Mobile Marketing is Hot...

Facebook has a dirty little secret. They don’t know how to make money with their mobile app. That may sound like no big deal, or even a little humorous, but its actually pretty scary. Facebook has one of the biggest user pools around and if they can’t find a way to make their smartphone users convert, then what hope is there for the rest of us? The trouble stems from the fact that Facebook’s mobile app is a highly stripped down version of the real site. It’s about giving users a quick overview of what’s happening and a way to post an update while on the go. It’s not designed to handle the interconnected series of links, likes and lookarounds that keep people on the web version for 18 to 38 minutes per visit. Facebook ads? They’re no space for them on mobile dashboard. According to the Facebook IPO filing (via the New York Times) [Facebook] expected its mobile users to “exceed the growth rate of our overall monthly active users for the foreseeable future.” And if executives are not able to chart a path to profitability on mobile platforms, the filing indicated, the company’s “revenue and financial results may be negatively affected.” Poor Facebook! I feel bad for them. Okay, not really. Because here’s the thing about the internet and social media in particular – like the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park, they always find a way. In this case, it could mean inserting sponsored posts into mobile newsfeeds. Maybe giving Facebook credits for those who visit a special mobile ad page? Or, heaven forbid, a banner ad that covers part of the screen. I’m sure Facebook has thought of all of these options and they probably worry that people will object. But people object to every change Facebook makes. They objected to photo tagging and timelines and newsfeed filtering. They object and they object and they still show up to the party, because if they don’t, then they’re missing out. As the Times points out, we’ve had 15 years to get used to banner ads on our computers. Imagine where we’ll be with mobile 15 years from now. It’s likely we’ll have gotten used to small ads on the small screen. Or maybe by then mobile phones will pick up on your pulse and respiration then deliver a suitable ad that supersedes whatever you’re doing. “You appear to be hungry? May I suggest you stop playing Angry Birds and visit Wacko’s Tacos for lunch? They have a Buy 1 Get 1 deal today only!” The only reason mobile isn’t paying off yet is because we’re still stuck in the banner / search web advertising mode. Mobile is a different animal and soon we’ll have new advertising options that suit. Then Facebook will make more money and hopefully, the rest of us will, too. Join the Marketing Pilgrim Facebook Community

When Will The Post-PC E...

