Mobile Fix – Amazon flexes its muscles
Simon Andrews, founder of the full service mobile agency addictive!, on Amazon’s move in to the ad market and potential partnership with Microsoft. Sound far fetched? We’ll see…
Amazon flexes its muscles
In the last couple of weeks we’ve talked about Amazon beating Google and Apple to the punch with a cloud based locker system for digital content like music books and video plus their rumoured entrance into mobile payments and of course their appstore.
But this week they really shook people up when they made their first entry into the ad market – announcing a reduced price Kindle that will feature ads – or offers. One of the first ‘advertisers’ will be Living Social, the Amazon owned Groupon competitor.
Business Insider talk of this model as the future of gadgets and we tend to agree (Eric Schmidt has been predicting free ad supported smartphones for a few years now).
We also remembered that Amazon hired one of the key people behind XBox last year, suggesting the Kindle is going to evolve into a gaming platform. We remain convinced that Amazon will be a big player in devices – tablets and smartphones. Their success with Kindle hardware and software must have proven that to preserve – and strengthen – their position as a major content retailer they need to facilitate the devices that people use to consume content.
But who could they partner with? Who has a cool mobile operating system and is looking for partners? And who lives just around the corner?
Yes – Microsoft. Amazon can’t really work with the other GAFA players and Microsoft has lots to fear from Google, Apple and Facebook too.
Sound far fetched? We’ll see.
It was 5 years ago when Eric Schmidt made the prediction about free smartphones and even a year ago the idea that smartphones would ever be cheap enough for adfunding to cover the device cost seemed unbelievable.
But this week T Mobile started selling an Android for just £20. OK it’s not that well specced and its pink, but this is just the start. Within 12 months no-one will be selling feature phones when you can get a smartphone at the same price point. And with devices at that price, Google and others can probably make the math work for an ad supported model.
And anyone with a big customer base and the desire to learn more about their customers might also jump in with a new business model. Imagine if Sky decided the time was right to extend their triple play to a quad play and launch a mobile MVNO. Could they afford to give away smartphones, with pre-installed apps for Sky+, The Times and The Sun etc? A neat way to launch a new mobile offering to their 10 million customers?
Sound far fetched? We’ll see.
Other Google news this week is that they bought Pushlife – strengthening their abilities round music – maybe Google Music is finally going to happen?
Apple
And while Apple seem quiet right now, we enjoyed a thoughtful look at their strategy – which suggests the long game for them is to make the technology irrelevant.
A quote from a recent iPad ad; This is what we believe: technology is not enough.
So the argument is – like the point we made the other week about the internet becoming like electricity – that the device becomes irrelevant. What matters is what you’re doing with it.
The other interesting piece was this look at AirPlay – the way Apple can stream content between devices – Tech guru Scoble says it’s the most important thing since RSS.
Mobile TV
Thinking about TV, we were impressed by the data from ESPN showing that mobile accounted for half the viewing of their coverage of the Cricket World Cup, backing up the staggering data we shared on how important mobile was in the Sky coverage of The Ashes.
And socialTV/2 screen pioneer GetGlue reached one million registered users. This service has people checking in to TV shows and we also read some news of how TV shows are using QR codes in a similar way.
Physical
Staying on that tip the coverage of QR codes is growing – with research on young peoples views on them and some sensible advice that marketing objectives need to come before technology in this space – just like anywhere else.
Places
Is Foursquare etc over all ready? We think the behaviour of checking in is important, but brands need to find ways to incentivate that really resonate with their customers – otherwise it is a gimmick and will go the way of all gimmicks.
Finally
It’s Easter next week and we’re going to be skiing in Val D’Isere. Then the week after it’s the Royal Wedding and we’re escaping that hype, so there will be no Fix for the next couple of weeks. We’ll be back in May with a tweaked format.
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