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Mobile Industry News 11/11/09

Quattro Wireless' daily take on interesting and important news for the mobile industry. See something today that we missed? Post it in the comments or send it our way on twitter @intheq

Verizon to Launch an iPhone Next Year?

GigaOM

The mobile space has long buzzed with rumors of a Verizon Wireless version of the iPhone, and according to Northeast Securities, the device may finally arrive next year. Citing its supply-chain checks, the financial services firm said in a research note issued today that Apple will launch a WCDMA/CDMA2000-enabled version of the device — not an LTE version — through Verizon by the summer of 2010.

T-Mobile launches new laptop stick, promotional data plans

FierceWireless

T-Mobile USA is offering a new USB laptop dongle that doubles as a USB hard drive for those who want to access the company's 3G UMTS network via their laptop. The carrier also launched two new promotional rate plans to go with the device.

The Migration Of iPhone Developers To The Android Platform Is Beginning

mocoNews

Now that the Android platform has moved beyond T-Mobile in the U.S., it has started to win the confidence of developers and publishers, who were once primarily building applications for the iPhone.

The Droid: Is this the Smartphone Consumers are Looking For?

Nielsen Wire

The launch of the Droid by Motorola–which runs Google’s Android 2.0 operating system–is the latest smartphone to be tagged “game changing iPhone killer.

IBM upgrades its e-commerce software with mobile support

VentureBeat

IBM is entering the burgeoning mobile commerce market today with the latest version of Websphere Commerce, its technology for creating online stores. Version 7’s big addition (at least according to IBM’s press material) is the ability to create a version of your web store that’s tailored for smartphones like the iPhone and BlackBerry.

Samsung Launches 'bada' Open Mobile Platform

Mobile Marketing Magazine

Samsung has announced the launch of its own open mobile platform, Samsung bada, which it will release in December. Samsung says it is launching the platform in order to make a rich Smartphone experience accessible to a wider range of consumers across the world.

Volkswagen sees more than 2M downloads of iPhone game

Mobile Marketer

Volkswagen of America Inc. claims that its game, Real Racing GTI, has been downloaded more than 2 million times.

Mobile Industry News 11/10/09

Quattro Wireless' daily take on interesting and important news for the mobile industry. See something today that we missed? Post it in the comments or send it our way on twitter @intheq

AdMob: Who's Next?

Forbes

Validation, schmalidation. Former Lycos Chief and venture capitalist Bob Davis wasn't saying Google's acquisition of adMob for $750 million in stock "validates" Quattro Wireless, the rival mobile advertising startup he's backing.

 
Apple Shoots Past Nokia As World’s Most Profitable Handset Vendor

 GigaOM

Apple became the world’s most profitable handset vendor in the third quarter of this year, reports Strategy Analytics. “We estimate Apple’s operating profit for its iPhone handset division stood at $1.6 billion in the third quarter of 2009,” wrote analyst Alex Spektor. That means Apple overtook Nokia, whose operating profit came in at just $1.1 billion.

 
What the N900 Means to Nokia

GigaOM

Nokia is hoping to recapture some of its lost glory in the smartphone space with the N900, the flagship device that began shipping today. The long-awaited handset runs Nokia’s new Maemo 5 operating system and boasts some pretty impressive features, including 32GB on onboard memory, multitasking functionality, and a 5-megapixel camera with video capability

 
Analyst: Motorola sold 100,000 Droid smartphones

FierceWireless

Although anticipation was high, lines outside Verizon Wireless retail stores to purchase the Android-based Droid smartphone were relatively short last Friday when the device went on sale. Nevertheless, one analyst says that Motorola sold around 100,000 Droid units in the first weekend of its release.

