Since everybody in the mobile tech scene are all agog about mobile applications right now, here’s an interesting report called – Sizing Up the Global Mobile Apps Market. According to the study, the overall mobile apps download could grow at the rate of 92% from 7 billion in 2009 to almost 50 million by 2012.
In terms of revenue, mobile ads and virtual goods is expected to bring in 62% more from a mere $4.1 billion in 2009 to around $17.5 billion by 2012. These include revenues from both paid and free apps. Free apps developers get to earn through mobile ads peppered on their applications’ interfaces.
The study also highlighted the contributions made by Apple’s Apps Store in sparking new interests into mobile apps. Actually mobile apps have been around since the nineties, but only reached its peak of success when Apple launched its Apps Store. True enough, we’ve only heard about the Google Android Market recently. And soon after the BlackBerry App World, WebOS apps market, and even Nokia’s Ovi store which houses its mobile apps gained some recognition and online mileage.
To achieve this growth, creative strategies should be implemented by countries to attract new customers and different business models since the dynamics of the app market varies in emerging nations. The mobile apps ecosystem will prosper if some actions to enhance discovery, improve user experience, drop price barriers and increase developer revenue share are adapted.
With the increasing popularity and media mileage being gained by location-based social networking sites such as Gowalla and Foursquare, it is not surprising that the Facebook people will take notice of this. And this could be threatening to Facebook especially since this location-based social networking services can take away a number of users from them.
So, what’s the best way to handle this threat? – Facebook decides to offer the same location-based services. NYT Bits Blog is reporting that Facebook is preparing to launch a new feature that will allow users to share their location. This will be launched in late April, just in time for Facebook’s f8 developer conference.
What this means is that starting April expect to receive status updates from your friends stating their current locations. But of course, sharing location among friends is just the tip of the iceberg. This new feature could also be the start of a social recommedation feature which eventually would bring in more brand participation Facebook.
This also explains why Facebook updated is privacy policy last November 2009, where part of the policy stated – “When you share your location with others or add a location to something you post, we treat that like any other content you post.”
Facebook’s location feature will either be through Facebook’s site or through APIs that will be made available to small time developers.
It’s too early to tell whether which of the location-based services will this new Facebook kill. Although according to the report, Facebook is not really eyeing any of these startups but rather a bigger competitor – Google with its small-business advertising program powered by Google Latitude.
As rumored awhile ago, Google indeed run their own Super Bowl commercial right after the 3rd quarter of the games. And staying true to what it has grown accustomed to doing, Google’s Super Bowl ad was very simple sans all the fanfare of other Super Bowl ads. Google was not advertising any upcoming product or gadget or anything but rather decided to show the power of its localized search engine. Simple as it is, the ad was able to convey its message well and has probably endeared many who have watched it.
Actually Google’s ad dubbed “Parisian Love” is an old clip. It has been on YouTube for three months now. So, instead of coming up with an explosive ad which could have cost them a lot of money, like the other ads Google was able to save some money as well. Except for the $30 million fee that it has to pay for the highly coveted 30 seconds Super Bowl slot.
In case you’ve missed it during the airing, the Google Super Bowl commercial started with a search for “study abroad in paris france” and ended with “how to make assemble a crib.” Yup, it’s a love story for crying out loud! It shows how Google search can be a part of everyone’s life. Simple, straight forward and extra-ordinary way of telling a love story with the help of a search engine. You’ve got to give it to the Google folks for pulling this one out effectively.
Just a quick note to follow-up on the latest development about New York Times plan of introducing a paid model for its online newspaper. It is now official, NYT will be rolling out the paid-metered model beginning in 2010.
The metered model approach to making its loyal readers pay for their access to the New York Times will give users free access to a set number of articles per month. NYT will start charging users online when they’ve access more than the number of free articles. According to NYT, this is their way of creating a second revenue stream that will somehow help in preserving the online newspaper. Furthermore, offering the NYT online on a paid subscription basis will also give them the flexibility to keep an appropriate ratio between free and paid content – hence helping them stay connected to the Internet.
To prepare the online NYT, new online infrastructure will be designed. The good news is, those who subscribe to the print NYT will continue to have free access to the online NYT, even when the paid model system is already implemented.
NYT Chairman Arthur Sulzberger expressed confidence that the loyal NYT users would not mind the paid model since it will help the NYT improve on its content.
“Our audiences are very loyal and we believe that our readers will pay for our award-winning digital content and services.”
