Tag Archives: mobile Blog

The Battle for the Future

A heated battle for the future is underway, and forces are aligning around an ongoing court battle between Apple and Samsung. Apple is ticked, claiming Google’s Android OS is a copy of Apple’s iOS. Steve Jobs has even famously vowed to use all of Apple’s cash (about $80B or so) to “destroy Android.” (Untapped rage over Microsoft’s copycat Windows OS and Apple’s failure to stop it, perhaps?) Eight Samsung phones were examined, and now a $1B judgment has been handed down against Samsung.

Repercussions from this case are just beginning. Google, now in danger of losing worried phone makers from its platform, is suing Apple. Meanwhile, Microsoft is jumping for joy, trying to decide how to woo those same makers to its platform.

“I think this will force a reset on Android products as they are re-engineered to get around Apple’s patents,” said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the tech consultancy Enderle Group.

“[It should also] provide a stronger opportunity for both of Microsoft’s new platforms – Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 – because they come with indemnification against Apple, suddenly making them far safer.”

These behemoths believe that what’s really at stake is who will own mobile, as if that’s a desirable outcome for anyone other than these companies. We’ve seen it before — who will own search? Who will own browsers? Who will own e-commerce? etc., etc., etc. Big dollars go to lawyers, settlements are eventually made, and the world goes on. I can’t blame companies for protecting their intellectual property, but no one wins when the goal is to rule the world.

Read full article: http://bbc.in/QJeID5

iPad Takes Significant Lead as e-Commerce Shifts to Mobile

A study by RichRelevance illustrates the power of Apple’s tablet platform in e-commerce (m-commerce?). Accounting for “68% of all mobile shoppers,” the iPad has put a charge into the move from desktop to mobile for buying things online. The larger screen undoubtedly helps consumers view full web pages better than smartphones for a more comfortable shopping experience. iPads may also make shopping online more casual since purchases can be made from the couch or kitchen table. Also, people may find that shopping on the go on smartphones is challenging timewise. True m-commerce implies “buying while flying,” which, apart from technologies like Near Field Communications that allow instant purchases, may currently be unrealistic if shoppers want to research and compare when shopping online.

Whatever the case, there’s no denying the iPad’s impact on the all-important activity of spending.

The report, the 2012 Q1 Shopping Insights Mobile Study, finds a steady rise in mobile share of revenue from 1.9% in April 2011 to 4.6% in March 2012, with the iPad driving nearly all shopping, browsing and purchasing in this emerging channel.

According to March 2012 data, iPad users spent significantly more time and money on retail sites than other mobile users, account for 68% of all mobile shoppers, and show the strongest conversion rates (1.5% for iPad vs. 0.57% for other mobile devices).

Read full article: http://bit.ly/HQxXH3

Smartphones Reaching Tipping Point

The smartphone revolution marches on! Data from Nielsen (via CNET) shows that more than half of those aged 18 – 24 carry a smartphone today. And numbers for those over 44 are continuing to trend upward. Given these phones’ almost limitless functional capability (via the apps that run on them), we should expect the use of smartphones for more and more of the transactions that people make while on the go. And, since Moore’s Law continues to hold, and users love those little apps that “just work,” the proliferation of powerful, pocket-sized computers, aka smartphones, will only increase.

A lot of technology makes perfect sense on smartphones — technologies that aren’t necessarily as useful on desktops or laptops. These include bar code scanning, NFC (Near Field Communication) for speedy transactions, and photography and video recording. Combine these, and right in your hand, you have a wide range of capabilities in a single device.

Today, people buy smartphones for convenience in connecting and communicating with others, accessing information, carrying media and entertainment, and playing games. But soon, smartphones will be essential for transacting business and making purchases. Once we reach a tipping point, changes, especially around commerce, will snowball.

All of us in business need to consider smartphones. If you want to know where markets are going, look at the devices people use and how they get information. And then start planning for the changes that follow.

Article  and infographic: http://goo.gl/NqVP2

Some Tips for Using QR Codes

Are QR codes useful? Are they here to stay or just a passing tech fad? Here’s an interesting article that explores productive ways that print publications use QR codes and some helpful tips if you’ve been thinking of adopting them.

