Category Archives: Mobile Fix

Mobile Fix – November 11

Posted by Simon Andrews on November 11, 2011 None comments

Death of Flash

For many years Flash was the drug of choice for many web developers. At one time it seemed every marketing site had an all singing all dancing Flash Intro – remember them? And the ability to pack lots of animation in a small file made it a key to online advertising. But Steve Jobs hated Flash and was very happy to tell people why. His insistence that the iPhone and iPad wouldn’t use it – and his ability to persuade Google to switch from flash video to H264 on You Tube  – have finally had the expected effect; Mobile Flash has been dropped by Adobe.

Given the progress being made by HTML5 not many people will miss Flash, and as Responsive Web Design ( so new it’s not even on Wikipedia yet) becomes the norm we’ll see less use on desktop web too. But those tablets where Flash was pushed as a key feature will need to go back to the drawing board.

The momentum of HTML5 continues with Strobe, one of the key firms in this space, acquired by Facebook this week. Given the way Strobe have been developing their platform it add credence to the idea that Facebook want to be a significant mobile platform

Voice

3 weeks in with Siri we’re still impressed. It was great on maths homework, giving great detail on how to calculate the area of a right angle triangle. This piece sums up how people are finding value.  Of course there are already some cool voice controlled apps on Android too.

For those who are still underwhelmed by Siri, this is a worthwhile read. Essentially we are still in very early days of voice; right now Siri is like the first Talkies - little more than a novelty – but it doesn’t take long for these capabilities to become the norm.

Futurology

Whilst the new Microsoft video sharing their vision for the future is really shiny, it doesn’t seem to have too much new in there (we covered most of it in our lower budget futurology video back in 2001). Former Apple engineer Bret Victor agrees – he thinks that the focus on touch is misguided. Given the bet that Apple have made on voice, maybe he is right.

eBook wars

With news that Amazon are increasing their orders for the Kindle Fire (no doubt based on research like this) their old foe Barnes and Noble have reminded them that there are other players with an update Nook tablet. The new Nook has got great reviews but at $50 more than the Kindle it’s going to be a tough fight.

Here in the UK WHSmith have struck a deal to partner on the other significant player Kobo – we wonder who could bring the Nook to the UK?  Tesco are rumoured to have sold a lot of Kindles (does anyone know how many?) but that seems an unlikely long term relationship. Could we see Tesco switch allegiance to the Nook?

Meanwhile our friends at Anobii are making good progress with their UK take on eBooks. This start up has some powerful backers and their (software) product is getting really good.

Money

We’re speaking at a financial services event next week and we’re updating the deck we shared at the Google event around mobile and money back in March. There is lots of new stuff going on – PayPal are now working with NFC, Simply Tap, the new payment service from the Carphone Warehouse / Talk Talk team, is now live and Richard Branson has invested in Square.

Square ( now handling $10m a day) is fascinating as the service is clearly morphing from a payments system into a tool for dialogue between merchants and customers. They are a perfect example of just how powerful a mobile wallet could become; the place that handles all aspects of your money and the people you spend your money with. What Google, Paypal, Visa, all the mobile operators et al want to be is that gatekeeper – the people brands and business have to go through to sell anything.

The interesting thing about Branson is that he can take Square international. He is already a big player in money, with his UK banking business looking to make a big leap through the takeover of an established player. We’re convinced that innovation in financial services is more likely to come from a Tesco or a Virgin than the established players – especially as they both also have a mobile operator too.

So we should expect to see Square disrupting the UK high street very soon.

Quick reads

Google seeks to assure Samsung, HTC etc that Moto won’t get any special treatment from Android

New research finds (shock horror) that people don’t like mobile advertising. It is actually hard to find any research where people say they like ads, so we shouldn’t be surprised that mobile is the same as TV and press etc. But we should remember that overly intrusive ads will have a negative effect. All the old stuff is still true here – smart creative that respects the user, targeting to make sure the ads are relevant, frequency capping so people don’t keep seeing the same ads and formats that don’t annoy. Just because you can make your ad float across the screen doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.

Despite getting over 40 million users in a matter of weeks, there is a lot of cynicism over Google +. Brand pages are the latest addition to service still in development – ignore it at your peril.

