As businesspeople, we’re obsessed with answering the question: who’s going to win? It’s a natural tendency since it can be very expensive to pick the wrong horse. Unfortunately, the current vogue of comparing smartphones strictly on features may lead marketers to compare devices when they should be surveying the ecosystem they inhabit.
So let’s turn our attention from the impressive horse above to the humble vole.
Research scientists at Purdue tell us the 60 species within the vole genus Microtus are evolving 60 to 100 times faster than the average vertebrate. Given the chance to evolve 60 times faster than my competitors, I’d say “yes, thank you very much, I think I will.”
So what does this have to do with smartphones? Today most observers are comparing the features, look, feel and application store depth of the iPhone and Motorola’s new Droid with the fervor of the English and the French insulting each other in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.”
In the bigger picture, it’s not the device in particular that’s going to win or lose the race. Read those comparison reviews again: some aspects of each device are lacking or irritating, but the feature set of both are quite robust.
“It’s the ecosystem, stupid”: open systems are coming of age. Platforms like Twitter invite innovation, from the invention of a now-commonplace meme like retweeting to new applications create using Twitter’s API.
Yes, open systems tend to produce nine inelegant solutions for each gem. No, the open system can never be as elegant as the closed can be.
But if you believe crowdsourcing and citizen developers are the waves of the future, a closed system won’t be the right ecosystem for every application.
Soon, sophisticated marketers will say “Yes, this Droid is very much my personal preference. But to best reach our target market for this client, we went with an iPhone app.” Or, conversely, “I love my iPhone! Personally, I wouldn’t want any other smartphone. But since this project called for multiple, open hardware platforms, we’re using Android.”
What smart businesspeople won’t say is “One size fits all.”
Notice how Twitter has changed our perception of what “breaking” means? I’m seeing a similar effect in reporting of mobile trends and possibilities. Some prople and organizations are reporting data that is either outdated (despite being as recent as six months ago!) or distorted by recency bias.
Recency bias causes us to over-weight data seen more recently, even if it’s disproportionate to the actual data in the entire series. It’s particularly dangerous when business conditions are rapidly changing, making recent history less relevant and potentially misleading.
For many marketers, mobile has been in the background, given either little thought or a lazy, token effort. Now, hearing the buzz building and trying to catch up, they scramble for recent data.
But today’s data are misleading. Here are a few of dangerous conclusions you might make from recent or current data:
- Nokia is the dominant mobile hardware provider worldwide. This is statistically true. However, Nokia is a badly limping player, taking lumps for poor recent “breakthrough” smartphones. Its operating system, Symbian, is badly out of date. The latest Nokia investor conference call would have been risible had it not been downright sad. No one is really paying much attention to Nokia as a market leader.
- All the action is in smartphones. All the buzz has been in smartphones for the past year. But the truth is, fewer than 20% of Americans own a smartphone. The smartphone landscape is so balkanized you can’t possibly pick just one for your smartphone “bet.” Luxury brands like Ralph Lauren are very well-served by good iPhone apps. But a smartphone is as far from a mass platform as arugula is from a Big Mac. I love my iPhone (which took me back after my my extramarital fling with that Droid guy last weekend), but for mass marketers, smartphones are a wrong (single) choice.
- We already have all our content on-line — we’ll just link mobile visitors to our website! This is one of the worst things you can do in trying to shortcut mobile marketing. It’s so bad, it’s worse than doing nothing. A Sept 17, 2009 Yankee Group study revealed “most mobile sites fail to deliver optimal experiences, earning an average score of 52 on a scale of 1 - 100.” A simple, inexpensive, mobile-friendly web presence earns you at least a “Gentleman’s C.”
- OK, you’ve convinced me that things are changing too fast — I’ll wait for this landscape to shake out. Only if you’re willing to cede the big next marketing platform to your competition. Once they’re entrenched in your customers’ mobile devices, you’re going to have to work that much harder to displace them.
