We face a new breed of marketing and advertising. Understanding customer behavior across media channels, communicate effectively and create brand experience are daily challenges facing anyone in marketing or management. People use and collect information differently today than some months ago. Unfortunately most businesses are still communicating as usual.
With this in mind, you can expect to find thoughts, view points and experience that encompass us to act more effectively as we learn more about how customer perception are influenced in our high-tech world. As new technology, collaborating platforms, social media and communication channels is changing consumer behavior, businesses and professionals need to understand the driving forces within these changes.
Welcome to mandal.com
Henrik Mandal
Will WinPhone be a sucess?
There is with moderate enthusiasm the market is waiting for Microsoft’s WinPhone to gain market share from Apple, Android and RIM. But we have seen it before, when iExplorer made KO on Mozilla Netscape almost 2 decades ago. Their strategy has not been very effective as of today, but there are some research organizations that are still expecting huge growth for WinPhone this year.
Microsoft WinPhone – Foto: Nokia
The analysis for Q3 2011 was only poor 2% penetration, but in their defence this was before Nokia launched their new Lumina models. Some of the previous predictions on market penetration of WinPhone has been very optimistic and just recently the research organization IHS still believes hugt growth with the Micorosoft/Nokia alliance. According to IHS, there will be more WinPhones than iPhones by 2015. The predicted lead is minimal, with only 0.1% lead to WinPhone.
Interesting enough it is expected that WinPhone will not steal market share form Android or iPhone, but from Nokias own platform Belle (which is the new name for Symbian). IHS also estimates that 50% of all sold WinPhones in 2012 will be delivered by Nokia, which is a substantial amount of devices, bringing WinPhone to a total 9% market share in the mobile space.
Another important growth factor is that with Nokia onboard as leading device manufacturer, it is expected that HTC, Samsung, LG and Motorola will also follow, so the number of devices available in the market will heavily increase over the next years.
I am excited to see how this saga ends, but I encourage more mobile OS platforms to be supported in the market, as this gives the consumers a better choice of variation.
All time high app downloads on Christmas Day
According to Flurry, an appstore monitoring service, Christmas Day achieved all time high download on both iOS and Android devices. Amazingly 242 million apps where downloaded December and 150 million just on Christmas Day. The average December download growth (except Christmas Day) is close to 125% growth.
According to New York Times, over 6.8 million new devices has been activated this holiday season compared to the 2.8 million activations from last Christmas.
Summarized, the mobile app phenomenon is still growing very quickly; smartphone and tablet owners can’t resist buying apps. The iTunes App Store has earned over $3 billion for app developers, Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, said at an iPhone event in October and Android Market and WinPhone Marketplace are also reporting high increase in app sales this year.
Windows Phone Marketplace reaches 50K Apps
Microsoft has reached a milestone when reaching 50 000 apps in the WinPhone Marketplace. According to All About Windows Phone who monitors market information reports that the appstore has received a fast growth the last month, where over 10 000 apps have been submitted to the Microsoft appstore.
Source: All About Windows Phone
It is clear that appstores are on the arise these days with Apple appstores and Android Market celebrating huge downloads of apps so I am pleased to hear that Microsoft finally are getting a larger app inventory to offer the market. An interesting observation will soon be to see how the storefront will attract paying customers to purchase the apps available. At the 50K milestone, the majority of apps are still free for the Windows phone, but knowing Microsoft, this can quickly change.
Microsoft did earlier this month announces a different commission model to developers in order to attract more quality apps quickly and this is perhaps just what has happened. With their 70/30 commission model (where Apple and Google offers 80/20) it might be what has made more developers support the Microsoft device environment and joined their ecosystem.
Now I bet we are all exciting to hear about the actual downloads figures from WinPhone Marketplace when it will available!
iPhone loosing terrain in Europe
Poor economy in Europe results in poor sales of iPhone. According to news distributor Reuters, Apple iPhone is loosing terrain in Europe as Europeans rather select a cheaper Android device. This is bad news for Apple as holiday sales has not been as expected in the market forecast.
Apple iPhone 4S has reached good sales in the US and UK where Apple has increased its market share after the release. But in most of Europe, the situation is a completely different scenario.
In France Apple’s market share has declined to 20 percent the last 12 weeks before the exit of November from a 29 percent market share same period last year. In Germany the market share has dropped from 27 to 22 percent and simlar negative trends are being reported in Span and Italy.
In the US Apple increased its market share from 25 to 36 percent and from 21 to 31 percent in the UK.
One explanation to this drop of market share is the price level between iPhone 4S and competing Android devices, which has a lower price tag.
