Smartphone: Marketing Strategy
The most important factor is the marketing strategy deployed by giants smartphones companies, to attract and retain their clients, building long-life relationships with customers.
Apple does not pursue the small business or smartphone market, it is just too small. the only market big enough is the mainstream market, and thus Apple is aiming the iPhone at the millions of iPod-toting technophobes. the Mac customers who seek tech support every time their precious Mac will have a small problem is the target for the iPhone; provide them with a cool status symbol that they can use every day to take calls and they will be pleased.
At the other end of the table, to make the BlackBerry more appealing to consumers, RIM has begun releasing devices that offer more than just wireless e-mail, including features such as a media player, camera, overall sleeker design, resulting in an enthusiastic response from consumers that ended up quickly snapping these new BlackBerry devices. One way in which RIM has been trying to be more competitive with Apple is with its offering of applications. Blackberry’s App World has doubled its options to around 2,000 applications, however, still far behind the 50,000 that Apple has, but constantly gaining more confidence. As of July 2009, these applications are available in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Italy, France, Germany, and Spain and soon to be offered in Brazil and India.
HTC has recently implemented a new global advertising campaign that is based on HTC’s ‘Quietly Brilliant’ brand positioning. As HTC’s first global advertising campaign, the YOU campaign is being rolled out across 20 countries and features the tagline, ‘You don’t need to get a phone. you need a phone that gets you.’ this represents HTC’s commitment to focus on people (you), making a big propaganda within the city centres, with a mix of traditional advertising and guerrilla advertising techniques, such as television, fliers, posters on buses and stickers on urban stairways. HTC has truly blanketed the market with these 60-second ads, focusing their attention on quantity rather than a whole storyline portraying the phone throughout a journey. in addition, more ads of shorter duration increase the likelihood of someone seeing at least one of them. this, in turn will build some Brand Recognition for HTC, and thus a lack of specific phone detail is understandable. most people carry a various devices manufactured by the company, such as Fuze or Cingular 8125, yet when they hear something mentioned about their phone being an HTC, the response is completely blank. therefore, it seems it would be a good strategy for HTC to build some name recognition; however, the trick will be in transferring that to individual models / carriers, in comparison with Apple, which has only 2 models to consider.
On the pro side, BlackBerry’s target market is premium users, and there are a lot of things you can do with apps designed for BlackBerry, such as enrich productivity. On the con side, there is not the critical mass with the general consumer compared to the iPhone.
However, in order to be really successful and the real market leader, you have to play in both consumer and enterprise markets. People use smartphones for both pleasure and business, and this holds true from teens to adults.
Smartphone: Marketing Strategy
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Categories: Technology Tags: Apple, blackberry, giants, mac customers, rim
Apple regains number one smartphone spot – Apple Business – Macworld UK
Apple has emerged as the number one smartphone vendor worldwide in the fourth quarter of 2011, by a small margin, after losing ground to Samsung in the previous quarter, according to research firms Strategy Analytics and IHS iSuppli.
But the Korean giant has emerged as the market leader for the first time in 2011, the research firms said Thursday. Samsung shipped nearly 100 million smartphones during the year.
Samsung had a close to 20 percent share for the year, in comparison to Apple’s 19 percent share, according to Strategy Analytics.
Samsung had overtaken Apple in the third quarter, as customers waited for the iPhone 4S. Apple’s introduction of the new phone in the fourth quarter unleashed tremendous pent-up demand for the iPhone as consumers awaited the arrival of the latest model, said IHS iSuppli.
Besides competing in the market, Apple and Samsung are in fierce patent litigation, with Apple trying to block Samsung devices in many markets.
Global smartphone shipments grew 54 percent annually to reach a record 155 million units in the fourth quarter, said Strategy Analytics.
Apple’s smartphone shipments in the fourth quarter were 37 million, up 128 percent from the same quarter a year ago, it said. Shipments by Samsung in the quarter were 36.5 million, up 241 percent.
