Mobile Fix – the next hot phone and Android
In the latest Mobile Fix, Simon Andrews, founder of the full service mobile agency addictive!, discusses the next hot phone and Android…
The next hot phone?
With the hype over the Windows Phone 7 receding slightly, we’ve been watching the reviews to get an idea of whether this is the big deal that Microsoft would have us believe.
So far it’s hard to tell; Tech guru Walt Mossberg in the WSJ is not convinced: “…I couldn’t find a killer innovation that would be likely to make iPhone or Android users envious, except possibly for dedicated Xbox users”.
But the smart kids from Gizmodo disagree (sort of): “Windows Phone 7 is really great. A solid foundation, it’s elegant and joyful. True, a lot of that greatness is potential. But if anybody can follow through on their platform, it’s Microsoft. Should you buy this instead of an iPhone or Android phone though? In six months, after the ecosystem has filled out, the answer will be more clear. But right now, Windows Phone is definitely an option. Considering where Microsoft was just a year ago, that’s saying a hell of a lot.”
Microsoft need to get back in the game and with a huge adspend and – we imagine – very aggressive support in the sales channels like Best Buy and Carphone Warehouse, we’ll be seeing lots of their phone over the coming months. But we wonder whether people will really pass over Apple and top end Android phones to buy a Windows one.
Android
One thing that most people agree Microsoft have got right is the tight control over how their handset partners use their operating system (OS). Android has been criticised for letting its partners tweak its OS and for developers this has been a nightmare. But with version 3 of the Android OS (called Gingerbread) imminent, Google have hired a User Interface guru from Palm to improve usability and they will stop people adding their own UI, such as MotoBlur and Sense.
It was clear from the Apple numbers call this week that Steve Jobs is rattled by Android – going as far as suggesting their numbers are false – and New York VC Fred Wilson has written a great post extolling the huge potential of Android:
“I am encouraging every company we work with to invest as heavily in Android as they invest in iPhone/iPad. I actually think they should invest more because Android is still wide open and the iPhone/iPad marketplaces are leaderboard driven and the leaders have been established and it’s hard to crack into the top ten anywhere.”
We agree – and if you’re being advised to only do an iPhone app, your advisors are missing the point.
Even if your customers are 50% more likely to have an iPhone than the average this means around 10% of your customers have an iPhone.
And supposing you do really well and get 10% of them to download your app, you have reached just 1% of your customer base.
Everyone needs to be cross platform and to have a mobile site.
Forrester have looked at Mobile strategy and find it is very siloed and that many people are too busy sorting out digital and social – still.
They were; “surprised to see the lack of integration of mobile into companies’ broader corporate strategies”.
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