Web Browsing and App Downloads on the Rise, says Nielsen

Mobile Marketing Magazine

Browsing the web was the fastest growing activity on UK mobile phones between the second and third quarters of 200p, according to new research from The Nielsen Company. The number of Britons using mobile Internet increased by 1.6 million, from 8.8 million in Q2 2009 to 10.4 million in Q3 2009. This means over one-fifth of people in the UK with a mobile now use their handset to browse the web.

 
HTC Expects To Sell Up To 6 Percent More Phones To 'You' This Quarter

mocoNews

Taiwanese handset maker HTC launched its first-ever consumer-facing ad campaign that’s all about “You” late last month. The multi-million dollar advertising blitz has the goal of raising the awareness of its Windows Mobile and Android-based mobile phones, and now we are hearing just how much they think the ads will boost sales.

Mobile Industry News 11/9/09

Quattro Wireless' daily take on interesting and important news for the mobile industry. See something today that we missed? Post it in the comments or send it our way on twitter @intheq

Google snaps up mobile ad startup for $750 million
AP - Google Inc. is buying mobile advertising network AdMob for $750 million, underscoring the Internet search leader's determination to ensure its marketing machine reaches the growing number of people surfing the Web on phones.

LiveBlog: BlackBerry Developers Conference keynotes
RIM's big guns take the stage at the company's flagship event

Flurry of Smartphones Coming This Christmas
Ad Age
What a difference a year makes. Last year, the iPhone ruled the smartphone roost, barely stirred by early challengers like the BlackBerry Storm and Android G1. This holiday season, more than a dozen touchscreen smartphones are out to take on Apple, with device makers and carriers banking on hearty appetites among consumers who want a minicomputer in their back pocket.

ANA Urges Marketers: We Must Be the Ones to Lead the Country Out of Recession
Ad Age
If someone is going to lead the U.S. out of recession, the Association of National Advertisers made a case that it should be the marketers, trotting out a group of CMOs to detail how they've led major turnarounds or fueled record growth during the group's annual conference.

BlackBerry Adds Advertising, In-App Transactions, Alerts And More To App Store
mocoNews
Research In Motion has announced a slew of updates for developers, who are distributing apps in the BlackBerry App World. The updates are in line with what Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) offers on the iPhone today, and will allow for in-app advertising, in-app purchases and new push and location services.

Radioshack To Sell The iPhone
Silicon Alley Insider
RadioShack will begin selling the iPhone this month in their Dallas-Forth Worth and New York City stores, Bloomberg reports.
The rest of the United States will be able to buy the Apple smartphone in their local Radioshack sometime in 2010.

Shazam Encore Debuts on the App Store

Mobile Marketing Magazine
Mobile music discovery service Shazam has launched its Shazam Encore application on the Apple App Store.

 

Our view on the Google acquisition of AdMob and Quattro Wireless becoming the largest global independent ad network

Today’s acquisition of AdMob by Google is great for the industry – it shows the importance of the mobile advertising market and how vital it is for both advertisers and publishers to have access to mobile specialists to make the most of the medium; even a sophisticated company with deep resources like Google felt the need to acquire a mobile expert to really make inroads in this space. As Google’s strength is in the long-tail and in the self-service market – on both the publisher and advertiser sides of the business – and as AdMob specializes in the long-tail app marketplace and self-service as well,  this pair up is not surprising.  We congratulate our friends at AdMob today because we believe that change – including new companies, ongoing innovation and some consolidation -- is natural and healthy for a growing industry like mobile advertising.   This is a catalyst event, so likely will make other players take a look at what they need to do to take advantage of the growth in consumer, advertiser and publisher interest in mobile to impact their own growth.

For Quattro Wireless, now the largest global independent mobile ad network, we will continue to focus on providing advertisers with unrivaled targeting precision, transparency and ROI, and publishers and developers with superior monetization. Leading companies including P&G, Ford, NetFlix, Time Inc., Visa, Disney and the NFL partner with us because we have turned the art of engaging and converting mobile audiences into a repeatable science.