There has been much debate about what the post-PC era is, when it will arrive, or whether it’s already here. But key pieces of new data, emerging last week, are making the case that we crossed the imaginary line from the “PC” era to the “post-PC” era at the end of 2011. According to analysts at Canalys, two major computing milestones were achieved at the end of this year: smartphone shipments outpaced PCs for the first time ever, and Apple became the world’s largest PC maker, if you count iPads as PCs (as well you should). Combined, what these numbers tell us is that the post-PC era is happening now. Right now. And maybe we need to think about how we define “PC.” In Q4 2011, vendors shipped 158.5 million smartphones, up 57% on the 101.2 million units shipped in Q4 2010. For the year, there were 487.7 million units shipped, up 63% on the 299.7 million units shipped in 2010. Meanwhile, the global PC market grew just 15% in 2011 to 414.6 million units. The smartphones have won. The funny thing about that PC shipments number is that, on its own, it doesn’t paint the most accurate picture of today’s PC landscape. There weren’t 414.6 million desktop, notebook and netbook computers shipped in 2011 – those were at 112.4 million, 209.6 million and 29.4 million, respectively. The 414.6 million number includes 63.2 million in “pad” shipments, Canalys’s preferred term for tablets. That means 15% of the “PC” shipments in 2011 were tablets, largely Apple’s iPad. In Q4, tablets were 22% of the total PC shipments. And the tablet segment of the market grew 274.2% year-over-year. Also in Q4 2011, Apple became the leading worldwide “PC” vendor (if you count the iPad as a PC) with 15 million iPads and 5 million Macs shipped, representing 17% of the total 120 million client PCs shipped in Q4. It overtook HP (now #2), Acer, Dell and Lenovo in the process. Overall, the PC market grew 16% year-over-year, Canalys noted  last month. Without tablets, it declined 0.4%. Of course, there’s still the question of whether or not tablets should be broken out into their own computing category, positioned against the traditional “PCs” when tracking device shipments. For what’s it worth, I think it’s fine to count tablets as PCs – after all, PC means “personal computer,” not “machine running Windows.” The fact that we still equate the word with a desktop, monitor, keyboard and mouse combo is a testament to the empire Microsoft built, and is now losing. Case in point: netbook shipments dropped 25.3% from 2010 to 2011. Desktops grew a paltry 2.3% and notebooks grew just 7.5%. This is end of the “PC” era in action. While the 209.6 million notebook shipments still make that the largest category of “PCs,” the growth trends here, if sustained, dictate that’s its only a matter of time before the shift to tablets becomes even more pronounced. Think about it: what’s the first “PC” you’re going to buy for your kid, as a new member to the post-PC computing generation? If you respond “ notebook ,” I’d say you’re lying. That kid is getting an iPad, even if they end up stealing yours. If not an iPad, then they’re getting a phone. And smartphones are PCs, too. The most affordable ones. This past quarter, smartphone shipments overtook PCs, a hugely important milestone that speaks volumes about the state of modern-day computing. The computer-in-your-pocket has moved from being “a niche product segment at the high-end of the mobile phone market to becoming a truly mass-market proposition,” explains Canalys of the change. In Q4, Apple  broke records by shipping 37 million iPhones – the most ever shipped by a single vendor in a quarter. Previously, Nokia held the record with 28.3 million phones shipped in Q4 2010. What a difference a year makes. But Canalys cautioned that it expects to see smartphone market growth slow in 2012, as vendors exercise “greater cost control and discipline” to focus on profitability. This is the only discordant note to the report. Smartphone growth slowing? No offense to the analysts, but I’ll believe that one when I see it. Just watching Apple’s sales alone, it’s clear you can’t underestimate its power to deliver record-breaking numbers. In addition, just because vendors like HTC and Motorola  are going to launch fewer smartphone models in 2012, that doesn’t (necessarily) mean they’ll sell fewer overall phones. If anything, the companies are hoping that their increased focus on “hero” devices will help them increase sales. One thing is clear, however: that post-PC era everyone’s been talking about since the day the phrase slipped off Steve Jobs’ lips has arrived. We’re living it. Anyone who wastes their time debating its existence (tablets are PCs! phones are PCs!) is arguing semantics. The shift itself, whatever you want to call it, is happening. So perhaps “post-PC” isn’t the best terminology. If everything’s a PC, then maybe what we’ve achieved is something more akin to “PCs Everywhere.” Not as catchy, though. Photo credit top: Lokesh Dhakar , flickr; bottom: agirregabiria , flickr

comScore: As U.S. Smart...

comScore just released its monthly mobile numbers, which charts smartphone usage from U.S. consumers for the three month period ending in December 2011. For the period, 234 million Americans age 13 and older used mobile devices, which is in line with the previous period’s usage. With respect to smartphone usage, 97.9 million (up from 91.4 million people in the previous period) people in the U.S. used smartphones during the three months ending in December, representing 40 percent of all mobile subscribers. Google Android continued to be the most popular smartphone platform with 47.3 percent market share, up 2.5 percentage points from September. Apple took the second position, growing 2.2 percentage points to grab 29.6 percent of the smartphone market. RIM ranked third with 16 percent share, followed by Microsoft (4.7 percent) and Symbian (1.4 percent). Samsung ranked as the top OEM with 25.3 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers (no change from September), followed by LG with 20 percent share and Motorola with 13.3 percent share. Apple has 12.4 percent share of total mobile subscribers (up 2.2 percentage points), while RIM following with 6.7 percent share. As mobile phone usage increases and smartphone adoption grows, more and more consumers are actually using their mobile for functions other than phone calls. In December, 74.3 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers used text messaging on their mobile device; ownloaded applications were used by 47.6 percent of subscribers (up 5.1 percentage points), while browsers were used by 47.5 percent (up 4.6 percentage points). Accessing of social networking sites or blogs increased 3.8 percentage points to 35.3 percent of mobile subscribers. Game-playing was done by 31.4 percent of the mobile audience (up 2.6 percentage points), while 23.8 percent listened to music on their phones (up 2.9 percentage points). Google just revealed in its fourth quarter earnings, Android has been activated on over 250 million devices, up 50 million since November of last year. But iOS is growing as well. Nielsen reported recently new smartphone buyers are more interested in the iPhone (particularly the 4S) vs. Android phones.

RIM Bolsters Marketing ...

