Well we did see the next generation, but maybe it isn’t as significant of a jump from the current generation as many wanted. The iPhone 4S is almost exactly the same form factor as it’s predecessor, but the emphasis from Apple has been made on what’s inside as apposed to some beautiful new aesthetic.

Now I have seen some ridiculous comments made on Twitter and blogs that I would like to address first. Firstly, the insinuation that this is ‘Tim Cook’s fault’ is nonsense. This handset would have been in planning for a LONG time, and Steve Jobs would have been well involved in it’s development. This handset is no accident or slip up from Apple. Its a conscious decision! Secondly, the claim that Steve Jobs quit because he was too embarrassed about this iPhone launch is utter utter bollocks. Seriously.

Anyway, so Apple launch the 4S and not the 5. Why is this do we think? Well here is what I think.

Apple is well aware of what is happening in the smartphone market. Android has demonstrated that smartphones are no longer the niche proposition only available as toys for the affluent consumer. EVERYONE now wants touch screens, app stores and decent mobile web browsing. Smartphones will soon become the mass market proposition, and handset manufacturers will be challenged to produce the next generation of ‘super’ smartphones to re-create the divide.

So how does Apple adapt to this environment? They have the likes of HTC and Samsung snapping at their heels with increasingly great hardware, and brilliant exploitation of the Android platform. Well let us not forget that the iPhone 4 continues to be the world’s best smartphone, that still has nothing getting too close to make Apple uncomfortable.

With handset upgrades more often than not dictated by the network operator/carrier, the 18-24 month cycle is becoming increasingly common around the world. Now this isn’t a major worry for Apple, who never struggle shifting handsets, but surely their sales could improve even more if they aligned themselves with the natural renewal cycle? Makes sense to me.

Alongside this, many people touted an iPhone ‘Lite/Nano’ which would be a cheaper version to appeal to the mass market. Well ya know what, Apple will NEVER release a cheaper product, when they can extend the shelf life of their preceding products. The iPhone 3GS is a fantastic handset, supporting a decent version of iOS. Now that the gap doesn’t seem as large between itself and the iPhone 4S, the 3GS suddenly becomes a valid, affordable alternative iPhone. There is your iPhone ‘Lite’ right here. I have seen it here in the UK for free on a £15 a month contract. How much more affordable and mass market do you want?!

So although the tech press and pundits aren’t happy, the people are. And regardless of who moans and complains, people will talk with their feet and their wallets. I personally believe the iPhone 5 is ready and waiting. NFC, wallet and all. But is the consumer ready for it yet? No. Apple will wait for the rest of the industry to show its hand before sending it to market. You just watch.

The mind still boggles at how people can moan about a phone which now essentially makes your camera redundant, and GIVES you a personal assistant. Demanding bunch aren’t we…

But for mobile applications, as one of the youngest mainstream media, success has yet to be truly be defined. For games developers it is ‘relatively’ simple. Downloads equal revenue, and ultimately, profit (although not necessarily sustainable). But what for brands? Many brands have launched themselves into the app foray without the slightest consideration for what they want to achieve. Downloads is often banded around as an indicative measure of success, but what do downloads really show?

Well I have taken it upon myself to explore this and many other success metrics for mobile apps, hopefully with a view to enlightening an industry which in my eyes, is being tarnished by applications without success metrics defined, and thus affecting the quality of the ouput. I have established 2 core categories; primary and secondary.

Primary metrics

1. Frequency of visits – As with all of these metrics, frequency does not just mean ‘as many/much as possible’. But dependant upon the use case of your application, frequency may be related to ‘times a day’ or even ‘time of day’. If your application is a utility which you expect people to use every day before they go to work, success may be defined as ’5 visits per working week’. Alternatively, your app may focus on targeting a specific activity which happens infrequently throughout a month, but you want to encourage this activity to occur more frequently using the application. This is where this ties into the next metric.
2. Length of engagement per visit – So how long do you expect people to use your application for per visit? As long as possible I am sure, but does a longer engagement translate to success? Smartphone owners spend on average 45 minutes a day within apps, so how much of that time do you want to capture? The thing is, applications serve a variety of purposes, but roughly speaking, they are either used to save time, or waste time. If your app has been designed to save time, you will judge your success on shorter engagement times, whereas for apps designed to waste time, you would more than likely want to see people spending a much longer time with your content.
3. Active users – Combine frequency of visits and length of engagement per visit, and you land upon this ‘uber-metric’. Active users are your ultimate sweet spot. These are the people using your application exactly as you wish for it to be used. And whether that means less than 30 seconds every day, or 45 minutes once a month, this engagement is real success. With this particular metric however, you cannot pass judgement until a good few months after it has launched. As research has shown, between 20-30 days after an app has been downloaded, the number of people actually using your application can drop as low as 5%. So just because you have a lot of active users within the first few days, sustaining this is what really counts. In the long run, this could become DAUs (Daily) or MAUs (Monthly), dependant upon what your app intends to achieve.