Mobile Ads Get a Boost with Google Analytics - Eswar Priyadarshan, CTO

We have seen a flurry of announcements in recent weeks that point to an inflection moment for the mobile internet. Smartphone announcements galore, Adobe Flash goes mainstream and now perhaps the one most significant for awakening many advertisers to the potential of the mobile channel – Google announcing the expansion of Google Analytics to mobile.

It’s common knowledge that a lot of Internet advertising today is driven by the long-tail of direct response and local advertisers who utilize search and other performance advertising mechanisms to drive traffic and conversions. Many online long-tail advertisers who buy on systems such as Google AdWords utilize Google Analytics to understand what happens after the ad click. How many people abandoned after hitting their entry page? Which traffic sources (search, display ads, affiliate sites) produced the best conversions? What is the average time spent on the site?

Google’s extension of their free analytics tool to mobile means that many of the advertisers who rely on it for insights will now treat the mobile channel as a mainstream advertising medium.  I don’t expect an overnight shift in ad spend, since advertisers need to strategically plan for and develop their mobile presence, such as building mobile landing pages, but I do expect the curve of advertisers joining the mobile bandwagon to now resemble the general consumer curve of the adoption of Smartphones, the mobile internet, apps and the like.

This announcement is good for direct marketers and local advertisers with niche content or a commerce offering. What about major consumer brand advertisers? Will they adopt the Google mobile analytics tool? What about the larger direct response powerhouse advertisers such as travel sites, online education and entertainment subscription sites?

Quattro Wireless has long served as the ad serving and post-click analytics partner of major brands such as P&G, Ford, Coke and Sony. We have also driven considerable traffic to major direct response advertisers such as Papa John’s Pizza and Netflix. We therefore have a good, realistic assessment of these advertisers’ key needs now and going forward.

Google Analytics is a powerful Cost-Per-Acquisition analysis tool – very necessary for advertisers big and small who diversify their “click spend” across many traffic acquisition channels. Google Analytics is not an audience and engagement tool. Put another way, Google Analytics will not tell you very much about who your audience is and why they are behaving a certain way, but it will tell you what they do on your current site – this is good for an advertiser who is spending on reach, not so concerned about the who and why, but certainly concerned that the right “what” is happening for site visitors.

Major brands are all about who and why. P&G Household Products marketers care about Moms. Major supermarket advertisers care about Moms only in the geographic areas where they have stores. Major movie studios target Teens on Thursday nights with ads for movies that open Friday. These simple examples are just the tip of the iceberg on the degree of audience segmentation and analysis that major brands require from their advertising and analytics partners. Mobile analytics for major brand advertisers means (a) the ability to as accurately as possible identify unique mobile visitors, (b) provide a rich set of site traffic and engagement metrics about these visitors, (c) provide tons of mobile specific drill-down in terms of mobile devices, carriers, classes of devices (touch screen, QWERTY keyboard, video enabled etc.) and (d) provide additional insight on engagement by various audience segments.

Quattro Wireless’ analytics tools provide solutions to all four classes of problems above. Google does not try to tackle the “mobile uniques” problem in their Analytics tool – they basically say unique visitor tracking works if the phone supports cookies. Many older phones and many wireless carrier gateways even with newer phones disable or throw off any cookie-dependant solution. The iPhone ships with the strongest privacy respecting cookie solution as the default (aka “Never”). Given mobile cookie issues, I would not be surprised if for many marketers Google’s mobile unique visitor reporting does not provide the full picture but is only a sample of their actual visitors – which for brands obsessed with audience quality, audience size and engagement will not provide them with the actionable data they need

Going beyond counting the audience properly, brands want a mobile analytics tool to provide them deeper mobile insight than just overall device and carrier statistics for their traffic. For example, a major advertiser running a campaign on our Network asked why they were seeing low engagement with their site of late (i.e. people were just visiting their home page and leaving). Quattro Wireless’ analytics enabled them to quickly isolate the lower engagement numbers to a particular brand of Smartphone devices, which was another puzzle, as Smartphones are typically great devices for user engagement. Further analysis showed that it was it was a specific model of the Smartphone brand, which was an even deeper puzzle, since it was a newer model with rich capabilities. Final analysis across all of the advertisers’ sites indicated that this particular model consistently performed worse than all others. The advertiser shifted the traffic away from the device and the engagement numbers returned to their normal higher levels.

