Tag Archives: MobiThinking

Lots of Smartphone Numbers

As much as one wants to try, much of the rhetoric around mobiles tdese days revolves around smartphones. While popular, smartphones are not the only computing interface that the world interacts with. So, its good to see where they sit as devices amongst some of the other computers we see these days.

In one set of numbers, our friend Tomi Ahonen looks at the largest computer makers when you include smartphones and tablets. Wild to me is that if you looked at these numbers a little less than half a decade ago, that you’d see just how many mobiles Nokia sold, which was crazy when I first saw it. Here’s a snippet of Tomi’s information:

Largest Computer Makers, incl. Smartphones & Tablets
Rank (was) Brand Units 2012 Market Share 2012
1 (1) Apple 272 M 22%
2 (2) Samsung 249 M 20%
3 (6) Lenovo 77 M 6%
4 (4) HP 59 M 5%
5 (-) Huawei 55 M 4%
6 (7) Dell 38 M 3%
7 (10) Sony 37 M 3%
8 (9) Acer 36 M 3%
9 (3) Nokia 35 M 3%
10 (-) ZTE 35 M 3%
  Others 331 M 27%
TOTAL 1,224 M

Read the rest of Ahonen’s Computing Summary at Communities Dominate Brands

Our other set of good friends over at MobiThinking have also put some numbers and an analysis together looking at how Samsung has been going about taking Nokia’s position as the major mobile player. Some really great pieces to take note of here, if for no other reason that you can map what Samsung is doing, to what Nokia and Motorola did before them and get a better idea of how mobile will evolve and where to look for the next shifts in mobile technologies:

…Analyzing the products available from the top five handset and smartphone manufacturers tells a very interesting story.
In the US alone, Samsung offers 153 different cell phones. Feature phone or smartphone? Cheap or expensive? Big or small? Flat-screen or physical QWERTY keyboard? 4G or 3G? NFC? Bluetooth? WiFi? Flip phone? Rugged phone? GPS? Whatever the customer wants, within reason, Samsung provides. It offers smartphones with a variety of operating systems (OS): Android, Windows, Bada (a home-grown OS) and there are plans to launch phones based on Tizen. The idea behind Tizen, supposedly, is to help Samsung reduce its reliance on Android…

Read the rest of Why Your Mobile Strategy Should Emulate Samsung’s at MobiThinking

Updated: Not long after this post published, we saw (via Twitter) that Vision Mobile has also published a suite of graphics which detail many of the statistics found in much of the mobile industry. What’s probably the best about this is that most of this data is shared on Flickr – where the licensing allows for inclusion into reports and other projects with correct attribution.

VisionMobile – Tablets nearly as important as smartphones as development targets

View the entire Flickr gallery from Vision Mobile

For more stats and resources towards mobile, bookmark our Case Studies and Research page; there’s always a lot of data, and at least on that page, you get some direction towards the pieces which should be near the top of your list.

Has Your Ministry Started Doing Mobile Marketing

Mobile marketing image
A neat piece over at MobiThinking talking about the beginning steps for doing mobile marketing has been published:

The mobile phone is an incredibly versatile device. It can take photos and videos, and send them anywhere in the world, instantly. Many devices know where you are, the more advanced ones even know in which direction you are facing. A quick search on the mobile Web will help you find the nearest branch of your favorite store or restaurant chain and a mapping app will guide you there. A well-targeted offer via mobile ad or SMS might tempt you into this outlet rather than another. In store, you can compare the price of a product here with prices elsewhere simply by scanning the barcode on the packaging. When a print, TV or outdoor ad interests you, mobile gives you the chance to find out more, sign-up, interact or make a purchase there and then.

With virtually all consumers carrying a mobile phone in their pocket all the time, it’s no wonder that all shrewd marketers are looking to engage with customers via mobile, but with a bewildering choice of options, and numerous pitfalls, it is understandable that companies don’t know where to start. These basic tips will help you get your mobile strategy started off on the right foot.

Here are those tips in summary:

  • Seek Permission
  • Start with the Strategy
  • Build A Mobile Website
  • The Power of App
  • Mobile Advertising
  • Loyality Tool
  • Location-Based Services
  • Measure It

Read the full article at MobiThinking.

What have you or your ministry had success with? Any areas where going mobile would be great, but you are having issues?

That Ever-Evasive Calculation of Mobile ROI

Mobile ROI

Caught this on the 271st Carnival of the Mobilists (hosted by MobiThinking) and thought it just great to put into the stream of posts given the direction the past two have taken:

Many execs put items on their roadmap that their gut tells them are important, but it’s difficult to calculate the ROI.

While I agree that it’s impossible to calculate the exact ROI of soft ROI initiatives, I think you can calculate the ROI enough to objectively assess your priorities.

In fact, I think it’s critical that you do so. The mobile landscape is littered with too much wasted money because of executive gut decisions that didn’t end up the way they expected.

