Now that Apple has enjoyed some success with its App Store, smartphone manufacturers are starting to realize that having such a service is a worthwhile endeavor. An App Store with the right ingredients for success not only makes people want to buy the smartphone more than others, but it offers a new revenue-sharing opportunity that could become extremely lucrative.

Perhaps that's why Microsoft's new store for Windows Mobile 7, called Skymarket, leaked today. And it's also why Google announced late last week that it was planning on launching the Android Market to compete with Apple's store.  Each and every company going after the mobile Web is trying to do what Apple has done with its own App Store.

If nothing else, the App Store has shown that there really is a recipe for success in this space.  What is that recipe?  At this point, success in the Mobile App Store market requires:

1.  A popular device.

2.  A single marketplace where users can find any application they want in one location.

3.  A developer platform that's both easy to use and powerful enough to create fantastic apps.

4. A dose of enterprise applications.

5.  The ability to deploy the same applications on multiple devices.

6.  The ability for users to download applications wirelessly to their device from a Wi-Fi or 3G connection.

Apple has most of these ingredients and is performing extremely well in the app market, but its competitors — RIM and Microsoft — seem lost. Both companies have applications that can be downloaded from countless places on the Web, the applications simply aren't as usable as iPhone apps, and there's no simple way to add applications to the phone without connecting it to your computer. (Update: To clarify and echo what some commenters have noted, BlackBerry owners can download apps over-the-air and do so on a daily basis.)

While Apple wins out in most of those categories, Microsoft and RIM can still stand up in a few where Apple isn't quite so strong. For example, Apple's applications appeal mainly to the consumer, but RIM offers the enterprise solutions that have been left out of Apple's store so far. But in the end, it's Apple that reigns supreme in the app store market and will continue to force the others to modify their offerings and catch up.

Report shows the busiest browsing handsets

http://www.intomobile.com/2008/09/10/report-shows-the-busiest-browsing-handsets.html

Posted by Simon on Wednesday, September 10th, 2008 at 12:13 pm under RIM, Palm, Mobile Web, Apple, Samsung, Nokia

AdMob's monthly report for August has been released, giving us plenty of juicy data from across 5,000 mobile sites to reveal which devices are gobbling up the most ad impressions as well as giving us some general usage stats. Nokia still rocks the roost, taking 13 of the top 20 spots (N70, N95 and N73 took the top three), but BlackBerry nabbed 5th. and 8th. place with the BlackBerry 8100 and BlackBerry 8300 respectively. Apple's iPhone saw the biggest growth jump out of all (up 1.3% from last month) to put it at 9th. place in mobile browsing traffic. Geographically, the U.S. is still the number one browsing, but is rapidly declining, soon to be taken over by Indonesia. Asia on the whole is just edging out North America, but that gap will widen as N.A.'s numbers dropped 3.9% last month.

http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/advertising/1685.html

How will Google's Chrome browser, Android affect mobile marketing?

By Dan Butcher

September 10, 2008

Google Chrome dome

With the impending release of Android handsets, Google has announced two key components of its Android mobile platform: the Chrome browser and the Android Market content distribution system.

Chrome borrows elements from Apple's WebKit and Mozilla's Firefox and is Google's attempt to go after the browser market by creating a modern platform for image-rich Web pages and interactive applications. Android Market is an open content distribution system that will help consumers find, buy, download and install applications on their Android-powered devices—basically Google's answer to the iTunes App Store.

"It makes a lot of sense that Google would compete with Apple's App Store and create more of an open market Synthesis TookKit to let people develop applications on top of it," said Michael Wolf, research director of ABI Research, New York.

"As for the Chrome announcement, Google is coming out with its own browser to create a more customizable open source for Web applications that is less desktop-centric and better able to handle memory management while running richer apps and Java script," he said.

In addition to the Android Market announcement, Google has added a new open source sample application called Photostream has to its apps-for-android project. Photostream is a simple photo browser and viewer for Yahoo's Flickr.

Alloy or chrome?

Google also recently announced the winners of the Android Developer Challenge, an effort to drive innovation in the development of mobile applications for its mobile platform.

Google's Chrome browser will be integrated into the Android platform. Google has released a beta version of Chrome for Windows and is working on versions for Mac and Linux.

Chrome is organized by keeping each browser tab in an isolated "sandbox," which reportedly prevents one tab from crashing another and provides improved protection from rogue sites.