A second example is the conversion tracking “pixel” and accompanying conversion reporting that we provide many of our direct response advertising partners. We had an advertiser drop in the pixel on their landing page and their conversion success page and within weeks report that they were able to act upon the conversion reports provided to dramatically reduce their Cost-Per-Acquisition. Their fixes involved shifting traffic amongst carriers, removing certain non-performing devices, and changing the mix of content they were targeting.

The examples above shows the power of real mobile analytics – both the visibility Quattro Wireless provides to advertisers regarding many relevant mobile factors that influence consumer behavior and the ability to quickly take action upon the result of the analysis. This depth of understanding provided by specialists like Quattro Wireless is a necessary component of ad buys for advertisers serious about playing in the mobile arena.

Looking ahead, Quattro Wireless fully intends to invest heavily in the mobile analytics space to further increase the depth of insight that we can provide for our advertising partners:

·         We will be packaging and offering an agency and advertiser analytics tool for advertisers who want an accurate understanding of their mobile uniques plus engagement metrics around their mobile visitors.

·         Our analytics package will be tightly integrated with the audience segmentation capabilities of our Q Elevation technology. Q Elevation is the foundation of our data and optimization offerings – more on this in a future newsletter article.

·         We will be offering integration into Google Analytics for advertisers who use our creative services to build ad sites. This extends our overall approach of focusing on what we do best and partnering where there are other experts or incumbents that can add value for clients. We already integrate with DART for Advertisers, Microsoft Atlas and others for 3^rd party ad serving, PointRoll for rich media and Omniture for analytics – so adding Google to this suite as an additional analytics partner fits right into our overall approach.

·         For Android application download tracking, we are integrating with Google Analytics Referral Tracking to provide developers and brands with real-time conversion metrics on their app download campaigns.

The arrival of a behemoth such as Google into a space does and should cause a lot of consternation and questioning amongst existing players and others with vested interests. This writer is happy that new dollars will be moving into mobile ads because Google has opened a door to an important set of advertisers. Quattro Wireless is well-positioned today and in the future to offer analytics services to brand and direct response advertisers who demand considerably deeper and stronger mobile audience insight and metrics. Additionally, we will offer easy integration with Google Analytics for those advertisers who choose to use it for their mobile analytics.

Mobile Industry News 11/5/09

Quattro Wireless' daily take on interesting and important news for the mobile industry. See something today that we missed? Post it in the comments or send it our way on twitter @intheq

 

Pictures and specs: Verizon's Droid Eris, Samsung Convoy, BlackBerry Curve 8530 and LG Chocolate Touch

from FierceWireless

A day ahead of the release of Verizon Wireless' Droid phone from Motorola, the carrier announced a bevy of new gadgets just in time for the holiday shopping season, including its second Android phone, an LG touchscreen phone and a new BlackBerry. Check out pictures and specifications for each of Verizon's newest handsets.

 

Verizon Offers Prepaid Data Plans With a Pretty Big Catch

from GigaOM

Amid the slew of exciting, new phone announcements (the HTC Hero turned Droid Eris!!!) Verizon Wireless said it would offer prepaid data plans, something we’ve been saying the industry should do for a while. The company is offering folks the chance to pick up data on an as-needed basis, instead of having to buy it as part of a monthly contract. That’s mighty fine of them, and should net the carrier some extra dollars, especially since the convenience charge for the prepaid data is pretty darn high.

