How Mobile Enables Better Retail Experiences
Best Buy’s Scott Durchslag, as reported by Business Insider, made an important comment about customer behaviour in his stores.
60 percent of the customers in Best Buy stores have been on BestBuy.com or are on it when they’re actually in the store live. People are using it real-time while they’re there. I think the opportunity is to really bring these together.
Durchslag is absolutely right. What forward thinking retail organizations must be doing today is to think about how customers can use their mobile devices, and other channels, to enhance the shopping experience.
Mobile is a particularly great enabler of this because it has the capability to easily provide extra information about products to the customer. Not only that, it can …
Apple’s Research Uncovers Why People Buy Android Phones
Apple, like many others, was curious as to why people choose to buy Android phones. You can understand why the company may have some difficulty in understanding why consumers would make another choice than the iPhone.
This is true for me too. As a reply to most requests for a recommendation, I suggest Apple’s phone for several reasons. For many Americans, however, they feel that an Android device would better suit their needs.
Business Insider published an article with data Apple provided during its on-going patent battle with Samsung on the reasons why people have chosen Android.
It turns out that the primary reason was to remain with their carrier. It would lend credence to …
Tour Guide Applications on iPhone
Having a mobile device that is able to give you information about where you are is a quite amazing new innovation that can be used in many scenarios. In a city like Montréal where there are many tours and many reasons to have tours, such an application can be extremely useful.
Imagine a scenario where you would like to promote different products in different speciality shops. For example, let’s say you are promoting independent cafes and speciality food shops. Foodies may want to plan out upfront the different establishments that they would like to visit.
With an application on their phone, they can do this, and then receive an alert when they are in the vicinity of such an establishment, or they can create an effective walking / public transit …
Android Growth Declining in the US
The growth of Android device adoption in the US has declined at the beginning of this year according to a survey by comScore and analyzed by Horace Dediu at Asymco.
While Android growth is slowing, iOS market share growth is increasing. As for BlackBerry, it is continuing to shed customers at an alarming rate. Microsoft’s poor showing is illuminating: the Lumia doesn’t seem very popular in this key market.
Why is Android’s popularity waining? I think for two reasons. Firstly, iPhones are increasing cheaper with 3GS being available for free, so cutting into Android’s core market. Secondly, customers who had early versions of Android phones might be moving to iOS for a better user experience. …
Montréal Mobile Developers Use Apps to Entice New Customers
Mobile applications on the smartphone and tablet can open up your services to a new raft of users. For example, Digital Possibilities has recently been investigating an application within the tourism field close to Montréal in order to do this. The goal of the application would be twofold:
Draw in new participants – having an application can bring in new visitors that would not necessarily have considered participating in what was on offer. This would have targeted a younger, professional demographic from the Greater Montréal and New England areas.
Increase participation amongst existing visitors – the beauty of the application is that it can track ongoing visits and can therefore suggest new attractions based on the taste profile of visitors. It’s a great way to increase engagement and make sure …
Amazon should partner with RIM to build a smartphone
Successful mobile phone ecosystems in the future are going to feature a whole range of devices to access data and consume content. Amazon has a strong presence with its Kindle range of devices, and arguably is strong on the web, but has little or no direct control over smartphones.
It has borrowed space on smartphones today with its kindle book reader for iOS and Android, and has created an Android app market. But it doesn’t control the underlying platforms so is susceptible to competitive pressures from Google or Apple.
Amazon’s Platform Strategy
With the introduction of the Kindle fire for $199 it’s clear that Amazon is using the razor-blade model to make device hardware cheap and wireless transport of their content cheap. Amazon’s goal with hardware is to …
Canada’s Smartphone Penetration Reaching 50%
A new article from eMarketeer suggests that almost 50% of Canadians will have smartphones in 2012 with 62% projected to have one by 2016. These are big numbers for anyone interested in reaching the Canadian population or doing business in Canada.
The graph from eMarketeer shows that overall mobile phone ownership is expected to rise, but within that, the number of users with a smartphone is expected to rise too. Here’s the thing though, as smartphones are becoming cheaper, many people will simply take them to replace their existing feature phones and will see the smartphone extras as simple “nice-to-haves.” This group of users will probably not be large consumers of mobile data or applications, but still will be a group that …
