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