 

Fear of Flying? There's an App for That

from Advertising Age - MediaWorks

People who are afraid of your product or service aren't usually a brand's core target, but that is not stopping Virgin from creating an app to help people overcome their fear of flying. For a more in-depth look at this Idea of the Week and other case studies, visit Ad Age and CMDglobal's Inspiration site.

 

Hell returns as id Software’s John Carmack builds Doom Classic for the iPhone

from VentureBeat

John Carmack is the programming wiz at id Software, the Mesquite, Texas-based company that pioneered the first-person shooter game genre that has generated billions of dollars in the game industry since 1993. Now Carmack has returned to the game that started it all: Doom. He has taken the original game and ported the code to run on the iPhone, his favorite new game platform. Although he is working on big console and PC game projects for id (and its new owner ZeniMax) such as Doom 4 and Rage, Carmack stole time to create the iPhone game, Doom Classic. With 36 levels, this shooting game is a repeat of the original title where you play a space marine who has to wade knee deep in the dead and hold off an onslaught demons after a mining colony on Mars accidentally opens a portal into Hell. Doom Classic is now available on the iPhone. Here’s our interview with Carmack about how he made it.

 

Mossberg On The Droid: The Best Verizon Has To Offer

from Silicon Alley Insider

Walt Mossberg, the Journal's gadget guru, weighs in with his review of the Motorola Droid.

The Verdict: If you're married to Verizon, this is as good as it gets. If you want the best phone on the market, the iPhone is still the way to go.

 

Mobile ads three-to-five times more effective than online: analyst

from Mobile Marketer Homepage Feed

NEW YORK – Mobile advertising is three-to-five times more effective than online advertising, according to an ad:tech panelist.

 

US Users Take to Touchscreen Phones, says comScore

from Mobile Marketing Magazine

comScore has published a study of touchscreen mobile phone adoption in the US, which shows a growth rate of 159% during the past year, to 23.8 million users in August 2009. According to comScore, the growth in touchscreen device adoption substantially outpaced the already strong 63% growth in US adoption of Smartphones overall.

 

The New New Carrier Deck

from GigaOM

There are no longer any doubts that T-Mobile has hitched its smartphone bandwagon to Google’s Android operating system. The company today said that it will be selling four Android-powered handsets to its (current and potential) customers during the vital holiday season. It is clear T-Mobile is hoping to sell a lot of smartphones. As part of its push, the company is making some plans regarding applications and application discovery. Here are some excerpts from their email pitch sent earlier today:

 

New tools use social data to find iPhone apps

from VentureBeat

Apple’s big news today is the historic accomplishment of over100,000 applications in their App Store. With those numbers, it’s no surprise that the evolution of the iPhone user and how they find and use iPhone apps have progressively changed. Most recently, users have found that a simple search just doesn’t cut it anymore. There are just too many apps!

To solve this, companies have begun to get smart about helping users figure out which iPhone apps are right for them through what we are calling social data. Notably, Chorus, an iPhone app that launched yesterday from envIO, seems to have the answer. Chorus is a free app that enables you and your friends to review apps and share your opinions. Ultimately, Chorus lets your friends do the searching for you. Based on the principal that friends have similar likes and dislikes, you’ll arrive on a set of apps that you may find interesting and want to download.

 

LG Is Targeting Apple With Decision To Invest In Smartphones

from mocoNews

LG Electronics (SEO: 066570) CEO Yong Nam said going forward as the third-largest handset maker invests more heavily in smartphones it will no longer see Nokia and Sony Ericsson as its main competition, but rather Apple (NSDQ: AAPL), Research In Motion and Palm (NSDQ: PALM). The CEO made the statements at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, reports Reuters.

 

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Mobile Industry News 11/4/09

Quattro Wireless' daily take on interesting and important news for the mobile industry. See something today that we missed? Post it in the comments or send it our way on twitter @intheq

 

Apple's iPhone Hits 100,000 Apps; Two Billion Push Notifications Sent

from mocoNews

Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) announced today that there are more than 100,000 apps now available in iTunes for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Release. However, Apple did not provide updates on how many downloads there have been; how many iPhones or iPods there are; or how many developers are part of its program.

