Hiring an iPhone Developer? Read This First.
The Business Insider has posted an article titled How To Hire A Great iPhone Developer and it features a few quotes from our creative director, Ryan Unger. It’s a good read with some valuable insight, so feel free to give it a look.
Hampshire, UK – 4th November 2009: A new report from Juniper Research (www.juniperresearch.com), forecasts that consumer usage of mobile coupons will generate close to $6 billion globally in retail redemption value by 2014.
Juniper Research’s new report – ‘Mobile Coupons & NFC Smart Posters: Strategies, Applications & Forecasts 2009-2014’ cautions that user apathy amongst the wider public, as well as lack of willingness to change and learn a new method of making financial transactions are potential stumbling blocks. This is despite NFC trial results which show very high levels of user acceptance.
“Marketers can use the mobile device as the ultimate personal marketing channel. It is almost permanently switched on and physically with the consumer. This makes a great opportunity for brands and marketing agencies to access clients immediately, driving footfall and encouraging an instant decision,” explained Howard Wilcox, Senior Analyst at Juniper Research and lead report author.
Smart posters with embedded NFC tags will bring to life static billboards, creating immediate interaction between potential customers and their prospective purchases. By simply passing their device close to the tag, users can take away a coupon or product information that can result in purchase decisions.
Further findings from the Mobile Coupons and Smart Posters report include:
- ARPU from NFC coupons and smart posters will exceed ARPU from NFC payment transactions
- The vast majority of mobile coupon redemption value will be generated by the Far East & China, Western Europe and North America in 2014
The report, launched globally today, contains comprehensive six year forecasting for all the key market parameters including users, redemption rates, values and incremental ARPU for all mobile coupons, NFC coupons and NFC smart posters.
The Mobile Coupons & Smart Posters whitepaper and further details of the study, ‘Mobile Coupons & NFC Smart Posters: Strategies, Applications & Forecasts 2009-2014’ can be freely downloaded from the Juniper website.
Get Well Soon, iPhone 3G Network!
When I first got my iPhone some two years ago, I rarely experienced connectivity issues. In fact, I was pretty proud of the fact that my phone and data service were so consistent. Flash forward to today, and I’ve moved from Cleveland (population: 500,000) to Chicago (population: 2.9 million), and the number of iPhone users has increased many, many times over.
Increasingly, I can’t hold on to a call. No joke—I drop calls every single day. And 3G data service? At this point, I feel like I’ve won the lottery when I see that beautiful little 3G icon instead of the letter “E” at the top of my screen. The other day, a friend of mine received nine visual voicemails all at once…and they had been left by recipients four days prior!
Make no mistake. Despite these issues, I absolutely love my iPhone. And thankfully, a recent article over at the NY Times has shed some light on why these issues are occurring.
You can read the article here.
Clearly, no one could have predicted the success of the iPhone. With a little patience, it looks like all of these issues will be ultimately resolved.
Apple Leads Cell Phone Industry with 32% of the Total Industry Profit
Question: How does a newcomer introduce just one cell phone, and absolutely obliterate their competition with respect to profit?
Answer: They build an iPhone.
Top Cell Phone Manufacturers' Estimated Revenues Compared to Apple's
In the cell phone game, the Apple iPhone only accounts for 8% of the total industry revenue, but 32% of the total industry profit. How they managed this feat is quite simple. They pull in a 40% operating margin, in an industry that averages only 7.5%. The next most profitable company in the industry, RIM, only takes in 20.7% operating margin.
[ iSmashPhone.com ]
Microsoft is teaming up with Nokia to develop mobile versions of its hugely popular software titles for Nokia devices. This sounds like a very promising union, and I’ll be excited to see what develops.
You can read the story here.
Punchkick Interactive to Launch Mobile-Web Initiative for ASPCA
CHICAGO, IL (August 4, 2009) – Punchkick Interactive®, a Chicago-based mobile marketing company, today announced the signing of its newest client, the ASPCA® (The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals®), the oldest animal welfare organization in the United States. The ASPCA will retain Punchkick Interactive’s services to create a mobile version of the ASPCA Web site, which will provide users with pet care information, adoption center locations, and the ability to make donations directly via their mobile phone.
“We’ve partnered with Punchkick Interactive to increase our visibility with our increasingly tech-savvy audience,” said Jo Sullivan, Executive VP of External Affairs for the ASPCA. “Punchkick Interactive’s expertise with mobile marketing technologies gives us confidence that our mobile Web site will be one that delivers a top-notch user experience.”
Punchkick Interactive will be creating a custom mobile Web site for the ASPCA, which will feature content specially tailored for the unique mobile-phone Web browsing experience. The site will be accessible on nearly all internet-enabled mobile phones, and feature an easy-to-use user registration form, a mobile donation form, as well as access to valuable information such as emergency pet care tips.
About Punchkick Interactive Inc.
