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What’s New in Mobile Marketing – 03/24/10

• mSpot’s Mobile Movie Streaming Service Expands To The Web
• Justin.tv Unveils Non-Broadcasting iPhone Application
• How the Tablet Will Change the World
• Some Crazy Postbellum Data From Foursquare And Gowalla (STATS)
• How the Fashion Industry Uses Location-Based Marketing
• You Can Now Gift iPhone Apps
• Flurry: iPhone Games Are A $500 Million Industry In The U.S. And Taking Share
• Average Price for iPhone Apps Keeps Falling
• DEMO: Google Still Advocating For Mobile Web Sites Over Apps
• MobiTV debuts offline storage features for mobile TV service
• VH1 “Smiles” on Mobile Marketing
• The iPad May Change Computing, Just Not Your Life
• Zillow Launches Android App To Browse Home Sales And Rental Listings On The Go
• iPhone vs Others: The Mobile OS Market
• Soon, There’ll Be More Mobile Web Users In China Than People In The United States
• Square Now Being Used For Mobile Payments At Political Fundraisers
• Apple Patents Reveal Plans for Mobile Social Networking App
• Android and Apple To Be The Big Winners In N America
• Don’t Let Your Website Ruin Your Magazine’s Tablet Edition
• Notifo Is A Simple Mobile Notifications Platform For Anything
• What Business Card? Just Scan My QR Code
• Chevy Adds QR Codes to Cars
• Has The Time For Mobile Marketing Sailed By?
• An ‘Unanswerable’ Question: Can The iPad Save Magazines?
• Check-In Fatigue. Or, Why I’m Rooting For An All-Out Location War.
• 5 Things You Need to Know About Location-Based Social Media
• Do Mobile Coupons Matter?
• Travelers Love the Mobile Web – But Most Don’t Use Travel Apps Yet
• Study: More Than Half Of Companies Are Primed For Mobile Advertising

What’s New in Mobile Marketing – 09/23/09

• Ustream Launches Android Livestreaming Video App
• Apps Hot Right Now, But Mobile Web Will Win
• Denny’s, Taco Bell, Walgreens Offer Android-Targeted Mobile Coupons For In-Store Push
• Is Bing A Better Place To Browse iPhone Apps?
• Why You Can’t Get A Good Phone With Verizon
• JAGTAG Brings 2D Barcode Reading To Twitter
• How Mobile Technology Is Changing The Future Of Banking
• Report: Mobile Web Sites Are Not Improving

The iPhone App Store Now Has 75,000 Apps (And Counting)…Can You Find Yours?

That’s 10,000 More Apps in ONE MONTH…

What’s New in Mobile Marketing – 09/02/09

• Kid Robot’s Mobile Scavenger Hunt
• Analysts Believe iPhone Will Be Non-Exclusive Next Year…Finally
• Jet Blue Is Killing It In Mobile
• Mobile Marketing Industry To Reach $50 Billion By 2014
• iPhone and Android Users Downloading 10 New Apps A Month
• Marketers Are Driving Development Of iPhone Apps…Is This Really A Good Thing?
• Paramount Reveals Mobile Marketing Results From Transformer’s Campaign
• Samsung Launches Corby Touchscreen Handset Targeting European Youth Market
• 97% Of iPhone Users Love Their iPhones, Hate Battery Life & AT&T

What’s New in Mobile Marketing – 08/19/09

• Mobile Web Audience Is Larger Than You Think
• SCVNGR Lets You Build Awesome Scavenger Hunts For Any Mobile Phone
• Build Your Own iPhone Apps in 5 Minutes With Sweb Apps
• Samsung Widget Strategy For Cross Platform Support
• iPhone Is Now The Most Popular Camera Phone On Flickr
• Mobile Video Phones Hot, Pay TV On Handsets Not
• Jonas Bros. Team with Verizon for Innovative Campaign
• Capture Your Summer with Great Mobile Video Apps
• The 10 Most Expensive iPhone Apps
• Sherwin-Williams iPhone App Moves from 70th to 18th in App Store After 2-day $15K Media Push By Admob
• The 35 Best iPhone Apps Of The Year (so far)

Why Are Brands Acting Like Lemmings Going Over A Cliff When It Comes To ‘Needing’ An iPhone App?!!?

