12/09/08 by Cellit Staff | Blog, Industry Blog | No Comments »
Recently, much has been written about President-Elect Obama’s love affair with his Blackberry and the security concerns it raises for the Secret Service. It’s been funny to watch the back and forth between a very determined and independent President-elect and the institutions (legal, security and administrative) that have built up a tradition of shielding the President from such personal communication.
President-Elect Obama is not alone. One need only fly any heavily traveled business route (my favorite is New York-Chicago) and watch as the plane touches down. Within minutes, almost every business person has popped out their smart phone and begun digesting the mountains of data that has piled up while the plane was in transit. The smart phone isn’t only for business people, as the stay-at-home moms, students, and young professionals purchase these handsets for their personal use.
As this article suggests, the mobile phone is going to compete with the television and PC to be the dominant technology people spend time with. While the TV and computer will undoubtedly get the most non-interrupted use, the fact that our phones are with us all the time will provide opportunity for quick interaction during brief periods of down time. President-elect Obama is the perfect example, using a few moments of solitude between appearances, in the car or on his campaign plane to stay in touch.
So if the mobile phone is going to be THE technology people spend the most time with, how is your business making plans to be where all the consumers are going to be?
12/01/08 by Cellit Staff | Blog, Industry Blog | No Comments »
This past week, India experienced one of the worst terrorist attacks in its history. (WSJ has a full recap of the terrorist attacks) As a member of the mobile industry, I couldn’t help but be fascinated by an aspect of the story: the prominence that mobile played as the story unfolded.
It has been widely reported that the terrorists themselves used Blackberry’s to both communicate with each other, as well as monitor world reaction to their attack while also obtaining clues as to the activities of the Indian Commando response teams. This small, portable and contained window to the world provided all the information and access that 5 years ago would have required a laptop, at the very least.
The flip side to the story are the incredible stories of survivors who kept in touch with family and authorities. From the Australian business woman who used her cell phone to communicate, in silence, with her daughter as the terrorists roamed the hallway outside of her room to the Chicago couple who spoke with a CNN reporter by text, and eventually orchestrated their rescue by the Indian Army by text.
As telephone lines, basic utilities and television signals were cut off or destroyed the one common infrastructure element that both sides relied on was their mobile phones. We’ve long known that mobile penetration was growing, but the interesting point in the story was the use of data services (text messaging and mobile internet).
Unfortunately, this incident is a turning point in our history, and in some ways not a positive one. In closing, it may be important to think, in the event of a crisis, (hopefully not a terrorist crisis), would your customers have the ability to get the information they need from your company on their phones?
06/25/08 by Cellit Staff | Blog, Industry Blog | No Comments »
We know that every day more people are using their iphones, blackberries, and other mobile devices to surf the web. In the past few years, one of the biggest areas of change has been the amount of Internet users who are accessing websites via phones and mobile devices. As a result, Web designers have a growing need to be educated in this area and ready to design websites that accommodate this audience.
So here are some trends that you will find in 2009 in mobile web design:
- Simple Options – Nobody wants to be scrolling through pages and pages of unnecessary info. When it comes to mobile websites, simplicity is key. Make it easy for the user to navigate on your mobile website
- White Space – White space is an important part of any design, and it’s something that’s usually a challenge in Web design because there is a desire to get as much as possible in front of the visitor. But in mobile design the screen is much smaller the white space becomes more of a necessity in mobile design
- Lack of Images – On a regular laptop or desktop images are encourage to help spark the visitor’s interest to a website but on the other hand it can be harmful for mobile websites. Because the screen is so small it will be hard for visitors to see the image and also harder for them to read the content. Again, less is more.
- Sub-domains instead of .mobi or separate domains – It is becoming more common that companies have a serparate url for they mobile websites. For example m.twitter.com, mobile.washingtonpost.com and netflix.com/mobile/.
- Prioritized content – Make sure that the content is prioritized towards the visitor, unlike websites they are full of banner ads and advertisement. Most mobile websites are ad-free, therefore mobile websites are more focused toward the visitor.
