In the latest installment, Apple today sued Motorola (NYSE: MMI) Mobility in an attempt to force the Google subsidiary to stop using its patents against Apple in Germany. Or more simply, Apple filed an American lawsuit to stop a German lawsuit. Got that?
This latest ripple in the smartphone sagas grows out of Motorola/Google’s decision to sue Apple over one of its German FRAND patents.
For the uninitiated, FRAND (Fair Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory) rules are used when a group of companies decide to create an industry-wide standard. To prevent one company in the industry group using a patent to extort the others, all the companies will agree that any patents related to the standard must be shared at a fair price.
In the Apple case, the FRAND patent at issue relates which to a broadband processor made by Qualcomm (NSDQ: QCOM) that Apple uses in the iPhone 4S and other devices.
Motorola claimed the Qualcomm chip infringes one its patents and briefly obtained an order to stop Apple from using the chips. That order was suspended and today it appears to have been overturned.
In the action filed today in San Diego, Apple seeks a declaration forbidding Motorola from suing over the Qualcomm patent in Germany. The company also wants to declare that Qualcomm has a license to the Motorola patent in question and that Motorola breached a contract when it sued Apple.
Here’s the complaint:
Apple Motorola_ San Diego _Germany_
Related
]]>With the debut of the “consumer preview” version of Windows 8 now expected later this month at Mobile World Congress, Microsoft’s Steven Sinofsky wrote an epic blog post Thursday on Windows 8 and ARM chips. After Microsoft introduced Windows 8 last year confusion rose over whether or not applications for the ARM versions of Windows 8 devices would be able to run in the legacy “Desktop” mode, and Sinofsky used the opportunity to explain why Microsoft included that Desktop mode on the ARM version of Windows.
“Some have suggested we might remove the desktop from WOA (Windows on ARM) in an effort to be pure, to break from the past, or to be more simplistic or expeditious in our approach. To us, giving up something useful that has little cost to customers was a compromise that we didn’t want to see in the evolution of PCs,” Sinofsky wrote.
But only Microsoft will be able to write applications for that Windows Desktop experience on ARM tablets and PCs: all other developers who want to write applications for Windows ARM devices will have to write them in the Metro style, which also means they’ll have to distribute those applications through Microsoft’s Windows Store. Windows-on-ARM devices will be able to access the legacy Desktop mode from their Metro “Start” menus, but the only things they’ll be able to do in that legacy Desktop mode is run a new version of Microsoft Office (Office 15) designed for touchscreen devices and manage files in the old familiar way.
It’s sort of the best of both worlds for Microsoft. This approach allows it to postpone the creation of a Metro-style of Microsoft Office—perhaps the most useful set of Windows applications—until a later date while encouraging those who want to target Windows 8 devices to focus on Metro.
Windows 8 devices that will run on Intel (NSDQ: INTC) and AMD’s chips will be able to run applications written for the legacy Desktop mode, but developers will be able to use the same development tools to create Metro-style user interfaces for devices using either Intel or ARM (the back-end code, of course, would need to target a particular chip). Given the trends in the computer market these days, focusing just on the Desktop user interface means you’ll be concentrating on the slow-growing portion of the market.
But this is a classic problem for Microsoft; during each technology transition it finds it very difficult to make a clean break from the past given the huge installed base of consumer and corporate applications that run on older technologies. Windows 8 on ARM is an important step forward in that regard, in that anyone who wants their app to run on those devices will have to suck it up and move forward at Microsoft’s speed because older applications written for Intel’s chips won’t run on the ARM devices.
But it seems that even Microsoft can’t do all the heavy lifting to move Office to Metro, at least not right away. That means users will have to switch back and forth between Metro and Desktop in order to access some of Microsoft’s most valuable applications, and that could be jarring, although the Office 15 preview shown off Thursday does indicate that Word and Excel, among others, have been tweaked to more closely resemble the Metro design language.
The company also said that its partners plan to release Windows-on-ARM devices at the same time Windows-on-Intel devices are released, dispelling some fears that the ARM version of Windows might be delayed due to the technical complexity of the project. Most industry observers think those devices are scheduled to arrive around the end of the year, perhaps in time for the holiday shopping season, but Microsoft hasn’t directly addressed a launch schedule.
Related
]]>You could argue that 2011 was the year of Android, given that the number of Android devices activated daily doubled from 350,000 to 700,000 between April and December 2011. Or perhaps it was the year of the mobile operating system war, with Nokia’s strategic shift to Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) Windows Phone OS. So what are the trends that will shape the mobile landscape in 2012? Let’s look at them in four categories: business, ecosystem, consumer expectations, and technology.
Mobile Is A Key Business Enabler
Professionals who hope to increase the sophistication of their mobile strategies will need to:
» Develop a scalable approach to delivering mobile services. Organizations will need a strategic approach to building and spreading institutional knowledge as well as governance for the development of mobile services. It will be increasingly important to define key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the success of mobile initiatives.
» Craft a mobile strategy that extends beyond phones. The emergence of tablets in particular will require a different approach than smartphones.
