For mobile marketing, it's (still) about the network
In 1999 I joined Sprint PCS. One of my first projects was to launch the T3000 – a mobile phone aimed squarely at the business segment. And, with a $700 price tag, business segment meant “executives.” The phone was a modern mobile miracle – you could actually synchronize your contacts and calendar to the phone – as long as it was tethered to your PC. And yes, it had to be a PC – no Macs allowed. At the time smartphones made up approximately 00.00% of the market. The term hadn’t even been invented yet.
About a couple of years later I had the privilege of using one of the first air cards. People in airports marveled as I pulled out the PC Card (this was before USB ports), unfolded the tiny antennae, and accessed the Internet at a blazing 14.4 kbps max (this was before airport Wi-Fi – or any Wi-Fi). I’d proudly show how I could access my Exchange server at work wirelessly – if onlookers had about 10 minutes to wait. Oh, and no support for Macs again.
These scenarios are laughable today. If it takes more than half a second for the screen on your iPhone, Droid, or Blackberry to materialize you’re taking it back to the store. Access to email, contacts, and calendar information is ubiquitous. Users measure the value of their smartphones by the user experience and the size of their application stores, with Apple’s iPhone leading the way at 160,000+ applications.
Now, 25% to 35% of all mobile phones in the U.S. market are smartphones. These devices are expected to increase over 500% in new sales from 2010 into 2011. Although RIM Blackberries still have the largest market share, Apple’s iPhone is credited with the huge upswing in smartphone sales – and rightfully so, bringing a completely new and much more friendly user experience to mobile web browsing and application use. iPhone holds second place in market share and Google’s Android platform, in third place, is actually the fastest growing smartphone platform in 2010.
But no matter what smartphone you use; web browsing, application performance, messaging, access to emails and calendars are all inherently dependent on one thing: network performance. When diving into the mobile marketing world you need to ask two questions with respect to networks:
1) Where is my target market?
Is your market concentrated in big cities, small towns, or rural areas? And which big cities? High speed wireless data access is still not widely available in small towns and rural areas. And the user experience could vary from city to city – just ask an iPhone user in New York City compared to Chicago and you’ll get wildly different responses (recall that AT&T temporarily shut down sales of iPhones in New York City earlier this year due to the burden on their network). You will need to tailor your mobile marketing and applications to fit your typical user’s access speeds.
2) How is my target market most likely going to access my content?
Does your target hang out at coffee shops and airports – almost all of which provide Wi-Fi access today? Or do they work in the field and depend on 3G speeds? Or, over-lapping with the question above, do your field targets work in cities with newly launched wireless 4G services offered by companies like Clear? You need to be aware of the bandwidth required for the applications you are making for your targets.
It may not seem like network technology and coverage should concern marketers when making decisions about expanding their brand to the mobile world. But remember this the next time you hear someone complaining about how poorly an application performs on their iPhone or why their mobile website looks so bad on a Blackberry.
For a comprehensive review of mobile marketing come back to capstrat.com to view our darticle on the topic coming out soon.
Comments
There's clearly no one-size-fits all. And even if 50% of installed phones are smartphones by the end of 2011, as Nielsen keeps saying, that still means half of consumers don't have web (and app) capability.
As access time drops from 10 minutes to half a second, hardware becomes less of a differentiator. If everything happens instantly, it's all about good content and a good user experience.
My Droid finally does what my Palm Pilot struggled to do back in 2000, synchronizing calendars and contacts automatically without a tethered USB or serial cradle. In another 10 years, our mobile devices will probably handle day-to-day concierge tasks for us automatically in the background. What do you think is next?
Completely agree - it's always about content and user experience. And I think wireless network evolution will further intensify this fact.
Long Term Evolution (LTE) looks to be the future technology for 4G wireless speeds. The big leap in this technology is not really about speeds, however. LTE will probably be adopted across all competing technology standards - CDMA and GSM - and across countries (major exception being China).
Manufacturers will probably create devices that can operate on multiple channels of LTE which means you can go from Verizon to AT&T to Sprint or from the U.S.A. to France to Japan with the same phone.
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