Purchases worth tens of thousands of pounds; in just a simple click via their mobile.

Along with Amazon (who have both an iPhone application and a mobile website), they make up 70% of m-commerce transactions worldwide. All this can be attributed to taking the consideration to prepare and design a dedicated mobile site, rather than optimising the desktop site, in order to leverage the existing web infrastructure, and have a process and user flow that is cohesive between the platforms. Of course this is supported by a seamless payment process and other factors, but the importance of usability should not be underestimated.

But what makes m-commerce such a viable solution and/or extension to current commerce activity?

• Convenience – Mobile creates the opportunity to shop without hitting the high street, and from the comfort of your sofa, the train or your walk in the park.
• Accessibility – Should you decide to do your walk in the park at 3am in the morning, you can rely on the fact that the m-commerce store will still be open!
• Ease of payment – Whether it’s an integrated account with your MNO (mobile network operator), or saved account details, it is relatively easy to pay for your goods too!
• Location aware – Should you not want the hassle of entering delivery details if not saved, there is the capacity to locate your local outlet and pick up your items yourself.

However, although the potential for m-commerce is clear, there remain several key challenges before it is adopted mainstream.
The main issue (at the moment anyway) is the iPhone obsession. Now I do not want this to turn into yet ANOTHER Carl Martin iPhone rant, because it certainly is not that (hell I am an iPhone owner for crying out loud!). However, businesses are employing the wrong mobile strategy and not even considering the mobile web first. iPhone users may be more comfortable with making transactions, have greater disposable income and have better functionality to facilitate the process, but more often than not, the target market is not predominantly using the handset.

A good example of looking at handset usage is Ticketmaster (US). After recognising a siginifcant amount of traffic arriving on their site via mobile, they built a dedicated mobile site (although significantly lacking in design!). After its continued success, it opted to develop a Blackberry application because it has the largest market share in the US (46% in 2008).

But returning to British shores, 17% of Britons are willing to buy products and services through their phones, according to a survey of 1,000 UK adults in 2008, and this will no doubt have improved since the app store age, yet I can assure you that 17% are not all iPhone users! Especially considering iPhone market share in the UK is only 4%.

If you want to engage with your regular customers and attract a new consumer base, you need to fundamentally understand not only the ways in which they currently interact with your brand, but their personal values and issues relating to mobile transactions. A lot of consumers continue to be intimidated by the mobile web, never mind making a purchase decision using it.

Although applications may provide the most personable and relatable experience, this can severely segment your consumer base and isolate those who wish to shop via mobile. The best advice you can ever be offered when looking into the m-commerce arena is to consider the following:

• Does it have a broad reach?
• Is it targeted to your demographic?
• Is it an engaging experience for the user?
• Is the transactional process smooth and easy to use?

Without these considerations, you are setting up for a fall. Take heed of the example of eBay and Amazon, and look into the mobile web before taking the application route. And if you are worried that a mobile website may not look as good as an application, or even work as well as an application, take a look at the Interflora website on your mobile device. You may be very pleasantly surprised! My final two hints:

• More often than not, people will try your mobile site first. If it isn’t available or is terrible, they will look to their app store. This is an indication of the way YOU should be thinking.
• Take a look at your main desktop sites web stats and take a look at who is visiting your site and via which mobile browser. This is a very basic level way of judging who is trying to access your site on the move.

‘Mobile is very much a part of our marketing priorities, and getting our brand associated with mobile is at the core to our strategy”

Visa Europe

Thanks for that Visa, but so what?

Well there are 1 billion PCs in the world today, 950 million of which are connected to the internet. There are 1.7 billion credit cards with spending power, which has in recent years made a dramatic shift to the online market place.

This is all redundant when you realise that there are 3.4 billion unique mobile users in the world today, with 29% of worldwide internet access made exclusively on these devices, whereas 25% is exclusively made on PC’s.

When people talk about mobile in terms of marketing, it’s often the same images that pop into their head. Spammy unsolicited SMS from your local gym telling you to make the most of their discount sign up fees? Or an iPhone application that imitates drinking a pint of lager?!