Android’s market share is between 46 and 61 percent according to Kantar Worldpanel ComTech. Android is the most dominating device platform in Germany with a overwhelming 61 percent market share. Samsung Galaxy II S is also the most selling mobile device in Europe this quarter.
Rumours: Amazon acquiring RIM ?
For some time there has been rumours that Amazon was interested to acquire Canadian RIM (Research In Motion), the company behind the successful Blackberry devices. Earlier this week Reuters announced that Amazon had engages an investment bank to perform a due-diligence earlier this summer, but no formal offer was never submitted to RIM.
It has now also been revealed that several organizations has been flirting with the Canadians in 2011. Other interested parties has now been confirmed to be Microsoft and Nokia, who also performed due-diligence on the company.
RIM and Amazon is again talking about a closer cooperation beyond the Amazon music service now available on Blackberry devices. It is unclear what will come out of this, but it is definitely an interesting scenario that might result between the two parties.
Amazon’s superior content inventory makes it probably one of the most wanted partners in the world. So I guess the 10.000 dollar question is if either RIM needs Amazon or Amazon needs RIM. With the latest move from Amazon to launch the Amazon Fire, I believe it will be RIM who is the desperate party here.
RIP Symbian.. Or will it ever die ?
In a recent announcement from Nokia, the company claims that Symbian will no longer will be supported, but funny enough is the whole announcement just about a marketing re-branding of the Symbian operating system. The new name, according to Nokia, will be “Nokia Belle“. Initial project names include “Symbian Belle” and it is not clear that “Symbian” now belongs to the history books.
But once-upon-a-time, Symbian was a very promising operating system and platform. There is no doubt that the Symbian Foundation has played an essential role as en early role-model for today’s iOS, Andoird, Windows Mobile and Blackberry operating systems.
Brief history/timeline of Symbian and Symbian foundation:
- 1980: Psion was founded
- 1998: Psion became Symbian
- 2001: First Nokia Symbian phone, Nokia 9210 communicator
- 24-Jun-2008: Nokia acquires Symbian, Symbian Foundation announced [source]
- 21-Oct-2008: Android first release [source]
- 12-Mac-2009: Symbian Platform Release Plan revealed [source]
- 30-Apr-2009: S60.com site closure announced [source]
- 08-Jun-2009: Symbian still trying hard to woo developers [source]
- 09-Aug-2009: Nokia rumoured to ditch Symbian in 2012 [source]
- 11-Nov-2009: Samsung dropping Symbian for Bada [source]
- 04-Feb-2010: Symbian fully open and free source [source]
- 01-Jul-2010: Best Symbian site, Symbian-guru.com ends [source]
- 24-Sep-2010 : Sony Ericsson abandons Symbian [source]
- 19-Oct-2010 : Symbian CEO exits [source]
- 22-Oct-2010: Angry Birds on Symbian [source]
- 08-Nov-2010: Nokia reclaims Symbian [source]
- 17-Dec-2010 : Symbian foundation website closes [source]
- 31-Dec-2010 : Samsung terminates Symbian support [source]
So it is final, Symbian in its old suite is dead, but it looks a little bit like it will be resurrected as Nokia Belle.
Android activations sky rocketing in 2011
It has been a fantastic year for Android and we are to believe the numbers from Google, the number if activated devices has literally sky rocketed. With only a 3 year history in the market, Android has already become the market leader and bypassed the popular iPhone, Symbion, Blackberry and Windows Phones.
According to Google’s Android boss, Andy Rubin, there are currently over 700.000 activated Android devices daily. Yes, that is almost 30.000 activations pr. hour, 500 pr. minute or 8 device activations pr. second.
A nice video presented at the Google IO conference.
The platform is supported by many of the largest technology manufacturers today such as HTC, Samsung, Amazon, Motorola, Dell among some, and more manufacturers are expected to join with new, powerful and innovative devices in all sizes and screens.
I am sure Andy will have a great holiday season this year and we are looking forward to see how the mobile platform war continues in 2012. I also found this nice video illustrating the activations of Android since its born with the G1 device, 3 years ago.
Enjoy !
How Google killed the long tail
I recently saw a very interesting infographic made by the clever minds at SEOBook.com. A very informative piece of information is produced with eye opening graphics showing how the combination of Googles real-time search combined with the new a panda metrics has killed long tail keywords. It helps understand how to shift strategies to not only adjust to this significant Google update. But the new real-time search user behavior patterns which impact long standing domain.
This infograhic is a must to read for all content driven marketers and publishers. It is definitely worth reading. Enjoy !!
Source: www.seobook.com/blog