» Differentiate on the delivery rather than the content of mobile services. In 2012, “how” mobile services are delivered will differentiate them—not what they offer.
Success In The Mobile Ecosystems Will Elude Incumbents And Embrace Newcomers
Expect incumbents across a range of industries to look to hold or gain share as mobile revolutionizes their business. Key 2012 mobile ecosystem trends include:
» The emergence of mobile digital wallets and their ability to go beyond payment. New technologies are converting mobile handsets into digital wallets that combine not just payments but also receipts, vouchers, and loyalty schemes. As well as gaining the convenience of using the phone for payment, consumers will benefit from post-transaction elements such as location-based coupons and enhanced product information at the point of sale.
» The continuation of the smartphone OS bloodbath. If you need a native application, iOS and Android are “must-haves.” However, there is still room for a third major OS platform. Windows Phone is a good candidate, but Nokia (NYSE: NOK) and Microsoft will have to execute perfectly to stay in the game longer term, even with a larger portfolio of devices in 2012.
» Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) and Facebook becoming disruptive distribution forces. We don’t expect Amazon to succeed in replicating its Kindle approach in the crowded smartphone space—nor do we expect Facebook to invest in hardware. While their respective roles in the mobile space are still unclear, they could become disruptive forces that enable the distribution of products and services in new ways. Think about the use of social recommendations and personalization tools to facilitate the discovery of mobile services.
Consumer Expectations Will Be Both High And Conflicted
Professionals developing mobile services should take the following into account:
» Consumers will expect more contextual experiences. Phones will have the ability to collect a phenomenal amount of information about a consumer. They will offer new product and service opportunities, both on their own and when combined with others. Mobile phones will be the hub of consumer interaction—not only with other people but also with other services and machines, such as TVs, cars, and even medical devices like heart monitors. Physical products will increasingly ship with companion mobile services.
» But they will also worry about privacy and security. When the press realized that several players were tracking user location to improve services, there was a public outcry. Location is the least of it. The mobile phone will know everything about an individual. Consumer concerns here will center on: 1) the commercial use of this information, and 2) security issues, given the increased use of mobile devices for banking and buying.
Emerging Technologies Need Standards And Scale To Succeed
New native technologies will enable new services, products, and navigation techniques that are unimaginable on the PC. Professionals excited by these new technologies should note that:
» HTML5 has made phenomenal progress, but it is not a panacea. Adobe’s abandonment of Flash at the end of last year and support for HTML5 from heavyweights like Apple, Google (NSDQ: GOOG), Amazon, and Microsoft are elevating HTML5’s potential as a solution. Two key things continue to hold back this potential cure-all: 1) the experience and performance differences between native and web applications are noticeable, and 2) realizing the full benefits of HTML5 requires device- and OS-specific optimization.
» Near Field Communications (NFC) will fail to live up to the hype. We expect dozens of millions of NFC devices to ship from a wide variety of device makers — including, eventually, Apple (NSDQ: AAPL). We expect events like the 2012 Olympic Games in London to serve as marketing catalysts and help showcase the numerous potential uses of the technology. However, a poor out-of-the-box experience, minimal consumer education, and the lack of NFC infrastructure will inhibit growth.
» The cloud is still too congested or too thin. The consumerization of the enterprise IT notion of cloud computing is already a reality, with services such as Dropbox, Spotify, and Apple’s iCloud. The cloud will grow in importance, enabling cross-device services, but will be inhibited by limited network capacity and congestion.
Thomas Husson is a Principal Analyst at Forrester Research serving Consumer Product Strategy professionals. Follow him on Twitter at @Thomas_Husson
Related
]]>The Wall Street Journal, citing those all-knowing “people familiar with the matter,” said the DOJ might approve the deal as early as next week. Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has pledged to operate Motorola as a standalone company, and so the government’s main focus on Google has been whether or not it will use the patents acquired from Motorola in an offensive fashion.
Mobile rivals are already complaining that Google plans to uphold Motorola’s patent-licensing strategies on what have been deemed “essential” patents by asking for a royalty rate above what they consider fair as well as its willingness to leave the threat of an injunction on the table, which other companies have pledged not to employ for standards-essential patents. The report said regulators will watch closely to see how Google uses the Motorola patents post-acquisition.
And in related news, the DOJ plans to approve the $4.5 billion purchase of Nortel’s patent portfolio by a group of mobile companies that included Apple (NSDQ: AAPL), Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), and Research in Motion (NSDQ: RIMM), denying Google a chance to solidify its patent holdings for far less money than it will pay for Motorola. That event prompted Google to open talks with Motorola and to lash out at its rivals for playing the patent game more effectively than Google.
Related
]]>AllThingsD didn’t have an exact date, but said Apple has settled on the first week of March to introduce what most people are calling the iPad 3. Less is known about the device itself, but it’s expected to feature a more powerful processor and a higher-resolution display than its predecessor.
This will be the company’s first major launch event since Jobs’ death last October, as January’s iBooks launch event was a much smaller type of introduction. Apple continues to dominate the market for modern tablet computers, and despite upstarts like Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) finally getting traction for tablet other than the iPad, Apple sold 15 million of the current model in the fourth quarter, far more than any other company.