Will Chrome shine?

Chrome will run on V8, which Google claims is a more powerful JavaScript engine that has improved the browser's speed and responsiveness.

"Google's pitch is that older browsers were built in a time when text was predominant format on the Web, but now they're not fast enough to meet the needs of video and advanced applications," Mr. Wolf said. "Like Apple, this offers the potential for customization from a user interface standpoint."

This announcement is about much more than a simple need for speed and user-friendliness, however.

"Ultimately this represents a two-screen strategy for Google on both PC and mobile, and potentially Chrome Browser could even be pushed onto TV screens to make it a three-screen browser," Mr. Wolf said. "This will give them a foundation to distribute content and Web apps."

One of the biggest questions stemming from Google's play is what effects its open-source model will have on the industry as a whole.

"You've seen Nokia say that they're going to make Symbian an open-source operating environment as well," Mr. Wolf said. "This could represent a larger-scale trend, and Google does tend to be on the vanguard of these things."

It will be interesting to see how Microsoft—a long-time player with its Internet Explorer and Windows Mobile products—and other competitors react to Google's mobile initiatives.

"I don't see Microsoft opening up Windows, although we are seeing the continued trend of a move toward Linux due to the strength of LiMo and Google and move away from entirely closed down operating systems," Mr. Wolf said.

"You're going to see more Linux-powered smartphones coming out," he said.

Google will have to flex its muscles to squeeze ad dollars out of the mobile channel.

Google and Verizon Wireless are said to be nearing a deal that would add the Internet giant's search interface to the carrier's mobile devices, thus opening up the mobile marketing space (see story).

"Ultimately the success of Android will be tied to strength of Google's monetization on the PC side and their ability to drive targeted advertising into some of these mobile applications," Mr. Wolf said.

"They'll explore paid content, paid applications and other hooks into their robust existing monetization strategy, and is search a big part of it as well," he said.

Google's recent moves highlight the incredible potential the search giant sees for the mobile space.

"Google is the dominant search provider on PCs, and they realize that the majority of growth as far as Web usage will be on handsets," Mr. Wolf said. "They'll seek out various cross-platform tie-ins between the mobile Web and the PC Web, although the domains will largely remain separate.

"The Chrome announcement is a sign that browsers are getting better and that helps to make the overall user experience better," he said.

There has been a healthy dose of skepticism expressed about the Android platform, however.

Some critics have argued that the buzz is missing from the marketing efforts leading up to the first Android-powered handsets. Others doubt that the initial reach of Android will be significant enough to seriously impact competitors.

"If you look at the Android mobile version of Chrome, at a tactical level the impact in the short-to-medium term will be very limited," said Saurav Chopra, director of business development for Byte Mobile, Mountain View, CA. "For mobile platforms, distribution is absolutely key."

Wireless carrier T-Mobile will launch a smartphone powered by Google's Android software before the end of the year to compete with players such as Microsoft, Research In Motion, Apple and Palm (see story).

"Android and Chrome would need to get strong distribution, and a couple of handsets from HTC is not going to help that," Mr. Chopra said. "Android handsets have to have a decent install base."

However, the long-term impact of Google entering the browser and operating system markets is a different story.

"If you take a look at high-level impact, however, it will incredible," Mr. Chopra said. "The reason Nokia bought Symbian was because Android is an open-source platform."

Nokia Corp.'s decision to buy the 52 percent of Symbian it didn't already own may threaten Google's Android and Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating systems (see story).

"Operators and manufacturers will open up the system so that developers have access to handset APIs and in the future network APIs, and it will force a rethink among operators and manufacturers as far as business models," Mr. Chopra said.

"Operators in much better position to drive value of advertising, and they have to ask themselves how best to leverage the immense wealth of information they have to drive a new business model on open networks, open systems like Android," he said.

Competition in the mobile ecosystem is fierce, but with the market growing steadily, there are niches in which various industry players can thrive.

"The iPhone has kick-started the mobile Internet and made it available to average man and woman in the street, and a few years down the road, people with Android handsets will be accessing the open Internet and mobile Web apps much, much more than in the past," Mr. Chopra said. "Overall, the usage from end users is going to skyrocket.

"Looking at the big picture, this is not about Google or Apple getting a bigger chunk of the pie," he said. "The overall size of the pie will increase tremendously."

