Posts Tagged 'iphone'

According to Comscore 17 million people in the UK have used an app in the last month; and while it has been the more consumer facing apps that have courted the limelight their B2B counterparts are quietly transforming the way people work facilitating busy B2B professionals with nomadic lifestyles to connect, close a deal, generate and convert leads in real-time, anytime, anywhere.

We were recently invited to talk to B2B Magazine about mobile apps for their feature “Apps: To be or not to be?” The feature lists seven golden rules for B2B brands before they take the plunge – here’s our thoughts and commentary added in for good measure:

OFFER SOMETHING OF VALUE
The challenge is looking beyond the apps function as a marketing tool and integrating it business process. This means having the infrastructure to support the app outside of the marketing department.

An app can’t be all things to all people. Focus on the function you want the app to perform and the desired outcome rather than trying to cram multiple features into one app. You need to strike a balance between monetizing the app and good user experience.

BE SURE YOU NEED AN APP
Avoid ‘me-too’ syndrome by defining clear use and purpose before you rush in. Be sure it’s integrated into your overall strategy and supports your core offering. That way your app will deliver value to the user and profit for the company.

PICK THE RIGHT PLATFORM
iPhones only account for 14.4% of the global market, developing your app for other handsets such as Android, Blackberry and Nokia will improve your customer reach.

SET THE RIGHT PRICE
Annette Ehrhardt, Director at pricing consultancy Simon-Kucher & Parners says “If you see your app as a revenue generating tool rather than purely a promotional one, you might want to consider offering a free version with limited content. After trying and liking a free app, nearly 80% of Apple users and over half of Google Android users were willing to pay for its premium counterpart.”

PROMOTE YOUR APP
There is a tendency to view getting an app in the app store as end result, but this is simply the beginning. Its how you market the app thereafter will influence its up-take and usage.

ENSURE IT INFRASTRUCTURE CAN SUPPORT IT
You’ve marketed and promoted your app drumming up significant interest in the process but these efforts are futile if you don’t have the instructure to support the download and usage of the app itself. Insufficient bandwidth, for example, will lead patchy performance or at worst prevent users from being able to download it at all.

ADAPT AND REFINE
In the words of Christian Howes, head of solutions engineering at Webtrends “Don’t be scared to change your app based on the analytical insight you can gain on the user experience. People will always find ways of engaging with and using your app in ways you didn’t anticipate; be prepared to adapt the app quickly to enhance the user experience.”

Here at Pancentric we’ve always got one eye fixed firmly on future developments and while first and foremost its about getting these 7 steps right it’s the technology that’s precluding the next wave of super-applications that excites me most. Over the next 6 months we can expect to see the spread of NFC (Near Field Communication) on smartphone handsets allowing for contactless, cashless payments.
Geofencing is another trend where consumer brands have been quicker off the mark but it will be interesting to see how B2B businesses can exploit this technology – the opportunities are there, just think about sponsorship, corporate events and conferences.
And with so many business professionals making important decisions on the move using mobile to inform decision making the opportunities for location-based marketing are plentiful.

A smoother stroll down your virtual street

‘Hyper-perspective view’- now there’s a term you don’t hear everyday, but it best describes Microsoft’s new street level imaging system ‘Street Slide,’ an enhancement of their Streetside offering. Google Street View and Bing Maps Streetside users, will recognise the jumpy transition as you navigate along the street, caused by moving from one ‘bubble’ to the next – Street Slide eradicates this by overlaying perspective projections of the bubble images, which display  sideways along the street. Dubbed by Microsoft as being ‘As perspective as possible’ there are many user benefits outside of the smoother transition such as making it easier for people to find and recognise places quickly and easily by creating a more true to life perspective. Navigation is impressive too, achieved by either ‘smooth scrolling sideways’ (see video), widening the field of view once you find something you’re interested in, 360 degree view turn and a simple icon to flip to the opposite side of the street. Its good news for advertisers too as the wider space is engineered to display company logos or even the inclusion of social information, such as the location of friends – if linked up to a social network. It’s really kind of cool, but don’t take our word for it, check out the above demo video and see for yourself.

Gorillaz in the mist, and on your iPhone

The Gorillaz have launched a game for the iPhone and iPad. The game is based on the artwork for Plastic Beach, Damon Albarn’s bands latest album, tipped for a Mercury music prize this year. ‘Escape to Plastic Beach’ features 8 levels, with the cartoon members of the band represented in 3D animation. With visuals taken from designer Jamie Hewlett’s illustrations and the soundtrack from the album, this looks like a great fantasy land to ease the commute to work.

