The Droid chatter continues on the web, and Verizon has announced that it's releasing it next week on November 6th. It will be interesting to see how the Droid actually performs in the market and how much user share it can steal away from the other mobile platforms.
Of course the Droid has been called the "iPhone Killer", but then again so has every other new phone that has come out recently. One thing I mentioned in an earlier post is how much different Google's strategy is to Apple's when it comes to their mobile platforms. While Apple has only released the iPhone on its handsets and on the AT&T network, Google has gone with a wider spread approach and essentially released Android into the wild. So maybe it's incorrect to compare the Android (Droid) to the iPhone, when we really should be comparing it to something else.
This Tech Crunch article ("The problem with iPhone Killers") does a great job of highlighting this point. The Droid isn't actually an iPhone Killer because first and foremost... it's not trying to be an iPhone Killer! Although it's competing in the same marketplace with the iPhone, in actuality Google's strategy and approach seems to be more targeted at being a "Windows Mobile Killer". Google is following the same mobile operation model as Microsoft; releasing its mobile operating system to the device makers and letting them control the physical hardware and distribution process. But the big difference for Google is that its OS is open source and free, while Microsoft charges licensing fees upwards of $25 per phone. The problem for Microsoft right now is that the Android platform is starting to gain real traction with the public and with the device makers. We're seeing more and more phones released with the Android platform, stealing away market share from Windows Mobile. Microsoft is responding with its upcoming Windows Mobile 7 platform, but for now it looks like it could be facing a lengthy uphill battle against Google.
So while most people will be eagerly anticipating the release of the latest iPhone Killer next week, I think I'll be keeping a closer eye on the real battle going on in the mobile world. At some future point, Android might be a true iPhone killer, but for now Google appears to be focusing on building up its mobile base by going after much weaker prey: Microsoft.
Would you pay for Hulu?
That's the question a lot of people are asking themselves this week, as Hulu subscription rumors began flying all over the internet. It seems that Hulu isn't really an "evil plot to destroy the world" after all, but just another multimedia company trying to make money off of us. Who knew? Still, for those of us who have started to rely on Hulu for our viewing needs, it could signal the end of the free ride.
Hulu has done an impressive job of building up a large user base and partnering with several key content providers (NBC, ABC and Fox) over the past year or so. They have a lot of mainstream TV shows on their platform, both from the major networks and the smaller cable networks. I've used it a bunch of times to catch up on shows that I'm casually following (I DVR my serious shows). Some of my friends have even gotten rid of their cable subscriptions entirely because most of the shows they would watch on cable are now available for free on Hulu.
So how much would you be willing to pay for Hulu? There haven't been any real numbers thrown around yet, so it's hard to get a feel for what the Hulu executives are thinking. There has been mention of this pay model only applying to certain programming, so it sounds like it will be a pay-per-view model, and not a general subscription model. If that's the case, will they follow an iTunes model, and charge something like $0.99 for each show? You'd be able to watch the show for a couple of days after paying for it, and potentially be able to watch it on more than one computer.
If they went with this pay-per-view model for only the latest and hottest TV shows, I think it could work out. In theory, people would be willing to pay a premium charge to gain access to the latest episode of their favorite shows. Still, I don't think casual viewers would be willing to pay this cost, and it could turn off a lot of potential viewers from an aspiring show.
We'll see how Hulu plays this out. I'm tempted to close out this post by saying something about the "best things in life being free", but I won't. Instead, I'll close it out by saying something about "if it's seems too good to be true, then it probably is". I think we all knew Hulu was too good to be true, and that one day it would start charging for its content. It seems like that day is coming soon, whether we like it or not.
Hulu has done an impressive job of building up a large user base and partnering with several key content providers (NBC, ABC and Fox) over the past year or so. They have a lot of mainstream TV shows on their platform, both from the major networks and the smaller cable networks. I've used it a bunch of times to catch up on shows that I'm casually following (I DVR my serious shows). Some of my friends have even gotten rid of their cable subscriptions entirely because most of the shows they would watch on cable are now available for free on Hulu.