Smartphone Start-Ups Have a Friend in This Fund

MENLO PARK, Calif. — Matt Murphy eats at expensive steakhouses, likes to watch his kids play soccer and is a loyal fan of Peet's Coffee and Tea. And if he has his way, mobile phone users will know as much about each other as readers now know about him.

Mr. Murphy is a venture capitalist overseeing the iFund, a $100 million investment fund created earlier this year by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers to invest in start-ups specializing in iPhone applications. One is Whrrl, a mobile location-based service where users can be tracked on their iPhone by friends, who can also critique and share their favorite restaurants or events.

Kleiner is hoping to tap into the popularity of the Apple iPhone, whose owners have already downloaded 60 million applications from Apple's App Store. So far this year, Mr. Murphy and his partners at Kleiner have received 2,500 business plans for potential iPhone application start-ups and they have invested in four.

Mr. Murphy, 41, has for the last seven years focused on finding hot mobile start-ups. But until the iPhone emerged, it had not been easy. Much of the control over what is on a cellphone has been in the hands of the wireless carriers, not entrepreneurs. The iPhone, of course, and other smartphones on the horizon like the T-Mobile Dream, powered by Google's new Android operating system, are sparking creativity among software developers.

"I was frustrated along with everyone else about how slowly everything was moving," Mr. Murphy said in an interview at his office on Sand Hill Road not far from Stanford, where he attended business school in the 1990s. "Until the iPhone came out and you got to use one, it was hard to imagine how impactful it could be," he said.

So far iFund has financed the companies Ngmoco and Gogii, a company called iControl that makes it easier to monitor homes while away and a soon-to-be-announced company that creates virtual worlds that one enters through the phone. (Kleiner made a pre-iFund investment in Pelago, Whrrl's parent, but follow-on financing will come from the iFund, Mr. Murphy said.)

Three companies — Gogii, Ngmoco and the unnamed company — are expected to begin selling products in the fall. IControl's applications are likely to come early next year.

The popularity of the App Store has spurred other investors and phone makers to advocate funds of their own. Research in Motion is expected to announce soon a fund for those developers who want to create applications for the BlackBerry. JLA Ventures, which is based in Canada, along with RBC Venture Partners, is co-managing the $150 million BlackBerry Partners Fund. Google announced a $10 million challenge for software using its Android operating system.

Investments in iFund companies can range from a modest $100,000 to $15 million. But on average, Kleiner has invested $5 million to $8 million in each of the five companies. Last January, for instance, Kleiner gave the founders of Jamdat Mobile (which was later acquired by Electronic Arts) $5 million to start Gogii, figuring that interactive gaming and social networking would be the biggest-selling categories for the iPhone.

Mr. Murphy said that Kleiner invested in these companies with an eye toward taking them public in seven to eight years. But some industry analysts are skeptical. Paul Kedrosky, a senior fellow at the Kauffman Foundation, which studies entrepreneurship, said a mobile software company would have to be sold for $90 million to $150 million after eight years for venture investors to earn an 18 percent compound annual rate of return on their $5 million investment. "Based on that size, you'd be the biggest mobile software company in the world," he said.

Mr. Murphy and his iFund collaborators are also coaches, teammates, recruiters and hand-holders. Recently, Mr. Murphy helped Gogii's executives schedule face-to-face meetings with seven advertising agencies to discuss ad possibilities for their mobile service. It allows users to point their phone at an object, click a button and learn about what the phone is pointed at. His fellow Kleiner partner, Bing Gordon, who was chief creative officer from 1998 to 2008 at Electronic Arts before he joined the venture fund, flies frequently to Los Angeles to consult with the founders on the service's design.

One of the iFund's newest investments is in Ngmoco, a game maker founded by Neil Young, a longtime Electronics Arts executive and a friend of Mr. Gordon. Mr. Young said Ngmoco, which received money from the iFund in July, planned to have several free and paid games on the iPhone this fall. "He's kind of like a producer," Mr. Young said of Mr. Murphy. "He didn't influence the direction, but he influenced the tactics."

When Mr. Murphy invested in Whrrl, which is based in Seattle, in November 2006, few people knew about the iPhone. It was during a series of brainstorming sessions last summer that Mr. Murphy and his partners, including the venture capitalist John Doerr, came up with the idea for their iPhone-centric fund. All were optimistic regarding prospects for growth of the mobile Web, and the iPhone looked to make that easier. After all, there are 3 billion mobile phones worldwide.

