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Thursday, November 29, 2007

Symbian: sales up, and dismissive of Android.

Computing: in 2007Q3 Symbian sold 20.4m smartphone software. This represents a 56 per cent increase on the same period last year. Revenue is at US$54.2m. Symbian chief executive Nigel Clifford commented: "I am confident that Symbian will continue to lead the growing smartphone market, to outperform the competition, and to erode other consumer electronic device markets."

Nokia, who own 48% of Symbian, have not ruled out joining Google's Android platform, which is a competitor to Symbian, according to eWeek.

Elsewhere, the BBC report that John Forsyth, vice president of strategy at Symbian, believes "there was nothing to indicate that Google's dominance of the web would make it successful as a mobile phone platform provider".
by Richard @ 13:24

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Google Android

Google has launched their open source Android mobile platform to developers. It's a full stack: Linux, with a Java runtime and applications. It goes head-to-head with JavaFx Mobile from Sun (Linux with a Java runtime and applications), Symbian, Microsoft and arguably the forthcoming Apple iPhone development offering. The software is developed under an group of companies working under the Open Handset Alliance banner.

"Google's new alliance includes some big names. But Samsung, the number three handset-maker, always joins everything; Motorola, the number two, is in trouble and could do with a helping hand from Google; the same is true of Sprint, an American wireless operator. The heavyweights—Nokia, Vodafone, AT&T, Verizon Wireless, not to mention Apple and Microsoft—are conspicuous by their absence" (Economist).

The strength of Google as a leader of the alliance, and Google's willingness to spend on the project to get ads onto handsets makes for a promising combination. "Fostering Android under the alliance, [Google CEO] Schmidt said, will give consumers better user experiences than what they get from today's mobile platforms, which include the market-leading Symbian OS and Microsoft Windows Mobile OS. Android, which is expected to appear on handsets in the second half of 2008, will pave the way for Google to optimize applications such Google Maps and Gmail on Web-enabled devices such as smartphones" (eWeek).

"Most important of all, the wireless industry may be ready for a new model, just as the computer industry was 25 years ago. As phones become ever more like computers, consumers are unwilling to stay within "walled gardens" built by mobile operators. They want to pick their own software and services, just as they do on their PCs. Android's aim is to make this possible" (Economist).

by Richard @ 12:44

Monday, November 19, 2007

Social networking sites and advertising.

The Economist (10 Nov 2007, pp. 93-94) comments on "conversational marketing". Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook says that "advertisers will be able to piggyback on the 'social actions' of Facebook users, since 'people influence people'".

This style of marketing, while not new, could be pushed forward by the sheer size of Facebook and MySpace (who have a similar system). This constitutes what the Economist describes as a fourth phase of internet marketing. The first three advertising categories are: display (32% of online ad revenue), classified ads (17%), and search (41%). The Economist article doesn't specify where the other 10% of revenue is allocated.

Brands can now create Facebook pages, and Facebook users can treat these pages as they would any other friend "by adding reviews, photos or comments, say. Each of these actions might again be communicated instantly to the news feeds of their cliques. Obviously this is a double-edged sword, since they can just as easily criticise a brand as praise it".

User's associations and purchasing behaviour act as implicit recommendations. "Some people may find all this creepy, so Facebook will allow people to opt out of sharing their information. Another potential worry is that the analytical information passed on to advertisers may be of poor quality, because so much of what people put on their profiles is made up or out of date. Chris DeWolfe, the boss of MySpace, counters that his research shows that 98% of American MySpace users correctly report where they live. And they tend to report important changes in their lives—such as getting engaged—promptly. This presents great marketing opportunities."

Another problem: "Because few people dare to dump former friends or to reject unwanted friend requests from casual acquaintances, 'social graphs degenerate to noise in all cases,' [Paul Martino of Tride] says. If he is right, social-marketing campaigns will descend into visual clutter about the banal doings of increasingly random people, rather than being the next big thing in advertising."
by Richard @ 17:34

Monday, November 12, 2007

UK: 1.2bn text messages sent per week.

News from the Mobile Data Association: "4.825 billion messages were sent during September 2007, an average of over 1.2 billion messages every week, staggeringly, the same number of messages sent during the whole of 1999" (reported at Text.it).

The numbers break down to be almost 4,000 every second assuming most messages are sent in a 12 hour period of the day, and 70 text messages per person per month based on 69 million devices in the UK.
by Richard @ 13:49

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

SMS revenue slowdown: IM may step in.

An article from Computing reports on Ovum's prediction that SMS revenue growth will slow.

Ovum principal analyst John Delaney: "Even if SMS traffic keeps growing at current rates into the future, mobile operators cannot rely on revenues from SMS growing at the same pace". This is because the cost to consumers of sending messages is dropping. "So mobile operators need to plan an encore: a new type of communications service that can have the same kind of mass-market appeal as SMS, and that can inject new growth into mobile messaging revenues."

There are several contenders, one of which is instant messaging (IM).

Also reported at ITPro.
by Richard @ 13:26