I came across a press release this morning from Nokia announcing their acquisition of the remaining 52 per cent of Symbian that it does not already own estimated to be about $410 million. Without question, recent changes in the cell phone market initiated by Apple and further pushed by Research in Motion and Google, have changed the landscape of the cell industry. In essence, features and functionality are taking second place to ease-of-use and integration. There are many comparisons that can be made with other industries. Take the automobile industry for example. For years, American car manufacturers have added every bell and whistle to their vehicles including things like HUD displays that on the surface look cool, but only serve to complicate the user experience and add one more quality control item that could fail. Japanese car manufacturers, in contrast, had much fewer features but ensured the quality and the user experience were second-to-none. As a result, Toyota, Honda and Nissan … [Read more...]
Mobile Subscriber Usage – US & Europe
For those trying to determine whether to plan for mobile technologies, M:Metrics has come out with some interesting stats on mobile subscribers in the US and major European markets. With rapid adoption in the next two years of converged devices such as the BlackBerry Thunder and the Apple iPhone, growth in Internet usage (social network sites, news, sports, weather, media access, and applications such as productivity and game downloads) is expected to increase dramatically. If you haven't considered planning for a mobile version of your website, it should start showing up on your radar. To build on a recent post, mobile subscriber growth is increasing faster than Internet access over the last 5 years and is cheaper to roll-out than building fixed Internet connectivity such as cable or adsl. Marketing initiatives will also be increasing for mobile technologies and will be introduced in mobile video, sms messaging, mail (such as mobile Gmail), instant messengers, social network sites and … [Read more...]
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