 

T-Mobile USA Investigates Cause Of Massive Network Outage

from mocoNews

T-Mobile USA experienced a nationwide outage yesterday that prohibited roughly 5 percent of its subscribers from calling, texting or using the mobile internet on their phones for several hours. Today, it is saying that service is fully restored, but continues to investigate the root cause of the problem.

 

Kodak enters mobile arena with iPhone app

from Mobile Marketer Homepage Feed

Photography, imaging and printing giant Eastman Kodak Co. has gone mobile with the launch of the free Kodak Pic Flick application for Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch.

What Are the Downsides to Droid?

from GigaOM

UPDATED Verizon Wireless is ramping up for Friday’s launch of the Motorola Droid, and the device has created substantial buzz, thanks to generally positive reviews and the carrier’s big-budget marketing campaign. But some users — including Om — say the handset has been overhyped and is no threat to the iPhone. The Droid does have a few noticeable shortcomings, including:

 

Report: Touchscreen Phone Ownership Jumps 159 Percent Over The Past Year

from mocoNews

Thanks to the popularity of the iPhone, the number people who own phones with touchscreens in the U.S. has skyrocketed by 159 percent during the past year to 23.8 million users. Release.

 

T-Mobile USA Will Add Content Channel And Carrier Billing to Android Market Soon

from mocoNews

T-Mobile USA is increasing its investment in the Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Android platform even more, by improving the application experience, according to a keynote given by CTO Cole Brodman said this morning at Open Mobile Summit this morning in San Francisco.

Smartphones Explained: The Advertiser Perspective - Eswar Priyadarshan, CTO

This is the third in a series of posts providing perspective on the rise of the Smartphone. The first post defined the Smartphone space, the second post provided a Point of View from a Publisher’s perspective and this post will switch focus to the Advertiser’s perspective.

All of us enamored of the mobile channel and mobile advertising have been waiting for the elusive ‘year of mobile advertising’. Well, let me go out on a limb and call it – 2010 will be the year of the mobile internet and mobile advertising, thanks, in no small part, to the emergence of a large and growing Smartphone market. Is it the devices themselves that draw advertisers? Or is it the full browser on new phones? Or is it the emergence of Apps on Smartphones? What dots should the mainstream connect to determine if the Smartphone means that it’s time to get serious about mobile?

Advertisers of all stripes, be they brands interested in brand awareness or direct response advertisers interested in conversions and sales, all crave a large, engaged audience that is hungrily consuming content and quite happy to click on its fair share of ads. Smartphone users are exactly that – all day mobile content junkies that devour all manner of content voraciously worldwide. Our recent Mobile R.O.I. Report for Brands demonstrates how this audience consumes more ad impressions than sales data would indicate, and also clicks more on advertising. Their appetite is supported by two key pillars – first, the unlimited data plan and only then, the device.

Back in the day when the arrival of a new rock album was the subject of breathless adulation on part of the media and the fans, the band was the focus of the fan base (myself happily included), with very little attention paid to the producer – the person to have secured the deal and very likely to have really made it happen and drag our beloved heroes (or heroines) across the finish line. The modern version of the new album release appears to be the new Smartphone release, with the screen size, keyboard, camera power and apps serving as the glamorous band. The unsung Producer in the back room? I believe it’s the far less glamorous but far more potent unlimited data plan. When we analyze traffic across the Quattro Network, the audience that always “over indexes” in terms of ad impressions is the unlimited data plan audience – be it iPhone and Blackberry users, but also Cricket Wireless, Boost and Metro PCS users without Smartphones, but with the appetite and ability to surf all day. Just so happens that most Smartphones ship with all-you-can-eat data contracts, ergo reason #1 for the Smartphone audience being a data hungry audience.

