Thursday 22 October 2009

NYT says cost of mobile app development going up and Mobile Marketing is the

"What Do All These Phone Apps Do? Mostly Marketing"

NYT had a some very interesting insights on mobile apps this month:
  1. The demand for mobile apps is driving up cost from $5.000 8 months ago to about$40.000 or more today
  2. Advertising apps are evolving from the early novelties like the zippo lighter to more advanced services such as the Kraft iFood Assistant
  3. No single kind of phone holds a big enough audience to attract many mass-market national brands.
  4. Utilities that people use repeatedly are the most effective.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/technology/05apps.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss

Wednesday 21 October 2009

Gartner's top 10 technologies include the cloud, mobile apps

"10) Mobile Applications. By year-end 2010, 1.2 billion people will carry handsets capable of rich, mobile commerce providing a rich environment for the convergence of mobility and the Web. There are already many thousands of applications for platforms such as the Apple iPhone, in spite of the limited market and need for unique coding. It may take a newer version that is designed to flexibly operate on both full PC and miniature systems, but if the operating system interface and processor architecture were identical, that enabling factor would create a huge turn upwards in mobile application availability."

Comments have ranged from "Mobile apps on the bottom of Gartner's top 10 list" and "Mobile apps going out of fashion" to "Mobile apps the next big thing". To our knowledge this is the first time Mobile applications have made it onto the list and the amount of attention mobile apps are getting this year despite only being used by about 5% of the population in Europe and US is amazing. Imagine what will happen when it hits 25%!

Read the full top 10 list on http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=530109

And read more comments

Friday 16 October 2009

Advertising to women on the iphone

According to mobile marketing firm Brand in Hand, female iPhone users are the worst demographic in terms of responding to mobile ads on the iPhone. See article by ReadWriteWeb http://ow.ly/15Vlkn

Just like the article suggests we think the solution is to offer great apps that are relevant for women. We also think that advertisers should consider other mobile platforms to target women as approximately 75% of iPhone users are still male (Comscore June 2009).

Return to this blog next week for some great examples of mobile applications targeted towards women!

Thursday 1 October 2009

Tech Media Invest 2009

We presented at the Tech Media Invest 2009 today but also thought we should share some of the insights from the conference. A lot of the discussions were around mobile applications even though Golden Gekko was the only pure mobile development company present. See http://www.e-unlimited.com/events/view.aspx?events_pages_id=1 for more information about the conference.

1. Mobile platform choice is difficult
3-6 months ago everyone was going for the iPhone as the primary platform and then expended to other platforms. More recently developers have started to question the impact of iPhone apps versus other platforms due to increasing competition.

2. iTunes appstore storefront has become a barrier
The difficulty for customers to find the apps they want / relevant apps on iTunes appstore is becoming a barrier. Despite this Apple has reached over 2 Bn downloads so question is whether this is a consumer or publisher issue? We think that it is currently mainly an issue for publishers but that it will become a limited factor for increased consumer activity in the coming months.

3. Openness is key
Media, developers and investors all believe that openness will win. This is somewhat strange considering that
a) The success of the iPhone is much thanks to the fact that it is not an open platform and continues to get the most media attention
b) Android is still far behind other platforms such as iPhone and Blackberry
c) Feedback about Symbian open initiative has not been as positive as Android

4. Business models are uncertain
Rupert Murdoch has made it clear that the time of “free” is over. Therefore it would seem that focus should have shifted to premium revenues. Generally this seems to be the case but consensus points to freemium as the golden answer.

5. Mobile Marketing is going from one hit wonders to a strategic marketing channel
Brands such as BMW, Coca Cola, Barclay’s are now moving from one-off campaigns to developing mobile platforms for future growth.

6. Apps and browsers will become seamless but when?
One interesting point that was made is that the browser is getting more and more functionality and integration with the phone but development is slow. Google has repeatedly stated that they believe browsing and not apps is the future of mobile but at the same time they refer to several of their online services as Google Apps despite the fact that they are being delivered through the browser? The difference will become more and more grey.

7. Branded apps are performing amazingly well
Speakers and panel members referred several times to branded apps as the killer mobile advertising service at the moment. iPint, BMW Z4 app, Barclays app, etc.

All in all an interesting day with lots of great new contacts!