So how much would you be willing to pay for Hulu? There haven't been any real numbers thrown around yet, so it's hard to get a feel for what the Hulu executives are thinking. There has been mention of this pay model only applying to certain programming, so it sounds like it will be a pay-per-view model, and not a general subscription model. If that's the case, will they follow an iTunes model, and charge something like $0.99 for each show? You'd be able to watch the show for a couple of days after paying for it, and potentially be able to watch it on more than one computer.
If they went with this pay-per-view model for only the latest and hottest TV shows, I think it could work out. In theory, people would be willing to pay a premium charge to gain access to the latest episode of their favorite shows. Still, I don't think casual viewers would be willing to pay this cost, and it could turn off a lot of potential viewers from an aspiring show.
We'll see how Hulu plays this out. I'm tempted to close out this post by saying something about the "best things in life being free", but I won't. Instead, I'll close it out by saying something about "if it's seems too good to be true, then it probably is". I think we all knew Hulu was too good to be true, and that one day it would start charging for its content. It seems like that day is coming soon, whether we like it or not.
The Droid is coming
There's a lot of buzz going around right now about the new Droid phone. It's a Motorola smartphone running the Google Android platform on Verizon's network. The technical specs on the phone sound impressive, and the marketing campaign launching right now is positioning it as the iPhone killer everyone has been waiting for.
A couple posts ago I talked about Windows Mobile phones vs. the iPhone. I mentioned that even though the Windows HTC phone I was looking at might have better technical specs, it didn't have the same complementary 'network' (Apps Store, user base) that the iPhone has and as such was at a disadvantage. I didn't mention the Google Android platform at the time, but it is certainly emerging as a contender in the mobile operating system market.
The App Store has 85,000 applications available, and coming in (a somewhat distant) distant second is the Android Market at 10,200. These numbers are based on statistics pulled on Sept. 9th, 2009.
So how did Google get the Android platform to a place where it's ready to take on the current reigning champion? This CNET article ("Google Andoid: More than just a cheap date") seems to attribute most of Android's success to its open source nature. Google pretty much gives away the Android platform to any device manufacturer that might be interested in using it. This allows for anyone to experiment with the platform on their upcoming phones and helps lower the overall cost of manufacturing and licensing. The platform also draws in a heavy crowd of application developers looking for the flexibility of open source. Seems like a win-win in terms of adoption for Google. For now the focus appears to be on gaining widespread adoption and usage, and using that as a channel to deliver search and advertising services. Classic Google.
The new Droid phone appears to have the two key features needed to take on the iPhone. It has equal (if not better) technical specs. More importantly, it has a complementary network that is growing and will soon challenge the App Store in offerings. As the Android platform is released on more and more new phones we should see the Android user base steadily grow. We'll see if this is enough to take on the incumbent Apple.
A couple posts ago I talked about Windows Mobile phones vs. the iPhone. I mentioned that even though the Windows HTC phone I was looking at might have better technical specs, it didn't have the same complementary 'network' (Apps Store, user base) that the iPhone has and as such was at a disadvantage. I didn't mention the Google Android platform at the time, but it is certainly emerging as a contender in the mobile operating system market.
The App Store has 85,000 applications available, and coming in (a somewhat distant) distant second is the Android Market at 10,200. These numbers are based on statistics pulled on Sept. 9th, 2009.
So how did Google get the Android platform to a place where it's ready to take on the current reigning champion? This CNET article ("Google Andoid: More than just a cheap date") seems to attribute most of Android's success to its open source nature. Google pretty much gives away the Android platform to any device manufacturer that might be interested in using it. This allows for anyone to experiment with the platform on their upcoming phones and helps lower the overall cost of manufacturing and licensing. The platform also draws in a heavy crowd of application developers looking for the flexibility of open source. Seems like a win-win in terms of adoption for Google. For now the focus appears to be on gaining widespread adoption and usage, and using that as a channel to deliver search and advertising services. Classic Google.