- I don’t have the money to do anything effective in mobile Cost effective mobile impact costs much less than you think. And you have the money lurking under the sofa cushions of your worst performing channels. Triage those budgets now to prepare for 2010.
This is a Wayne Gretzky moment: skate to where that puck’s gonna be. In a dramatically changing environment, focusing on today’s mobile landscape won’t help you succeed.
A career or two ago, I had the privilege of leading large teams of people. As I became responsible for larger and larger teams, I always took time to learn something about each of those with whom I worked.
Even when I had a team of 350, I was proud to know each person, and to remember at least one thing important to (or about) each one of them.
But a funny thing happened one year when, as my employer went through an epic growth spurt, my team ballooned from 350 people in one facility to 750 in two far apart states. (It probably didn’t help that the expansion occurred in 90 days.)
As hard as I tried, I simply couldn’t connect with - and stay connected with - all 750 people as individuals. At best I could know about 500 by name and recall some pertinent piece of information.
Now, as I approach 1,000 Twitter followers, I feel a very similar discomfort. Like any new Twitter user, I enjoyed watching a gradual, organic growth in both followers and those I follow this year.
But now, I admit I’m starting to lose connection. I had an extended conversation with a smart, interesting person this past week who had to nudge me to follow him; I had no idea I wasn’t.
So: what’s the optimal follow / following pool size for effective community? Even recognizing virtually no one reads every Tweet (or even 50%), can you truly be following 10,000 people? How about 1,000?
I’ll be fascinated to see how folks cope with this fundamental issue in future. If Twitter continues to grow and expands into more demographics, Twitter follow / follower pool size may become the “I can’t get on top of my emails” complaint of the 21st century.
Given the significant changes occurring in the rapidly-evolving smartphone and web ecology during the past three months, I’ve been considering what mobile and social media approach is optimal now. It begs for a new approach, and I see one forming.
If your mobile thinking stops at SMS or a lame, one-off app, if your social media efforts go no further than a Twintern, stop here. But if, like me, you sense something basic is shifting and that you need to take a more sophisticated approach, read on.
The Super-Moddable Yesterday I mentioned the ease of modifying Android-OS smartphones. When Motorola Cliq debuted running MotoBlur, I was enthused by the possibilities of a personalized smartphone streaming social media updates. It’s an exciting platform, but Cliq has been limited by the lack of Android 2.0 (“Eclair”) and the “1.0” performance of Blur.
Hands-on use of Droid running 2.0 demonstrates performance up to the promise. The device is very easily modified, even by only modestly geeky users. And, with an open platform, accessibility and speed are higher now. If I were a marketer, I’d buy one of these devices the minute it’s available (Nov 6) and start exploring its capabilities.
A super-smart marketer is about to… create a targeted, easy-to-load, easy-to-update, measurable, complete mobile ecology aimed at a key customer segment, including:
1) Custom wallpaper Think Sparkly Vampires for tweeners. Or hockey themes for NHL fans. Now add a modest web-based program for the user to lightly customize the wallpaper (“Insert your picture here!”) before downloading.
2) Custom ringtones Ditto. Ideally this will be a suite of related tones so customers can load one for messages, one for calls, one for social media updates, etc.
3) Social media Create a modest web-based program to facilitate the customer including you in her favorite social media. (Declinable of course.) Ensure your customers are never linked to mobile-unfriendly content from your social media. Consumers hate this and it’s extremely common. Remember: Facebook mobile is growing over 400% per year and 80% of Twitter traffic happens on mobiles.
4) One or two useful applications Please note I said “useful.” By now we know that download-once-never-look-at-again “brand apps” don’t work. A glitzy, throwaway brand app does just that: once your CEO has swooned over it once, it becomes a throwaway of precious budget dollars. An app your customer uses weekly or more is the ROI that keeps on giving. And you probably don’t even have to build it — you can easily find a well-written app (like a location-based movie finder) that the developer will be thrilled to skin for you and lease.