As part of their GoMO initiative Google have published a guide for agencies to help them get their clients to think mobile. Little of this should be news to regular reader of Fix, but it might be useful for less enlightened colleagues.

New York VC Fred Wilson has smart piece on how WiFi is changing the dynamics of the market and making the need for Spectrum auctions less important.

Barcodes work – Glamour magazine gets 50000 likes on Facebook using 2D barcodes.

Finally

 
We’re speaking at a couple of events next week and making a visit to Amsterdam, for a session with the coolest agency there. And one of our projects is due to go live in the next of couple of days. But we are still going to find time to go through all these Google easter eggs ( Did you get chance to search for Barrel Role on Google last week?)

Mobile Fix – November 4

Posted by Simon Andrews on November 4, 2011 None comments

The Fireworks issue

Privacy Matters?

It’s clear that the battle between Google and Facebook will be one of the biggest themes of the next 12 months at least. They are battling for talent, the time spent with them by users and for advertisers cash

A key skirmish is going to be around privacy. In a very entertaining presentation at the IAB engage yesterday new Google Chief Dan Cobley talked about everything going digital. And towards the end points out that society has a role to play if digital is to grow – and states – quite forcefully that Privacy Matters. Followed by Mark Zuckerberg Law of Information Sharing. You can see the presentation here – well worth spending 10 minutes on.

It is clear that Google see Google + as a different way of sharing information – even denying that it’s a social network.

They are promoting their Why These Ads programme – to explain why people see the ads they see and allow people some control over the data used n the targeting.

And even their ads around online safety ( in partnership with the Citizens Advice Bureau) seem to promote the concept of privacy.

With Facebook facing more scrutiny over its tracking of users when they have left the site – this time in Germany, where privacy is a really big deal – are we seeing Google attempting to paint Facebook as cavalier with their users privacy?

In a conversation with Eric Schmidt a couple of years ago we were told that Google felt legislators in Europe were more likely to investigate Google than in the US or Asia. Will we now see Facebook facing real problems from regulators over here?

Another problem for Facebook is that, whilst smart brands now see Facebook as strategically important, most of the ways that brands use Facebook don’t involve spending much money with Facebook. In an eery echo of ‘traditional’ online, direct response advertisers spend money on Facebook advertising, but brands tend not to. The WSJ has a good piece on how big brands are underspending on Facebook. And Scoble looks at the money Facebook are leaving on the table, with some thoughts on how their ad model could develop.

Waiting for NFC

Despite all the hype NFC doesn’t seem to be moving that fast. Given Apple chose not to support it with the 4GS and relatively few Android devices have it – yet – the installed base is still low.

We have yet to hear a convincing argument of who is going to pay for NFC readers instore. Chip and pin terminals were introduced everywhere because the banks wanted to reduce credit card fraud – and pass the responsibility to the consumer at the same time. There seems to be no similar business case for NFC so we will have to depend on the replacement cycle for chip and pin terminals etc, with the next generation likely to have NFC capabilities in the chips – as Intel are developing.

So in the meantime smart brands are focusing on technologies that do have mass reach now. We continue to see QR codes being used more and more widely, even seeing them on a Circus poster last week and Unilever have put them on every pack of their Tony & Guy haircare range, opening mobile friendly videos with hair styling tips. This sort of smart use will build consumer usage. ( Unilever rather than the circus)

But there are other alternatives. Square is morphing from a neat payment solution into a platform for dialogue between merchants and their customers. Their new iPhone app – called Card Case – uses the geo fencing capabilities of iOS5 to open a tab whenever the customer is within 100 yards of the merchant. This means that to buy a coffee, or whatever, all they need to do is give their name and the merchant can see a tab is open on their iPad.

And Amazon have just launched Flow – an app that uses image recognition (similar to Google Goggles) to identify products and open the relevant page on the Amazon site so you can buy it. It’s not available in the UK yet, so we haven’t tried it, but we struggle to see what the Augmented Reality element is.

First Mobile Christmas

Nearly half the UK population now own a smartphone – and 70% of all current phone sales are smartphones, so we can expect that figure to keep rising. People who get smartphones quickly adopt the new behaviours that exemplify the mobile opportunity; they use the internet on their phones to search and access content, they start to play games with apps, take pictures etc.

