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Maybe you’ve seen some form of the 230 ads. If you haven’t, we’ve embedded it below. The ad – in its various forms – features a bouncing, smiling, and winking electrical outlet that ends up representing the number “zero” after numbers 2 and 3. All of these appear above the numbers “8-11.” So what the heck is it all about?
Apple has aired two new iPhone ads: “Share” and “Travel.” The two commercials are in the familiar “There’s an app for that” format, featuring iPhone apps for file sharing and navigation. Videos and our take after the break! Read more »
Posted in Advertising, App Store, Apple, Mac, Marketing, iPhone, iPod Touch, iTunes
RadioShack is undergoing a major rebranding that will change the company’s forward-facing name to “The Shack.” The name change may hint at a new direction for the company, venturing into the general home electronics space thus far occupied by general technology retailer Best Buy. How will the move impact RadioShack and will it be a success? Read more »
Posted in Business, Decisions, Marketing, Numbers, RadioShack, Ratailing, Rebranding
Apple is by no means a newcomer to the education market. Graduating high school seniors wait for the start of the annual Apple summer sale, at which point they can get a free iPod along with the purchase of a Mac. With the iPod Touch occupying the top rung in the iPod lineup, the device is well worth the wait (of the end of the school year). But Apple does much more than give away free iPods to entice students and the education market at large! Apple has abundant resources that offer both faculty as well as school administrators the means to publish content online. This points business back in the direction of the iTunes Store as well as the company’s hardware products.
TUAW reported earlier this month that the University of Florida College of Pharmacy has made it a requirement that students own an iPhone or an iPod Touch. A college requiring a specific kind of cell phone or music player? Isn’t that a bit much? Isn’t college already expensive enough? The Alligator, an independent school news publication, reported on the story back on July 9th. In the story, the Dean of the College of Pharmacy said, “These are the instruments at the forefront that are developing applications for medical uses by the hundreds. We want our students to become adept at using these mobile devices early on because we see this as the future in pharmacy practice.” Quite a tall order to fill. But this wasn’t the first university-wide application of the popular Apple cell phone or music player. Earlier in the year, the University of Missouri implemented the use of an iPod Touch in order to help students retain information. Brian Brooks, associate dean of the Missouri School of Journalism told the campus newspaper about his decision to make the device a requirement for incoming freshmen: “Lectures are the worst possible learning format,” Brooks said. “There’s been some research done that shows if a student can hear that lecture a second time, they retain three times as much of that lecture.”
Can the requirements for iPod Touch/iPhone on college campuses be considered a trend that’s sweeping the nation? It’s hard to tell. The iPod has been around since 2001 and from the day it was born, Apple has yet to see significant market competition. Apple’s most recent quarterly earnings yielded a 7 percent decrease in iPod sales from the same quarter last year, but a 626 percent unit growth for the iPhone. Here’s what the numbers could tell us: Read more »
Posted in Apple, Education, Marketing, Touch, Trends, iPhone
We all love Apple. Well, most of us do. The last few years, especially since the Vista launch, modern media has pushed on us the virtues of owning a Mac. Most of the top names in the tech blogosphere use Macs, and support almost all of Apple’s products. Leo Laporte, Ryan Block, and Peter Rojas are all self-admitted Macs (though they all come clean to using PCs). The “in” thing to do in the industry is to be a Mac. While this may put Apple in a position to become the leader in the PC industry, there are several reasons as to why Apple doesn’t want to and cannot do so.
Apple has long been the underdog of the PC industry. Right before Steve Jobs’ return as iCEO, we can see that this was for a good reason. Apple’s product line-up was a mess and the company was suffering through its worst years ever. Apple started out as a company that was all about the ability to “Think Different.” With Jobs’ return to Apple, this concept was embraced again, and the company started producing computers for the people. The original iMac and iBook are perfect examples: a colored and translucent computer was all about style and appealed to a younger audience. On the other hand, Windows PCs of the day were still considered the computers of choice amongst the tech elite and the business world.
Apple’s lineup of computers is amazing, to say the least. An Apple computer represents the latest and greatest in hardware: processors, graphics cards, RAM, connectivity technology, and enclosure engineering are all top-notch. The Mac lineup caters to both personal and business users and does so with extreme precision. Yet Apple is still the underdog of the personal computer market, having approximately 10% of U.S. market share. And this is exactly where the company needs to and wants to be, give or take a few percentage points.