Virgin Media ramps up cross-platform strategy

Virgin Media have rolled out a Beta version of their new TV-on-demand service online to subscribers of its XL TV package, with plans to roll out to other subscription packages after the initial trial period. The move comes as competition in the sector is hotting up with imminent launches of Sky’s Anytime+ and Project Canvas. So what will it take to gain crucial advantage in the battle of VOD when long-form video content is readily available from a multitude of places? Perhaps as Nic Howell puts it, the issue issue boils down to a question of what matters more: content or convenience? “Virgin has more than 4,600 hours of on-demand content, but its challenge is to combine nice-to-have features with must-have content – exclusive content you really can’t get elsewhere. Anything else risks being incremental rather than game-changing.”

Amazon e-readers saving the Amazon

You didn’t know you needed one, but you do, so save the trees and cram all your books into one dinky palm sized device. Amazon have launched two new and improved versions of the Kindle, their e-book reader.  The new model has 50% better contrast, is 21% smaller and 15% lighter and weighs less than 250 grams. Its battery will now last for a month on a single charge if the wireless connectivity is switched off. The 6 inch display device comes with free 3G, Wi-Fi and will hold up to 3,500 books, magazines, newspapers and blogs which you can download wirelessly from Amazon directly to the Kindle. Amazon have been secretive about exactly how many Kindle’s have been sold but boast that the  Kindle has been their number one best selling item for two years running and has the most 5-star reviews of any of the products they sell and insist that it serves a different market to the popular iPad. This week Stieg Larsson, author of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, became the first writer to sell one million e-books in the Kindle store and Amazon announced that it is now selling more e-books than hard backs.

Hurrah, TV catch-up on your iPhone!

As of autumn we will be able to catch that missed episode of Neighbours on the bus on the way to work, as Five are to launch a TV VOD app to coincide with their Demand Five relaunch. Sky launched their live TV app last November and app’s became available to remotely record programmes on your Sky Plus from your iPhone,  but Five will host the first video on demand app. They look set to beat the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 to have a catch-up app on the iPhone along with the iPad, and have new plans for the relaunch including placing the VOD function at the centre of the channel with links so users can share content with friends on Facebook.

Who said the iPad would never catch on?

LG has revealed plans to introduce a thinner, lighter tablet computer running on Google’s Android OS. It is to be launched later this year and leaps on the iPad bandwagon along with Dell and Samsung, offering an alternative to Apple’s monopoly on the keyboard-less PC market. In response to record demand Apple is now producing over 2.3million iPads monthly and a Forrester research report predicts that tablet or slate style computer sales will outsell netbooks by 2012.
Matching the iPad seems a tall feat but there is room for competition. There may be apps available that are prohibited by Apple and a telephone function and removable battery would give a great advantage. As with the iPhone, if you encounter battery issues with the iPad, it is necessary to send the whole device to Apple.

LG boasts it “will deliver vastly superior performance than other similar devices currently on the market while still managing to be thinner and lighter than competing devices.” It’s rumoured LG’s device will use Android OS v2.2 (Froyo) with a 7-inch touchscreen, WVGA resolution, 3G, Wi-Fi and built-in GPS. Samsung previously announced they are working on the Galaxy Tab, a tablet with a 7inch TFT screen also powered by Google’s Android OS.

Watch and learn Prince, Radiohead’s Phil Selway offers his first solo single as a free download

After Prince’s outlandish comment that “The internet is completely over”, Phil Selway, drummer of Radiohead, has followed in his bands footsteps and embraced the internet, offering his first single as a free download. The new track ‘By Some Miracle’ is taken from his debut solo album ‘Familial’, set to be released over the summer. Radiohead caused a sensation in 2007 when they released their Rainbows album online offering fans the chance to pay what they wanted between £0.00 to £99.00. Figures from Comscore show the average amount paid per album download was US$6.00 and despite the free download option, fans bought more than 100,000 copies of the CD within a year. According to Radiohead front man Thom Yorke “In terms of digital income, we’ve made more money out of this record than out of all the other Radiohead albums put together.”

Adding more power to digital’s elbow research sponsored by Microsoft and Intel, for a study entitled ‘The Energy and Climate Change Impacts of Different Music Delivery Methods’, shows downloading is better for the environment than buying CD’s.  All the more reason to embrace digital.

Twitter surpasses Bing as fastest-growing search engine

Brace yourself for some big number crunching – Fast Company brought us news of happenings at the Aspen Ideas Festival where cofounder Biz Stone talks of how Twitter is rapidly establishing itself as a popular search tool, pulling in around 800 million search queries per day. While the news is unlikely to have the daddy of search engines Google quaking in its boots just yet (88 billion searches per month), young Twitter with its 24 billion searches per month is certainly giving the likes of Bing (4.1 billion) and Yahoo (9.4 billion) a run for their money. Not bad considering Twitter is still in its relative infancy – search volumes are up 33% in the last 15 months. Fast Company say “this is something the service has been angling for. Last month, at the the World Innovation Forum, Stone argued that Twitter is “not a social network,” though many people view it as one. “That’s been a myth since the beginning,” he explained. “We’re much more like an information network or a source of news.”