The new Droid phone appears to have the two key features needed to take on the iPhone. It has equal (if not better) technical specs. More importantly, it has a complementary network that is growing and will soon challenge the App Store in offerings. As the Android platform is released on more and more new phones we should see the Android user base steadily grow. We'll see if this is enough to take on the incumbent Apple.
Social class on the internet
CNN posted (yet another) story last week on the social class divide between MySpace and Facebook. This concept has been thrown around for a while now; I think I first read about it a year ago. Basically, users of Facebook tend to be more educated and affluent than users of MySpace. This makes sense when you think about how and where Facebook got started. It originally started out as a service for students at Harvard, and branched out to other colleges before becoming fully public in 2006. MySpace, on the other hand, started out open to everyone.
I avoided the whole MySpace craze back in its day. I had a Friendster account way back when and then joined Facebook pretty late after taking a hiatus from social networking sites. So I may not be the best resource on all these sites, but from a personal perspective I never liked (and still don’t like) MySpace. Every profile page I looked at had HTML diarrhea all over the place. It was the most cluttered busy obnoxious site I could imagine, and I couldn’t comprehend why people needed to add so much junk to their profile pages. It appeared “uneducated”, if that makes any sense… it all seemed so childish and amateurish I couldn’t bring myself to make a profile and validate MySpace’s existence. I know, it sounds a little harsh, but I don’t take too kindly to my eyeballs being violated every time I had to visit MySpace.
Facebook on the other hand has a lot more structure and control, and that visually and logically appeals to me. The privacy controls are important to me, because I understand the risks of letting the public see my profile, both personally and professionally. In my mind, Facebook has a lot more ‘functionality’ in place that actually serves a purpose and isn’t just there to flaunt the latest style or widget that was hot at the time.
Back to social class on the internet. It makes sense to me why the demographics are lining up the way they are on those two social networking sites. There are several articles out on the internet that talk about that. The CNN article also mentions two other sites that attract even more affluent users: Twitter and LinkedIn.
LinkedIn makes sense; it’s a site for white-collar professionals who are seeking to build up their professional network.
Twitter is a bit more interesting… is it because only upper-class yuppies would be so self-centered to think that anyone really wants to ready the very minutia of their lives? Or because only they have that much free time on their hands to waste time twittering about life’s little foibles? :)
Here’s another example of a class divide between internet services. Gmail users tend to have a higher credit score than Yahoo users… the article notes that it might be because young users favor Yahoo email so that drives down the average credit score on that site.
I wonder what other cases might be out there… YouTube vs. Hulu? Flickr vs Picasa? Blogger vs. LiveJournal?
New Smartphone
I’m in the market for a new phone right now. My current phone is a couple years old, and it’s constantly getting made fun of when I pull it out. It’s a T-Mobile MDA phone, which uses the HTC Wizard base model. I’m actually not quite sure if it’s a Wizard or a Hermes model, but that’s beside the point. The point is my phone is very old.
A month ago, I had it in my head that I was going to buy the latest HTC Windows phone, the HTC Touch Pro 2. It’s a pretty slick phone, it has all the latest touch screen features and is 3G enabled and has a slide out keyboard. It has been toted as the iPhone killer, but then again, so has almost every new smartphone that has come out recently. On my Facebook profile I posted a link to the phone and said “My next phone, aka the iPhone killer!” Well, that prompted a couple of people to comment on my post, most of them disagreeing with my statement and saying the iPhone was better. My brother actually made the best point of the bunch when he pointed out the biggest reason why the iPhone was better than the HTC phone had nothing to do with the phone technology itself, but with Apple’s App Store. Both phones are on par with each other, technology wise, but only the iPhone has the big content base at the App Store which gives the phone so much more added value.
