05/06/11 by Bryan Butler | Blog, Marketing Blog | No Comments »
If you’ve paid attention to marketing materials that feature a phone, I’m sure you’ve noticed the default smartphone is the ever ubiquitous iPhone. Perhaps this is because Apple does a great job in creating hype around said phone, which then raises consumer awareness. How many people can say that they know what the HTC ThunderBolt looks like, or even the Blackberry Torch? The graphic designer wants to use what will be easily legible, something that will communicate instantly. Since people are familiar with the iPhone look, a designer will be more apt to use it.
Sometimes, there also seems to be a misconception of what a smartphone is. “Does it have the apps?” Everyone knows Apple has the App Store, but Android Market launched the in same year, 2008, and Blackberry App World has existed since 2009. If the designer assumes that the misconception holds true, they will cater towards it, meeting the expectations of the target market, which only reinforces the idea.
Perhaps this isn’t the reason, though. If you were to search for public domain images of a smartphone (preferably something in a format that is easy to edit, i.e. vector), most of the higher quality illustrations you’ll find will be iPhones. Designers don’t always have the time or skill to illustrate a realistic smartphone, so it’s much easier to just grab one of these, pop your screen shot into it and place into the layout. This brings up another point: the iPhone and iPod can take screen shots, something which Android and Blackberry can’t easily do (unless your phone is rooted, but that’s something we won’t get into). A designer could mock up a fake screen, but, again, they may not have the time or the skill to pump it out.
Any one of these reasons helps create the strangle hold on marketing materials that the iPhone has. Perhaps Google will release screen capturing as a base function in one of the upcoming Android OS updates, but I’m not holding my breath.
11/09/10 by Cellit Staff | Industry News, News | No Comments »
With the holiday season quickly approaching, Sam’s Club revved up their marketing engines this summer to prepare for the launch of a mobile microsite, holiday microsite and an application for iPhones, Blackberry and Android phones.
With 40% of their customers using smart phones, Sam’s Club saw the mobile microsites and application as a way to interact with their customers in the way they wanted to be interacted with.
“We wanted to create a multichannel experience so our members can interact with Sam’s Club in the way they want to interact, and with eValues, they can access the coupons any way they want to get them, including from their mobile device,” said Jason Jackson, Senior Director of Member Program Development at Sam’s Club.
To read more about Sam’s Club’s holiday mobile marketing solutions, click here.
04/08/10 by Brian Bauer | Blog, Marketing Blog | No Comments »
Advancing technology is an interesting thing, which sometimes begets unusual outcomes. T9 predictive text was a huge leap forward on traditional flip phones, as it allowed you to type faster and almost always obtain the desired message. Occasionally I’d miss something as the phone was almost too smart, and a message would go out to a friend that didn’t quite make sense.
I recently ran into a similar and unexpected situation. Newer smart phones are coming out with built-in detection for emoticons – you know, those smiling yellow faces that can be found in most email strings, on Facebook, and many other online gathering places.
Take for example the following news alert, sent out by one of our clients:
NEWS TRAFFIC ALERT: Main St. (Hwy 78) in Blanchardville blocked after fire at tavern leaves four dead; more on WKOWTV.com
Several phones received the above message and replaced the “8)” with a smiley-face, creating a disturbing addition to an otherwise somber message. So we decided to test it out, and sent the following series of common characters to demote a smiley face to several phones to see what results we would get:
The results were extremely varied across various models of phones. As you can see from the pictorial evidence, some phones replaced all of the characters, some replace a few, and others saw it as only text.
Old Blackberry Vs. New Blackberry
iPhone Vs. Android
12/24/09 by David Wachs | Blog, Industry Blog | No Comments »
Well folks, it’s that time of year again. Time for another round of predictions. Looking back, it seems that the last time I ran through predictions was in (yikes) 2007! Many (actually most) of those predictions came true. This time, I’m going to expand my predictions to cover the entire mobile industry, and not just text messaging. As Cellit is a full-service mobile technology/mobile marketing company (covering text messaging, mobile web development, and iPhone/Android app development) so too are our predictions. Let’s get to them:
- Symbian will drop from first place to forth in global new smartphone sales. Lacking a competitive operating system, Nokia’s Symbian group will be trumped by Blackberry, iPhone, Windows and Android. Android will also overtake Windows’ position and become the third largest smartphone OS, after iPhone. Symbian will only beat out Palm, and Samsung’s Bada. (Hey, these are predictions people, so I don’t need to back them up with reasons for my forecasts!)
- iPhone app development will curb as companies come back to the mobile web. With over 100,000 apps out there, the novelty of a mobile app will compare poorly to the ROI. Thus, companies will turn to developing robust mobile web sites that support multiple platforms.
- Flash Lite will finally become an acceptable offering. I predict Android will be the first smartphone platform to support Flash, and other platforms will follow (first Microsoft, then Blackberry, with iPhone taking up the rear). This will lead to the next revolution in mobile “apps”, quite possibly more substantially than the iPhone app revolution.
- Bada will fail.
- The Twitter craze will fade. Marketers will realize catering to Twitter followers is a very specific demographic, and will turn their attention towards developing direct relationships, through text messaging or some other means. Hopefully, this will mean less “follows us on Twitter” ads everywhere.
- Text messaging adoption will continue to grow. We’ve only seen the beginning, folks. The power is the network. The more “texters” out there, the more people will want to learn to text. 1.5 TRILLION texts were sent in the US in 2009. Look for another 150% YOY growth. That’s right: I’m pegging 2010 at 2.25 trillion texts.
- Mobile CRM in 2010!. Companies will follow best-of-class leaders (like Chase, GPS Insight, Sam’s Club) in developing SMS-based interactions with their customers. It’s not about marketing anymore! It’s about developing deep relationships with customers via mobile interaction.
- Mobile companies will be top on the list to be acquired. As the economy turns in 2010, acquisitions should continue to be on the rise. Expect to see some of Cellit’s larger competition get acquired. If you had to ask me, I’d say iLoop and Vibes, as both have investors that will need an exit.
- Sombreros will be fashionably worn at the Cellit office. As Cellit continues to grow, we will be expanding further into Mexico, providing a “one stop shop” for North American messaging solutions. I know this probably isn’t pertinent to most of you, but man is this exciting for us here at Cellit! Plus, our sangrita consumption is going to skyrocket. Maybe an opportunity for some of our readers to go long in tomato juice futures?
- POS providers will begin integrating mobile couponing extensions into their offering.Cellit provides a suite of mobile couponing systems, from the Widgit POS overlay, to APIs for integration with mainstream and custom-built POS systems. POS providers will turn to companies like Cellit in the coming year to build the couponing modules directly in to their platform, which can serve as an additional recurring revenue generator for the solution provider.
Well, that’s it for this year. Many will come true, some will not. Regardless, it’s our intention to do our best in the coming year to helpyour mobile predictions come true. If there’s anything we can do, please do not hesitate to reach out. And, if I don’t get the opportunity to speak with you, please have a happy, prosperous and (most importantly!) healthy 2010.
Best always!
David