Nokia’s global smartphone market share halved from 33 percent in 2010 to 16 percent in 2011, mainly on account of a lackluster touchscreen smartphone portfolio and a limited presence in the U.S. market, Strategy Analytics said. Nokia’s partnership with Microsoft will be very much in focus during 2012, and the industry will be watching closely to see how swiftly the two companies can expand in the high-value 4G LTE (long term evolution) market that is rapidly emerging across the U.S., Japan and elsewhere, it added.
Other major Android licensees like Sony Ericsson and Motorola did not match Samsung’s strong smartphone performance in the fourth quarter or for the entire year, indicating that the Android smartphone market is becoming too crowded “as the various licensees compete for limited consumer mindshare and shelf space”, IHS iSuppli said.
Sony Ericsson shipped 9 million phones in the fourth quarter, a 20 percent decrease year-on-year, citing fierce competition and price erosion as reasons for the poor result. Its results for the quarter, which included a net loss and a drop in revenue, highlighted the struggles of many vendors who rely on Google’s Android to power its smartphones.
Global handset shipments meanwhile were 445 million units in the fourth quarter of 2011, up 11 percent from the same quarter in the previous year. Nokia is still the leader with a 25.5 percent share for the quarter and close to 27 percent share for the full year, but its share has fallen from over 30 percent in the previous year. Strategy Analytics said. Samsung was the number two, followed by Apple.
Apple regains number one smartphone spot – Apple Business – Macworld UK
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Categories: Technology Tags: 5 million, Apple, isuppli, patent litigation
iPhone users grabbed 6 million free apps a day in December
iPhone users downloaded more than 6 million of the top free apps each day in December.
(Credit:Fiksu)
iPhone users were busy in December downloading more than 6 million of Apple’s top free apps each day.
For the last month of 2011, theiPhone app store witnessed a record 6.04 million downloads per day, a 7 percent jump over the previous high of 5.45 million daily downloads in November.
Compiled by mobile ad firm Fiksu, the App Store Competitive Index looks at the total number of downloads of the top 200 free iPhone apps in the United States. the downloads have been gaining momentum since September when the average daily number was 3.8 million.
Of course, the jump in iPhone app downloads during December is hardly surprising, even to Fiksu.
The critical Christmas season lights a fire under mobile advertisers eager to share in the holiday tidings. Advertisers spent big bucks throughout the month to bump up their app store rankings.
And the amount of money spent during the final week of Christmas jumped 100 percent over the prior weeks, says the mobile ad firm.
“This presented advertisers with sufficient budgets the rare chance to acquire twice as many loyal users,” noted Fiksu. “For many major app brands, and game apps in particular, this exceptional opportunity certainly justified increased budgets. eager consumers actively downloaded apps on their new devices, and the brands that had secured higher ranks were able to acquire a higher volume of loyal app users.”
The number of downloads were also boosted by the sheer volume of iPhones scooped up by consumers. for the final quarter of 2011, Apple sold 37 million iPhones, a figure much higher than expected.
December also saw a leap in the number of iOS (andAndroid) device activations, leading up to 6.8 million between the two platforms just on Christmas Day. one story has suggested that Apple alone saw 4.2 million iOS devices activated on December 25.
iPhone users grabbed 6 million free apps a day in December
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Categories: iPod, iPhone, Xbox 360 Tags: Apple, christmas season, holiday tidings, rare chance
Apple’s iPhone Strategy Cutting Into Android Market Share
For the most of the life of the iPhone, its major limiting factor? it was only available at AT&T. In March of 2011, the iPhone 4 came to Verizon and the world seemingly rejoiced. while Verizon iPhone sales have been solid, they have not been quite as killer as Apple or the pundits had originally thought. People have expensive contracts and early termination fees to contend with and the notion of jumping from one carrier to another does not make sense for a lot of consumers.
Those AT&T contracts are starting to expire. that does not mean users are dropping the nation’s second largest cellular operator in droves, but would-be iPhone buyers finally have freedom of choice. there are also a variety of price points available. the iPhone 3GS is now free from AT&T on a contract. the iPhone 4 is $99 on Verizon and AT&T with a contract while the iPhone 4S is available across AT&T, Verizon and Sprint for $199. that makes the iPhone available to more than 260 million Americans whereas it used to only be available to the 95-100 million or so on AT&T.
