Thank you Gigaom

So I’m an iPhone user, and so are most of my friends … but I really think the new gold mine is Android; I was playing with the HTC Hero and Samsung Moment today, Droid Eric over the weekend, and can’t wait to get my hands on a Nexus One … With 50 new Android phones coming out this year, an open app eco-system, and 4G coming out this year, I really can’t wait to see the outcome …

Oh, I was playing with some custom phones I bought from China with Video conferencing over Wifi and it works awesome… so 4G/Wiki, Android OS, free cloud hosting, Google Voice / other VoIP providers … New communications are here, this will be an interesting year.

Before answering what does it take to make a successful iPhone application we have to define what makes an application successful. Sapient always asks why are we building something, what are we trying to achieve, and how are we going to measure it; so starting from top down, what are the business objectives, the key performance indicators, and all metrics. iPhone applications usually serve one of two purposes: drive brand or drive revenue.

Objective: Drive brand
Applications that drive brand most likely are free since they have to target a broad reach. Objective is usually increase awareness, brand recall, or word of mouth, and is traditionally measured based on simple downloads, usage, and extended with how many share with friends, stickiness, and engagement levels. A good way to take it one step further is tie in social media monitoring and analyze share and velocity of voice, general sentiment, and overall impact of the application within social conversations.

Now that we understand how to measure it, what will the application do? Nowadays brands cannot push messages to the consumers, they have to provide value and we generally call it brand as an enabler. Applications that drive brand usually fall under one of two categories: be entertaining or be useful. Entertaining applications usually have a wider adoption, more downloads, but less engagement as users open it just a few times before they get bored. Useful applications have a smaller reach but higher engagement; less users will download the application, but they will use it much more than simple entertainment applications. However the key for both types is simplicity.

Objective: Drive Revenue
Revenue can be driven directly by the application, or indirectly but multi-channel tie-in with retail and stores. Indirect revenue usually aims to drive users to store fronts, partners, or provide reasons for the user to purchase products or services. Whereas direct revenue is generated by the application. Measurement towards these objectives are always dollars.

Direct revenue can be generated from advertising or downloads, and both have different strategies. Revenue from advertising is similar to brand-driven applications: it aims to reach as many users as possible by providing free entertaining or utilities, and collect revenue through 3rd party advertising. However, download revenue can be a little more complex as it involves pricing strategy.

The secret to maximize download revenue is pricing. The most popular paid applications are priced between $0.99 and $3.99, with predominant 99 cent applications. These applications are what we call the big-fast-sales. Most users download them and use them once or twice; they’re predominantly entertainment and provide small value to the consumer, but the mass download provides great initial revenue and then stops. The most grossing applications are actually priced between $4.99 and $9.99 at 44% and account for 44% of revenue. These applications are downloaded less, but used much more often as usually they do provide value.

Here’s a simple framework to determine your iPhone application strategy

• Set objectives – what is successful?
  • Drive Brand – Free
    • Entertaining
    • Useful
  • Generate Revenue
    • Direct Revenue
      • Business models
        • Free apps
        • big fast sales
        • sustained sales
      • Revenue Models
        • Thru ads
        • Thru downloads
          • Pricing Structure
            • Most popular $0.99 at 50% and 0.99-3.99
            • Most grossing $4.99-9.99 at 44%
    • Indirect Revenue
      • Cross / Multi-channel
      • Point of Sale

Conclusion
So what does it take to make a successful iPhone application? You need a strategy, know what you want, how to get there, and how to measure. Keep it simple, make it engaging, and provide means to share and pass-along.

Panelist |   Jeannette Kocsis, SVP Digital Marketing, Harte-Hanks, Inc.
Panelist |   Ujjal Kohli, CEO, Rhythm  Media
Panelist |    Kyle Outlaw, UX lead, Razorfish
Panelist |    Ken Willner, CEO of Zumobi
Panelist |    Jamie Wells, Director, Global Trade Marketing, Microsoft  Mobile Advertising
Moderator |   Rob Gonda, Director of Digital Strategy & Innovation, Sapient

Topic was Mobile Web Vs. Mobile Applications; it was pretty interesting, Ken and Jamie as more vocal and Ujjal with some nice comments for debates. Jamie plugged Microsoft so much that it almost became a game, and I had to get back at him towards the end; he said he wanted to pick up a fight, crowd always loves that.

