Amazon To Allow In-App Purchases For Its Appstore Developers
Tag: android
Android operating system #1 in U.S. market
According to a new report from Canalysis, Google’s Android platform has rocketed to the top spot among U.S. smartphone operating systems with a 43.6% market share. Worldwide, the Android has a staggering 1,309% year over year growth, a 25% market share, and is now on 20 million devices.
Android’s success is rooted in three key advantages. First, the product itself is user-friendly and has been quickly embraced by consumers. Second, Google was able to strike deals for Android with a variety of mobile manufacturers– among them Samsung, HTC, Motorola and Sony Ericsson. And lastly, Android is available on devices at a variety of price points, making it easily accessible to any smartphone purchaser. Continue reading “Android operating system #1 in U.S. market”
Chinese mobile web market is booming
Recently, the Chinese government renewed Google’s license to operate its search engine business in China. Although uncertainties over Google’s future prospects in the Chinese internet market still remain, Google has expanded its presence in the emerging Chinese mobile internet market by ambitiously pushing its Android mobile operating system in the past half year. China, the world’s largest online market and also one of the fastest-growing mobile web markets, is becoming a competitive arena for Google and many other foreign companies who have set their eyes on the tantalizing growth of the mobile Internet around the world.
Early birds in the Chinese mobile web space, like Google and Apple, have faced challenges from a unique cultural market and have adapted their businesses to the local environment accordingly. And despite some early stumbles, they have also secured some small victories worth noting. In fact, these experiences can serve as useful lessons for marketers looking to tap into new opportunities to extend their branding efforts in China. Continue reading “Chinese mobile web market is booming”
Slimmer, cooler, enough to compete with Android?
Steve Jobs officially announced the new iPhone 4 yesterday morning at Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference in San Francisco. The basic design of the iPhone 4 (read a full review of the iPhone4 handset) was hardly novel due to a leak by technology blog Gizmodo several months ago, but the slick appearance of the iPhone 4 and some steady improvements earned it a round of applause from technology media and blogs at the conference.
While the iPhone 4 still leads the smart phone market in some ways, there was hardly any single killer feature that significantly sets it apart in this fast-paced and rapidly evolving smart phone market. Instead, the iPhone 4 is entering a more homogenous and competitive smart phone market full of competitors eager to challenge its supremacy, an indicator of a new phase of overall growth for the mobile industry. Here are the three things you need to know about the iPhone 4 and its impact on the mobile space:
Continue reading “Slimmer, cooler, enough to compete with Android?”
Apple-Google catfight is good for consumers
Things are getting downright ugly. Apple and Google, once the best of friends, seem to have devolved into the bitterest of enemies. The tactics have become dirty. The blows are getting dangerously close to the belt. And I couldn’t be happier.
Unlike real wars, when corporations battle it’s often the common person that prospers. We’re seeing honest-to-goodness tooth-and-nail competition take place, and it’s the consumer and marketers that will come out on top regardless of which behemoth wins the fight.
The blows toward the end of 2009 were focused mostly on mobile. Google Voice was blocked from the App Store, and the FCC started poking into the matter – specifically Apple’s Control of the app economy. In short order, Eric Schmidt resigned from Apple’s board. Then the Motorola Droid came, and the marketing that placed Android’s features directly in competition with Apple’s iPhone OS. Apple then acquired Lala, a streaming music service, near immediately after Google started using the streams in their search results. Following this, Google announced they were moving acquire AdMob (still pending FTC approval), an advertising network that served ads into iPhone apps and a company Apple had been trying to acquire prior to Google outbidding them. In turn, Apple bought up ad network Quattro Wireless. As 2009 came to a close, rumors of both an Apple tablet device and a Google built phone competed for headlines. Continue reading “Apple-Google catfight is good for consumers”
iPad: Game changer or iPod Touch for Boomers?
The IPG Media Lab team weighs in on Apple’s release of the much anticipated iPad device.
Is the iPad a game changer?
Scott Susskind, IPG Lab CTO: I don’t know if I would consider it a “game changer.” However, I do think it raises the bar. We saw several tablet devices this year at CES that leveraged the Google Android platform that have some similarities to the iPad.  However, the iPad will quickly leapfrog the competition due to the maturity of the iPhone OS and breadth of the existing application ecosystem. The heavy lifting was already done. It allowed Apple to focus their efforts on smoothing out the user experience for this form-factor as well as developing special ports of business apps that make it an attractive device for the workplace.
That said, I think it will be a short-lived lead. As the Android App ecosystem matures, the marketplace will swell with a variety of Android-based devices Devices that will either compete directly with the iPad, or fill smaller, niche markets that would be too costly for Apple to support through multiple hardware versions.  And since the content (and app) distribution model will likely be based on an open ecosystem, I would wager that the lion’s share of the market will be non-Apple inside of a few years. Continue reading “iPad: Game changer or iPod Touch for Boomers?”
Layers of influence reign at CES
Imagine a world where any screen you come into contact with has the capability to play multiple streams of content that are contextually relevant to you, to your gender, location and purchase habits. Imagine that this content could take the form of video with additional layers of text, graphics or audio. Then picture a powerful 4G network, with 80 megabits of data being delivered with HD quality video and 3D enhancements. Data would be fed back and forth to respond to interactions and navigation would be more primal, responding to touch and movement. Marketers would have a field day with targeting content based on demographics right down to the individual. And imagine if the foundation of this world was presented to you at a yearly consumer electronics trade show…
While there were no earth shattering products or mind-blowing reveals at this year’s CES, the world I described above has been set in motion. Never before have so many consumer electronic companies all committed to embracing the same technology trends in such a way that the dividing line between competitive offerings is hard to see. All this sets the stage for what I’d like to call “layers of influence.” Continue reading “Layers of influence reign at CES”
Google just changed the wireless game
At the Android press event this morning, Google turned the wireless industry on its head. Â On the surface, it looked like Google only introduced a new (albeit very slick) phone, the NexusOne. Â But below the surface, there’s a lot more going on.
The centerpiece of the event was the Nexus One phone. Slightly thinner and lighter than the iPhone, the Nexus One boasts a 1GHz Snapdragon processor from Qualcomm (the fastest mobile phone processor on the market), a 5 megapixel camera with LED flash, dual microphones for noise cancellation, and my favorite bit of all, a 3.7 inch 480×800 OLED screen.  This phone is a powerhouse, and while some in the industry are looking at the current carrier exclusivity of T-mobile (currently the 4th place carrier in the US), it makes a lot more sense when one considers that they just upgraded their network to 7.2 Mbps 3G, twice the speed of AT&T’s current network.
But this barely scratches the surface. Continue reading “Google just changed the wireless game”
Three reasons Android could terminate Apple
The smartphone market seems to be shoe-in: Apple has got momentum in the space reminiscent of their takeover of the MP3 player market years prior with the iPod. Despite this momentum, the discerning media planner working on mobile for six months out should take note – Google’s Android is poised to crash Apple’s party.
Android Clones: While the iPhone had Chinese imitation devices, Android will literally have a clone army. The open source system will live on a handful of devices by the end of this year, and dozens of devices by the end of 2010. So while the system seemed to languish when the only Android device was the G1, with phones like the HTC Hero and myTouch 3G, Android will traverse carrier networks and handset manufactures. Continue reading “Three reasons Android could terminate Apple”