The fact of the matter is that mobile creates opportunities that many other media channels cannot. A world of rich, interactive, targeted, location aware content is waiting to be exploited, and despite the 1000s of mobile campaigns already launched, the market remains unsaturated.

Mobile creates a whole new level of engagement with its consumers, and can integrate seamlessly with other digital and even traditional media channels for the optimum effect.

Without a shadow of a doubt, the past 12 months has been dominated by the mobile application. The iPhone App Store has clocked up over 3 Billion application downloads since it’s unveiling, landing on one of 85 Million Apple iPhone and iPod Touch devices worldwide.

Mobile apps now allow you to do everything from decide who makes the tea, to start the engine of your car. The market is becoming littered with financial services apps that allow you to find your nearest ATM, cash a cheque and pay your bills.

Imagine placing this power in the hands of your consumers. A device that allows them to do everything they could do via a branch or call centre. It’s not just the money making power of mobile, it’s the money saving power too.

If the past year has taught us anything, it is that the financial climate is a fragile creature. The industry needs to not only look after its customers, but itself too.

Mobile creates the opportunity to streamline processes and as a result, reduce costs. Why should a customer waste 2 minutes of a call handler’s time checking a bank balance, when they could be checking their balance on a dedicated branded mobile application. And hell, at the same time they can pay those bills and transfer that cash into their savings account for Christmas.

All at the click of a button.

All completely secure.

Over the next year, the mobile industry is going to become even more furiously competitive, as Android continues to go from strength to strength, allowing developers to create the applications of their dreams, and the Apple iPhone strives to maintain its place as the King of Mobile and at the heart of marketers mobile plans.

PricewaterhouseCoopers forecasts the transaction value of mobile financial services will be around £6bn by 2012. Being part of it won’t take much, but getting it right won’t be easy. That’s why you need a supplier with a strong understanding of the technicalities and security issues that surround mobile development. And to top it off, an understanding of employing creativity to create a usable, valuable, secure and enjoyable experience for your customers.

The Virtual Roundtable aims to explain the significance of the Mobile Touch Web and the impact of touchscreen devices on how people access, enjoy and purchase content and services. Taptu and MsearchGroove were joined by a wide range of mobile industry entrepreneurs, authorities and pundits including:  Tomi Ahonen (best-selling author); Mark Curtis (Flirtomatic); Carl Martin (Redweb); Andreas Constantinou (VisionMobile);Jonathan MacDonald (This Fluid World);  Martin Wilson (Indigo 102); Dan Appelquist (Vodafone UK);  Christian Lindholm (Fjord); and Peggy Anne Salz (MSearchGroove).

The contributors agree the rise of touchscreen phone shipments from handset manufacturers including Apple, HTC, Nokia and Samsung, and the growth in touch-friendly websites and content will profoundly impact how we live, work and shop. From content creation and publishing, to user experience and design, to commerce to advertising, the Mobile Touch Web changes all the rules.

Christian Lindholm, a partner and director with Fjord, a leading European digital design agency, who contributed his vision to the Taptu Virtual Roundtable, believes the Mobile Touch Web has not only arrived full-force. It marks the beginning of a seismic shift that will spur the creation of new Webs and new device segments. “Within 2-3 years we will have 3 Webs. The 13″ Mouse web, designed for computers, desktop and laptops; the 4″ pocket Touch Web for mobile touchscreen devices and the like; and the 10″ casual Touch Web for devices such as the iPad. Thus, we will have three segments: Phone, Pad and Computer. The Phone and Pad are Web sub-segments, and will require their own discovery, structure and monetization solutions.”

Peggy Anne Salz, founder and chief analyst of MSearchGroove believes the Mobile Touch Web lays the groundwork for a “new kind of interactive mobile Internet, a brave new place where new content, new experiences and even new mobile search services will set the bar.” Salz adds: “The Mobile Touch Web, though growing vigorously as Taptu shows, is not the only game in town. Thus, the pressure is on companies everywhere in the ecosystem to re-think their strategies and create a balance of touch-friendly content for touchscreen devices and the emerging Mobile Touch Web, while not losing sight of the opportunities offered by the other Internets. We face tough choices, but hoping for the Internet to become a unified place where everything is accessible and connected (again) is not an option.”