Related
]]>Sponsorship on the license-funded BBC in the UK is strictly forbidden. But the workaround, for Accenture, was to build a mobile app…
]]>Sponsorship on the license-funded BBC in the UK is strictly forbidden. But the workaround, for Accenture, was to build a mobile app…
Back in January, the RBS 6 Nations tournament anointed Accenture with “official technology partner” status. That’s a relatively new trend, but not entirely - 12 months ago, the Barclays Premier League gave Electronic Arts (NSDQ: ERTS) the same status.
To earn the status, technology partners must each provide a service to the tournament. EA provided match data. Accenture built the official Six Nations mobile application, with tournament news, live scores, squad lists, tables and video highlights.
Broadcasters are frequently bound, by the terms of their contracts with tournaments they air, to show the brands of these supposedly integral tournament partners. EA got to show its logo alongside live on-screen match facts on Sky Sports. Accenture’s logo is displayed along with rugby scores broadcast to by the BBC, Ireland’s RTE etc. Many other broadcasters do the same for many other sports.
What’s interesting here is Accenture is not just providing a private partner service to the tournament but, through the mobile app, is itself providing to the tournament’s end audience the same kind of content media consumers might expect to obtain from an organisation like the BBC
BBC Sport gave paidContent this statement…
“Accenture are the official data supplier for The Six Nations and as a technology company are responsible for providing the statistics for The Championships. This ‘facility’ is available to all partners/media covering the event.
“The relationship is between ‘Six Nations Rugby Limited’ and ‘Accenture’. In accordance with BBC and EBU guidelines (which provide for the crediting of official data processing and timing suppliers) the BBC credits Accenture as official data supplier on a number of occasions throughout the match.
“For television, a corporate logo accompanies a select number of statistical match graphics. This is common practice, industry wide, and should not be confused with reflections given to event title sponsors.”
We run this story in the interest of clarification and curiosity and not necessarily as a BBC-bashing piece.
How come the BBC are allowed to show the Accenture logo during the stats coverage in the rugby? #sixnations #England
— Toby Morris (@tobym20) February 4, 2012
]]>How did Accenture advertise on BBC Sport, when the Editorial Guidelines specifically prohibit it? More: mediauk.com/tv/discussions…
— James Cridland (@JamesCridland) February 4, 2012
In yet another case of the tricky line between sharing, mobile data, and transparency, Arun Thampi, a developer for Anideo, discovered Tuesday that Path was uploading the contact information of his iPhone address book when he created an account. Path’s intention was to make it easier for users to find friends using that information, but Thampi and several others found it “a little creepy” that the company felt entitled to the data in one’s personal address book without explicitly warning them first.
On Wednesday, Dave Morin, CEO and founder of Path, apologized (sort of) in saying “we are deeply sorry if you were uncomfortable with how our application used your phone contacts.” A new version of Path has been released that no longer uploads that data unless you explicitly choose to do so, and the data collected from current Path users has been deleted, he said in a blog post.
Once again, we see the dance that mobile apps tied to location and social networks have to do around show they handle of private information. Path’s misstep is just another signal that people are willing to share information with mobile service providers up to a certain point but they are not pleased when that sharing happens without their knowledge.
Related
]]>After an explosive 2011, in which seemingly everyone involved in the mobile industry sued their counterparts, 2012 is shaping up as more of a slog. As weary companies start to strongly consider patent licenses instead of patent trials, the notion of FRAND patents—patents essential to tech standards that are required to be licensed on a “fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory” basis—is becoming more important, and different people have different ideas concerning what it means to be fair.
As a result, Apple has asked the European Telecommunications Standards Institute to clarify exactly what royalty rates its members can seek on so-called FRAND patents, according to The Wall Street Journal. Concern has surfaced regarding a royalty proposal made by Motorola (NYSE: MMI) to Apple that some consider exceedingly high, although the exact details of that proposal were not made public.
Meanwhile, Google is planning to send a letter to standards bodies that makes clear its intention to follow FRAND principles with Motorola’s patents should it be allowed to acquire the handset maker, according to Bloomberg. Google needs Motorola’s patents to help fend off attacks against its Android partners, but its rivals have speculated that Google could be planning offensive moves as well.
Related
]]>The deal brings “thousands” of Viacom episodes to Prime Instant “over the next several months,” including MTV’s The Hills, Jersey Shore, The Hard Times of RJ Berger and several Real World episodes (what, no Teen Mom?); Comedy Central shows like Chappelle’s Show and The Sarah Silverman Program; and Nickelodeon episodes of iCarly, Dora the Explorer, SpongeBob SquarePants and Yo Gabba Gabba.
In Amazon’s Q4 earnings report, the company said it had 13,000 episodes available through Prime Instant Video, so the Viacom deal appears to add around 2,000 episodes.
The company also said that that in Q4 of 2011, “the number of Prime Instant Video streams increased nearly 300 percent” compared to Q3.
Since launching Prime Instant Video about a year ago, Amazon has added content from Disney-ABC, PBS, NBC, CBS, Sony (NYSE: SNE), Warner Bros. (NYSE: TWX) and Fox.