5) Complimentary mobile website This is vital to attract non-smartphone-owning customers — and to ensure they become part of your smartphone ecosystem when they upgrade. Remember that 80% of mobile devices are non-smartphones. If part of your social media is SMS, for example, you want to ensure you’re not embedding a link to a non-mobile site.
6) Appreciation and curation Now comes the hard part: only the shrewd and hard-working will win the long-game. You have to maintain and curate this ecosystem over time. New star announced for the next Vampire movie? How fast can you: Update wallpapers and ringtones? Stream the latest news and gossip on your social media channels? Create a new mini-application to dovetail with the movie’s pre-release date? Update the mobile website? The prize will go to the swift, persistent and committed.
Over 80% of consumers report their favorite brand is not yet marketing to them on mobile. Customers are ready for well-designed and well-maintained mobile/social ecosystems and companies who create them will be rewarded.
Admittedly, this is not a set-it-and-forget-it strategy. The vast majority of firms who tried the lame “brand app” have discovered a poorly thought-out, one-off mobile app doesn’t deliver.
An engaging and consistently updated mobile ecosystem will deliver outstanding ROI — and make your brand stickier than a three year old after a birthday party.
First, thank you to Verizon for giving several of us in the Twin Cities loaner Droids Wednesday through Monday.
Second, I’ve been tweeting periodically about my Droid experience, and wanted to share a more synthetic view. This is not a feature-by-feature review of Droid, nor a feature-by-feature comparison with iPhone. If you want that type of review, there have been several good ones over the past few days, in ZDNet and BoyGeniusReport among others.
So here’s my non-technical take on iPhone and Droid:
iPhone The iPhone is one of the technological and stylistic marvels of my lifetime. Apple is rightly respected as having moved mobile forward significantly, instantly elevating the smartphone experience (especially in the U.S.).
iPhone is an ideal platform for those who want an easy-to-use, elegant smartphone with a vast number of Apps to choose from. The iPhone is the Lamborghini of mobile devices, hands-down. I enthusiastically recommend the iPhone to designers, artists, architects and anyone who appreciate a beautiful and well-behaved product. It’s also the obvious choice for anyone who owns an iPod and a Mac. Apple’s closed platform philosophy supports a gorgeous look-and-feel that requires complete corporate control. You’ll never get anything else - but you’ll love what you (consistently) get.
Droid If the iPhone is the Lamborghini of smartphones, Droid is the muscle car, ready to be modded by professionals and enthusiasts. And “muscle” is the right adjective: Droid runs significantly faster than iPhone: in several informal loading “acidtests” Droid loaded the same image set in 8 seconds compared to 18 seconds for the iPhone. (Motorola missed badly on Droid’s memory, but I hope this will be addressed in the near future.)
Droid’s operating system, Google’s Android, is free and open. It is already being used on devices as diverse as set-top boxes and netbooks. (Within a year it will probably be used in cars and refrigerators.)
Because the Android ecosystem is open, like a Mustang in Carroll Shelby’s hands, Droid is just waiting to be souped-up. Without the equivalent of the Apple App Store benevolent-dictator, 1,000 flowers will bloom. (And of course in an open system, quite a few will be ragweeds.)
Droid is a Swiss Army Knife smartphone in function, look and feel. It’s dense, and although the corners were slightly rounded after a very sharp-corner initial design, it’s still angular. My iPhone nestles adorably in a Paul Frank SockMonkey skin; if I put Droid in a HelloKitty skin, it would figure out a way to mod itself overnight and electrocute me in the morning.
I recommend Droid to anyone who wants a full-featured, powerful smartphone with advanced features including multi-touch (up to three touches tracked on screen simultaneously), rugged email and contact support, multiple online account support, searchable messages, turn-by-turn (free) navigation and softkey support.
In summary: Want a beautiful and solid Lamborghini showhorse? Buy an iPhone. Want a workhorse Mustang that can be turned into a GT500 Super Snake? Buy a Droid.
You’ll be lucky and happy to have either one.