Most consumers don’t care about the exact specs of each phone; which phone has the most memory or the slightly better camera. What they care about is all the “cool stuff” you can do with the phone. Right now Apple has a huge advantage over all other phones and applications stores because you can do more “cool stuff” with their phone than you can with other phones. That doesn’t mean their phone is better. It means that Apple got into the market early, built up a massive installed user base, and is now leveraging that user base to build out its complementary App Store service. Microsoft or Blackberry can roll out phones with better specs and functionality than the iPhone, but until they build out their user base and offer equally as cool applications on their own stores they won’t stand much of a chance against Apple. Which is a bit of a catch-22… how do you get more people to use and develop apps for your phone if the only way they’ll do that is if there is a bigger user and developer base for it?
In the ideal world (for consumers), we’d see a uniform platform used for all these phones and all the cool and innovative applications would work on any smartphone. That’s probably not going to happen anytime soon, but it would probably spawn a lot of growth in the mobile apps market. As it is right now, Apple has the dominant standard in the industry, but I can see Microsoft investing a lot of time and money trying to get their Windows standard spread out across the mobile landscape. It will be interesting to see the tactics they’ll use to achieve this…
Ok, back to my next phone purchase. I’m not sure what I’m going to do now. The HTC phone is nice, and would work well with my current carrier (T-Mobile), but it’s still priced really high even with a 2-year contract. I’m not sure if I’m ready to switch over my family plan to AT&T, so that limits some of my options. One thing I am considering is buying a separate phone line just for the iPhone, so I can play around with it over the next couple of months. I’m also *maybe* thinking about buying an iPhone unlocked and using it on the T-Mobile network. I’ve heard you can do this and pretty much everything works properly. I may go down this route just to go down the route… it sounds pretty cool and hackerish! :)
A month ago, I had it in my head that I was going to buy the latest HTC Windows phone, the HTC Touch Pro 2. It’s a pretty slick phone, it has all the latest touch screen features and is 3G enabled and has a slide out keyboard. It has been toted as the iPhone killer, but then again, so has almost every new smartphone that has come out recently. On my Facebook profile I posted a link to the phone and said “My next phone, aka the iPhone killer!” Well, that prompted a couple of people to comment on my post, most of them disagreeing with my statement and saying the iPhone was better. My brother actually made the best point of the bunch when he pointed out the biggest reason why the iPhone was better than the HTC phone had nothing to do with the phone technology itself, but with Apple’s App Store. Both phones are on par with each other, technology wise, but only the iPhone has the big content base at the App Store which gives the phone so much more added value.
Most consumers don’t care about the exact specs of each phone; which phone has the most memory or the slightly better camera. What they care about is all the “cool stuff” you can do with the phone. Right now Apple has a huge advantage over all other phones and applications stores because you can do more “cool stuff” with their phone than you can with other phones. That doesn’t mean their phone is better. It means that Apple got into the market early, built up a massive installed user base, and is now leveraging that user base to build out its complementary App Store service. Microsoft or Blackberry can roll out phones with better specs and functionality than the iPhone, but until they build out their user base and offer equally as cool applications on their own stores they won’t stand much of a chance against Apple. Which is a bit of a catch-22… how do you get more people to use and develop apps for your phone if the only way they’ll do that is if there is a bigger user and developer base for it?
