So what’s next after mobile apps? Will it be mobile services?
Search the web for ways to improve your traffic numbers and you’ll find no end of guru’s offering advice on how to improve your search ranking on Google. The funny things is none of them ever mention what having the phrase “Click Fraud” on your home page can do for your page ranking.
Needless to say this isn’t the first time I have noticed that success in search correlates closely with old axiom ”accentuate the positive eliminate the negative”. So if you have arrived here by mistake looking for insider tips on how to make it big in blogging then here is a handy tip. Don’t mention click fraud and Google in the same page if you want to improve your page rank. Better still don’t mention click fraud full stop. You would also be wise to to give terms like spam, identity theft and botnets a miss as well.
On the other hand one word I have found to be useful in securing a high page rank is the word Google. But more on that another day. It’s time to move on to matters more mobile.
No doubt you will have all seen that 500 Apps Approved infographic published by 148 Apps earlier in the week. It is one of those annual reviews that illustrates that the App Store economy appears to be growing as quickly as the old dot com economy.
Here’s another link. This time to a much more valuable table published over 6 weeks ago by Vision Mobile. The table maps the overall completeness of the Mobile Services strategy of each of the key players.
The accompanying post asks the question: What’s next for the handset manufacturers after everybody is in the app store business? The answer is a back to the future response in that it suggests the future isn’t about the mobile web but about state of the art mobile service offerings that go far beyond much-hyped application stores. … This in turn suggests that it is the experience in operating a services orientated business that delivers the competitive edge to the emerging platform leaders Apple, Google (Android) and Windows over the traditional hardware leaders (e.g. Nokia, Sony, Samsung, HTC and Motorola).
What is interesting is the table doesn’t reflect the argument being presented. For example Nokia has one of the most complete services strategies and yet it is losing market share to Samsung who has one of the most incomplete services strategies. Plus if you take a look at the comparative check list between Nokia and Windows you are left wondering if mobile services are the future where are the synergies in a partnership based on replication of services?
Services, mobile or otherwise, is a failed Telco strategy from the 1990′s and early 2000′s. In each iteration the telcos have built wall gardens (i.e. services) only to discover in the long run they can make more money by just selling data access to free and open content on the internet.
Yes paid services provides a premium revenue stream but the dollars pale into insignificance compared to the fixed and mobile data revenue generated by customers eagerly seeking out free content online.
Thanks to the run away success of Apple’s App Store the benefits of building a Walled Garden strategy is once again in vogue. Only this time we are hearing the phrase “Sticky Garden”.
The sticky garden is a catch phase for the simple idea that customers are basically lazy and so the apps and the games and the data they accumulate in the walled garden over time become a significant barrier to exit from the platform.
Once an Apple Fan always an Apple Fan simply because it is too hard to move across and learn another platform. Why? Because they have to buy all their games and apps again.
The problem with this logic of course is it forgets that Windows, Nokia and the Telcos already provided Games , Music, Apps and Data well before the iPhone arrived on the scene. More importantly it fails to recognise that the iPhone was a success prior to the App Store opening its doors. Plus it fails to acknowledge that access to 500,000 Apps is not the primary consideration for anyone choosing to buy an iPhone.
It also fails to account for the fact the quality of the games and apps improves as the technology improves. So these games and apps will need to be replaced when the time comes for the customer to invest in a new handset anyway.
So the key to Apple’s three-year success story and the adoption of Android by the OEMs isn’t the Apps and the Games. After all, if the Apps and Games really made that big a difference then why not build an emulator to run iPhone Apps on Symbian or Windows? Open the market up for the 80,000 + iPhone developers to reach an even bigger audience. or Why not just acquire the developers of the Top 10 or 20 iPhone Games and Apps and have them build exclusively for your platform. Maybe even preinstall the best Apps and Games on the Next Generation handset.
It’s not the games. It’s not the Apps. And it’s certainly not the services. It is all about the Mobile User Experience.
Customers have willingly migrated to these smart phone platforms for the same reason customers abandoned DOS and moved to Windows 20 years ago. It’s all about delivering a better user experience (UX).
This in the end is the crux of Nokia failure. It pursued services at the expense of the user experience and, like the media industry, it has now discovered far to late that content, be it paid, free or DIY, comes a distant second to ease of useability, connectivity and personalization in an interactive world.
Deliver to your prospects a UX that delights and enchants them more than the experience they have with the iPhone and you’ll soon discover that all those fauxionary ideas about what makes the Apple’s orchard so sticky will quickly evaporate.
As I have said many times before. If your customer’s aren’t walking into a crowded room and saying “Hey! You just gotta take a look at this” then you know you are not even in the game. You need to urgently rethink the mobile experience.