Related
]]>This is a significant deal for Facebook on two separate fronts:
—It ties Facebook up with one of the bigger companies in the area of mobile billing: Bango is the payments provider for RIM’s App World, which yesterday once again laid claim to being the second-most profitable app storefront after Apple’s—largely because of the fact that it has a strong business in paid apps and that those apps are billed directly to users’ mobile bills in 34 countries. RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) yesterday claimed that 13 percent of its App World developers earn in excess of $100,000, which is massive considering how many developers earn next to nothing.
In December last year, Bango also secured a deal with Amazon.
Like the Facebook announcement that deal provided no detail about what it was that Bango would do for the company—although that, too, could be an opportunity for Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) to build carrier billing into its mobile apps. A spokesperson contacted today declined to comment on the details of either the Amazon or Facebook deals, although she did confirm that Amazon was an active customer.
The use of carrier billing also begs another question: for what? That could point to Facebook offering richer mobile services on its web platform. The could include paid content apps or the ability to pay for other goods and services, perhaps linked up with location-based deal offerings. As the FT points out, that’s something that Bango itself started to promote, coincidentally just when news began to leak out of Facebook’s own HTML5 push, code-named “Project Spartan.”
It could also mean Bango working alongside or in place of other billing partners: Bango competes directly with Facebook partners Zong and Boku.
—The other significant side of Bango’s business is in the area of analytics for mobile web sites as well as apps. This is a service it already provides various high-profile publishers like CNN, Fox (NSDQ: NWS), and EA Mobile, among others—as well as to mobile ad agency AKQA—to help track how mobile content is used and consumed. That helps the publishers not only track what content “works” but also can be used to build profiles to sell advertising and marketing services.
If reports are true, that is another area where Facebook is going to have to start doing some serious tracking, too: the company is reportedly going to start inserting “sponsored stories” into mobile users’ feeds, which would represent Facebook’s first big foray into offering marketing services to brands since filing for its IPO last week—where it pointedly mentioned it had yet to start offering such revenue-generating services.
Facebook is holding an advertising confab at the end of this month—its first high-profile foray into wooing Madison Avenue—where it may well announce more details about how its mobile plans are progressing.
The other point to be made here is that it is interesting that Facebook is taking the road less traveled by companies like Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) and exploring routes to align itself with carriers as it expands what it does on mobile. It’s not the first time: Facebook has a whole swathe of non-smartphone users that can update their statuses by mobile; many of those feature phone Facebookers are using SMS, which also require carrier interconnections to operate.
Related
]]>The plants will remain operational now for “smartphone product customization.” The news comes amidst unconfirmed reports that the company is planning to curtail its Symbian lineup after the release of the next model.
Nokia (NYSE: NOK) says that the transfer will result in the loss of 4,000 jobs in total, and the reductions will take place through the end of 2012.
Nokia does not outline how much the move to Asia will mean in terms of money saved, but this is a decision that has been some time in the making: these were plants that were spared in the last round of cuts under CEO Stephen Elop.
Since then, Nokia has reported yet more declines in its smartphone shipments, mainly around its legacy Symbian platform. The company is now gradually moving to making more of its smartphone portfolio based on Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform.
Now, Nokia says that the move is being made to put the manufacturing bases closer to where the different components are being made for those smartphones. That is a move we have seen from many other companies—and was the subject of a series of stories recently concerning Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) in China and the role of Foxconn in that business.
The move to make these plants focused on customization, meanwhile, points to some focus that Nokia does seem to maintain on its software and services for its devices—a crucial part of the company’s differentiation as it moves more and more to a platform being used by its competitors as well. Others that make Windows Phone devices include Samsung and HTC.
The news comes amidst other reports about Nokia that claim the company is planning to curtail its Symbian lineup after the next model comes out.
Symbian is gradually being phased out for Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform, but Nokia had originally said it would support the OS until 2016, and that could still be the case even if it stopped making devices based on it. Nokia transferred the operation of Symbian to Accenture last year.
A spokesperson from Nokia told paidContent that the article was “speculative at best” and would not comment on device rumor or speculation:
“As we have previously said Symbian continues to be an important part of our portfolio and going forward it will play a more focused role as we accelerate our transition to Windows Phone,” he said. “We remain fully committed to the platform through 2016, which means on-going software support as we go forward.”
The company is currently rolling out an update to Symbian, Belle, and the devices remain popular in the Middle East, Russia and India, even as they have lost out to Android-based devices, Apple’s iPhone and even RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) in other markets.
Related
]]>Citing third-party data from Adobe (NSDQ: ADBE) and mDialog, NBC says 2,105,441 unique users in the U.S. streamed the game on either NBCSports.com, NFL.com or through the NFL Mobile channel that’s available to Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ) subscribers.
NBC also said that 78.6 million total minutes of game coverage were streamed and that 1.83 million game clips and Super Bowl ads were viewed digitally. CBS’ coverage of the NCAA’s “March Madness” men’s basketball tournament actually recorded more than 3 million digital viewers for individual-day of coverage last spring. But no single game came close to the 2.1 million mark.
