iPhone 4

I wonder did Apple do this on purpose? They knew there was going to be a huge number of people signing up for the iPhone 4, they could have made more ready. Lets see how the other mobile phone operators are reacting to the news.

O2 are ranking number 4 for the term “iphone 4″ and it immediately takes you to the page which clearly describes O2’s response to a shortage of handsets. They are saying that only those O2 customers can get the iPhone 4 and then after July 4th, it will be available for non customers. I registered my interest for the new handset and I have been receiving emails with a count down of when I can go and buy the iPhone. This was a nice touch as it lets customers stay excited about the launch.

There was no place to register my interest on the Vodafone site. They also do not mention anything regarding an iPhone shortage, does this mean they will have enough when they become available in their stores? Their site has no new content about the iPhone 4, simply an overlay which appears to be from Apple and sits on the old Vodafone iphone URL.

I registered my interest on the Orange site who sent me an email a week ago letting me know when the iPhone 4 would be available. On their website, like Vodafone, there was no mention of an iPhone shortage, simply a detailed breakdown of their price plan. Orange are the only UK network to reveal their prices for the handset and the tariffs. Prices range from £169 for the 16GB handset on the cheapest £30 per month two year contract, to free for the 16GB model on a £75 per month two year deal.

I am sure demand will only increase once Vodafone and O2 announce their deals. Lets just hope not too many customers switch from O2 since their capped data usage was announced.

Now that Google launched the Android in 2008 which is gaining popularity, customers coming to the end of their contracts are torn between the iPhone and Android. Here are some facts about each handset:

Apple vs Android

iPhone

Android

When I go into the mobile shops and ask which handset is better the sales assistants always seem perplexed. You are either an Apple fan or an Android fan. For me, I love both, but I have to say I have been disappointed with Apple recently. My sister had a problem with her iPhone and it has taken forever to sort out. Someone basically hacked into her itunes account (in China) and purchased music which they didn’t pay for. My sister now cannot buy anything from iTunes until this is resolved.

The market share for Android is growing. It offers just as much as the iPhone does to its customers but as it is open source it allows for further developments to be made without customers having to wait for the big releases as we have seen with the iPhone.

E consultancy reported last week that Marks and Spencer launched a mobile site.

Unlike the other high street retailers who have launched apps, Marks and Spencer have put all their efforts into the mobile site. I have tried it on the iPhone and it is pretty good. I also tried it on the Samsung Tocco (not a smart phone) and it was easy to navigate and the pictures were very clear. A full review can be found at E consultancy

This news just shows you that more and more companies have mobile as part of their marketing/business strategy. Then yesterday, I read another article about mobile phones . Android phones outsold iPhones in the USA, last month for the first time. The iPhone better watch out, it is not the only smartphone out there. And for those companies that want to have a mobile strategy, do not just tailor it to the iPhone. Make sure the Android, Symbian and the Samsung handsets are involved as well. According to The Times, BlackBerry controls 63% of the market for business phones, so do not exclude these handsets either.

The trend in smartphones is expected to increase. According to Garner, sales increased by 49% to 54.3 million during Q1 2010. Overall, 314.7 million handsets were sold worldwide, with Nokia the number one supplier in both categories. Symbian was the most popular smartphone OS globally, selling 24.1 million units, with a market share of 44.3%.

RIM came second with 10.6 million sales and a 19.4% share, followed by Apple’s iPhone OS with 8.4 million sales and 15.4% share. Sales of Microsoft Windows handsets were flat at 3.7 million units, seeing its market share falling by 3.4 percentage points to 6.8%.

There is no denying it, these smartphones are here to stay, so it is vital to integrate these into your marketing strategy. Next time you are thinking of redesigning your website or adding new pages, think of making it viewable on a mobile phone.

Firstly on April 1st, it was announced that T-Mobile and Orange had become a single UK entity. Tom Alexander who is the Orange UK boss is the chief of the new company and T-Mobile UK boss Richard Moat is the chief financial officer. It comes seven months after France Telecom and Deutsche Telekomeir first announced their plans to merge the UK operations.

This means that the organisations can share confidential financial and customer information and begin consolidating the two businesses and Orange UK and T-Mobile UK now cease to exist.

Orange said : “Further to announcements of September 8, 2009, and to the obtaining of all necessary approvals, Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom today announced the successful completion of the UK merger transaction and the formation of the new Joint Venture. The JV will be accounted for using the equity method as of April 2010 for both Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom.”