Walk past a bus shelter, check product packaging, visit a home improvement store and you’ll see Quick Response (QR) codes. They have gone mainstream, as 14 million people scanned a QR code in June, according to a new report from comScore, and it turns out that half of the time they scanned codes in a newspaper or magazine. Newspapers (and some broadcasters) are exploring how they can make good use of these codes to drive traffic from the print product to the Web via mobile devices, and it may be working.

Read full article: How 6 news organizations are using QR codes to drive traffic to news content

The Post PC Era

 “Post-PC Era: a social and technological phenomenon in which computing experiences become ubiquitous, casual, intimate, and physical.”

It’s upon us. But why the big deal. Does anyone really “like” PCs? Yes, they help us do lots of creative, productive things — when they work. And computing power keeps increasing while the chips they run on get smaller and smaller, just as it always has. Isn’t it just a matter of time before we can have an entire system with terabytes of data embedded into a wristwatch? So why the hype?

But of course, it’s not as simple as that. With heightened technology comes shifts in the way we do things. And when this happens on a mass scale, business, society, and culture all end up changing as well, and not always without some pain.

“Tablets are breakthrough devices. You can see that in the way that people have adopted them into their daily lives. Their deep functionality and highly attractive form (plus the cool quotient of simply being seen with one) have made tablets a normal element in many backpacks, briefcases, and fancy purses, and with good reason: with the iPad and the many other tablet offerings, we finally see the transition of computing ability away from being a distinct activity (“I’m going to the living room to surf the web”) to simply being a thing we can do whenever, wherever, and whyever we want.”

The Post PC Era means that more people will be connected and have access to in-depth information more of the time, on smaller and cheaper (and hopefully easier to use) devices. And it will come faster than anyone expects. It’s upon us.

Read full article: http://bit.ly/riwmRK

Tablet Content: Apps or Browser?

We all know that the success of tablet computers is tied to the content they deliver. We never hear the whizzy specs typically touted for desktop and laptop computers in selling tablets. We see people on the go, happily bringing their content with them. Tablets allow us to go anywhere and have all our books, movies, photos, music, magazines, and newspapers available in a lightweight, instant-on, easy-to-carry, and easy-to-use device. However, the problem for publishers is to create a user experience that’s as satisfying as the original medium. And that can be difficult when it comes to reading. How should pages turn? How should they be numbered? What about fonts? And is it even possible to “curl up” with an electronic device?

Consumers are offering answers to these questions, but are publishers listening? Or are they trying to create a “value-added” experience that exploits the new technologies to “wow” consumers into buying? The following article addresses this concern and shows how publishers, in their efforts to “enhance” the reading experience, may be giving consumers far more than they want when all they want is content. A question arises: is it worth delivering textual content in apps, or is it better through the browser?

Developers on the mobile web know how problematic app development is. Separate apps must be created and maintained for each platform, and consumers must purchase, install, and maintain the apps. On the other hand, browsers provide much more reliable delivery, more easily shared content, and a much wider audience that can be reached. Presently publishers seem to be favoring apps for the “rich experience” they offer. Are consumers being properly served?

Read full article: Publishers Should Be Developing for the Mobile Web Instead of Making Replica Apps

iDevices and iCloud Portend a PC-less Future For Consumers

Forgive my continued references to Apple, but they’re the ones with The Vision. There are many companies out there with the potential to harness technology in ways that transform our world, but only Apple has done so consistently. With their talent, connections, and money, Apple has become THE company to watch.

The following article makes a good case that the latest step in Apple’s ongoing iStrategy, announced this week at their annual developers’ conference, will result in the decline of the PC industry and the ascendance of burgeoning mobile. Consumers are showing a strong preference for portable devices that are easy to use and maintain. Tech geeks may want total control over their devices, but consumers couldn’t care less. Consumers want things that work — and do cool, useful everyday stuff. Why is it that only Apple seems to understand this?

Smart phones and tablets are much easier to use than PCs and many, many mobile, hand-held Apple Internet device users will abandon their PCs. Microsoft will be in a cleft stick.

iDevices coupled with the iCloud service, promises to give consumers easy access to their everyday data from all their devices. If this works out, it will likely be that consumers will embrace mobile solutions the same way they’ve embraced other Apple ideas, all the way back to the Apple II. Why is this? Because Apple has never departed from The Vision: make it useful, easy, reliable, and cool, and they will buy.