One of Apple’s greatest strengths is its ability to manufacture both the software and the hardware that combine to make an amazing piece of machinery which outperforms all competition. But this level of performance comes at a price: the company’s second-greatest strength is the margin it enjoys. The last bevy of financial reports have pegged profit margin in the area of 30% or higher. Compared to rival companies such as Dell and HP, that’s an astounding number! It has turned Apple into a company that’s not only debt-free, but one that also enjoys tens of billion of dollars in the bank (and other short-term investments). But why can Apple charge so much more for its computers while other companies try so hard to earn even a 5 percent margin? Read more »
Posted in Apple, Business, Decisions, Featured, Mac, Marketing, Microsoft, Operating Systems, Predictions, Software, Speculation, Windows 7, Windows Vista
As many have noticed, AT&T isn’t exactly providing iPhone users with a quality of service they could brag about. During WWDC, the groans in the audience came in loud and clear: MMS and tethering were announced as available features on the device, but weren’t supported by AT&T at the time of release of OS 3.0. In the San Francisco Bay area, making a call on the iPhone could turn into a constant game of “how fast can you hit the redial button?” Many have hoped that the end of the exclusivity contract with AT&T would put pressure on the company to not suck and become more competitive. Yet as much as we would all like to see AT&T lose the exclusive rights to the device in 2010 (when the contract is up for renegotiation), I don’t think the iPhone will be available on any other US carrier. Let’s explore.
To start off, let’s take a look at Apple’s options when it comes to carriers:
Sprint
Why will Sprint never carry the iPhone? That’s easy: not only does Sprint’s wireless network use CDMA (a completely different set of wireless technology than what AT&T uses), but the company’s future network plans include rolling out WiMax. It would not be wise for Apple to design a completely different phone for just one carrier. It would complicate logistics, support, and manufacturing. Apple would rather make one phone that can be sold (and used) worldwide, than to manufacture different models that cater to different wireless networks. Apple can also achieve a greater degree of economies of scale by manufacturing, distributing, and providing support for one worldwide model based on the GSM wireless standard. Yet even if Apple were to make a phone compatible with Sprint’s CDMA network, the wireless company has being on shaky ground lately: it has weathered two consecutive years of a negative operating income, is losing subscribers by the boatload, and has sold its physical towers to Ericsson, which essentially makes the third largest carrier in the U.S. an MVNO. All in all, a collaboration with Sprint would yield more risk than possible return for Apple. Read more »
Sometime late last evening, Microsoft launched its latest addition to its Bing decision engine. Dubbed Bing Tweets, the new destination is a mash up of real-time Twitter search with Bing web results (something Microsoft apparently calls Bing Insights). Interestingly, the site is a second series of partnerships between Microsoft and Federated Media – the first being ExecTweets. And while there is a plethora of real-time search engines cropping up (seemingly left and right nowadays), Bing Tweets may be that one place that takes real-time search mainstream.
Bing Tweets is described as combining “Twitter trends with Bing search results, enabling you to see deeper, real-time information about the hottest topics on Twitter. You can also search for anything in the BingTweets search box (at the top right of every page) and see Bing search results alongside the most recent related tweets.”
Posted in Bing, Business, Google, Marketing, Microsoft
ZAGG, the maker of many gadgets and gadget accessories – most notably known for its amazingly awesome invisibleSHIELD gadget protection film – is demonstrating its savvy marketing genius. The maker of the see-through scratch-proof gadget protection film is holding a special 30% off promotion, and is doing it in a way that speaks directly to the hearts and minds of iPhone and Palm Pre fans. ZAGG is pitting the sales of the iPhone SHIELD to the sales of the Palm Pre SHIELD, and is calling the event “Clash of the Gadgets.” This is a perfect outing for fanboys and fangirls to vote on their favorite device of the two smartphones. The kicker? To cast a vote, you have to buy an invisibleSHIELD. Read more »
In Q1 2009, RIM increased its share of the consumer smartphone market by 15% over the prior quarter. In other words, RIM now has a market share of nearly 50 percent when it comes to consumer smartphones. According to NPD group, a “buy-one-get-one” promotion by U.S. CDMA carrier Verizon Wireless helped push the Canadian company’s BlackBerry Curve past the iPhone 3G in the first three months of the year. This comes as bad news for Apple and Palm, since both companies lost 10% each. NPD reported that the BlackBerry Curve was the top-selling smartphone during the quarter, followed by the iPhone 3G, the BlackBerry Storm, the BlackBerry Pearl, and the T-Mobile G1. “Verizon Wireless’s aggressive marketing of the BlackBerry Storm and its buy-one-get-one BlackBerry promotion to its large customer base contributed to RIM capturing three of the top five positions,” NPD analyst Ross Rubin said.