While reading this article in the NY Times about big media brands jumping on the iPhone App Bandwagon, I couldn’t help but get frustrated by the lack of strategy most of these companies have. Are the people in charge of most of these brands bothering to do due diligence on the iPhone App Market or Mobile Market in general? I’m a big believer in the iPhone App platform when the situation is right and an App make sense. However, I would ballpark that about 80% of Brand Created Apps on the iPhone don’t even need to be apps. Odds are they could have used the same amount of budget it cost to create the iPhone app to optimize the same content/site across most major smartphone browsers – including the iPhone’s Safari browser.

Hmm. Seems like a tough call:

• There are now 65,000 apps on the iPhone.  Good luck trying to fight through the noise without dedicating even more budget for media to promote the app itself.
• The iPhone has just 1.5% of the overall smartphone market as of July 2009.  For arguments sake, lets say it’s 5% now.   Do you really want to ignore 95% of your mobile audience and potential customers?
• Mobile website usage in general is soaring.  From a recent Forrester report on the mobile environment, Weather.com attracts 12.5 million monthly unique visitors to its mobile site and People.com generates 18 million mobile pageviews a month.

In the beginning I could understand a brand trying to get an iPhone App for experimentation and PR value but that ended in 2008. Though iPhone is the hottest smartphone out there, it just doesn’t make sense to create an iPhone app unless you plan on replicating the same app on Symbian (Nokia), Android (Google), Blackberry, Palm and any other platforms.  And that’s not going to be cheap…

Brands are much better served creating a mobile strategy that targets the greatest reach possible, and right now that means it’s much more cost effective (and smarter) to optimize content for all smartphone browsers versus doing a one off iPhone app.

You can view the pros and cons on iPhone App Development vs. iPhone Optimized Site on a previous blog post here.

What’s New in Mobile Marketing – 07/29/09

• New Dexter Game for the iPhone Pushes iPhone’s Visuals
• 5 To-Die-For Augmented Reality Shopping Apps – Zagat Android App looks great
• New iPhone App Tracks Real Life Achievements – Perfect for Gen Y
• 10 iPhone Apps that Use Facebook Connect
• Axe Launches Branded Game for iPhone
• Control Your House by iPhone?
• iWet T-Shirts app for the iPhone
• Maybe this is what’s needed to reinvent the auto? Nissan Unveils IT System, iPhone App for New Networked Car

What’s New In Mobile Marketing – 07/15/09

• Qik Launches Push API, Mobile-To-Mobile Video Streaming
• Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issues runs 2D Bar Code MMS Campaign
• 7 iPhone Apps that can save lives
• One out of every seven minutes of media consumption today takes place via mobile
• $2 or less is prime price point for iPhone Game
• MillerCoors courts Chicago sports fans with Mobile Marketing
• Seeking fame in Apple’s sea of iPhone Apps – 65,000 apps now…
• Top 10 Mobile Phone Websites - June 2009

What’s New In Mobile Marketing – 07/08/09

• 14 iPhone Apps With Push Notification for Productivity
• Christian Dior Makes Fashion Statement With Mobile Marketing
• iPhone Apps for Movie Geeks
• Amazon Won’t Let Mobile Apps Use It’s Product Info Anymore
• Video Camera’s in iPods? Bad News for YouTube?
• Akamai Shows Off VBR Streaming for iPhone 
• Mobile Phone Proves Useful Tool For Ace Hardware
• Arby’s Using Shortcodes for Free Roastburger.  Text BBQ to ARBYS (27297) on July 9th for Free Grub.
• The Weather Channel Creates Mobile Optimized Site for Weather.com.  Nice to see that they get it.  No need for an App – Just optimize your site for the main mobile browsers.

What’s New in Interactive – 5/12/09

What’s New In Interactive is a round-up of interesting links we pass around to each other.

Here’s the latest list of links that caught our eye…

• Marketers moving online in downturn
• Facebook Turns on Commenting For Public Profile Wall Posts
• iPhone Apps Can Make Quite A Bit Of Money…
• 10 Highly Addictive Facebook Applications
• Social Media campaign gives NBC’s Chuck a Final Chance
• Word Of Mouth Goes Far Beyond Social Media
• up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A
• Forbes Finally Realized That Twitter And Facebook Can Both Play A Role In Branding
• Social technologies are like sex. “Fun to talk about and read about, but you can’t truly comprehend unless you do it.”
• The top 100 social brands
• What? MySpace is the most common social networking site used by Moms?