Read full article: http://bit.ly/knXZ30

Apps 6 Times More Popular than Web on Phones, Less Popular on Tablets

There’s a debate among mobile developers. Are apps the surefire way to consumers’ wallets, or are mobile websites the golden road? On smartphones, apps have proved hugely popular. These tiny programs that usually do one thing well have clicked with consumers to even Apple’s surprise. Apps have made some developers rich and, for others, provide a viable income stream. But apps are not necessarily an efficient way to deliver functionality. To reach the widest number of users separate apps must be developed for each mobile platform and maintained and updated across these platforms. And for people to get them, they have to be purchased, downloaded, and maintained on their devices.

On the other hand, is the mobile web. Functionality developed for delivery through web browsers only requires one vector of delivery and maintenance, and programs are much more easily distributed and maintained. Browser technology is great for almost all of the functionality that apps now deliver, and there are no app store policies for developers to deal with.

Typically, consumers follow the easiest route, right? Well, not according to the following recent data. Maybe it’s the shiny icons, cool names, or flashy home screens, but consumers greatly prefer apps on their smartphones (although not quite as much on tablets).

The study, conducted in April 2011, found that on smartphones, apps were used 85% of the time, but the Web browser was used just 15% of the time. On tablets, apps were still popular but were used just 61% of the time as compared with Web browsing, which was used 39% of the time.

Says Jing Wu, from Zokem’s research team, “it can be speculated that for tablets, the bigger screen and the better overall user experience in browsing contribute to the relatively higher face time for Web browsing. On smartphones, on the other hand, a smaller screen and, of course, better availability of apps contribute to the apps’ dominance.”

It makes sense that the smaller the screen, the more likely a consumer would prefer an app.

Read full article: [no longer available]

Q: Are Web Apps the Future of Websites? (A: Yes)

As we become a more mobile society, in the sense of the devices we use, everything becomes smaller. “Smaller” includes the time expected to complete tasks (or to be unavailable), the keyboards and screens we use, and the applications necessary to do our work. The Age of Apps is here. Due to the success of the iPhone, we can expect to see AppStores everywhere: the “MacApp Store,” “the ChromeApp Store,” “the AdroidApp Store,” and app stores from probably every telecom, computer platform, and device maker known to humankind.

Why have Apps become all the rage? People want to do things on the go, and Apps provide functionality in portable form with wonderful simplicity. Most apps do a single function very well. They’re easy to install and use and, in general, exemplify what people have always wanted from computers. With this in mind, businesses should start thinking of how they can offer their content and functionality as simple apps that people can use on the go.

In the mid-2000s, many of us still had to “go online” – meaning if we wanted to use Internet services like e-mail or read the content published in a blog, we needed to get to a computer connected to a network.

That doesn’t happen anymore. Or, at least, it’s happening less and less. We now travel about our real-world surrounded by a bubble of data and functionality that is always available to us. And, since we have ditched the spending-time model in favor of the doing-tasks model, we should expect that the organization of functionality and content should change as well.

No one had to persuade people to start using apps (unlike the unrelenting “education” of consumers regarding 3D TV). The demand has always been there. Now there’s a way to deliver the goods via portable devices. People like having their data and functionality with them. Smart businesses will take note and begin finding ways to provide customers with the information and capabilities they want when on the go.

Read full article …

Seventy-five Percent Of Online Americans Look For News On the Web

This is not surprising, especially as mobile devices of all kinds proliferate (smartphones, tablets, netbooks). What will be interesting is how news-gathering organizations (formerly known as newspapers) adapt and accommodate advertisers.

Newspaper delivery workers might want to start job hunting. A new study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project indicates that getting news online is one of the leading – and quickly rising – activities among online Americans.

Pew’s Generations Online in 2010 report surveyed Americans from 12 to over 74 years old to find out which activities dominate their time online. Email and search marketers may be glad to learn that checking inboxes and using search engines are the two leading online activities.

Read full article …