Category Archives: Mobile

Mobile

Slab Segments

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Cheap tables are a’plenty. Being a reformed gizmo glutton, I still receive a number of consumer electronics communiqués … hourly.  Most are for products I have no intention of buying, especially television sets that could cover my living room wall and still provide nothing considered entertaining.  Yet an occasional marketing lesson appears between engorged LED boob boxes and pocket cameras with more pixel resolution than the televisions. Today it was cheap tablet computers, or what I prefer to call slabs. Below those afore mentioned money wasters were a selection of slabs ranging from $129 to $320, and available with seven to ten inch screens.  This price range is a fair bit below the lowest end of the iPad 2 product line and the poorly marketed Xoom.  These slabs were not insufficient, sporting the same base memory, Wi-Fi and all the functionality of last year’s Android OS.  For customers lacking coolness … Continue reading →

MiSFiT

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Microsoft has lost it’s marketing mojo. Perhaps I should not base this analysis so heavily on their mobile offering, but having just returned from the massive CTIA event and witnessed Gates’ Goombahs slake Microsoft shareholder wealth into oblivion, I’m none too charitable.  Sure, Microsoft continues to milk the desktop cow, and the garner some gaming coin by Xboxing, but the world is rushing toward mobile and Microsoft is nowhere to be found. Literally.  Microsoft was so artfully concealed behind the Sybase booth (Sybase for cryin’ out loud) they were all but unlocatable.  It did not help that Microsoft’s booth manager squandered precious vertical real estate, apparently choosing a black funeral shroud for their flying buttress.  The booth itself was the Japanese/Swedish version of death décor — white and hard, modern, lifeless lines.  For an event soaked in the radical, consumer-focused “joy” of being wirelessly wired at all waking hours, Microsoft … Continue reading →

Bustle Bit Business

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Who wants $29B a year? The ubiquity of cell phones has not gone unnoticed by anybody, even the stodgy old banker down at your local branch (though he merely finds his daughter’s monthly texting charges aggravating).  Even the most primitive of modern cell phones is a small computer with wireless data capabilities.  With cell phone penetration nearing 80% in the United States, and emerging nations adopting cellular as their first telecommunications infrastructure, soon a cell phone will be owned and operated by every homo sapiens and a few lower order mammals as well (cats will not deign to dial themselves … that’s what they keep humans for). Thus, folks who earn a dime from financing a dollar are interested in using any technology to speed payments.  In our fast paced modern world, waiting behind someone using an ATM card at Starbucks seems like an incredible waste of time.  Hence the … Continue reading →

Mobile Mechanics

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Mobile is a microcosm for market mechanics. In recent weeks we witnessed the mobile market churning in seemingly random directions, but each has actually affirmed fundamental and very mechanical aspects of every market. If you are interested in mobile marketing check out white label SMS reseller, you will be able to send text messages to your clients for appointment reminders along with other things. When Nokia makes a bold move by adopting Microsoft’s mobile operating system, it asserted one market imperative.  When HP and Google forced Apple to blink, another market realty was at play.  As Google’s Android OS heads toward ubiquity, yet a third force of marketing was displayed. Commoditization: All markets commoditize over time as competitors provide similar or identical features.  In the mobile market, Google is the major force toward commoditization as they emulate what Microsoft did with desktops (indeed, the rumor that Android and webOS will … Continue reading →

Innovation Insufficiency

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Is owning 95% of a market enough? Taking in a number of market share estimates, Apple iPads have about 5% of the potential U.S. market for pads/slates/tablets (or as the wags at The Register prefer to call them, Fondle Slabs).  This is based on current P.C. market penetrations (north of 76% of households) and the estimated U.S. deployment of iPads.  Thus, the green field of the slab market is currently wide open. Which explains why several million Android slabs were introduced at CES last week. Market mechanics are based on many things, with technical innovation being a misleading indicator.  Apple has always been an innovator, but innovation in and of itself is insufficient.  Apple invented the PDA market with the Newton, which sold four or five units.  Pure innovation, but not only was it ahead of the market, it was also poorly marketed.  Alternately the iPad was very innovative and … Continue reading →

Paranoia Pays

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Steve Jobs needs to call Andy Grove ASAP. Groves, one of Intel’s founders, was very clear on the concept of paranoia in the tech biz.  Perhaps being Hungarian and thus too well acquainted with Soviet oppression, Andy learned paranoia at a young age.  But he refined his paranoiac inclinations being in the technology business, a war zone where corporate death comes quickly and painfully.  Like a battlefield where every soldier is out for himself, nobody and no company are safe from competition. Not even Apple. Wildly popular and cult-like, the iPhone and iPad made indelible marks in the consumer electronics space.  Though pads and smartphones existed before Jobs took on the job, Apple refined the product category and advanced the expectations of the market.  Combined brilliance in product design and marketing led to worldwide buzz, techno lust and a stock price that makes members of the House of Saud blink … Continue reading →

Android Aggression

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America used to beg for immigrants, because the joint was big and there was plenty of room and opportunity to go around. Kinda like the Android market. IDC caused Steve Jobs to dance a jig (not a pretty sight) when they predicted that the smart phone market would grow by 55.4% this year, a full 10% more than they had last prognosticated.  Steve could hear cash registers ringing at every Apple store with thoughts of iPhones flying out the doors.  IDC then caused Jobs to change underpants midday when they also predicted that Android and Windows phones would lead this surge in sales through 2014. Cachet casts a short shadow. IDC thinks Android smart phones will comprise nearly 25% of units within two election cycles (and can we just call them ‘phones’ since they will be the market by 2014).  Windows phones are estimated to take a relatively paltry 9.8% … Continue reading →