So one area we think we’ll see huge changes is retail. Whereas we have seen an online spike at Christmas before, this year we will see mobile commerce spike. Remember those Booz Allen figures we shared a while back? – mobile will influence $110 billion of sales, this year in Europe.

That influence – checking review sites, comparing prices, look to see who has what in stock etc – is going to create winners and losers this Christmas. Against a worsening economic climate people are going to be very careful how they buy. In the US they are being termed smart shoppers and research suggests;

27% of US smartphone users will use the device during in-store holiday shopping: A new Deloitte survey (Oct 26) of 5,000 U.S. consumers says of the 42% of consumers who own a smartphone, 27% will use the device while shopping for the holidays. 67% of these shoppers will use the devices to find store locations, 59% to compare prices, 46% to check product availability, 45% to shop at online stores, and 40% will scan bar codes.

Consequently we believe the big online players will do very well – at the expense of those retailers who just don’t get it.

Liberty – an amazing retailer –are buying mobile search terms that go to their desktop site. Selfridges don’t have a mobile optimised site. Neither does Primark or Top Shop. Fenwicks have a flash intro so their site is just blank on a mobile.

We expect that, come January, these may be amongst the brands Mary Meeker talks of; wondering what just happened.

Quick Reads

Google providing more resources as they encourage brands to GoMo. Read the full story here.

Music giant EMI is opening their vaults of content to app developers to see whether there are new business models for music and mobile. We intend to have a play around.

Two of our current projects are focused on Responsive Design – where we are building sites that automatically optimise for the device being used. So rather than have a desktop site and then a mobile site, you have one that works beautifully on all devices. This is a good summary of resources and tools for this approach. (And because this approach uses HTML5, it’s relatively easy to turn out a Facebook app at the same time)

PayPal are looking to protect their strong position in mobile with their own mobile wallet

Google are tweaking their algorithm to give more recent results in the 25% (ish) of searches where this will be relevant.

There are some videos here of interesting mobile sessions from the recent Omma event in the US

And Google are pushing Google TV – just as the buzz on Apple iTV – Steve Jobs final project builds. (We wonder what ITV will have to say if that is the name Apple choose to go with?)

Finally

we got the chance to do some reading over half term and thought we should share our reading list with you – as well as Seth Godins latest list.

Mobile Fix – October 28

Posted by Simon Andrews on October 28, 2011 None comments

Don’t call it a comeback

This has been a big week for some of the device manufacturers who have suffered as Apple and the Android first division (Samsung, HTC & Moto) have grown over the past couple of years
Nokia have launched the Lumia – the first fruit of their partnership with Microsoft and initial reaction is that they have made a good job of combining Windows Mobile OS with their hardware skills. There is an in-depth look here.
Coupled with good results last week – largely due to the continued success of Nokia featurephones in some emerging markets – Nokia are now back in the game. But they have a lot to do.
The other people back in the game are Sony; as predicted a couple of weeks back they have bought out their partner Ericisson and will now produce devices under the Sony brand. Can they get their mojo back? – there was a time when Sony was just as influential in design as Apple is now. And with products like the WalkMan, PlayStation and the PSP they have disrupted before. But their past success has been hardware based, whereas the smartphone sector is all about software – though we should remember they do get content much better than any of GAFA.

TV disrupted by tech

One area where Sony should have some advantages is connecting TV with mobile – and one benefit of the deal is that Sony now have access to patents that help here.
In the US, Simon Cowell has now seen the light on Twitter and US viewers can now vote on XFactor using Twitter. With new UK data suggesting that 75% of TV viewers watch whilst multi tasking this sort of partnership is going to become more comment as screens fight the war for attention. And when Ofcom tell us that amongst 12-15 year olds the mobile is now the tech they would most miss – 28% versus 25% for the internet and only 18% saying they would miss TV most. Of course this is due to the programming now being available on mobile and the internet. And once we have apps on the TV imagine how that will change behaviours.