So, let’s walk through an example…

Read the rest of Mobile Roadmap: Calculating Hard ROI on Soft ROI Initiatives at Mobile Manifesto

In other words, it can be hard as counting black beans in the dark but its not impossible. A lot of how you determine that ROI starts from what you know and don’t know. Perhaps in light of the piece at Mobile Manifesto, these posts will help make your ROI calculation, and project viability measures, a bit easier to understand and work through:

Catching Up with the Carnival of the Mobilists

I always find a gem or two within the Carnival of the Mobilists, even if there are those moments when I’m not able to keep up with the weekly postings. Over the past two weeks, the Carnival has had plenty to choose from in terms of relevant articles which create some avenues for thought and potential activity.

For example here’s a snippet from the 263rd Carnival, posted at MobyAffiliates:

First up Carnival Queen Peggy Anne Saltz who brings her regular video blog providing analysis on the evolving mobile voice market, looking at new developments such as Siri and similar innovations.  There’s loads more in this vodcast, which is full of really rich and useful information and discussion so go check it out:

Second-up a guest post from Michelle Manafy drawing on her new book, Dancing with Digital Natives, looking at how to motivate the ‘Millenial’ generation in a world of changing economics, high youth unemployment and rapid change:

Second in the ring is Yomi Adegboye from the excellent Mobility Blog.  Yomi has a quick post about his plans to go “mobile-only” and use mobile computing for all his IT needs.  Armed with just an iPad and an assortment of handsets can Yomi stick to this mobile-only regimen?  This blog is well worth checking out for a view of the burgeoning mobile market in Nigeria.

And then there’s this snippet of insights from No. 264, posted at MobiThinking:

First up, we have an avalanche of mobile stats and analysis from Tomi Ahonen’s Communities Dominate blog The State of the Union blog for Mobile Industry. This is a must-read piece for any marketer that wants a true picture of the mobile business. Did you know that the global installed base of smartphones is 19 percent and that Nokia’s Symbian still has the largest share (just ahead of Android) or that SMS has overtaken voice as the number one activity on mobile devices?

Well some brand marketers are clearly getting the message… After flirting with apps, it seems that brand marketers are re-embracing text as the most important channel. But SMS should focus on customer engagement, rather than just being one-way conversation, i.e. more than just a money-off voucher, points out Mobile Insider’s Steve Smith, and their role model should be Obama 2012. Read: From Obama to Brands: Leveraging Participatory Engagement.

A sobering piece by Matt Kapko at Eye on Mobile highlights the plight of those workers at Foxconn in China who make sought-after mobile devices for Apple, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung and many more, in The real human cost of our mobile devices. Foxconn employees regularly work 12-hour shifts at a starting salary of US $1.78 an hour… so how many hours must they work to buy an iPad (assuming they don’t eat)?

As you can tell, there’s much to be said in and around mobile. The various perspectives of those folks who work in the industry, in-line with and apart from larger organizational directives, tends to give mobile that taste of something a bit more than just “fast food.”

If you are invovled within the mobile minsitry (#mobmin) space, and you’ve been writing about mobile from that perspective, I’d really like to encourage you to submit your writings, case studies, or proejct summaries for inclusion into the Carnival of the Mobilists. Information on how to do so, and what your response needs to be if selected, is noted on the website. If you are a causal reader of things online and just looking for something a bit different, the Carnival of the Mobilists is an excellent means to spread your reading wings a bit as well.

Personally speaking, there’s not much better in terms of “readers digest”-style reads than the Carnival – especially when joined with a hot tea or coffee beside.

Pulling In Some Perspective on Mobile Apps

Wikitude AR Web Browser - Share on OviOne – and probably the most popular – method of utilizing mobile a a channel for ministry is that of the mobile app. I’m working on a future piece that talks some about the return on investment question in regards to mobile ministry. But until that posts, I’d like to point to an excellent perspective on mobile apps from the marketing side of the mobile conversation from the folks at MobiThinking. Here’s a snippet:

…“When I saw the mobile winners at Cannes Lions, I immediately tweeted how the majority of the advertising festivals tend to think of mobile marketing only in terms of iPhone apps,” comments Leo Xavier, CEO, Pontomobi, the Brazilian mobile agency that built the official Cannes Lions mobile apps. “Obviously, it is a disappointing to see that four Gold mobile winners are nothing but an iPhone app. I really like the Heineken Starplayer app, though, because it is based on the new concept of co-viewing. And, yes, the best option to deliver that experience is an app. The problem here is that it is only for iPhone.” (Apple devices were about 3.5 percent of handset sales in 2010, so focusing on iPhone-only will exclude the vast majority of the client’s customers)…

Read the rest of Why Ad Agencies Like Mobile Apps at MobiThinking.

We do have some understanding of what works for mobile apps, but not necessarily what always works with those apps when “ministry” is envoked as part of the platter. Effective mobile ministry apps are few and far in between – at least if we have some common measure for what makes an effective mobile ministry app. So that approach is quite important. Probably mores than the app itself.

And now for a question to consider, if you are thinking of a mobile application as the/one of the methods that you will use for mobile ministry, what aspects of investing in that approach are you most unprepared for?