This week was packed with mobile and start-up events and meet-ups. I attended Momo Boston’s event- great panel from uLocate, Google(Rich Miner, who is now heading up their new start-up investment fund), SkyHook, Enpocket(Now Nokia Advertising),and Apperian.
Ton of good discussions and data – here are some highlights:
• There are 25,000 iPhone apps on the iTunes stores (and counting). Google’s marketplace is nascent in comparison with 3,000 apps. The iPhone is now in over 80 countries – impressive! Apple launched a new web site counting the number of actual downloads from its store - downloads are very, very close to a billion! (Here’s the NYT blogpost where I found the link - - thanks, Jenna Wortham)
• As opposed to the iTunes’s process, Google does not vet apps uploaded to its store – it is counting on crowd ratings. This has got to be dangerous – there are a not of hackers who would love that challenge, I bet.
• Most of the app innovation is coming from North America, even though one new store provider, Nokia Ovi, is someone to watch – Nokia is the largest phone manufacturer in the world
• Key question asked was: how does an app get noticed? Or how does an app become a top 25/50/100 in the iTunes store? Evidently the jury is still out on this one but it seems that consumers in developing markets may be the right answer for a lot of brands.
• Another question: How do big brands deal with fragmentation? Apperian (full disclosure: I am working with them now) says big brands get their butts kicked by small developers – the Lose it app is very popular, so where is Weight Watchers? Very good point – inaction, big brands, may not be the smart reaction – by the time Gillette is ready we may be past shaving… That is all well – but the reality is that the iPhone and all the rest of the app stores are still a gamer utility. Well, at least until someone shakes the ground.
• Yet another question (I know it seems more questions were asked than answered – but then think early Internet days – it is refreshing we don’t hear some many grand predictions these days): What about the Enterprise? Android can become a work-flow tool, databases are moving into the cloud, computing is advancing, empowering out-of-office experiences, so it’ll happen. But unfortunately there are no good cross-platform tools t=yet.
• Note on SkyHook, which is a fascinating company providing location enablement – they made a deal with Apple to offer their technology to iPhone developers for free – hence we are seeing over 1,500 location-aware apps in the iTunes store. Besides GPS signals they use wi-fi to secure location – it turns out SkyHook has 500 reps mapping out wi-fi (much like Google's approach).
Next, must-attend Momo Boston event: April 27, 2009, Fairmont Copley Plaza, at 5:30 with featured speaker Governor Deval Patrick. A diverse set of mobile companies - Apperian, eInk, Geocade, Locale, Mobile Ed, Olin College, TripChill, Viximo, Valtus Mobile, will deliver rapid-fire, 5 min. presentations on their business models, apps, and products. Registration starts at 5:30 – click here to register.
Another great event, the Xconomy Xconomy Forum: The Future of Mobile Innovation in New England was sold out – a bunch of tweeted throughout the event – use #xconmobile to read about it.
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Showing posts with label iPhone app marketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label iPhone app marketing. Show all posts
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Monday, April 6, 2009
iPhone/ SmartPhone Apps: Data, Market Successes, What’s Next
You won’t be surprised if I told you that there are no established authorities on the subject (yet). There are no clear do's and don’ts. I came across an interesting industry report The Apps Store is Born: Smartphones Enable New Marketing and Advertising Opportunities Worldwide by David Chamberlain from In Stat. It goes for $2,495 unfortunately, but fortunately there are a few articles quoting stats from it.
Smartphone App Use Set to Quadruple by Michelle Megna is one of them. Chamberlain is projecting the number of devices supporting mobile applications to hit over 140 million by 2013. Even more intriguing is that mobile app-centric smartphones – such as the iPhone and Android-based handsets, will reach more than 30% of the global smartphone market. No wonder some established brands are entering the smart phone app markets will great apps. Take the Virtual Zippo Lighter, which got over 3 million iPhone downloads since last October. The app was developed by Moderati. According to TMC Net, most apps have a shelf life of thirty days in the Top 40, so Zippo’s top 40 position for the last five months make it really impressive. Why is the app so popular? It seems because it captures the “Zippo Encore Moment” and lets concert-goers customize its design. How did it get so popular? Well, this is a trickier question – my guess is, mostly word of month. It is easy to find the app in the app store, so it is easy to spread. If you don’t have a brand like Zippo, try embedding links to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, so people can easily promote your app. This is precisely what Smule did.
Zippo also did quite a bit of publicizing the app – they had a strong PR campaign, hitting legit app review outlets such as CNET, TMCNet, ZDNet, TechRepublic, and a lot of bloggers. Then Adweek picked it up. (According to AdWeek, most brand applications failed on Facebook because brands need to compete with “armies of scrappy developers building apps for nearly every conceivable need”. Coca-Cola, for example, is competing with a dozen apps, all spin-offs of the spin the bottle game Coke chose for its own app in January.)