Last week Orange also announced their new business mobile broadband packages allowing customers to choose a package that suits the way their business works. They have two packages both tariffs cost £10 a month and Orange has included an additional 1GB usage allowance per month to dip into:

1. Business Everywhere 5 to 9 – as the name suggests is for businesses who work from 5pm – 9am and want unlimited data. It is mainly aimed at start-ups and entrepreneurs who have day jobs and need mobile broadband access outside regular office hours.

2. Business Everywhere 9 to 5- are for businesses who want the same package but access 9am to 5pm.

There is also a service for frequent travellers who access an extra 5MB of data every month to use in Europe. Not worldwide yet, but who knows in the future?

Not to be outdone by Orange, T-Mobile expanded its Business Unlimited tariff by offering free conference calling and compatibility with its Boosters. There is conference calling for up to 20 people and customers now have access to a range of international boosters for businesses working abroad. They are Euro Talk and Text, Euro and Australasia Talk and USA and Canada Talk.

The plan “Business Unlimited” comes with unlimited calls, texts, email and internet access and costs just £35 a month. Customers will also receive free voicemail, free next day phone replacement, free 24/7 online account management and dedicated UK-based customer support.

Max Taylor , head of business marketing said: “We know that transparent pricing and predictable costs are crucial to any small business trying to manage its cashflow. By adding more to Business Unlimited at the same price, we’re enhancing what is already the best value small business tariff on the market and giving businesses greater control and peace of mind over their mobile costs.”

Watch out for more news from Orange.

Find out more news

Love mobile

I knew mobile was big, but after this event, I knew it was no longer the future, it was happening now. Those that are not using a mobile strategy should be seriously thinking of starting one today.

It may seem daunting, but mobile internet is the same position that the internet was 10 years ago and look how big that has grown. A user should have the same experience on the mobile and on the web. It is interesting to see how much internet on desktops has grown. Check out on the bbc’s website to visually see the growth of the internet.

There are 4.6 billion mobile phones world wide, more than 1,000 customers sign up every minute. You can no longer ignore mobile.

So where do you start?
If you are working agency side, you should start to introduce mobile marketing to your clients. The first step is assessing their website, which should be visible on a regular handset. I do not just mean smart phones such as the iPhone or Android but symbian phones as well such as the Nokia 6303. There are a lot of retail, finance and travel companies that are planning mobile at the moment. If you do not have a site that can be seen on a mobile phone, make sure there is at least a landing page that can be built in line with your advertising campaigns.

To app or not to app?
A lot of people when they want to get into mobile think they should build an app. There are over 50 million iphone and iphone touches and more than 3billion downloads for these apps. I wrote about apps in another post mobile app or mobile site and when I was at the event, Carl Uminski from Somo mentioned that there was a life cycle of apps. If it gets featured in the App store (which is luck) then it can get to top 25 of the Apple app store. This equates to 500 downloads a day. If the app is promoted to the top 10, then it can get 1000 downloads a day. However, there is a sudden decline.

He said people should think ahead of time and have ad campaigns to promote it. There is a lot of competition, 130,000 other apps people can choose from. You need to have a mobile advertising strategy before you build.
Somo have witnessed conversion to download range from 4% to 12%
Advertising click through rates range form 1% to 4.8%
Cost per download can range from 80p to 1.50 for free applications

Mobile search
Another interesting point raised at the event was that people on mobile phones who access the internet have different needs, they are more hunters than researchers. They are out and about and use their phone to look for something specific. Therefore there needs to be different ad copy for the paid adverts. Your digital agency should be able to build creative for you.

2010 is the year for mobile search and I challenge you to start using it with your clients or with your agency.

Photo is from flickr

Age by platform

The report also shows the differences and similarities between the Android and iPhone platforms. Despite the fact that Android and iPhone users download a similar number of apps every month and spend a similar amount of time using the apps, there is a difference in the purchasing patterns between the two smartphones.

As the table below illustrates, only 21% of Android users buy at least 1 paid app per month. The fact that are larger percentage of the Android apps are free (57%) compared to Apple (25%) affects this percentage.

Average App Downloads per Month

In terms of recommendations, more people with iPhones would recommend their handset (91%) compared with 84% of Android users. Perhaps this may be due to the fact the iPhone entered the market in 2007 and Android still has some catching up to do, launching its first handset in 2008.

Find out more about the January 2010 mobile metrics report from Admob

I think the mobile app market is going to become very saturated soon. Companies develop a mobile app, without really thinking what they want from a mobile app. One very good example highlighting this issue is Zara. They built the app, but there was no useful information on it and customers were unable to buy through it. Both Next and Net-A-Porter have the app, but not the mobile site. As I mentioned in my previous post, you can either build a mobile app or a mobile site.

