People trying BlackBerry 10 for the first time. Sounds like there’s a learning curve for the completely-gesture-based system. Wonder how easy to use it will be once you’ve learned it. Swiping from the bezel onto the screen has become a common enough gesture on mobile that people may get it quickly.
Tag: mobile strategy
We’ve heard this rumor before, usually in the WSJ: Apple is planning to introduce a lower-cost iPhone so they can expand their market share, particularly in the Third World. This one also has the questionable stamp of approval of Digitimes, who usually get these things wrong.
It hasn’t made much sense in the past. iPhones have been selling briskly, about as fast as Apple can make them, and the high margin has kept Apple at the top of the heap in profits from mobile. Why would Apple need to sweeten the deal, so to speak, by shaving hundreds of dollars off of their margin? Apple has traditionally not been concerned with market share over profit margin. Furthermore, it’s not clear what compromises in the design could lower the cost without compromising user experience, other than the outer shell, a small portion of the manufacturing cost.
There are some recent shifts that may make this a good move now, however:
Apple wants to accelerate uptake of its new Lightning connector. Apple is obviously serious about transitioning its devices to Lightning as quickly as possible; it’s introduction of a 4th-generation Retina iPad with a spec bump and Lightning risked alienating a lot of the folks who had bought the iPad 3, but they did it anyway. All of their iPod products have also been updated to eliminate the old connector. This movement to Lightning is being slowed down by the continued offering the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4s as lower-cost models, committing Apple and its OEMs to another 2 years of supporting and offering accessories for the old, tired iPod connector.
T-Mobile is eliminating device subsidies, and planning to offer the iPhone for the first time. A lower-priced iPhone makes sense here, as T-Mobile customers are not likely to be as enthusiastic about paying $649 for the iPhone 5 out of their own pockets. Furthermore, a new iPhone model with a less expensive $199/$299 price point, different materials, etc. would serve the need without necessarily cannibalizing sales of the fancier subsidized model at other carriers. Other US Carriers are waiting to see the results of T-Mobile’s experiment , so whatever move Apple makes here will need to anticipate a future where people are paying out-of-pocket for their own phones.? IMHO, Apple could get away with a slightly higher price point for the non-subsidized phone, but they are going to have to reduce the premium paid for their product in this market — an iPhone selling at twice the price of an unlocked Galaxy Nexus 4 would be a non-starter for many people.
The iPhone 4 is kind of off the table for T-Mobile, because it doesn’t support LTE, though T-Mobile does say that they already have 1.9 million iPhones on their network.
Apple could get a lot of mileage out of retrofitting the iPhone 4S with Lightning and using a polycarbonate back, preferably in colors. It would be a hoot to see Bondi Blue and some of the other iMac colors make a return. At the right price point, this could be a serious switcher device to lure back people burned by the lackluster Android phones on T-Mobile. However, it’s not clear where Apple can cut the corners on its newer devices to even hit a price point like $199, given estimates for the build cost of the iPhone 5 at around $200.
Some of the other speculation, like larger screens, makes very little sense given the needs of the developer ecosystem. It’s going to be at least another year or two before developers switch their apps to the new iOS6-only method of automatically managing app screen layout, because the technology does not gracefully extend to iOS 5. Given that many apps (including my own) have not been updated for the new iPhone 5 screen size even now, this isn’t realistic.
80 iOS magazine downloads for every 1 Android download, so they are throwing in the towel.
You can’t argue with their logic, but you have to wonder why the big discrepancy.
One area that screams opportunity is that it was taking them about 3-4 extra days to author the magazine for their Android targets, compared to a few hours to adapt their Retina iPad version to non-retina iPad and iPhone versions.
If you have an authoring platform that easily can generate for all the targets without manual intervention, then it really doesn’t matter how small your Android audience starts out. This seems to be the issue, that they built for the retina iPad, then ‘dumbed down’ the content to hit a broad range of Android devices. They use the Mag+ platform to publish their magazine. It starts with InDesign, and maybe that’s part of the problem. There’s a pressing need for a publishing workflow that is more organic to mobile rather than based on print content.
The other issue seemed to be discoverability — there is one place in iOS where Magazines are showcased (Newsstand), and they are also discoverable in the App Store proper. On Android, you have multiple app stores — Google Play, Amazon, and whatever storefront the carriers may have added. This means you need to submit your app to multiple stores and try to get it showcased there. If Apple has 100,000 downloads of your app, it will show up in popularity rankings, but that same 100,000 will be diluted across multiple stores on Android. And given the split they saw, it’s really 1250 downloads spread across Google Play, Amazon, Verizon, etc.
iOS 6 also has a feature that will tell you if there is an app for any sites you visit in Safari, and that certainly must drive downloads as well. The feature is called “Smart App Banners”. You basically put a meta tag in your web page that tells Safari about the app, and voila, a banner with an App Store link is visible to any Safari users using iOS 6. Android doesn’t have a similar feature.
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Samsung’s playing hardball
This detailed article from Horace Dediu at Asymco discusses how important mobile is to Samsung, and just how much they are spending on advertising and sales-related expenses (commissions, incentives).
It might be surprising to note that Samsung spends considerably more than Apple and Microsoft. But it also spends more than Coca Cola, a company whose primary cost of sales is advertising.
However, advertising is not the only form of promotional spending. Samsung also pays commissions and “sales promotion“.
They are in this to win, which is one reason they are the only company besides Apple who are showing profits in mobile. You can bet that this will eventually translate into more influence over the Android platform, if not an outright purchase.