In the ideal world (for consumers), we’d see a uniform platform used for all these phones and all the cool and innovative applications would work on any smartphone. That’s probably not going to happen anytime soon, but it would probably spawn a lot of growth in the mobile apps market. As it is right now, Apple has the dominant standard in the industry, but I can see Microsoft investing a lot of time and money trying to get their Windows standard spread out across the mobile landscape. It will be interesting to see the tactics they’ll use to achieve this…
Ok, back to my next phone purchase. I’m not sure what I’m going to do now. The HTC phone is nice, and would work well with my current carrier (T-Mobile), but it’s still priced really high even with a 2-year contract. I’m not sure if I’m ready to switch over my family plan to AT&T, so that limits some of my options. One thing I am considering is buying a separate phone line just for the iPhone, so I can play around with it over the next couple of months. I’m also *maybe* thinking about buying an iPhone unlocked and using it on the T-Mobile network. I’ve heard you can do this and pretty much everything works properly. I may go down this route just to go down the route… it sounds pretty cool and hackerish! :)
Mission Statement
So, I meant to write this first entry about a month ago. Then work and school got crazy, and I couldn't find any time to sit down and write entries into the blog. But anyways, that's not what this blog is about. This blog is about a conversation I had with someone a month ago.
I was talking to this person about what I wanted to do with my career. He is an older, more established business man who is much further along in his career than I am, so I thought it would be a good idea to press him for career advice. My career goal, I told him, was to move into an area I had vaguely titled "Technology in marketing, Marketing in technology". I'm still not quite sure what that means yet, but that's what I'm calling it for now.
His advice to me was simple. 'Make yourself an expert in this field'. I asked him how I could do that. He suggested I go out and write a blog, and make other people believe I'm an expert in technology and marketing. He cited an example of a friend who went out and wrote a blog about web development. As his blog started gaining readers he was often brought in for gigs where people treated him as an 'expert' in his field.
That got me thinking a bit. I am very interested into moving into the field of technology marketing, but I would hardly even call myself an expert right now. I'm interested in the actions and news of the big players, like Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Hulu, Microsoft, etc… but I'm more of a casual viewer right now, not a die hard fan. I'm intrigued by the direction all this technology will take us in, but I'm not sure if I have formed my own ideas and opinions of the direction where I think it will go in or should go in.
I'm like a casual 'Lost' viewer… the show is interesting to me and I'm curious to see how it will turn out... but I don't hit the message boards hard to see what other people think or maintain my own fan theory site.
Well, this will be my fan theory site. About technology and marketing, not about 'Lost'. Here I will write about technology trends and news, and try to analyze a bit and give my take on it. I will try to theorize on where I think the trend is going and where I think it should go. More importantly I will hold myself accountable to my career goals and work on establishing myself as an expert in my field.
Hopefully what I write will be fun and interesting. Even if I'm the only one reading it. :)
I was talking to this person about what I wanted to do with my career. He is an older, more established business man who is much further along in his career than I am, so I thought it would be a good idea to press him for career advice. My career goal, I told him, was to move into an area I had vaguely titled "Technology in marketing, Marketing in technology". I'm still not quite sure what that means yet, but that's what I'm calling it for now.
His advice to me was simple. 'Make yourself an expert in this field'. I asked him how I could do that. He suggested I go out and write a blog, and make other people believe I'm an expert in technology and marketing. He cited an example of a friend who went out and wrote a blog about web development. As his blog started gaining readers he was often brought in for gigs where people treated him as an 'expert' in his field.
That got me thinking a bit. I am very interested into moving into the field of technology marketing, but I would hardly even call myself an expert right now. I'm interested in the actions and news of the big players, like Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Hulu, Microsoft, etc… but I'm more of a casual viewer right now, not a die hard fan. I'm intrigued by the direction all this technology will take us in, but I'm not sure if I have formed my own ideas and opinions of the direction where I think it will go in or should go in.
I'm like a casual 'Lost' viewer… the show is interesting to me and I'm curious to see how it will turn out... but I don't hit the message boards hard to see what other people think or maintain my own fan theory site.
Well, this will be my fan theory site. About technology and marketing, not about 'Lost'. Here I will write about technology trends and news, and try to analyze a bit and give my take on it. I will try to theorize on where I think the trend is going and where I think it should go. More importantly I will hold myself accountable to my career goals and work on establishing myself as an expert in my field.
Hopefully what I write will be fun and interesting. Even if I'm the only one reading it. :)