Reasons to have a mobile app

1. Graham said that as smartphones and iPhone dominate the mobile internet, then an app is more likely to appear to users.

2. Graham said that smartphone users are more affluent. Therefore, apps will appeal to an audience with more disposable income. I disagree with this. Smartphone users are not more affluent. There are a high proportion of young people who use Blackberry and iPhones.

3. Better functionality on smartphones means retailers can offer a richer experience and therefore choose to build an app which will deliver this service.

4. The fourth point is that your app will get more visibility due to the popularity of the App store.

5. Customers have smartphones and therefore if a large number of mobile visitors are using Android and iPhones, an app may be better than a mobile site.

Reasons to have a mobile site.

1. A mobile site allows you to target a larger number of people as not everyone has a smartphone or has downloaded your app.

2. Those using their phone to search as they do on a desktop can easily find your site. The app store has thousands of apps, it is hard to find and if you do not have one, they cannot download it.

3. Unlike apps, you will not need approval of your site before it is released. It can also be updated as you update your website.

4. If you want an iPhone app, you will have to design one for the iPhone and a separate one for the Android. The mobile site can be seen on many handsets.

5. According to recent Taptu research, the browser-based mobile web market will grow much faster than the app market, so a mobile site will be necessary long term.

I agree with Graham on these issue for a mobile site. I believe companies should at least have a site optimised for all mobiles. Then if they want to and have extra budget, they can build a mobile app.

Oliver Newton at i-level wrote an article about the 7 deadly sins of marketing which I thought summed up well the mistakes companies have when trying to jump of the mobile bandwagon.

Changing the mobile landscape

To get hold of one for yourself, you will need to go directly to Google, google.com/phone.

What’s so good about this smartphone?

1. The Nexus One was the first phone to come with Google’s Android 2.1 and comes powerful features like a 1Ghz Snapdragon processor and a 800×480 multi touch screen.
2. The Nexus one is the company’s first own-brand mobile phone. There is not yet any information about tariffs, but people expect it to be about the same as the iPhone.
3. This is Google’s attempt to push through Android as one of the best smart phones to have in the market place.

The Nexus One has already launched in the US in January this year. Vodafone are not giving much away as to when exactly the phone will be available. I just went onto their blog and they still say it will be available “early spring”.

The photo is PhotosEcosse’s on flickr.

Below are the phones launched q1 2010
Pay monthly mobile phones
BlackBerry Storm 2 (9520)
LG POP (GD510)
Sony Ericsson Vivaz
Nokia E72
Nokia X6
Sony Ericsson X10 (Android)
Samsung Galaxy Portal (Android)
LG In Touch Max GW620 (Android)

Blackberry Storm 2 -9520

Pay as you go mobile phones
BlackBerry 8520
LG POP (GD510)
T-Mobile Vairy Text
T-Mobile Vairy Touch 2
Nokia 2220
Nokia 1616
Sony Ericsson W205
T-Mobile Pulse (Android)

LG Pop

According to Mobile news , T-mobile has big plans for BlackBerry smartphones, following the success in 2009 when they shipped 10,000 Blackberry handsets every week in q4. The BlackBerry Storm 2 9550 will be released in February, and the Curve 8520 with be on pay as you go. The original BlackBerry Storm 9530 was only available on Vodafone until end of January.

Apparently, more than 2,900 BlackBerry handsets were activated on the T-Mobile network on Christmas day alone. 50% of those were with the BlackBerry Curve 8520 handset – so you can guess which Christmas presents were popular for 2009. T-Mobile also said that the number of customers using Blackberry devices increased by 125% during 2009, most of these were on pay monthly contracts.

T-Mobile are offering the Curve 8520 on pay as you go for £150. Customers will also get 30 days of free text messages and 6 months free email and internet usage when purchased between 1st – 31st of March. This will look set to increase the popularity of the Blackberry Curve 8520 which according to GfK (the retail analyst) was the best selling pay monthly mobile phone in the UK in Q 4 2009.The Blackberry Curve 8900 was the best selling contract handset over the summer.

Phil Lander, T-Mobile account director at BlackBerry-maker RIM said “It was a phenomenal year for BlackBerry and T-Mobile. We have seen significant growth. We have established the BlackBerry brand with huge investment. There was a lot of focus on the consumer market, but we are in no way turning our back on business. The entry-level Curve 8520 is a really strong prepay proposition. We are anticipating big things for this, not just because of the product, but also because of the T-Mobile brand and the propositions that will help drive its success.”

Looks like T-mobile are onto a winner here, the other mobile operators better make sure they are working on their own USP.