Please check it out, it’s long, but hopefully you’ll find it useful and entretaining.

Simply put, I’m excited about the potential of mobile marketing and particularly the convergence of social networking and mobile. New capabilities on phones are opening doors to limitless new marketing innovations and, simultaneously, developing countries are having entirely new segments of their population enter the digital world. I spend a lot of time in the day dreaming about how to bring entirely new digital experiences to people, but I think we need to proceed with caution. Marketers, the frequently reckless group of individuals we are, are in danger of screwing it up (again).

Consider the lessons from social media. One of the factors that caused so many marketers to fail in this space is they forgot basic web etiquette and lost sight that all successful marketing (on the modern web) is some form of value exchange. Consumers must be approached in a way that is not disruptive or disrespectful of their time. Social media was never free — the buzz created around your brand or people’s willingness to come together as a community was earned. They would tolerate a certain amount of advertising if it was a reasonable value exchange.

Mobile, the ever-present digital touch point, is for many of us not only an essential daily tool, but also a place of great privacy and perceived intimacy. We’re far more sensitive about the “value exchange” in the mobile world. In addition we don’t click ads as often because, in my opinion, we’re frequently trying to get quick digital or social experiences on the mobile device in between other events. We have frequent interaction with our mobile devices, but the sessions might be shorter.

Sometimes I like to talk about the “paradox of marketing.” As marketers we feel obligated to get our clients/brands where the eyeballs are. We then descend on that thing like vultures and in most cases we destroy that thing we originally loved and saw as an opportunity to reach consumers. (Think George from “Of Mice and Men” with the rabbit.) We’re currently in the process of killing Twitter as well.

The next great mobile revolution will be focused on the culmination of social networks, geo-location services, content creation/sharing, augmented reality and the functions that come with rapidly increased bandwidth, such as live streaming video. My fear is that marketers will be irresponsible and will use these technologies to pound consumers with horrible interruptive ads that make consumers revolt against mobile marketing. We’ve already had epic failures with some marketers’ mass SMS broadcasting and then the totally idiotic idea of connecting to discoverable Bluetooth phones when they’re in proximity of a broadcast point.

There’s so much new technology that has the potential to redefine interaction between brands and consumers, but unfortunately too many of us are still using advertising techniques that we’ve used for the last century — and they are primarily disruptive in nature.

The “techies” have done a great job of continuing to innovate and evolve the medium. Now it’s time for marketers to show the same passion for innovation and evolve with the medium, rethink our approaches and be respectful of the most intimate of digital touch points. We’re marching into holy ground with mobile marketing and if we’re not careful a select few of us will ruin it for the rest of us and this time, I don’t think consumers will be as forgiving.

Finally, AT&T’s long-awaited MMS update for the iPhone is finally ready. Just plug your iPhone into iTunes and hit the “Check for Update” button.

You should get the dialog message above, saying: “An update to your carrier settings for your iPhone is available. Would you like to download it now?”

Hit “Download and Update” and wait a few seconds, then go to your iPhone and launch the Messages app. There should be a little camera icon to the left of the text input box at the bottom. Hit it, and you’ll be able to send pictures or video with your text messages.

Some users are reporting they have to manually reboot their iPhone after installing the carrier update.

PS: Haven’t tested if this has any effect on the tethering profile update

The ongoing debate over Flash on the iPhone appears to be over after Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen announced last week at the World Economic Forum that Adobe and Apple are working together in an effort to bring Flash to the iPhone.

While Narayen didn’t answer the question of whether Apple had strengthened its commitment to putting Flash on the iPhone he did point out that the ball was now in Adobe’s court. “We have the developer kit and the onus is now on us,” he said.

During the Bloomberg interview, Narayen said that Adobe plans to have over a million devices shipped by the end of the year that have Flash and he’s not just talking iPhone; the company is working on the Android platform, the Windows mobile and the Symbian platform.

Watch the five minute interview below.

It works by providing the augmented reality software with some form of tracking marker that it knows to overlay 3 dimensional graphics over. The results are astounding – it truly allows consumers to feel as though you have brought a little piece of your imaginary world into their reality.