Although it was the first time the Super Bowl has been streamed, NBC routinely streams its Sunday Night regular-season NFL coverage, which averages around 300,000 unique viewers, the network said.
Prior to the game, sports buyers for several large media agencies told us they were reluctant to spend a mid-six-figure sums for Super Bowl digital advertising time, noting that they were concerned that the game wouldn’t attract a big viewership number. This is appointment viewing, they noted, the kind of game for which fans go to viewing parties and watch the game on a big-screen TV.
Sunday’s numbers might cause them to reconsider future digital buys for big sports events.
Related
]]>Google announced the new browser in a blog post Tuesday. It’s available only for Android devices running Android 4.0, also known as Ice Cream Sandwich.
Ever since Android was released Google has used a different code base for the browser at the heart of Android, although both Android’s browser and Chrome are based on the Webkit open-source platform that powers almost all mobile browsers these days. But Android’s browser was not considered as agile or stable as others in the Webkit family, while Google’s Chrome browser has been steadily winning converts on the PC.
It will probably take a while before Chrome on Android turns into the default browser, however, given the beta nature of the product and the fact that virtually everyone using Android is running an older version of the operating system. In an interview with AllThingsD, Chrome leader Sundar Pichai confirmed that Chrome will take over as the default browser on Android eventually.
That could mean trouble for companies like MoboTap, which develops the Dolphin browser as an Android browsing alternative. The majority of Dolphin users are on Android, and they’re the type of users that want a more powerful and stable browser: something that Chrome for Android might provide.
So what now becomes of Chrome OS, Google’s bid to redefine the computer as existing entirely within the browser? Google didn’t comment on that project in a few of the interviews it granted to discuss Chrome for Android, but Chrome OS has been a clear disappointment ever since it was announced, with very few people adopting Chromebooks as interest in the netbook concept has plummeted alongside rising interest in tablets.
Here’s a video explaining the features of the new browser:
Related
]]>It all started with a report from last weekend, penned by a developer on the Touch Arcade forums, alleged that that some app publishers are using download bots to boost their rankings.
The services, it said, are being offered by third parties who will give your app the download bot treatment for as little as $5,000, and that many apps in the top rankings are using them already—pictured here. Some were also offering services to place favorable reviews on apps.
While Apple yesterday at first issued a “no comment” to paidContent when asked about it yesterday, overnight the company changed its tune and posted the following on its developer site, cautioning developers against manipulating rankings on its charts.
Notably, it doesn’t mention download bots specifically, but what it does do is suggest that the practice of using them, and any other services that inflate an app’s standing, will get that app the boot:
Adhering to Guidelines on Third-Party Marketing Services
Once you build a great app, you want everyone to know about it. However, when you promote your app, you should avoid using services that advertise or guarantee top placement in App Store charts. Even if you are not personally engaged in manipulating App Store chart rankings or user reviews, employing services that do so on your behalf may result in the loss of your Apple Developer Program membership. Get helpful tips and resources on marketing your apps the right way from the App Store Resource Center.
The question is, however, how hard it will be to substantiate who, exactly, uses these kinds of services, and who is ultimately culpable for how marketing is implemented.
One of the bigger app developers named in the original report, CrowdStar, spoke up in the Touch Arcade forum comments twice. With the name of the company offering the service redacted in the original report, the company never firmly denied (or confirmed) whether they used that marketing company’s services, but it did deny creating or using “farms or bots for downloads or reviews.”
Later, co-founder and CEO Peter Relan later told paidContent in an email that his company allocates “significant six- and seven-figure budgets on advertising through channels such as iAds, Flurry, Chartboost and many others, and also do direct developer cross-promotion partnerships.”
But he also admitted that some of this is slightly out of its control (the italics are mine): “Ad networks keep their ad partner information confidential, but we hope that none of the partners ever use farms or bots. If there are policy issues identified by the mobile platform, ad networks should adapt… We ask all our ad partners to uphold platform policies and stay abreast of changes.”
He also said that CrowdStar has had to resort to terminating relationships with marketers who cross the line only once before. “We found that an ad partner could not satisfy our queries about bots and we stopped using the partner,” he wrote.
It remains to be seen whether Apple will actually start to take down apps that it deems to have used these tools—and how, exactly, it will be able to track that the practice.
It’s also worth wondering how and if Apple will go after the numerous companies offering these services.
One that I contacted (as a would-be potential customer), says that his services to add reviews and ratings to apps range in price from $99 to $499; he also offers 100 iTunes accounts for $499 to be used for “data entry” and potentially other services, like downloads. He’s just one of many, a developer told me.
The discovery issue is a thorny one for the world of apps, and with the total number of apps now standing at over 1 million, that problem’s only growing. App stores like Apple’s are becoming increasingly harder to navigate and for users to discover apps, and some developers will be looking for any opportunity they can to game that situation.
There have been some examples of other practices that result in boosting downloads—namely Tapjoy offering users free credits in a game in exchange for downloading another, which Apple also forbade—although this was a much more open system, never hiding what it was doing, and was arguably was also good for app discovery and advertising revenues.