Facebook Mobile

“A Few Years From Now, Most Every Single Person At Facebook Is Going To Be Working On Mobile”
In more interviews the Facebook CTO stresses just how central Mobile is to Facebook. And at the London f8 developers conference this week Facebook Head of Partnerships Christian Hernandez talked of mobile being key for all web companies.
And we’re now seeing Facebook trial the use of Facebook credits as a payment mechanism for websites outside of Facebook. As the only currency permitted within Facebook, they have a strong chance of becoming a major player here

Quick Reads

Finally – our smart friend Glyn Britton from Albion has been channeling Jamie Reid and produced a cool logo for GAFA – which we intend to use lots. All these planners are just frustrated creatives really.

Mobile Fix – October 21

Posted by Simon Andrews on October 21, 2011 None comments

We missed last week as we were on a ship moored off Guernsey with 300 marketing directors, no phone signal and the worlds most expensive wifi – £18 an hour!So there is lots of news to catch up – but it’s worth taking a moment to consider just how central tech now is to marketing. The new Mary Meeker deck is just as thought provoking as those in the past;More smartphones now ship than feature phones in Western Europe and the USThe iPad is growing much more quickly than the iPhone did over its first 6 quarters – and Android adoption is even faster than the iPhone

More people use social media now than used the internet as a whole in 2006 

The biggest growth in internet penetration over the last 3 years has been China (who added more than the total of US users) India, Nigeria, Russia and Iran  

The deck is a must read as it paints a similarly positive picture around ecommerce and advertising. And if you have some time, watching the actual presentation is worthwhile too.

To put all these stats into context it’s worth reading a good Fast Company article on the Tech Wars – looking at how Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon are flexing their muscles and playing the GAFA chess game.

And the other read we recommend is an Economist article on Beyond the PC

As people come to rely more heavily on the web for everything from shopping to social networking, they need access to computing power in many more places. And as the line between their personal and their work lives has blurred, so demand has grown for devices that can be used seamlessly in both.,

So the challenge for we marketers is how we adapt to our customers new behaviours. We still need to acquire customers, maintain a dialogue and build our brand – but we now need to learn how to do it differently.

Those that evolve and adapt, face a bright future. Those that don’t, don’t.

Facebook

Whilst it’s been a little overshadowed by other news we still think the most significant move in the last couple of weeks is how Facebook is evolving to make the mobile experience match the desktop one. With 350 million mobile users Facebook intend the new Timeline will look pretty much the same whatever device you use. So the big change is that apps will now work on mobile.

The Facebook CTO talks eloquently about the challenges of embracing mobile – but the scary thing is that lots of Facebook apps just won’t work on mobile as they are developed in Flash. Brands now have the choice of developing (or adapting) iOS apps to work in Facebook for iPhone and iPad users and/or an HTML5 one for everyone else. Some wonder if this isn’t a compromise to appease Apple.

Our take is that developing an HTML5 app for Facebook is now essential – with the benefit you can take that work and use it as a hybrid mobile app and also build a modern site that responds to whatever device is being used. The developers resources on Facebook give lots of advice on what to do and this a good round up of the news

Apple

After all the “disappointment” over the iPhone 4GS, its gone on to be the most successful Apple launch ever – selling 4 million over the first weekend. Smart commentator Ben Evans points outthat the revenue from this ($2.6bn) is around the same as Apple earn from the app store over a year ($2.8bn) and close to what Google expect to make from mobile advertising over a year ($2.5bn)

As well being popular with punters, the 4Gs has also gone down well with pundits – David Pogue in the New York Times loves it as does Stephen Fry. Both rave about Siri and it’s clear that voice is going to be a big deal – Mary Meeker talks about that too.

No wonder iPhone users are the most satisfied – scoring 8.6 out of 10 versus an average of 7.8 in UK research

Google

Seemingly delayed out of respect for Steve Jobs, the new Google Samsung phone, the Nexus, has now been launched. And it looks really impressive. But the new version of Android (Ice Cream Sandwich) that powers the Nexus is equally newsworthy.

Whilst the Google results announced the other day are very impressive it’s the mobile element that is very exciting. A year ago they predicted a run rate of $1bn – one year later they’re talking $2.5bn

At the results they were also bullish about Google+ – talking of 40 million users. If you talk with anyone at Google they will tell you that Google+ is seen as central to everything they do – and they are excited about the traction its seems to have  – with 3.5 billion photos uploaded already. One bit of evidence we noticed was that a recent Seth Godin post had around 500 Facebook likes and around 50 Pluses.  The next addition is Google+ apps – due in the next week or so.

