Technology Marketing Ideas

Marketing thought of the week - Android and the crystal ball

You’ve got to admire Gartner, they’ll go out on a limb. In a forecast released last week they predict that the Android mobile operating system will have a global market share of 14%. That will exceed that of iPhone, Windows Mobile, and BlackBerry. Only Symbian OS (that powers Nokia’s devices) will have a larger market share.

This bold prognostication is based on a number of factors but largely on the power and flexibility Google can bring to bear, the multi-tasking capabilities the OS will afford the user, and how this will facilitate both communications and the use of applications.

What a world we live in when players such as Apple and Google can enter an established marketplace like the mobile OS world and quickly become dominant players. One should remember, however, that in such a rapidly changing marketplace almost anything could happen in 3 years – and Apple, Microsoft, and RIM aren’t likely to sit back and watch as Android erodes their standing. Who knows, even Symbian might find an effective counterpunch. Check back in 3 years.

Marketing thought of the week - Over 2 billion served - and that's applications, not hamburgers

This week Apple announced that its app store had surpassed 2 billion applications downloaded; a half-billion in the 3rd quarter alone! They've got 125,000 developers now in their iPhone Developer Program. I came across the breakdown of developers by mobile platform (as of this past June). It looks like this: iPhone - 74%, Android - 22%, BlackBerry - 3%, Java - 1%. No mention of Windows Mobile or Symbian. It's pretty amazing how quickly Apple changed the mobile landscape. You've got to admire the implementation of their application store and development process. They're estimated to take in between $60 to $100 million this year on App Store applications - with little to no overhead. Brilliant!

Marketing thought of the week – Why does it take an economic earthquake to make some firms do what they should have been doing all along?

A front-page article in the September 14 issue of BtoB Magazine contains a quote that made me scratch my head (and I usually don’t itch). The article is titled, “Tough economy forces marketers to reorganize,” and it contains much of the same stuff we’ve heard before about how marketers have had to adapt to the economy.  The item that made my head itch was under the heading “Focus On The Priorities” in which the director of marketing at USG Corp., a building supply materials company, was quoted as saying, “This year, we wanted to be as efficient as possible with our dollars and make our communications easy for the end-user to understand, so they’re not being bombarded with different messages and services from different groups,” (italics are mine).

I guess I don’t understand why the economy has to tank before some firms think about whether their messaging strategy makes sense. If it’s an effective strategy to prioritize and simplify messaging today, wouldn’t it have always made sense? It makes one wonder how much inefficiency and unnecessary complexity existed in some firm’s marketing before now – and how much of it will return when conditions improve.

Marketing thought of the week - The transistor meets its end

Here's a short, but fascinating article on how Moore's Law might be about to run out of room - and what's next - silicon nanowires. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/01/science/01trans.html?ref=technology

Marketing thought of the week - The advantages of face-to-face meetings

According to meeting planners, online meetings have some significant shortcomings compared to face-to-face conferences. A survey conducted by J. Spargo & Associates found these areas of objections to online meetings when compared to face-to-face meetings:

• Spontaneous socializing and networking
• Helping put names to faces
• Allowing more free and open dialogue between attendees and vendors/presenters
• Training effectively via live and personal interaction
• Paying greater attention to others when face-to-face
• Engaging in real-time conversation that is not interrupted by technical glitches.

I don’t think anyone thinks we’re going to turn the clock back when it comes to the use of online meetings, but their point that sometimes it’s just more effective to meet face-to-face can’t be disputed. Event attendance is down. The hassles and costs of travel have pushed many firms to adopt online meeting technology. As the capability to hold on-the-fly, mobile online meetings become more available more and more people might forget the advantages of face-to-face get-togethers.

You can learn more about the specifics of this survey at http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS122200+31-Aug-2009+BW20090831.

 

Marketing thought of the week - SMB IT spending

According to a just completed survey of over 1,000 SMB IT professionals conducted by Spiceworks, Inc., IT purchasing is starting to look up. Here are some of the survey findings which cover spending plans for the upcoming 6 months:

• 68% of SMBs plan to add new hardware to their networks within the next 6 months.
• 51% are planning new software purchases with security and anti-spam applications topping the list. 35% plan to buy cloud-based applications for these two areas.
• 22% plan to hire full-time or part-time staff while 3% plan to further reduce staff over the next 6 months.
• 33% plan to invest in IT services.