Pricing and other details about the new paid model will be released in the coming months. In the meantime, you’ge 11 more months of free access to the NYT online, so make the most of it.
If Moto Droid’s controversial ad campaign sparked some tremendous amount of buzz in the U.S., its European counterpart, the Motorola Milestone seemed to be a tamer version. The Moto Milestone is currently available in most Europe mobile distributors and earlier report from Expansys indicates that sales is starting to pick up, slowly.
Maybe the dull and boring ad campaign is not helping out Motorola to gain some market momentum for the Milestone? Or is it because Europeans are still not ready yet to embrace Android?
Now, going back to the ad campaign, any idea as to why the European version is not as hard-hitting to iPhone as the American ad campaign? Right now, I could only think of one thing – that Motorola was not after all behind the ad campaign that kept on attacking the iPhone and even AT&T. So, it’s quite obvious that Verizon is the mastermind of the iPhone bashing after all.
Anyway, Motorola Milestone’s video ad aside from not hitting any competitor was also nicely done with a bit of serious tone. It actually suits well with the Motorola Milestone’s features.
So, which of the Motorola Droid/Milestone’s video ads do you like better?
We all love Quentin “Pulp Fiction” Tarantino, agreed? And we also know how weird can he can get. But can you actually dig what Mr. Q is doing in this Japanese commercial? It’s not that there’s something wrong with making a fool out of yourself in exchange for probably millions of yen, but for the sake of reporting can somebody tells us what’s happening in the commercial? Anybody can translate the commercial for us? Or better yet, send us the transcripts?
It’s a commercial for Japan’s Soft Bank, right? As you can see from the video, there was Quentin clad in Japanese Kimono, talking to two Japanese ladies, a robot dog on a table a real dog together with a Japanese guy. Then the phone attached to the robot dog rings, and an American lady was seen yelling at Quentin on the phone.
Now, what can you deduce from this commercial?
It’s cute though. They all seem so serious about it.
If you’re closely following our beats here at 901am, you’ll surely noticed that we’re so fond of news with accompanying YouTube videos. This is fine and good since YouTube is part of the new media. Now much as we don’t want to annoy you our dear readers with videos running various targeted ads, we can’t help it because it’s beyond our control.
And guess what? Expect to see more of those ads as YouTube announced that they are rolling out a video targeting tool which advertisers can use to find appropriate videos where their ad campaigns will run on. Google really wants to push video ads, thus it is giving advertisers more control of their ad campaigns by letting them choose specific YouTube partner content they’d like to target.
The new video targeting tool is also flexible enough that advertisers can discover videos relevant to their campaign easily as well as their target audience. The tool would even suggest videos based on keywords, viewer demographics, and interest-based graphics.
In short, YouTube has established an advertising marketplace where video targeting options result in extra control and better brand for display advertisers.
And what this gives us YouTube fans – more annoying video ads, slow loading time and possibly the need to find another place to satisfy our video content hunger. Don’t get me wrong here – if it’s all for the good and sustainability of YouTube, well and fine. I just don’t dig if consumers are really acting upon ads they encounter on YouTube videos. Have you?
It’s December folks and both AT&T and Verizon must have already felt the Christmas spirit. AT&T decided to drop the lawsuit it filed against Verizon for putting up an add that misinform its customer about AT&T’s 3G coverage.
If you will recall, Verizon’s “There’s a Map for That” alluded that AT&T subscribers cannot access Internet services as compared to Verizon’s superior 3G network capability. This prompted AT&T to file a case against Verizon claiming that such ad was blatantly false and has caused irreparable harm to AT&T. More →
After getting various mobile innovation-related awards from several advertising organizations, here comes Pizza Hut iPhone app again bagging another prestigious plum. This time it’s from “the” Forbes Magazine, which named it the #Branded Mobile Application of 2009. Of course, Pizza Hut iPhone app was also named as the first national pizza chain to release an ordering app, and that’s not counting the millions of profits generated by the app for the Pizza store.
If you’re an iPhone users and you have not downloaded the app yet, you might be missing a lot. Actually I might be missing a lot because I haven’t downloaded the app yet. But I have a good excuse, the app is not available in the country where I am located. More →
If the big honking banner ads on your favorite sites suddenly get less annoying over the coming months, here’s why: Google is buying display advertising startup Teracent.
Just a quick note to follow-up on the 
If the big honking banner ads on your favorite sites suddenly get less annoying over the coming months, here’s why: Google is 
