzz, not in the application the original message came from. This may prove to be a weakness, and makes it vastly inferior to Flock, which has never gained much of a following. On the other hand, Buzz has the benefit of Google’s massive weight behind it.
To really gain traction, Buzz may have to actually wean people away from services like Twitter, and it may be too late in the day for that. Initially it will probably be used mainly for person to person interaction, particularly Google Mail users. But it could become a useful tool for businesses wanting to monitor what customers are saying. And with Google behind it, who knows how far it will go?
It’s certainly one to watch.
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.
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