Related
]]>On a wider-market level, there is good reason for RIM to be hosting a developer conference in Europe: it’s a market where it has had some mixed success of late, but that includes some key wins: data from GfK last week indicated that, in fact, BlackBerry is the most-purchased device brand at the moment in the UK. (Others say Android was the most popular, and still others claim the iPhone ran away with the market.) Thorsten Heins, in his keynote today, noted that 65 percent of the population of Europe, Middle East and Africa are still using feature phones. And that, despite everything, still spells opportunity for RIM.
RIM today said that it now has 60,000 apps in its App World applications storefront—still miniscule compared to the millions that live collectively on the Android Market and Apple’s App Store—but a significant improvement on the 17,000 that were in App World last January. Collectively, the store has seen 2 billion downloads as of last month, with 6 million downloads per day.
The company’s VP of developer relations, Alec Saunders, also repeated a claim we’ve heard before from the company: after Apple (NSDQ: AAPL), AppWorld is the “most profitable” of mobile platforms. This is based on the company claiming to have more paid downloads than Android’s Market, where the vast majority of popular apps are free to download. Part of RIM’s approach has been to enable carrier billing to pay for app downloads—meaning that the apps get charged directly to a users’ bill. That is something that is still nascent on the Market. (Apple handles billing itself via iTunes.) RIM says that it has now enabled carrier billing in 34 different countries
What’s interesting is that Saunders also spelled out a bit of detail on how much money developers are making on the platform: apparently, 13 percent of all app publishers have made $100,000 or more through AppWorld. That detail sparked off some responses:
“On the other platforms, virtually no one covers their investment as anything more than a hobby,” one developer, Matt Baxter-Reynolds, tweeted to me earlier. “That metric is just not believable.” That kind of thinking underscores the idea that apps and app stores are really just there to drive more stickiness to a platform and encourage more hardware sales.
But another raised the point that in fact RIM most likely attracts a different kind of app maker than those who have swarmed to iOS and Android. “I’d say [that is] reasonable,” noted another developer, Shaun Austin. “BB doesn’t seem a platform as likely to attract hobbyists in the way Android/iOS does.”
Of the apps that are selling best, four out of the top 10 on App World are games for the PlayBook tablet, RIM said. You can read that as a vote for engagement for a tablet that has been less than successful against the iPad and Android-based tablet makers.
Last week, RIM released an updated SDK for the BBM Social Platform, a newish area the company has been exploring, leveraging the wide usage it already has for its BlackBerry Messenger service. Today it noted that it now has 50 million people engaging on that platform through various apps, with the most-used of them being the BlackBerry version of Wikitude, an augmented-reality search app.
Looking ahead, it’s products like the BBM Social Platform that are perhaps where RIM should be putting more of its focus: it is, after all, an experience that is unique to RIM and helps set it apart from other handset makers. The company is gearing up for two significant platform updates in the months ahead, with BlackBerry 10 for handsets and PlayBook 2.0 for the tablet, and all eyes will be on how dynamic and easy these will be to use in creating services. RIM has already said that it will be looking for close integration of the BBM Social Platform with BlackBerry 10, which will the see the company doing more in social gaming on the OS.
Related
]]>The staff attorney for the International Trade Commission plans to recommend to the judge overseeing the case that Barnes & Noble did not infringe Microsoft’s mobile patents with the Nook, according to a report by Bloomberg. This is an extremely preliminary development: the judge overseeing the case can decide whatever he likes when he issues his ruling in April, and that decision can be further appealed to a panel of ITC judges.
But the ITC, while a speedier venue for patent rulings than the court system, has not really rewarded patent holders seeking infringement rulings. Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) was able to get a final ruling against HTC, but for a minor piece of its smartphones that HTC has already said it can work around. Microsoft was able to get a preliminary ruling against Motorola (NYSE: MMI), but on only one of the seven patents it wanted to assert against Motorola.
Related
]]>StatCounter’s figure, which does not include tablet usage, is still nearly double the mobile figure from 2010, when mobile devices accounted for 4.3 percent of internet usage. In 2009, mobiles accounted for only 1.6 percent of visits. It also comes as internet access via desktop PCs appears to be on the wane:
Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Mobile vs. Desktop Market Share
Yet even given the growth in mobile, these still-low figures also go some way to explaining why certain businesses, like mobile advertising, are still not the money spinners you would expect them to be: the usage volumes are just simply not there yet.
StatCounter also provided some numbers on which handset makers are bringing in the most internet usage country-by-country. Nokia (NYSE: NOK)—which, despite its many declines over several quarters, has managed to remain the world’s biggest smartphone maker—is the global leader in terms of internet access via mobile devices. That is partly because it is strong in those countries where users may be opting for phones instead of PCs to go online, such as China and India.
It will be interesting to see whether Nokia can hold on to that lead, both in internet usage and in smartphone leadership given its switch to Windows Phone for its smartphones—especially if you believe reports that Nokia is planning to discontinue Symbian after the development of one more device. Symbian is currently the company’s best-selling platform and although it has now been outsourced to Accenture, Nokia has said it would remain committed to it until 2016.