With devices getting more sophisticated and data speeds faster, Kleiner expects that more people will use their mobile phones the way they do computers — for games, shopping and watching video. "We finally saw the light at the end of the tunnel," Mr. Murphy said.

Mr. Murphy introduced Jeff Holden, the chief executive of the Seattle-based Pelago, to several developer relations executives at Apple earlier this year, which made it easier to get Whrrl quickly approved for the iPhone.

But while much of Whrrl's focus is on the iPhone, Mr. Holden said they were not barred from creating applications for other mobile phones as well. "We are not pigeonholed," he said. "Kleiner doesn't say you can only create things for the iPhone."

Mr. Murphy was born in Ann Arbor, Mich., and moved to Pittsburgh when he was 3 years old before hop-scotching around the country, living in Nashville, New York City, Santa Monica, Calif., and Underhill, Vt. He spent his last two years of high school in Paris, where he was "three-sport" athlete — soccer, rugby and tennis — which meant he traveled in Europe competing in athletic events.

"It gave me a different appreciation of how different people and cultures shape a way of thinking," he said.

He joined Kleiner shortly after graduating from business school and spent his days shadowing Mr. Doerr. The longtime venture capitalist was then actively involved with its investment in a little start-up named Google.

Did Mr. Murphy learn any lessons?

"If you focus on a really simple consumer product, that's better than worrying about what everyone else is doing," Mr. Murphy said. "They could have said, 'Let's be like Yahoo.' Instead they just focused on search as the killer app, saying 'Let's be the best at that.' "

Any of Mr. Murphy's companies could wish to be so lucky.

Banco Real - Bluetooth Marketing - Recordes mundiais

Neste post voltaremos para 2007, mas o assunto continua sendo Bluetooth Marketing, e o local o Brasil…

Para comemorar as festas de fim de ano, o Banco Real realizou uma ação que distribuía conteúdo via bluetooth. Existiam duas máquinas na sede do banco (na Avenida Paulista, em São Paulo, junto à exposição de Natal) que dispararam os seguintes conteúdos: mobile vídeo, ringtone e wallpaper.

A campanha teve duração de 36 dias e nesse período 57.332 pessoas foram atingidas, destas 14.925 baixaram o conteúdo. Uma taxa de 26% de conversão. Se esse número é bom? Recorde mundial na taxa de conversão em uma ação de bluetooth, que conta com aparelhos fixos. Parece muito bom .

Outro recorde mundial quebrado nessa ação foi o número de downloads a partir do disparo de uma única máquina, durante o período de uma hora: 102.

Coca-Cola em Beijing - Bluetooth Marketing

A Coca-Cola está utilizando o bluetooth marketing para distribuir conteúdo gratuito nas Olimpíadas de Beijing. Foram montadas centenas de "Bluetooth areas" ao redor dos estádios olímpicos, hotéis, restaurantes, cafés, clubes e ao longo de diversos locais de lazer em Beijing e Shanghai.

Este é um case grande. Investimento grande, anunciante gigante e evento maior ainda.

A decepção fica pelo conteúdo distribuído. Apesar de possuir centenas de pontos de bluetooth, a Coca-Cola irá distribuir apenas vídeos comerciais. Creio que perderam uma boa oportunidade para distribuir conteúdo da marca em outros formatos. ringtones e wallpapers, por exemplo.

Por se tratar de um evento da importância dos jogos olímpicos, Steve Chao, fundador e CEO da Pioco, empresa responsável pela ação, prevê uma taxa média de conversão impressionante "In previous campaigns, we've seen conversion rates closer to 35 percent. At events that prompt participants to enable their Bluetooth devices - as will be the case with many Olympic hotspot locations - we've seen conversion rates up to 65 percent."

Esta é a primeira vez que uma marca utiliza o bluetooth marketing em uma Olimpíada. É a Coca-Cola saindo na frente mais uma vez.

Fonte: Hit Search

Mobile Data Spend Grows, Thx 2 Txts

Mobile music and TV have far to go.

Text Messages Rule Mobile Ads

Simple ad formats reaching the widest audience

The US Hispanic Online Populations

One demographic, but multiple targets