Now that we have uncovered the fuel behind the fire, let’s talk about the devices themselves. The Smartphone platforms coming out from Apple, Google, RIM and other players present an untapped rich, accountable interactive and personal marketing channel.

• Large displays with an integrated full keyboard running on high-speed networks with an option to run on Wifi = no limitations on content size and display size
• Complete corporate and personal email and messaging = a consumer that’s on the device all day and night
• Powerful browsers and support for rich media such as video = no limits on creative options
• “Native” App capabilities made available to advertisers = the ability to provide user experiences that match a built-in application
• Location awareness , offering targeting down to the street block level if the user allows local offers = the ability to think about a rich consumer relationship while he or she is unfettered by professional or domestic obligations
• And it’s with you all day – probably less replaceable than your wallet or purse with credit cards and other personal effects. Best Buy Mobile recently sponsored a survey where consumers revealed their Smartphone passion in interesting ways, including 60% who said they would abstain from alcohol before they gave up their Smartphone.

Ask yourself, marketer, why are you waiting? The Smartphone is a perfect way to showcase your brand or your offer on a rich, fully accountable medium.

Assuming that you agree that Smartphones seem like a great platform to execute a mobile advertising marketing strategy, let’s switch focus to tactics. How do you best harness the platform? Should you build an app or a site? How and where should you target and run ads? And where do you get analytics to help understand what worked and what didn’t?

The mobile social networking firm Brightkite released a report in May, 2009 that showed much higher mobile ad recall rates on Smartphones vs. all phones (59% vs. 38%), with display ads on the mobile web being the dominant format (vs. SMS). The display ad world on Smartphones has rapidly grown in size and capability even since May of this year, with much greater reach of display and rich media ads on both mobile web and Apps. Very straightforward to conclude that display advertising on the mobile web and in apps is a good place to get started with Smartphone ads.

App vs Site? Lots of money being spent by brand marketers on building iPhone apps for inclusion in the App Store. Unfortunately, a majority of them seem to be a use-once novelty exercise designed more to show off a coolness factor amongst fellow marketing and agency colleagues than any serious exercise at achieving consumer reach and engagement. My recommendation would be to mix both mobile web and app executions to achieve maximum ROI – mobile web for reach across all Smartphone platforms, perhaps some more eye-catching/engaging rich media units that span both web and app and finally a branded app tailored at longer consumer lifetime value and usage.

An ad network like Quattro provides targeting options to ensure that the entire mix of your Smartphone ad inventory can be optimally targeted and tracked. We go a step further and ensure that the ads can be trafficked directly from your existing DoubleClick, ATLAS, etc. buy-side platforms. Your rich media units can run across the iPhone and Android Super Smartphones, while all other display inventory can run across all Smartphones.  We can ensure that you target specific wireless carriers, manufacturers, models, release dates, operating systems and the like within the Smartphone world. Advertising to promote download of apps that you build can be targeted to run within other apps with full conversion tracking capability. We shall soon be adding more sophisticated targeting and re-targeting capabilities around the download history and app mix on specific devices.

Finally, we turn to analytics. Quattro Wireless has long-served as the ad serving and post-click analytics partner of major brands such as P&G, Ford, Coke and Sony. We have also driven considerable traffic to major direct response advertisers such as Papa John’s Pizza and Netflix. We therefore have a good, realistic assessment of these advertisers’ key needs now and going forward.

Major brands are all about who and why. P&G Household Products marketers care about Moms. Major supermarket advertisers care about Moms only in the geographic areas where they have stores. Major movie studios target Teens on Thursday nights with ads for movies that open Friday. These simple examples are just the tip of the iceberg on the degree of audience segmentation and analysis that major brands require from their advertising and analytics partners. Mobile analytics for major brand advertisers, particularly on Smartphones, means (a) the ability to as accurately as possible identify unique mobile visitors, (b) provide a rich set of site traffic and engagement metrics about these visitors, (c) provide tons of mobile specific drill-down in terms of mobile devices, carriers, classes of devices (touch screen, QWERTY keyboard, video enabled etc.) and (d) provide additional insight on engagement by various audience segments.