Market depth + price = more smartphone sales. it should come as no surprise and we have been curious to see these numbers since Apple made the announcement of the 4S last October. it is also no surprise that the 4S is leading the charge. of new iPhone buyers, 57% chose the 4S.
of all smartphone owners (not just recent acquirers) that Nielsen surveyed, 46.3% are Android owners. Apple has risen several points in the overall market share to 30%. Research In Motion’s BlackBerry has dropped precipitously in these types of surveys, going from near 22% at this time last year to 6% of new buyers in Q4. Windows Phone and Windows Mobile (which indeed still exists) made up for 3.8% of new users and 5.9% overall in Nielsen’s numbers with Windows Mobile making up for 4.6% of that.
The smartphone market is cyclical. Apple made its big push with iOS 5 and the iPhone 4S in the fall. the company is likely to do that again this year with a late season rollout of the iPhone 5. Meanwhile, it is time for Android to reassert itself as version 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich makes its way to new devices across carriers. the seesaw battle will continue and when we see Nielsen’s numbers for Q1 or Q2, the tone of this story might be quite different.
It is not like Android is losing much steam. of recent acquirers, more than half chose Android at 51.7% in Q4. the growth of Android and Apple comes to the detriment of, well, everybody else, but especially RIM. of all smartphones purchased in Q4, 88.7% were either iOS or Android. that leaves several billion dollar companies such as Microsoft, RIM and to a certain extent Hewlett-Packard to battle over a very small slice of the pie.
Apple’s iPhone Strategy Cutting Into Android Market Share
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Categories: iPod, iPhone, Xbox 360 Tags: 4s, Apple, sprint, termination fees
Smartphone Development Trends
Smartphones are no longer restricted to elites in the society and they have become very popular with the average mobile user. This explains the huge buzz in the smartphone app development market with hundreds of smartphone developers creating thousands of applications each month. Businesses ranging from top notch MNCs to smaller proprietary businesses are looking at smartphone apps as a potent marketing tool. This increased popularity has led to regular change in the industry trends.
Popular Trends in Smartphone Development
- High Growth Rate – In the last two years smartphone app market has shown an incredible growth rate. It is estimated that the number of apps developed and download have gone up by three times during this period. the industry is worth more than $7 billion currently and is expected to double up in the next five years.
- Apple’s Sole Show Ends – Smartphone app market was once dominated by Apple but now other competitors have picked up and gaining market share. Most businesses are looking to develop apps for multiple platforms than only for iPhone that was the trend a few years ago. Android development has been heating up in the last two years.
- Businesses Leading their Way – Just about two years back only 10% of the top 1000 companies in the world had their presence on smartphone apps. But this figure has grown by leaps and bounds in the last couple of years as many of them have got their smartphone apps developed.
- Gamer Boys Love It – The increased processing speed and memory in smartphone has aided the mobile gaming market. many serious gamers now prefer to play games on their handheld devices while on the move.
- Social Media Buzzing – As like the PC apps, social networking has taken over a large share of the market in smartphones apps too. Millions of users access Facebook, Twitter, MySpace using their smartphones and this number is increasing each year. many smaller social media companies are turning to their own smartphone apps to make their platform popular.
- Search does not mean Only Google – in the smartphone world search doesn’t mean Google alone as many search apps have become popular with the users. Niche apps like those to find a coffee shop or a wine maker are more popular with the smartphone users. In the smartphone world search apps comprise huge market share.
The best way to get smartphone apps developed is to outsource it to offshore development centers in countries like India where you can get your unique smartphone apps developed. Here expert developers will handle your custom development project and provide you with a solid platform to take on your competitors. Outsourcing to India saves you a lot of money thanks to the low cost of hiring skilled labor in the country. apart from development, you also get awesome post development support from these centers.
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Categories: Technology Tags: app development, Apple, developers, development market, mobile user