I have rapidly established a reputation for ‘iPhone bashing’, which is nothing to do with not owning a suite of Apple Products or disliking Steve Job’s hair. Oh no. For those of you that are not aware, my main ‘beef’ is with brands who do not consider other platforms simply because its a) too hard, b) too expensive/not as cheap as iPhone or c) just want to tick a box that says ‘We have an iPhone app’.

There is a wealth and breadth of great (and some not so great) operating systems out there that can offer brilliant, rich and engaging experiences for their users, that despite having a substantially larger market share than Apple, continue to be overlooked. For a long time I have wanted to put together a presentation to demonstrate this very point, but Ewan MacLeod of Mobile Industry Review has pulled it out of the bag.

When it comes down to offering consumer utilities or CRM extensions, it is important to closely consider which platform to employ, but whether you should even consider the mobile web before apps! The iPhone is just 4% of the UK mobile handset share, so can you really justify spending a vast amount of your marketing budget on an app that might reach only 4% of your target audience (assuming your brand is a national brand with a fair reflection of the British population). The most likely scenario is that you cannot.

As mobile moves from ‘bit-part’ to mainstream, the importance of understanding this audience, their handsets and how they interact with brands via their mobile will be of the utmost importance. Mobile ‘strategists’ and planners will, like social media this year, start cropping up at agencies all over the world, and become an integral part of the planning and creative process. And this here, this is your first free piece of advice, condensed into a succinct yet effective presentation from Ewan. Enjoy.

p.s. still need more convincing? Martin Wilson and Tomi Ahonen can offer further support

Major props to Rudy De Waele for the awesome preso.

Mobilists of the world, welcome to Mobsessed, and the 218th edition of Carnival of the Mobilists. Its my first ever hosting of COTM, so feel very privileged to be part of its ongoing success.

We have quite the eclectic mix of posts this week, and for those of you who read this blog more regularly will be glad to hear there is no iPhone bashing from yours truly this week. Le’ts get the ball rolling.

Antoine RJ Wright addresses the justification for calling a phone ‘smart’, and believes Nokias BetaLabs experimental application ‘Nokia Bots’ could signal the beginning of true smartphones. The idea of phones understanding our behaviours in order to improve our experiences and enrich our lives is a very exciting prospect, which Antoine discusses in depth and with great passion.

I am a firm believer that mobile barcodes have a much bigger role to play in marketing than is currently evident, and these sentiments are echoed by Peggy Anne Salz in her post and interview with Carol Glennon, CEO of Renu Mobile. As well as addressing the challenges that face establishing a open, interoperable and global mobile barcode marketing campaigns, the other possible ventures in which barcodes can be employed are addressed, and offer up some incredibly exciting and innovative executions of barcodes in the public, security and pharmaceuticals sectors.

So 2009 was a rather monumental year for mobile, with some 1.3 billion mobile handsets now able to access the internet. All of the facts, figures, movers and shakers of Mobile Data can be found in Chetan Sharma’s updated Global Mobile Data Market report. The impact of the recession, app stores, smartphones and much more is considered in this brilliant factual analysis by Mr Sharma, which also explores revenues and growth in key markets.

With 2009 thoroughly analysed, the potential for 2010 is very clear, and Tomi Ahonen is the man to show us what we can look forward to this year. We are set to see the 10 billionth handset ever produced, 5 billion subscriptions and a Nokia for almost 30% of the global population; this and the other key headlines for 2010  are all explored in detail by the Godfather of mobile himself.

Marketing your mobile app is always difficult, especially when your particular market sector is so saturated. Affiliate marketers are becoming commonplace, and James Cooper takes a look at some of the affiliate stores and how they can help you and your app. Could this make traditional PR and mobile advertising redundant for marketing mobile apps?

Not an April Fools post here from Tsahi Levent-Levi, but he states that PDAs have won over mobile handsets! He is not of course referring to what we all know as PDAs, but the latest generation of smartphones that are, as he calls them, PDAs-that-also-make-phone-calls. Now I am not one to argue with the intent, as our mobile phones are more and more becoming the ‘remote controls of our life’, but even with the ever changing functionality of the mobile handset, they will always be called smartphones (more out of habit than anything!). What are your views?

And finally Terence Eden, ever the detective, has been getting to the bottom of the mystery surrounding what mobile the new Doctor Who has! Whadya think he has? Take a look.

Thats it! The 218th edition is over! My post of the week goes to Antoine RJ Wright, who is subsequently next weeks host! Thanks for stopping by and feel free to give any feedback!

Any thoughts will be included as part of my primary research for my Masters Unit, so would love your feedback