Apple (NSDQ: AAPL), which NPD earlier today noted is the most popular vendor in terms of smartphone sales in the U.S., is also leading in mobile internet usage in the U.S., as well as the UK, markets where it has also performed very strongly in terms of sales. Worldwide, RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) appears to be taking a nosedive at the moment. You can see other country-specific vendor rankings in the embedded table here:
Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Mobile Vendor (Beta) Market Share
Related
]]>The company is gearing up to start inserting “featured stories” into people’s mobile feeds—effectively, marketing-led posts—which could start appearing as soon as early March. The date and news of the launch comes from the FT, which cites several people familiar with Facebook’s planning as its source.
Since filing its S-1 for an initial public offering last week, there has been a lot of speculation on how, exactly, mobile will fit into Facebook’s money-making picture longer term. The company was very sober in its description of its mobile business—usage is growing faster than even desktop engagement, but there’s no money in that growth yet, it admitted.
That was something of a bum note in a document that otherwise dazzles with its growth story to date.
If the FT report is true, it could mark the first step in Facebook’s strategy to change that and start to make marketing dollars out of its 425-million active mobile users, and take a portion of a mobile ad market that is going to top $2 billion in the U.S. alone this year.
Facebook still has a long way to go before its mobile presence—via the mobile web and apps—is a mirror, or even enhanced, version of what it offers on the desktop. However, it does look like there may be also some developments underfoot there as well, in the form of app buttons appearing on Facebook’s mobile web site.
Meanwhile, the news of “featured stories” appears to be a development on a story from last week, which quoted Paul Gelb, head of mobile for agency Razorfish, saying that his company was trialling rich-media mobile advertising with Facebook.
Facebook may well be looking into more classic display ads for its mobile interfaces, but in any event Gelb later clarified that he was referring to “rich media featured stories”, not ads.
But if featured stories are what are in play here, Facebook gave nothing away in its own statement to paidContent: “We want to clarify that we are not working with any agency to create paid ads on our mobile platform,” a spokesperson said in an email.
Even so, the past few days are not the first time that the subject of Facebook mobile sponsored stories have come up: in December, Bloomberg also noted that Facebook would launch such a service in March 2012.
Facebook has already taken over in markets like the U.S. and UK in terms of having the biggest share of revenues in online display ads, so it seems like a no-brainer that it would take that pole position into the mobile sphere. However, issues over privacy, and the basic lack of real estate on a mobile screen have been some of the gating factors in Facebook taking up the mobile marketing opportunity more aggressively.
When Carolyn Everson, Facebook’s global VP of marketing solutions, spoke at paidContent’s Advertising conference in September 2011, she highlighted Facebook’s caution in this mobile:
“We are holding ourselves to as high a standard as possible on mobile,” she said. “I don’t rule mobile out, but we are working hard to figure out what the right model is. We haven’t figured that out yet.”
As we noted at the time, check-in deals have been the one exception to that so far: when a user is in a location where Facebook can deliver a relevant offer, those deals are pushed to users. But if that has driven revenues to Facebook, it was not enough to merit a mention in the S-1 form.
Related
]]>]]>
On Sunday, marketers of social TV apps – which typically blend social-network interaction and live-TV viewing—expect to engage more users for a single event than ever before. And from Coke to Pepsi to General Motors, social TV companies including GetGlue, IntoNow, Shazam and Miso will be working with a number of major brands.
But for all the hoopla surrounding social TV this year, a lot of the second-screen campaigns amount to low-cost experimentation. “For us, [campaigns like the Super Bowl] continue to be essentially pilot projects, and not so much about the money involved,” said Alex Iskold, president and CEO of social TV company GetGlue, a startup that will be sponsored by PepsiCo this weekend. “Our No. 1 objective right now is building our network and our user base. We’re learning how to monetize GetGlue and what advertisers want.” Industry-wide, Iskold said brand-commitments for social TV Super Bowl activity this weekend will typically range in the low six-figures.
Super Bowl watchers will be using their second—and maybe even third—screens to, of course, text, Tweet, Facebook and even email. Marketers, meanwhile, will be trying entice users of the social TV apps to download discount offers, enter sweepstakes, vote on their favorite ads and buy music, among other actions.
Adam Cahan, founder of social TV app IntoNow, purchased last year by Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) for around $30 million, said it can be hard to gauge the purchase price of a second-screen sponsorship. A typical brand buy-in for his platform, he explained, will often also include elements across myriad other Yahoo platforms. “The typical buy can be a six-figure buy, but generally speaking, it’s part of large-scale packages in which the advertiser is getting multiple consumer experiences,” said Cahan, whose company is also working with Pepsi this weekend.
So what’s the timeline to monetization? “We are working on mapping that out now, but for it to scale and turn into a real business, we will need to grow our user base at least 10 to 20 times the amount we’re at now,” Iskold said. Currently, GetGlue says it has about 2 million users. “It is hard to say how long that will take, but we are hoping to cross 5 million users by the end of this year,” he added.
With big brands coughing up, on average, $3.5 million for a 30-second Super Bowl commercial this weekend, Iskold said they’re “not yet eager to spend TV-like dollars on the social media.” “We’re looking to digital for a more meaningful way to engage with the consumer one on one,” Pepsi Max brand team executive Sam Duboff told us.