Quattro Wireless’ analytics tools provide solutions to all four classes of problems above.

The aggregate audience across all Smartphone platforms is intuitively a desirable, technology-savvy audience with some degree of above average “spend ability”. This intuition is borne out by studies such as the one done by Digital Life America a few years ago that showed the average income for Smartphone users is 50% higher than the national average. Additionally, Smartphone users tend to have a higher education level than the average population. Given the desirable income and demographic status of this rapidly growing audience, Agencies and advertisers interested in harnessing the rapidly growing mobile channel would be smart to step onto the “unwired planet” via the Smartphone.

Before I conclude, I would be remiss to omit mention of the “mother of Smartphone wars” that is already upon us and likely to kick into white-hot pitch with the Verizon Wireless/Motorola Droid launch on November 6, 2009 – the battle between Google Android and the iPhone, with RIM playing a worthy third contender. Marketers and advertisers take heed – vast sums of money from hugely capitalized companies are being poured into creating this intimate yet scalable marketing channel. Investments made now in learning and taking advantage of this channel will bear fruit for many years to come on both a local and a worldwide basis.

 

 

 

Mobile Industry News 11/3/09

Quattro Wireless' daily take on interesting and important news for the mobile industry. See something today that we missed? Post it in the comments or send it our way on twitter @intheq

 

Will People Line Up For The Motorola Droid On Friday?

from mocoNews

Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ) has a big marketing splash planned for Friday when the highly anticipated Motorola Droid first goes on sale. The blitz includes extending store hours, in-store demos and a big interactive event in New York’s Time Square called, “DROID Does Times Square.”

Several positive reviews have hyped the $200 phone as the biggest iPhone contender currently on the market, but it’s unclear how well it will ultimately be received by consumers. Will it be a true competitor to Apple’s iPhone? Will people line up at 7 a.m. to buy one? If not the Droid, maybe consumers will flock to other smartphones? Verizon is rumored to release 15 new phones, mostly smartphones, including the BlackBerry Storm2 before the end of December, reports Boy Genius.

 

What were Americans' top 10 favorite phones in August?

from FierceWireless

Smartphones are seen as a major growth engine for wireless. According to recent research from comScore, they are also becoming some of the most-favored phones of U.S. consumers. The following is a countdown of the top 10 most satisfying cell phones in the United States in August. The information comes from an August survey of 15,000 U.S. mobile subscribers over the age of 13, and includes devices that have installed user bases of more than 100,000. ComScore asked respondents to rank their satisfaction with their device on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest

 

Opera Launches Opera Mobile 10 beta

from Mobile Marketing Magazine

Opera Software has unveiled the beta version of Opera Mobile 10 for Nokia and other Symbian/S60 handsets. The release includes Speed Dial, tabbed browsing and password manager features, and is available for free download here. 

Pictures and specs: Sony Ericsson's Xperia X10 Android phone

from FierceWireless

Sony Ericsson unvield its new Xperia X10 Android phone, which the company said "introduces a new UX platform that will evolve across the product portfolio and expand over time continuously introducing new features and capabilities." Check out pictures and specifications for this new gadget.

 

UPS launches iPhone app to cater to busy holiday season

from Mobile Marketer Homepage Feed

With the holiday season right around the corner, United Parcel Service launched a new iPhone shipping application that lets consumers track and ship packages and find retail stores.

 

Analysts Predict Strong Q4 Mobile Phone Sales

from Mobile Marketing Watch

Handset sales have been on the decline throughout most of 2009, but according to research firms, the worst is behind us and Q4 is poised for a return of growth across all mobile handset segments.