12/30/06 by David Wachs | Blog, Industry Blog | No Comments »
In Rudy Da Waele’s recent post on M-Trends about Mobile and Wireless trends for 2007, he listed some interesting predictions. Some I agree with, some I don’t. But I wanted to add a slightly different viewpoint on the matter by posting my Mobile and Wireless Marketing trends for 2007. Since I’m up to my neck in the mobile marketing industry (running Cellit Mobile Marketing), surely I have a nugget or two of wisdom to add.
- Strategic, cautious investment in mobile marketing will occur in ’07. Expect big investments in ’08. As we all know, advertisers are (rightly so) cautious to spend their clients’ money in any new arena. That being said, “mobile” is a key advertising buzzword these days, and advertising execs know that they need to get their feet wet. I expect relatively small (but drastically larger than today’s) budgeting for mobile in 2007. As budgeting is a yearly process, the small experiments next year will lead to larger investments in 2008.
- Shortcode programs will dominate the mobile landscape. Phone photo capture of special bar codes (also called “QR codes”) will not catch on. QR codes offer no benefit over texting a keyword to a short number, and require the user 1) has a camera phone, and 2) has downloaded special software (that actually runs on the phone…trickier than it sounds!). While QR is a great gimmick, shortcodes will dominate.
- Location-based services will stick with the carriers. While your phone’s GPS receiver will become more and more powerful, don’t expect to walk by an Applebee’s and instantly get texted a coupon anytime soon. Due to technical limitations, carrier rules, and privacy concerns, GPS data will stay with the carriers. Additionally, “Bluetooth blasting” (which would also allow an establishment to send you a coupon when you’re in its vicinity) will also suffer slow growth. Most carriers have been turning off “free association” of Bluetooth by default. Unless your consumer is savvy enough to turn free association on despite the risks of spam and viruses, most consumers will never receive a Bluetooth blast.
- User generated content campaigns will explode. Marketers (rightly so) want to bring the YouTube and MySpace phenomenon to the phone by allowing users to send in camera phone pictures and movies. We are already working with a few household names on campaigns like this, such as a toothpaste company which will have users “text in” a picture of their bright smile. Users love to share, and the camera on the back of their phone is a great way to do it.
- Text and photos will reign supreme, video is a year away. While video is cool, only about 1.5% of Americans are watching videos on their phone. The networks and phones just aren’t there yet. While we are working with some of our clients to get their feet wet with mobile video, they understand that this medium will have limited short-term potential. To hit the most consumers, text and (to a lesser extent) photos will dominate.
- Mobile search will be dominated by the big players. Yahoo! and Google will own the mobile search market. Sorry, 4INFO.
- Smaller advertisers will get in the game. As costs for mobile marketing really aren’t that great (if you have the right partner), you’ll see smaller advertisers making big pushes into the field. These media expenditures will, on a percentage of total marketing budget basis, will be larger than the big A-list advertisers.
- Flat-rate texting will continue to spur adoption. As more and more carriers continue to offer flat rate texting, the psychological barrier to text will slowly disappear. Text messaging in the US has been growing at over 140% a year, and this clip will continue due to this, and continued push by…
- …Television shows will continue to spur text messaging adoption. We’ve already seen it with American Idol, Deal or No Deal, Identity, Extra and countless others. Text messaging (voting and contests, mostly) and television are great complements. The carriers are teaching users how to text message. Expect more tie-ins in 2007.
- Corporations will push text messaging for recruitment efforts. We’re starting to see already. Big banks, grocery stores, restaurants and more see the value of providing information on employment opportunities via text. Expect a lot of this in 2007.
Quite frankly, this industry is moving so fast, I’ll be lucky if 5 of the 10 predictions above are correct. From my vantage point, however, this is the world as I expect it.
To all my readers, I hope you had a fantastic 2006, and I wish you all a happy, healthy, and prosperous 2007!