According to Spiceworks, the majority of the survey respondents were IT professionals representing technology teams of 1 to 5 people supporting firms with fewer than 500 employees and with annual technology budgets of just over $100k. More info on the survey findings are at http://www.spiceworks.com/voice-of-it/

Let's hope these results are indicative of a broader IT market recovery.

Marketing thought of the week - Sleep less - earn more?

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal recounted the president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy’s admonition to his people that they should get up early and work more so they could earn more. The article went on to note that a recent study found that the French have won the title as the industrialized nation that gets the most sleep with a per person average of 530 minutes per day.

If Sarkozy’s assumption regarding sleep and income was accurate, then the Koreans, who get the least amount of sleep at only 469 minutes should be rich – but sleepy. The graph below indicates otherwise – at least the rich part.

 

I guess one could conclude that being awake doesn’t correlate precisely with productivity or income. Maybe the Koreans would be more productive if they got more sleep. Or maybe the French are perfectly happy sleeping more and earning less. After all, according to the same study they do spend more than 2 hours eating every day.

Marketing thought of the week - One dinosaur + one dinosaur = what?

There was a good bit of noise made last week about the joint announcement by Nokia and Microsoft that they were joining forces to augment their competitive positions in the cellphone market. The New York Times headline called it “An Assault on the BlackBerry.”  For Nokia, I’d say it’s about time. Nokia, which has controlled anywhere from 35% to 40% of the worldwide market for cellphones has, to date, been ineffective in taking on RIM in the U.S. business market.They’re next to invisible. RIM enjoys an enviable market position that enables it to maintain fairly high handset prices and additional revenue for their servers. And up until now this has been mostly about mobile access to email.

 

Much of the response from commentators on this alliance was to the effect that by adding one dinosaur to another dinosaur you just ended up with two dinosaurs. I wouldn’t be so quick to jump to this conclusion.

 

Microsoft is aiming to expand its presence in the enterprise through its Unified Communications offerings (as is IBM, Cisco, and just about everyone else). RIM acquired Ascendant Systems for the purpose of having a ready-made mobile UC offering.. Nokia has to figure out a way to make inroads against RIM or risk seeing its dominant position in the worldwide market jeopardized. (Apple has its own issues to address if they are ever to replicate their success in the consumer market in the enterprise market. Without an easy path to integration with backend UC systems they’ll likely find themselves at a severe disadvantage.)

 

Mobile devices are evolving into tools for collaboration and remotely accessing knowledge, people, and resources where and when they’re needed. If Microsoft and Nokia can develop the applications and devices that offer enterprise users a competitive advantage this alliance might give the dinosaur counters something to chew on.

Marketing thought of the week - The role of social media. Is it overstated?

From so much of what you read you get the impression that companies looking to reduce marketing communication expenses are running away from traditional tactics to less expensive social media. For the most part these tactics don’t require large out-of-pocket costs for creative, design, etc. Even in the face of very hard to calculate ROI the use of social media is ballooning.

If there are 20 million bloggers in the U.S and millions more using Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, how likely is it that most firms will find a way to effectively replace their other communication tactics with social media? Even if the message is compelling – it is going to be tough to get traction in the face of so much chatter. The cream will rise to the top and the vast majority will likely find themselves wondering if their social media activities are really worth the effort. That’s not to say there’s not a role for social media in the communications toolbox - regardless of the size of the firm – it’s that they should have a tempered, pragmatic perspective on what their endeavors will likely achieve. And devote their efforts to consistently creating content that offers value to their audiences.

Marketing thought of the week – Is Apple undermining its competitive advantage?

For years Apple has positioned itself as the creative, somewhat free spirit of computer manufacturers. That position has driven its sales to a young crowd that probably thinks of itself as being more “hip” than the users of its competitors. Events this week have turned that image on its head. The new stodgy policeman version of Apple has taken steps to defend against what it apparently sees as intrusions into its iPhone world by prohibiting the Palm Pre from accessing its iTunes library and removing Google’s telephony apps from its store.

Similar defensive actions, if taken by a firm like RIM whose market to date has been primarily made up of business users, might be decried by some but wouldn’t seem so inconsistent with the firm’s image. Already some in the tech community are threatening to abandon their iPhones because of Apple’s actions. It will be interesting to see if Apple’s posture on these issues comes back to haunt them or has any lasting impact on their competitive positioning.