Right now marketers and technology innovators have done some very interesting examples of augmented reality using symbols printed locally and are then placed in front of your home web camera. Although I think this is fun and definitely buzz worthy I believe the true opportunity is in the not too distant future as more and more mobile phones adopt the technology. Image the potential of being able to re-invent outdoor and print marketing by adding an interactive component to almost any ad by just pointing your mobile device at it.

If you know of any other great examples please forward them to me. I have included a great example of a two player mobile game for Fanta developed by my friends over at the Hyper Factory as well a brilliant Papervision 3D and augmented reality combination.

Visit Fanta.eu to watch a video of the Fanta game in action or actually use it with compatible smart phones.

Otherwise check out the video after the jump.

Papervision – Augmented Reality (extended) from Boffswana on Vimeo.

Ultimately both services start to decentralize social networks by virtue of data portability. Basically you can start having a single login and friend’s list that use them across a myriad of sites that integrate their tech.

We started to tinker with Google Friend connect on this site, but held back as we didn’t want to have two commenting systems.  I think it will be better suited to community sites that aren’t blogs.

Google’s system appears to be easier to implement for a typical site user, but Facebook’s has launched with some very interesting uses of their technology. My particular favorite is Loopt. Loopt is one of those mobile social networks that allow you to see where your friends are at in proximity to you. I didn’t dive deep into the service, because I didn’t want to go through the process of adding a whole new series of friends. I can now leverage my Facebook friend’s list to connect through Loopt.

Evan Tana, the Director of Product Management & Marketing of Loopt, commented “Working with Facebook Connect widens the circle of friends Loopt users can interact with, combining the power of Loopt’s social-mapping service with an established network of Facebook friends.” “Loopt users will be able to receive an alert whenever Facebook friends are nearby, discover restaurants and bars recommended by their Facebook friends, and integrate their location into their Facebook feed,” he added.

I strongly suggest you do deeper research on both platforms. There is an opportunity for innovation and success here. I guarantee you it’s what I’ll be doing.

The most popular matrix code is a QR Code, created by Japanese corporation Denso-Wave in 1994. The “QR” is derived from “Quick Response”, as the creator intended the code to allow its contents to be decoded at high speed. QR Codes are common in Japan, where they are currently the most popular type of two dimensional codes.

QR Codes are used in a broad context, including both commercial tracking applications and convenience-oriented applications aimed at mobile phone users (known as mobile tagging). QR Codes storing addresses and URLs may appear in magazines, on signs, buses, business cards or just about any object that users might need information about. Users with a camera phone equipped with the correct reader software can scan the image of the QR Code causing the phone’s browser to launch and redirect to the programmed URL. This act of linking from physical world objects is known as a hardlink or physical world hyperlinks. Users can also generate and print their own QR Code for others to scan and use by visiting one of several free QR Code generating sites.

I always thought that every Nike ID shoe should come with a Matrix Code for anyone to be able to scan it and launch the exact configuration to recreate it.

The latest addition to data mobility is the Audio Barcode: data embedded in sound waves that’s picked up by target devices with a microphone — mobile phones, for example –, analyzed by special software, and then extracted.

Data to be transmitted is superimposed (embedded) by Acoustic OFDM, the technology behind Audio Barcode, in such a way that it is not detected by listeners. With a transmission rate greater than 1kbps, a URL or simple text transmission takes a mere one to two seconds.

This technology has many uses… from being able to append artist urls to every song, dynamically embed DRM information, or even combine this with audio/visual such as movies to allow sending out product information on specific scenes without having to display or affect the video at all… Just think how much information can be embedded everywhere with all these techniques… I already use 2d Barcode applications on my iPhone and I can’t wait to install an Audio Bar reader.

For starters ARM devices will be able to view the same Flash sites that traditional Internet users do as opposed to the Flash Mobile only sites they see now. This is somewhat like what the iPhone browser did for regular website browsing.

Smart marketers will still offer experiences that are designed for a mobile experience (i.e. smaller screens, potentially slower bandwidth) but now they won’t be limited in terms of the complexity or media richness. Flash 10 will allow rich mobile experiences that will easily stream video (HD and regular) and integrate with systems like Flash Media Server 2 for collaborative multi-user experiences.

Kevin Lynch from Adobe shows a demo on a G1 after the jump. Now I just want to see it on a iPhone!