Part of the problem is that most app are not that useful - according to Pinch Media, an iPhone analytics company, less than 5 percent of downloaded iPhone applications are kept longer than a month. You can’t market a flash in the pan – and if you tried, you would only get a flash in the pan adoption results.
I also connected with Mike Alvarez from Avantar - they have two popular apps - Showtime and Yellow Pages, which according to Mike have jointly got hundreds of thousands of downloads. Mike says a few techniques have helped him and his team promote the apps - banner swaps with other iPhone developers, reviews by legit iPhone review sites such as AppReview.com, AppCraver.com and TopTenReviews.com, as well as posting a press release for under $50 to PRMac. Check this list out as well -
9 Places To Publicize Your iPhone App (thanks for the tip to Kevin from ShopWatchBuy.com).
What’s next?
1. A lot more apps and a lot more competition – from scrappy developers to established brands, vying for our attention.
2. A lot more bloggers and media reviewing apps – and perhaps a new independent apps monitoring body that will help establish and regulate some meaningful measurement standards.
3. A lot more analytics – apps will come in with built-in analytics – it is a way to measure usefulness, adoption, snatches with the apps, and ultimately ROI.
4. A lot more mobile advertising – which of course will make the effectiveness or the usefulness factor of app go down.
5. More money behind marketing apps – no longer just the meeting ground for scrappy developers, apps and app stores will be serviced by a growing ecosystem – of brands, marketers, digital agencies, PR agencies, social media mavens, development shops, consulting companies. Yup, it will be more expensive to be successful, the barriers would be higher – except for the occasional brilliant app that will defy all laws.
Have more iPhone/smart phone marketing tips or thoughts? Leave me a comment or reach me on Twitter @sallyswimsalot
Scratch
Smartphone App Use Set to Quadruple by Michelle Megna is one of them. Chamberlain is projecting the number of devices supporting mobile applications to hit over 140 million by 2013. Even more intriguing is that mobile app-centric smartphones – such as the iPhone and Android-based handsets, will reach more than 30% of the global smartphone market. No wonder some established brands are entering the smart phone app markets will great apps. Take the Virtual Zippo Lighter, which got over 3 million iPhone downloads since last October. The app was developed by Moderati. According to TMC Net, most apps have a shelf life of thirty days in the Top 40, so Zippo’s top 40 position for the last five months make it really impressive. Why is the app so popular? It seems because it captures the “Zippo Encore Moment” and lets concert-goers customize its design. How did it get so popular? Well, this is a trickier question – my guess is, mostly word of month. It is easy to find the app in the app store, so it is easy to spread. If you don’t have a brand like Zippo, try embedding links to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, so people can easily promote your app. This is precisely what Smule did.
Zippo also did quite a bit of publicizing the app – they had a strong PR campaign, hitting legit app review outlets such as CNET, TMCNet, ZDNet, TechRepublic, and a lot of bloggers. Then Adweek picked it up. (According to AdWeek, most brand applications failed on Facebook because brands need to compete with “armies of scrappy developers building apps for nearly every conceivable need”. Coca-Cola, for example, is competing with a dozen apps, all spin-offs of the spin the bottle game Coke chose for its own app in January.)
Part of the problem is that most app are not that useful - according to Pinch Media, an iPhone analytics company, less than 5 percent of downloaded iPhone applications are kept longer than a month. You can’t market a flash in the pan – and if you tried, you would only get a flash in the pan adoption results.
I also connected with Mike Alvarez from Avantar - they have two popular apps - Showtime and Yellow Pages, which according to Mike have jointly got hundreds of thousands of downloads. Mike says a few techniques have helped him and his team promote the apps - banner swaps with other iPhone developers, reviews by legit iPhone review sites such as AppReview.com, AppCraver.com and TopTenReviews.com, as well as posting a press release for under $50 to PRMac. Check this list out as well -
9 Places To Publicize Your iPhone App (thanks for the tip to Kevin from ShopWatchBuy.com).
What’s next?
1. A lot more apps and a lot more competition – from scrappy developers to established brands, vying for our attention.
2. A lot more bloggers and media reviewing apps – and perhaps a new independent apps monitoring body that will help establish and regulate some meaningful measurement standards.
3. A lot more analytics – apps will come in with built-in analytics – it is a way to measure usefulness, adoption, snatches with the apps, and ultimately ROI.
4. A lot more mobile advertising – which of course will make the effectiveness or the usefulness factor of app go down.
5. More money behind marketing apps – no longer just the meeting ground for scrappy developers, apps and app stores will be serviced by a growing ecosystem – of brands, marketers, digital agencies, PR agencies, social media mavens, development shops, consulting companies. Yup, it will be more expensive to be successful, the barriers would be higher – except for the occasional brilliant app that will defy all laws.
Have more iPhone/smart phone marketing tips or thoughts? Leave me a comment or reach me on Twitter @sallyswimsalot
Scratch
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