From iPhone to iPad

Apple's release of iPad over the 2010 Easter weekend created quite a stir.  One of my old friends, Derek, waited in line for his iPad outside of the Apple Store Valley Fair in Santa Clara.  He got high five's from about 50 Apple employees and free Starbucks coffee/water courtesy of Apple. It was chilly out there, but he got his new toy and a picture with Apple's co-founder Steve Wozniak.

300,000 iPads were sold over a weekend, and US sales went so well that the international release had to be postponed.  The Biongo Hotspot blog reported that in 4 days (click picture to see full story), iPad already exceeded Android, blackberry, and iTouch generating over 5% of non-PC Boingo WIFI traffic at the airports.  Of course, these numbers are sort of biased, since Andoids and Blackberries can get online via 3G, however, the fact that it already made a blip in 4 days is amazing.

So far, people are using it for reading, browsing, sharing pictures, music, and playing games. Beyond hard core technology geeks, it also appeals to wide range of people as it is light and portable.  The potentials for education market is immense, imagine consolidating all the text books into a device like an iPad.  It will have a huge impact to the backpack market and could hurt businesses for chiropractors (maybe they are already focusing on carpal tunnel instead of back pains).

Yes, there are of course many shortcomings in its first release and many other similar competing products will be released in the coming days.  Successful introduction of iPad validates my last post, that a general purpose, web connected App devices like iPhone, iPad, and Andoid will forever change our lives.

67% Mobile Web traffic from iPhone, the new Computing Platform

3 Essential trends makeing iPhone the Computing Platform of the future:

1. The de facto mobile gateway to the Web.
Although the richest woman in the world wants it sometimes, Melinda Gates is not allowed to have an iPhone since iPods and iPhones are banned in the Gates family. However, that's not the case in millions of families around the world. According to Net Applications, iPhone accounted for 67% of the mobile web traffic in February 2009. Today (3/4/2009), China Unicom says they are in talks to sell iPhone in China.

As to other "major" players... Java ME's (represents the stripped-down browsers on most regular phones) got 9%, while Windows Mobile, Google's Android, and Symbian each got about 6%. Palm was left with about 2%.


2. Mobile Video catching up with Internet Video? In a Nielsen report, the media consumptions from TV, Internet and Mobile Usage continue to increase. Most interestingly, Mobile video watchers are watching more videos comparing Internet video watchers. This amazing insight shows the portability power of mobile web for devices like iPhone. As even more main stream content becomes available (According to Video4Cell, CSB just announced Star Trek & C.S.I Episodes to iPhones on TV.com) even more people will rely on their iPhone for video and other content. This continues to pave the way for iPhone to be the dominating portable entertainment device and the computing platform which Microsoft, Google, Palm, Sony, and Nintendo have missed the boat... at least for this round.

3. Portable computing platform for lots of Applications. In addition to surfing the web with Safari and watching videos with Youtube, people are using the iPhone for other applications. In fact, Apple's says 500 million apps have been downloaded and counting. Based on one estimate, that's about 20 Apps downloads per iPhone user comparing to about an average of 5 Apps across all smart phones.

A survey of US smartphone users who installed applications on their devices in 2008, conducted by ABI Research in November, reveals that a surprising 17% spent upwards of $100. No wonder, a lot of people are building and marketing iPhone apps these days... watch out for one of ours, coming soon!

References:

• CBS Offers full length Star Trek & C.S.I Episodes to iPhones on TV.com.
• TV, Internet and Mobile Usage In U.S. Keeps Increasing, Says Nielsen.
• Five Apps Per iPhone?
  
• Buying Mobile Applications: 17% of US Smartphone Survey Respondents Spent More Than $100 Last Year.
• Report: iPhone takes 2/3 of mobile Web in February.
  
• Video Viewing Strong on All Screens.
  
• Banned In The Gates Household: iPhones and iPods.
• Apple: China Unicom Says In Talks To Sell iPhone. (3/4/2009)
  

eMarketer: Top online markting channels

According to eMarketer, Online retailers worldwide surveyed in July and August 2008 by E-Consultancy and R.O.EYE said that e-mail was second only to paid search when it came to driving high volume. The sample size was relatively small, at 241 online retailers. However, the results are in line with similar surveys. Nearly four out of 10 search engine advertisers worldwide surveyed in January 2008 by Radar Research for the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) said e-mail marketing yielded the best ROI of any tactic.


Lower Email Open Rates

MailerMailer said that some industries had higher open rates for their marketing e-mail, with banking/finance, religious/spiritual, government and telecommunications having more success than other verticals.

Tip: Shorter subject lines Perform Better

According to eMarketer, shorter subject lines performed better than longer ones. Subject lines of less than 35 characters yielded an average open rate of 19.6% and a 3.1% average click rate. E-mails with subject lines of 35 or more characters drew average open rates of 14.8% and average click rates of 1.9%.