On the surface, it looks like the folks over at Waterloo (RIM HQ) should be celebrating. But what if they don’t have anything to celebrate with? By cutting margins in half – that’s what happens with a buy-one-get-one promotion – RIM is well on its way to becoming the Dell of the smarphone market. Sure, the company’s products took three of the top five smartphone spots in the quarter. But the iPhone was #2 – and it got there without using any “aggressive” promotions or buy-one get-one offers. In other words, the iPhone spoke for itself (no pun intended), while the Curve needed all the help it could get to entice consumers to buy it.
You might say to me, “Alex, numbers are numbers; there are no if’s, and’s, or but’s about it.” Well, there are in this case. While RIM did sell more devices, the more important question is – at what cost? By discounting giving away the Curve, RIM has basically admitted that it can’t compete with Apple’s iPhone on the basis of value, user experience, or customer delight. Thus, it resorted to price-cutting measures. It’s kind of like deciding on that Porsche Cayman you’ve always wanted, but seeing a Toyota Yaris next to it for free, when purchased with another Yaris. So you buy the Toyota because your sixteen year-old daughter needs her first car, and you just couldn’t pass on the buy-one get-one offer. By allowing Verizon to give one Curve away as another one is bought commoditizes the BlackBerry brand, plain and simple. This is something Apple didn’t have to do. Read more »
Posted in BlackBerry, Decisions, Marketing, Numbers, RIM
It seems not long ago Blu-ray won the HD disc battle and became the one and only high-def physical format for consuming movies. But even as that happened, the “tech bubble crowd” (if you tweet about the fail-whale, you’re in it) wondered whether it really mattered: how would a physical medium hold up in light of digital downloads and instant streaming? It looks like concerns about the viability of a physical medium are highly overblown by the tech bubble crowd. Physical media is still preferred, according to NPD Group research.
As F.Y.E., Virgin Megastores, and other brick-and-mortar chains are shutting down, more people are buying DVDs than streaming and downloading content. In fact, when asked about their home entertainment purchases over the past three months, 48% of respondents said they bought a DVD or Blu-ray Disc – according to the NPD survey. If that doesn’t elicit a scratching-of-the-head response, get this: only 2% of respondents said they downloaded a movie or TV episode, and 2% said they digitally rented a movie or TV show. These numbers and the fact that physical media is becoming more difficult to find (as evidenced by the closure of many brick-and-mortar stores), actually make sense: the retail space for physical media is consolidating, especially in the current economy. But what about streaming content?
Sadly, it looks like sites such as Hulu.com and ABC.com, about which I expressed some dissatisfaction yesterday, didn’t make the cut into the NPD study. And that’s a shame: the beauty of web-based distribution is not in downloading, but in streaming. Downloading – if renting or buying – is the wrong way to do it. All downloads I know of (iTunes, anyone) are encumbered by some form of DRM and actually need to work some “expiration magic” if the rented content is set to expire upon a particular time period or amount of playing. Streaming, on the other hand, is the correct format for digital delivery of online video content: it’s quick (get in by going to hulu.com, get out by closing the browser window) and convenient (it isn’t locked to your iTunes collection on your desktop PC). It can be streamed to a netbook, to a laptop, to a desktop, or to a set-top box (of course, if Boxee brought hulu back). And looking into the future (if I may), streaming content will be widely available on mobile devices like the iPhone and the Palm Pre – when the former gets Adobe Flash support, that is.
Physical formats like Blu-ray are simply no longer necessary: having a physical disk is no longer a convenience, but a hassle. You either have it with you or you don’t. And if you don’t, your SOL. Plus these things are subject to scratches, breaks, and other forms of damage. Oh, and did I mention they need a $250+ investment in the form of a big, bulky, and power-hungry Blu-ray player? And while Netfilx expects that “DVD mail shipments overall should grow over the next five to 10 years,” they are also in the streaming game with the Netflix Rolu player. I wonder why that is (hint: because they know that the days of physical media are numbered). As for me, I’ll stick to streaming. I recommend you do as well.
Posted in ABC, Apple TV, Blu-ray, Entertainment, Hulu, Marketing, Netflix, iPhone, iTunes