On April 8th 2010, Steve Jobs made another jaw dropping presentation on the iPhone platform and its new features at the Apple's iPhone OS 4 event. I was amazed at the rate with which new apps are being developed and more amazingly the rate at which people are downloading and using them. All the new features specially multi-tasking, VoIP and folders are great and will make iPhone platform even better, but the biggest one that caught my eye is iAd. Check out the slides at 10:49AM and 10:50AM. Assuming Steve is giving the correct data the three slides that show the numbers game are very very powerful. They show the enormous opportunity that lies in front of advertisers to use the iPhone platform as the next gen in online advertising. It provides them with a perfect platform for targetted and focused advertising. I feel it is much more commanding than web/Internet advertising since in case of mobile advt, the advertisers can actually identify their users. They can know about their habits, usage patterns, geo-locations and routines by placing their ads on specific apps. These ads will also have a better ROI since the platform they run on will be with the users all the time, Internet ads cannot boast of that. The only problem I have with iAd is that is is tied to the iPhone OS. I would have loved it to be platform agnostic so that one could utilize it on Blackberry's or Palm OS or Windows Mobile. But going by Apple's history, that would have been a total departure from their strategy of having everything Apple :)
But overall, I give it a big thumbs up and am sure that advertisers will be quick to grab this huge marketing opportunity.
Showing posts with label Apple. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Apple. Show all posts
Monday, April 12, 2010
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Apple proposing Microsoft
News came out a couple of weeks back about Apple and Microsoft possibly entering into a wedlock. Wow, that will be something to watch and watching most closely will be Google.
Three big technological competing companies, all entering into different arrangements to be the bigger one by taking the help of each other. Apple wanted Google as the default search engine, maps application and video content for its revolutionary iPhone. Google needed that alliance to push for more advertising revenues from search. Microsoft was sitting in a corner and wondering what to do. They came out with Bing, although it did not get a lot of traction. Meanwhile Google decided to enter the hugely popular mobile market. Not only did they come out with an open-source operating system(Android) for mobile devices, they launched their own mobile phone - Nexus One. Apple sees it as a big threat to their iPhone market. Seriously its Nexus One that can really disrupt iPhone's success. Apple has also realized that it has been making Google richer by continuing with them for the iPhone's search tool. They plan to put a stop on this revenue channel by dumping Google and shaking hands with their traditional rival Microsoft and use Bing as their default search engine. Good news for Microsoft. However, it still needs to be seen whether Bing will be popular among users. Till date, it has only been able to capture 6%-7% of web search market. This alliance might be a good test to judge Microsoft's search capabilities.
Among all this dynamics, one thing that should not be forgotten by these companies is that their rivalry should not affect their users, any wrong move and we, the users would migrate.
Three big technological competing companies, all entering into different arrangements to be the bigger one by taking the help of each other. Apple wanted Google as the default search engine, maps application and video content for its revolutionary iPhone. Google needed that alliance to push for more advertising revenues from search. Microsoft was sitting in a corner and wondering what to do. They came out with Bing, although it did not get a lot of traction. Meanwhile Google decided to enter the hugely popular mobile market. Not only did they come out with an open-source operating system(Android) for mobile devices, they launched their own mobile phone - Nexus One. Apple sees it as a big threat to their iPhone market. Seriously its Nexus One that can really disrupt iPhone's success. Apple has also realized that it has been making Google richer by continuing with them for the iPhone's search tool. They plan to put a stop on this revenue channel by dumping Google and shaking hands with their traditional rival Microsoft and use Bing as their default search engine. Good news for Microsoft. However, it still needs to be seen whether Bing will be popular among users. Till date, it has only been able to capture 6%-7% of web search market. This alliance might be a good test to judge Microsoft's search capabilities.
Among all this dynamics, one thing that should not be forgotten by these companies is that their rivalry should not affect their users, any wrong move and we, the users would migrate.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)