Quick reads

Interesting data suggests that people are more likely to click on ads on tablets

FourSquare have announced a push feature called radar that uses the new Apple iOS to alert users to tips around their location.

Some good information on mobile search from Google

More use of QR codes –this time the BBC News are using them to link to their social tools

Top Shop are using location based game SCVNGR as a shopper marketing tool.

eBay expect to sell $5bn on mobile this year

Sky have announced that 1.6 million people are using their SkyGo service – essentially watch Sky programmes on your phone.

Finally

A panel discussion on tablets we took part in a while back has now been written up on Brand Republic. And now voice is going mass market with Siri, this futurology film we made – back in 2000 – seems pretty accurate. Apart from the bit about Leeds United, that is. And the idea Libya would be a popular holiday spot.

Mobile Fix – October 7

Posted by Simon Andrews on October 7, 2011 None comments

This video of Steve Jobs making his commencement speech at Stamford seems like an appropriate tribute to a great man.

We should also remember that he was a family man, who died at just 56. Cancer is a cruel disease and we’re proud to work with Trekstock; a very cool charity focused on raising money to fight cancer. If everyone who had been moved by Steve Jobs made a donation to a cancer charity maybe someone else’s life could be saved.

This sad news rightly overshadows the launch of the iPhone 4S – and perhaps explains just why it felt a little underwhelming.

The empty chair on the stage now makes sense and geek blogger Scoble speculates that some of the announcements due for this event – in particular the Facebook iPad app – were pulled at the last minute.

Having said that the new spec is good – and software innovation like Siri really does move the market forward. And looking at how Apple are using Siri, they create a little advantage of Google in that Apple will now know what their users are searching for – another chess move between the GAFA.

As the smart people at Splatf point out the Apple product roadmap tends to work in 2 year cycles – so next year should be huge. It seems likely that Apple have some more good stuff to come and we should expect more product news in the coming months.

Sony

Older readers might remember that – before Apple took the mantle – there was another consumer electronics company that was lauded for their innovation and excellent product design. Sony had a great track record but have never been able to nail it in mobile. Many think the tension between Sony and their JV partners Ericcson has thwarted their plans for mobile – and rumours of a break up are back.,/p>

It would be interesting to see what a really focused Sony could do with mobile devices. They have lots of advantages – they get design, they really understand content – as big players in the development of music, movies and games – and have a strong user base as their success in this analysis of who has really engaged Facebook fans shows.

Samsung / Google

But it looks like the big news in mobile devices over the next couple of weeks will probably go to Samsung/Google with their new Nexus Prime or Galaxy Prime. The leaked specs look really good as does the design. Official launch next week.

Facebook

We’re still waiting for news on what Facebook plan to do with mobile. There are more details emerging of Project Spartan and how HTML5 will be central. Maybe some or all of their plans were to be announced at the Apple event?

Online advertising

As the recession bites we see UK brands are increasing their investment in accountable media, with online ad spend up by 13.5% – putting online as the biggest ad medium in the UK with 27% of all adspend. And given this data excludes the two fastest growing areas ( mobile and Facebook) the true figure is higher still.

Quick reads

More interesting thinking around HTML5

Pepsi have chosen 10 European startups to support with marketing partnerships

A good summary of a good event around 2 screen TV

Google are pushing HTML5 creative for mobile

And Google have published a new research resource around mobile, in partnership with the Mobile Marketing Association and Ipsos. This lets you build your own charts from the global data- really cool.

Mobile operators move into Silicon Valley. AT&T, Vodafone and Verizon all opened R&D centres to get closer to innovation and talent.

Chinese digital giant keen to buy Yahoo

Another week. Another Walled Garden – Mobile Fix – September 30

Posted by Simon Andrews on September 30, 2011 None comments

Following F8 last week, where Facebook described a future where you never need to leave Facebook, this week Amazon described a future where you don’t really ever need to leave them.

With 4 new products, the Kindle range is pretty audacious – and very keenly priced. What the Kindles do isn’t quite what the iPad does, but they do a lot for the money.