Punchkick Interactive® is America’s first design firm to focus exclusively on full-service mobile marketing. The company specializes in creating text-message campaigns, mobile-optimized Web sites, and custom mobile software for iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Palm, Java ME, and Android devices. For additional information visit www.punchkickinteractive.com or call (800) 549-4104.
3 Rules for Keeping My iPhone Applications Organized
I can still remember the good ol’ days, when the iPhone had no downloadable content. You had one home screen with all of your Apple-bestowed icons in a single place–no organization skills required.
Those days are long gone, and with a slew of amazing iPhone apps comes a puzzling question: How does one best organize the plethora of applications downloaded to an iPhone? In the past, I’ve tried sorting my apps in a million different (and often bizarre) ways, and frequently found myself looking at friends’ phones, trying to figure out the logic they’d applied to their own apps.
After some careful consideration, I’ve finally settled on my favorite way to sort iPhone app icons. Of course, these methods are purely based on my personal taste and strange sense of “logic,” so take this post with a grain of salt. That said, without further delay, my 3 Rules for Keeping My iPhone Applications Organized:
My iPhone's Home Screen
1. I am an Apple purist at heart, and in a nod to the 1st gen iPhone, I keep the original twelve iPhone icons on my home screen (note: these are in addition to the four app icons found on the dock at the bottom of the screen). These icons are: Messages, Calendar, Photos, Camera, YouTube, Stocks, Maps, Weather, Notes, Clock, Calculator, and Settings. The reason for doing this is two-fold. First, I find that through years of using my iPhone, I’ve genuinely memorized the location of these twelve apps. Clicking on them is second nature to me. The second reason I like this organization scheme is that having twelve home screen icons on your phone leaves a nice empty row between the upper twelve app icons and the home row. I find this aesthetically pleasing–to me, it beats having a home screen crammed to the brim with icons.
2. Apple has provided us with five more application icons since the first gen iPhone. These icons are: App Store, Compass, Contacts, iTunes, and Voice Memos. Based on my logic in Rule #1, one could reasonably argue that these Apple-given icons should be on the home screen of the phone (they are Apple-bestowed, of course). This would be a fair argument, except that there’s no way to fit them all on the home screen. For this reason, I opt to treat these five application icons the same as I do any other downloaded iPhone apps. Doing this still supports Rule #1, which aims to keep my iPhone home screen organized and uncluttered as it was in its first release.
3. Finally, the piece de resistance. For ALL application icons not located on the initial home screen of my iPhone, I simply arrange them alphabetically on secondary home screen pages. This way, I don’t have to wonder where an app should be located and any hesitation I have to download millions of apps is squashed. I’ve tried all sorts of ways to sort my downloaded apps, but nothing is as fool-proof and easy to remember as this method. My experiments with attempting to sort apps based on categories like “utility” or “games” have always ended up failing. Alphabetizing is simple through and through.
…Phew. I hope this makes some semblance of sense! Do you have a better method of organizing your iPhone icons? If you do, feel free to share with me. I’d love to hear your thoughts as I continue in my quest to find true iPhone nirvana.
A Secondary Screen on My iPhone
As with many other Web sites, Google.com offers its users a convenient way to find what they’re looking for using a feature called autocomplete. Autocomplete does just what it says—it automatically completes a user’s search form based on the popularity of possible keyword suggestions. For example, as you type “m,” “MySpace” is displayed because “MySpace” is the most searched term that starts with an “m.” If you follow that “m” with “obile mar,” “mobile marketing” is shown because it’s the most searched term that starts with “mobile mar,” and so on.
I’ve compiled a list of the top 26 autocomplete keywords from a to z. I’ve also cross-referenced this list against Google Pay-Per-Click (PPC) costs, and came up with some really interesting results.
Key Findings:
- It would cost between $611,930 and $922,680 to own the first PPC position of the top 26 autocomplete keywords.
- “Quotes” is by far the most expensive of the top autocomplete keywords, costing ≈$23.67 per click, or ≈$374,755 per day for the first PPC position.
- The next three next most-expensive CPC keywords are “orbitz,” “gmail,” and “netflix” at ≈$4.79, ≈$4.30, and ≈$4.04, respectively.
- The three lowest-cost keywords with respect to estimated cost-per-day based on clicks-per-day are “facebook,” “photobucket,” and “zillow.”
- ALL of the following keywords do NOT break 1,000 paid clicks per day: “facebook,” “irs,” “photobucket,” “realtor.com,” “southwest airlines,” “usps,” “xm radio,” and “zillow.” The obvious assumption is that users searching those keywords ignore the sponsored links and just go organic.
PPC Costs for the top 26 autocomplete keyword suggestions
Texting + Driving = Uh Oh.
The New York Times has posted a driving game that measures how your reaction time is affected by external distraction (i.e., text messages on your mobile phone). After playing this game for a few minutes, I can definitely say that I have a new appreciation for states like California and New York, which have banned cell phone use while driving.
Think you can multitask while driving? Click here to prove it.