Iskold added: “Everyone agrees this is valuable. We’re just trying to figure out how much value it has.”
For operators like Iskold, the value the Super Bowl represents is more about user-base building. He said his company is expecting have its highest usage ever this weekend, with more than 50,000 GetGlue users. In last year’s Super Bowl, GetGlue couldn’t handle its traffic volume; this year, the company has doubled its number of servers.
Related
]]>To be sure, the former CEOs of Research in Motion (NSDQ: RIMM) would gladly trade places with Page, who last year regained control of the company he founded and brought new focus, and Brin, who is probably living out an alpha geek’s dream by working on Google’s most secret and far-out projects. But even since Michigan—Page’s alma mater—beat Virginia Tech in the January 3rd Sugar Bowl, not much has gone right for Google.
A quick recap:
Tarnished Chrome: Google was caught participating in a “sponsored post” scheme involving advertising for its Chrome browser, in which bloggers were paid to write favorable reviews of the browser that in some cases included the Web page for Chrome. It blamed outside agencies and reduced the rank value for the Chrome Web page, as buying links through ad campaigns is a no-no for everyone else.
When Google+ Is A Minus: Google managed to out-CES CES with its breathtaking decision to incorporate Google+ pages directly and prominently into its crown jewel: search results. The Search Plus Your World rollout generated a huge controversy that overshadowed any one single event that happened that week in Las Vegas, troubling both internal employees and former Googlers unable to recognize a company that would alter its search results to favor links to a half-baked social network.
Caught Red-Handed: After a local-business directory in Kenya noticed that some of its customers were calling it for support on building Web sites—a product the company didn’t offer—Mocality set a trap for Google employees who were systematically accessing its database and attempting to poach its customers. A “mortified” Google fired its country manager for Kenya and apologized.
A Short Quarter: Google missed financial analysts’ expectations for its fourth quarter, and observers began to wonder if the cash machine that is Google’s AdWords and AdSense had started to wane. Google’s stock has fallen nearly 7 percent since those earnings were released amid a rise in the Nasdaq over the same period.
Dealing Drugs: Google had already admitted to improper behavior involving ads for drugs sold by rogue pharmacies, but details emerged from a Wall Street Journal (NSDQ: NWS) report in January that showed Page was aware of the fact that Google ad executives helped those operating such pharmacies circumvent review policies designed to exclude such ads.
Transparently Murky: In a public-relations decision borrowed from a desperate company’s playbook, Google chose to reveal sweeping changes to its privacy policy at almost the exact same time that Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) released its fourth-quarter financial results on schedule. While the tech press was pretty busy dealing with the impact of Apple’s surreal quarter, Congress was not, and Google was forced to explain its conduct. The company said the changes were designed to simplify policies across multiple products, but they also had the effect of letting Google see your online activity across a host of its products—from Gmail to YouTube, Google+ to search—and form an aggregated picture of your potential buying habits.
When It Rains: In a sign of just how far Google has fallen in many people’s estimation, an obscure change to a technical policy involving the Galaxy Nexus phone—the best Android device yet released—briefly convinced many that Google was removing that device from the special Nexus category, which allows people owning those phones to receive software updates unencumbered by their wireless carrier. Google exacerbated the problem by botching its initial public-relations response, and outrage flew at the speed of Twitter before it was able to clarify that nothing had changed from a consumer’s perspective.
Meanwhile, Google’s biggest rivals are living it up.
Facebook is the new darling of the tech and investment communities following its plans to file for what will probably be the biggest initial public offering ever raised by a tech company. Tim Cook is attempting to prove he can run Apple without Steve Jobs, and has taken a big step with a huge quarter and a new interest in charitable giving. Microsoft’s collaboration with Nokia (NYSE: NOK) probably won the week at CES, it is preparing to launch a new operating system that will help bridge the chasm between the company’s PC era and what it hopes is its mobile era and it gleefully jumped all over Google’s missteps.
Google’s unlikely to have a month like that again, this year anyway. But it’s kind of shocking to contemplate just how uneasy the company has made a lot of people by its decisions around social search and privacy. Perhaps more troubling, its responses to those big questions have been tone-deaf and almost defiant, traits one did not associate with Google until recently.
January could easily be a blip in the long run for Google. The economy seems to be improving, which could boost search advertising spending. Android remains a vital part of the mobile story, and Apple could have a hard time sustaining the pent-up demand for the iPhone 4S (it would be unfair to expect gains like that every quarter). And if Google+ really does turn into a service on par with Facebook or Twitter, Google could have both pieces of the modern online data puzzle—search and social—at its disposal.
So why then do many people I talk to about Google—both tech insiders and regular Joes at the bar—feel uneasy? Maybe it’s because a lot of those people finally realized in January that Google has turned into a conventional company—one that pushes the line wherever possible to maximize revenue and profit even at the expense of users and customers—something it swore it would never become.
Once you’ve gone down that road, it’s pretty hard to go back, and all the driverless cars and mysterious entertainment devices in the world won’t necessarily help.
Related
]]>