As we have discussed over the last 18 months each of the GAFA* giants is trying to build a vertical ‘stack’ where they control every aspect. Apple have been in the vanguard, launching great hardware and then developing an ecology ( and the software) that enables them to capture the value of the content consumed using that hardware.  So selling music, books, movies, games and apps becomes a very profitable way of enticing people to buy new hardware that lets them use the content they have bought.

Of course all these eyeballs inside an Apple ecology worries Google, as they are the dominant monetiser of eyeballs through search. And new research on the success of Facebook in terms of time spent online has to concern Google too. So they have started to build their vertical stack – they key difference being that they started with the software (android) before recognising they needed to be involved in the hardware too – buying Motorola.

When we first started including Amazon in the GAFA, many people questioned it. But we should remember that Amazon have built a big business outside of ecommerce, with Amazon Web Services powering a huge proportion of web businesses. And don’t forget things like crowd sourcing pioneer Mechanical Turk, measurement company Alexa; or their search engine A9. They closed the standalone search engine in early 2010 and concentrate on search for commerce players. We wonder who is going power search on the Fire?

As the dominant player in selling content, they have most to lose as other people enter the market. So whilst Amazon has a huge advantage in physical content (CDs, DVDs etc) iTunes hurts them with MP3s etc.

So yesterday Amazon went a step further in building their vertical stack. They have built on the huge success of the Kindle (look at the graph below showing how Amazon now sell more Kindle books than paper ones) with new products. The Fire looks like a great way to listen to music, watch movies and yes, read books. And with their own Silk browser they are also positioning this as a great way to browse the web too. So at around half the price, this does what most people use the iPad for. Game on.

One reason for the low pricing is that Amazon expects to make money from content sales to subside the devices  - and (this wasn’t made very clear) these devices will also include Special Offers – unless you pay another $40. Just as Amazon launched an ad subsidised version of the kindle a while back, they will us this model to get great headline prices. This probably explains why the UK price looks so expensive – that media play hasn’t reached the UK yet so the UK

This is probably the key weakness of the Amazon launch – much of the sizzle depends on Amazon services like their cloud drive and streaming movies which so far are US only.

NextWeb have a good round up of the Amazon announcement here. And the Guardian look closely at how it matches the iPad.

Apples turn next week

Confirming all the rumours, Apple have announced an event for next Tuesday. The key question is whether this is just about the iPhone5 or whether we’ll see some new products.

On the iPhone 5 we think a big focus is going to be around voice control – with a feature rumoured to be called Assistant. Since Apple bought Siri last year there have been talk about Apple want to develop the iPhone into more of an assistant and voice control seems central to this. Announcements around the work Apple have been doing with Nuance were expected at the launch of Ios5 but didn’t happen. 

We also expect that NFC will be supported in some way, making sure Apple get to play in Mobile Money, rather than letting Google et al take a lead. Given that research suggests Apple have an 89% retention rate, whatever they announce will have queues out of the door.

Our other bit of speculation is that we see the iPod rejuvenated. We’ve mentioned stories of Apple buying 9 inch screens before and we wonder whether Apple couldn’t take some of the wind out of Amazons sails with a iPod Touch tablet that is designed for consuming media. Using the tech from the first iPad with this smaller screen would give Apple something at a lower price point and leave the iPad as the premium product.

The other thing we suspect might happen is a bit more love for iAds. No-one at Apple will have been very surprised by the Amazon launch – given the deep relationships Apple have with all the component manufacturers they will have had a good idea of what Amazon was doing. But the pricing may have given Apple cause to think – and we wonder if all their dealings with content companies will have reminded them just how good advertising can be at subsidising products and services. If Apple could rethink their ad proposition and scale it, they could use that revenue to reduce the cost of hardware. That’s what Eric Schmidt has been saying for years.

Facebook

Like us, you will have read many articles looking at the new features from Facebook. You might even have seen Don Draper presenting it. This summary from John Battelle is probably the best thinking on the subject we have seen.

The one thing that everyone seems to have missed is the mobile element. Every time a feature was shown Zuck stressed this was going to be available on all platforms. And if you watch the videos the mobile experience is going to look a lot more like the desktop one than it does now.

There are over 7 million apps and websites integrated with Facebook – and all these potentially are now going to be delivered on mobile. Except all of them that use Flash that is. We mentioned Project Spartan, the rumoured Facebook mobile platform using HTML5 last week and we expect that HTML5 is the way forward.