Source: eMarketing: Consumers Opening Fewer E-Mails

Obama and DB Marketing

No matter what is your party affiliation, you have to give Obama and team the credit for the successful marketing efforts so far. The entire primary was very well executed.

One of the innovative marketing tactics the Obama team used was to make the vice-presidential candidate announcement via text message. This has some interesting impacts:

• increased buzz and anticipation
• provided a call to action and increased traffic to the BarackObama.com website
  
• created loyalty with participation and a sense of inner group with priority
  
• created a sense of cutting edge leadership and being closer in touch with the younger generation
• equally important, from the database marketing perspectives, he now has one of the biggest opt-in SMS list in America! Now he can continue the relationship building via one of the most sought after channel.
  

The actual text message was: “Barack has chosen Senator Joe Biden to be our VP nominee.” And, it went to 2.9 million people. Sure, there were some technical difficulties, but I am sure he would turn this into an opportunity. Also, I am not sure whether the team was savvy enough to negotiate a lucrative deal with the carriers, by my own estimate, this first blast should have made 30-100K for the campaign.

Sources: Nielsen Mobile, MocoNews

Mobile Ad Spending Expected Soar!

The global mobile advertising spending is expected to grow from $4.6 Billion in 2008 to $7.4 Billion in 2009. The bulk of the spending is still with Mobile Messaging, however, the Mobile Search Advertising and Mobile Display Advertising are expected to double and triple.
In the US, spending on mobile ads will reach $6.5 billion in 2012, up from $1.7 billion in 2008.



In addition, the global mobile video advertising spending is expected to triple from $427 Million in 2008 to $1.5 Billion in 2009.


Sources:
eMarketer: Mobile Ad Spending Set to Soar (8/20/2008)
eMarketer: The Big Picture on Small-Screen Advertising (8/12/2008)

eMarketer: 2/3 of adults prefer E-Mail as Preferred Mode of Communication

67% of Adults surveyed said they prefer Email as the preferred mode of communication when dealing with businesses, and more importantly, they expect this to remain to be their favorite 5 years from now. More than 88% of respondents said they would like more choices in e-mail content and frequency, including options on advertisements and special offers. The biggest expect drop is postal mail, from 35% to 23%. The biggest expected jumps are: text messaging or IM, and video conferencing or web meetings.

On the other hand, the expected online spending for Email marketing is expected to increase relatively modestly comparing to other channels like search marketing, rich media, and lead generation.

Source: eMarketer: What Is the Future of E-Mail?

Web 2.0 Expo 2008 SF - Key Take Aways

Some key take away's from the Web 2.0 from week of 4/21/08 in SF.

• I went to a Facebook Platform Eco session, they ask how much total money is in the FB eco system to a panel of 3 experts, one venture capitalist said over $300MM/year, one successful FB app develop company said less than $10MM, the third said somewhere in-between but closer to $10MM. Most people are primarily talking about ad revenue.

Buzz.

• Windows Live Mesh - finally Microsoft recognize the cloud. they made a very touching video, showing a mother capturing video of her boy diving into the pool, at the same time, the video shows up at dad's portable computer, grand parent's digital picture frame, and cousin's X-box. Basically all connected devices to the data.
  
• Enterprise Web 2.0 - there is a lot of interests in this area but nobody seems to know what it means and how to do it yet. Our company does have an unique niche and approach.
• Mobile (iPhone, Nokia, Tellme, etc) has lots of interest but as Andreessen pointed out, there are no defining standards/players at this time, and we need a monopoly like what Microsoft did to the PC.
• Location based services. Lots of maps and location based services showing interesting ideas (twitter to show where are friends, crime map showing where to buy drugs, geo-coded wiki pages, sensors) but no killer apps yet.

Mood.

• Generally upbeat, we are still at the 'early days' for Web 2.0 and lots to be done.
  
• Marc Andreessen was quoted to be "happy to get a round of funding before the upcoming nuclear winter".

DB Marketing focus - I was looking for the following two things in particular:

1. Viral.

• I was looking hard for platforms for viral that we can use as our next wave of adoption tactic, I did not really find anything. most of them are either email referrals (like some FB apps) or built in to the social network.
  
• Tipping point Myth. New research indicates that centralized ripple-like distribution depending on a few 'Influentials' are not reliable, these influentials are mostly hindsight biased and generally not repeatable for future. The more reliable approach is to use a distributed social network approach with lots of interconnections. (check out a picture of Twitter "Social Graph")
  

2. Targeting

• behavior targeting is the buzz (since most apps don't have profile, they only know what people do), I did not see anything concrete yet, but most people are looking at it from targeted ad perspectives, "people who like to throw sheep and vote this way tends to respond to this kind of ad."
  

eMarketing: Giveaways Key to Mobile Marketing

Looks like only 17-26% of people are willing to watch advertising on their phone for mobile applications.


However, over 44% of people are willing to watch up to 4 ads to get a free phone. Do they think they are getting an iPhone or a Google phone?


What we have found was people really responded well to free ring tone offers.

Reference: eMarketing article: http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1004978&src=article2_newsltr