Update: RIM updated their blog to state that the images and characters in question are were meant to be a bit of fun, and not the vanguard of the company’s new marketing plan. Way back in December, before a management shakeup saw him and his partner leaving RIM’s top posts, co-CEO Jim Balsillie lamented the state of the company’s marketing efforts. They hadn’t “achieved the desired results” as he put it during RIM’s Q4 earnings call, and promised big things to come on the marketing front come 2012. Things seemed to start off well — you couldn’t watch Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve without getting an eye-full of BlackBerry logos imploring you to “be bold” in in the new year. Then the Bold Team happened. Somehow, when RIM’s marketing department was brainstorming ways to get people to take them seriously as a worthwhile competitor in the smartphone market, the concept of using small ethnically-diverse cartoon superheroes not only came up but stuck. Let’s meet the team, shall we? Look, it’s not as though I don’t understand what RIM is going for here. The implication is that BlackBerry users don’t fit the corporate drone archetype that people associate with the brand. They’re active, they’re motivated, and yes, they enjoy a good ninja movie just like the rest of us. RIM is trying to humanize the brand (or in this case, super-humanize) in an attempt to show people that using a BlackBerry isn’t a mark of the tragically uncool or the hopeless workaholic. All of this in hopes that people who would have otherwise written off BlackBerrys would give it a second thought when it came time to extend their contracts. “Trying,” of course, is the keyword. It’s not as though they don’t deserve credit for giving something new a try. RIM took a… ahem… bold step here by trying to shake off their business-oriented pallor, and while I don’t expect them to gain much headway if they try to play up the Burger King Kids Club, at least it shows that they’re open to taking some risks. The bigger issue in play here is that while pumping up the BlackBerry brand is a necessary move for RIM, their product lines don’t seem quite up to snuff yet. With a leaked roadmap pointing to the first BlackBerry 10 device hitting the streets in September, it’ll be quite a while before RIM gets the fresh start they’ve needed for so long. Meanwhile, with hardware revamps and middling handsets peppering the first half of the year, even BlackBerry faithful will have to live with a considerable dry spell. With any luck, this was just a one-off promotional effort, and we’ll never see these little creatures again.

Apple Overtakes Samsung...

According to the latest report from Strategy Analytics, Apple has now overtaken Samsung to become the world’s largest smartphone vendor by volume. Apple achieved 23.9% market share during Q4 2011, narrowly beating out Samsung’s 23.5% share. In addition, Apple shipped 37 million units in Q4, again going neck-and-neck with Samsung and its 36.5 million units shipped during the same time. However, notes Neil Mawston, Executive Director at Strategy Analytics, “while Apple took the top spot in smartphones on a quarterly basis, Samsung became the market leader in annual terms for the first time with 20% global share during 2011.” Apple’s annual share, meanwhile, was 19%. In other words, Apple won the quarter, not the year. Smartphone global shipments reached nearly half a billion units in 2011 (488.5 million units), the firm found, turning the smartphone battle into a two-horse race between Apple and Samsung in terms of units shipped. Nokia, the one-time smartphone leader, is still holding onto a top spot, in position #3, with 19.6 million units shipped during Q4 and 77.3 million shipped during 2011. But Nokia’s global share has been halved from 33% in 2010 to just 16% in 2011, indicating its ongoing decline. Although Strategy’s numbers paint the Samsung vs. Apple battle as a tight race between mobile giants, there’s a big difference between the numbers being reported here. As MacRumors points out, Samsung no longer reports its mobile phone sales numbers, while Apple discloses its units sold each quarter. That means analysts are estimating Samsung’s numbers, but Apple’s numbers are provided by the company itself. It could be that Apple’s lead is even greater than what’s seen here. Update : A report from the analysts at Canalys has just come in, and confirms the same thing – it’s an Apple vs. Samsung battle. According to the firm’s latest findings, Apple’s record shipment of 37 million iPhones shipped in Q4 beat the previous record held by Nokia of 28.3 million phones shipped in Q4 2010. Another shocking figure: the huge volume of iPhones shipped exceeded the size of the entire market of 4 years ago, when 35.5 million smartphones shipped globally. The firm also noted Nokia’s shipment of 19.6 million phones, calling it “a decent performance given its current transitional state.” However, Canalys stopped short of estimating Samsung’s phone shipments at this time, saying that the company doesn’t disclose these numbers publicly. They did say that Samsung’s quarterly smartphone growth was around 30% and mobile phone shipments were up 10%, though. Says Canalys Vice President and Principal Analyst Chris Jones, “the numbers are still coming in, but our early take on the state of the smartphone market is that, while Apple and Samsung clearly saw phenomenal performances, many other vendors have struggled. The full impact of this difficult quarter on hardware and software vendors will become clearer over the next week, when final results from the likes HTC, LG, Huawei and ZTE are announced, and Canalys publishes its full Q4 2011 worldwide country-level databases.”