We await some word from Facebook on what is going to happen with mobile and apps, but we’re convinced this is huge news as brands can use the same technology to develop their presence on Facebook and mobile – as well as desktop web.  TechCrunch think that Monday is the day Project Spartan gets launched so we’ll know a lot more then. Screenshots of Spartan here

This interview with their head of mobile is worth reading; Within another year or two, we’ll be a mobile company, with 1/2 mobile users.”

Quick reads

The new edition of excellent Think Quarterly from Google is now out.

Google launch an MVNO in Spain. Turns out not to be true but do they want to disintermediate operators? We looked at that back in 2006

Smart thinking on how to use Twitter as an ad medium from @PeterKim at Dachis

Cool new Android phones from Japan. How long before they arrive here?

People are quick to unlike brands on Facebook

Not that quick but this video about HTML5 is a good summary of a hot topic.

Good interview with Zynga about mobile gaming

Everyone knows that integration is essential. Some new research from Google measures the additional impact of adding digital and mobile to TV.

 

Finally

One of the biggest events in the mobile calender is talking place next week in London. The MMA Forum has an excellent set of speakers – including experts from China, Japan, Africa and Indonesia sharing a truly global view of mobile. We’re part of a panel on day one, looking at one of our passions – Permission Marketing. This is a great chance to supercharge your mobile understanding. It’s just £200 for brands – and we could probably sort a deal for Mobile Fix readers. Let us know if you’d like to come and we’ll see what we can do.

 

*GAFA – how we describe Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon. – the people who boss this market – like the Gaffa in cockney slang. Eric Schmidt calls them the Gang of Four. We suspect he doesn’t know that much cockney slang.

Mobile & Social just merged – Mobile Fix September 23

Posted by Simon Andrews on September 23, 2011 None comments

Big news from Facebook – Mobile & Social just merged.

Whilst last weeks London Facebook Studio Live was well received (Contagious have a good round up here), everyone was expecting big things from F8 last night – and we weren’t disappointed.

We got Timeline, Ticker and OpenGraph – with a bigger role for apps. And it looks like apps are now featured on the mobile experience for the first time.

We really need more time to play with this and think through the implications. But it’s clear  that the ability to tag media (and other) content with read, watched, played, eaten etc will have a big effect on how people discover media. And that data will also be valuable for targeting ads. So Facebook just became even more critical for everyone in the content business

One thing that flew out was the fact 350 million people use Facebook on their mobile each month. So having all the apps available on mobile Facebook to that huge audience, changes the game in mobile.  And it changes the game in social too.

We now have to think about developing content and services that are mobile ready, with social baked in.

And given the move towards HTML5 as the key way to build Facebook apps, we think this probably hastens the demise of native apps. It just doesn’t makes economic sense to build native apps for fragmented operating systems when you also have to build an HTML5 one for Facebook. Already a lot of the work we are doing with our friends in Brazil is around using HTML5 as the platform, with native integration only where necessary.

You can read the Timeline intro and watch the videos, just released, by Facebook here;

Timeline

A New Class of Apps


Cnet have a good summary of all the announcements.

Other Facebook news – as a demonstration of how brands are embracing GAFA, we see our friends at Diageo have inked a big deal with Facebook for their plethora of brands.

TechCrunch have some interesting thinking around how the rumoured Spartan project (where Facebook build a HTML5 mobile platform to enable FB apps to work on mobile) could be a Trojan Horse that essentially converts your iPhone ( or your Android) into virtually a Facebook phone. This might need rethinking now, but well worth reading.

Big news from Google, too

Finally Google will start to reward mobile optimised sites by including this as a quality factor for adwords. So those big advertisers we called last week for wasting money by buying mobile ads that point to non optimised sites will now have to pay even more to stay at the top of the listings.

As a result of this change, ads that have mobile optimized landing pages will perform better in AdWords — they will generally drive more mobile traffic at a lower cost.

Of course the performance of natural search isn’t affected – yet – but we believe the instant previews on Google search are starting to influence traffic. And as Google point out;

61% of users are unlikely to return to a website that they had trouble accessing from their phone.

So what are the 70% ish of brands without optimised mobile sites waiting for? We’re happy to help ;)

Other Google news;

Tech guru Robert Scoble is still bigging up Google+ and we’ve found the hangouts to be really useful – much better for video calls than Skype. And you can do these through mobile too.

Google Goggles is now being trialed with UK brands in a partnership with a Poster company.

Mobile Money

In the week that Google wallet launches in the US – with another cool ad – Mastercard have been sharing their vision for mobile money.  The Google demo is worth watching too.

Operator supported mobile money player Isis is still in there too – but they won’t launch until next year and to get some headlines they have announced that they’ll be on Android. We can’t imagine that Google are really worried about these guys.

This is a good round up of the current status in the UK where the operators look likely to announce their plans shortly. But of course we should expect that Apple might shake things up when they launch iPhone 5.

New phones imminent

The iPhone 5 launch is now expected to be October 4 – but it seems like Samsung might have something to say about this. Having had to delay the launch of their Tablet in some European markets due to Apple legal challenges, rumour has it they will try and prevent the iPhone 5 going on sale.

These patent battles are going to happen more and more. Interesting times.

Of course the iPhone isn’t the only new device expected shortly. The new Google Nexus will probably come out around the same time as will the first Nokia Windows phones., using the imminent mango update for Windows Phone 7

 

We’re very excited about how this market is shaping up. Consumers have embraced mobile and their new behaviours are affecting every sector of business. Smart brands are recognising that they need to change the way they build their brand, the dialogue they have with their customers and, in some cases, even how they sell their products and services.

Mobile is no longer an emerging space. Its’s ready for prime time.

What a waste of money – Mobile Fix

Posted by Simon Andrews on September 16, 2011 2 comments

We were going to add this fascinating infographic (showings the 20 most expensive keywords on Google) as a quick read at the end of Fix.

But we decided to try a little experiment – we searched for the first 3 keywords on our mobile. And guess what? The lead advertiser for each (Insurance – GoCompare, Mortgage – Moneysupermarket, Loan – Sainsbury’s Bank) is paying to drive people to sites that are not optimised for mobile.

How much money are brands wasting by not going mobile?  In every project we have done, the cost of developing mobile friendly landing pages has been more than covered by the value unlocked in mobile search. What are people waiting for?

Twitter – Mobile Fix

Posted by Simon Andrews on September 16, 2011 None comments

With some big numbers – 100 million active users - Twitter have been talking about their plans for the future – including advertising. Their CEO Dick Costolo spoke last week ; this live blog of the speech is worth a read – not least to get a flavour of how ubiquitous Twitter is now.
Some of the smartest thinkers have built on this news. John Battelle has a typically well thought through piece on twitter advertising.  One key quote;
( I think) Twitter will adopt a model based on two familiar features: a cost-per-engagement model (the company already uses engagement as a signal to rank an ads efficacy) and a real-time second-price bidded auction 
Fred Wilson shares some thinking about the different ways people use Twitter, reminding us that lots of people just treat Twitter as a place to get news and views – essentially a broadcaster that aggregates people you’re interested in.

It is this scale – the constant broadcast – that sums up Twitters greatest asset but also its key problem. There is so much content how can users get to the good stuff? Other media have solved this problem – print lets you tear out the good articles and search back issues online. The reason Sky+ is so popular because it lets people organise their TV viewing – saving the stuff you really want to see whilst the on demand services like iPlayer and 4OD let you access stuff you missed.

But on Twitter that’s just not possible – so we get a degree of Twitter anxiety if we don’t check every few hours; worried about what we might have missed.

If Twitter can solve this problem and highlight the good stuff, they make themselves even more valuable. And advertising could prosper if it can be that well targeted. But advertising that merely adds to the noise it will be resented – and have little purpose other than perhaps motivating sign up to a premium ad free service – a la Spotify.
We were interested to read that the YouTube founders who have bought delicious from Yahoo are thinking on similar lines and see the potential to evolve the bookmarking service to focus more on social discovery.

Windows 8 – Mobile Fix

Posted by Simon Andrews on September 16, 2011 None comments

With lots of buzz around Windows 8 this week we were reminded that Bing is pushing out some good mobile products – all getting ready for the imminent debut of Nokia phones running on Windows?