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The Chinese are coming! The Chinese are coming!

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Paul Revere’s Ride by N.C. Wyeth (1922)

On Monday, the Chinese mobile phone manufacturer ZTE announced it will release its ZTE Open, a smartphone based off Mozilla’s FireFox OS (FxOS). Starting Friday, eBay will sell them exclusively in the US for $80, unlocked.

Few paid attention to this critical notice–a search on Google yielded only 39,600 results that day. By comparison, Apple also announced on Monday that it will be announcing its iPhone 5s on September 10–the web went wild with over 3,900,000 results.

If I had a horse in Silicon Valley, I would have recreated Paul Revere’s Ride down Sand Hill Road though I doubt that anyone would’ve noticed.

It’s a pity considering this: the ZTE Open is to the iPhone as the Chromebook is to the MacBook.

Here are a some more reasons why you need to pay attention:

  1. Laptop sales are crashing while smartphone sales are skyrocketing. Kudos to the Chinese for nailing the timing just right. Only 56% of Americans own a smartphone. The other 44% of Americans will within the next five years. An $80 contract-free smartphone will look far more appealing than an $800 iPhone for many late adopters and lower-income users.
  2. It’s the first smartphone developed for the developing world. Do the math. Only 1.5 billion of the 6.9 billion mobile phones in the world are smartphones. At $80 each, the ZTE Open is within reach of millions today and 100s of millions more as that price drops.
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  3. The ZTE Open is ‘open.’ For you non-techies, the phone runs on Mozilla’s FireFox OS (FxOS), which is a lean, Linux-based platform. It’s truly an open standard. FxOS remains free of the Draconian developer restrictions of Apple, and similar, if more relaxed, requirements of Google. While this might expose phones to issues like malware, app developers have long complained about the high commissions paid and software review delays often tied to app stores.
  4. FxOS apps are limited, but lean: Unlike their Android and iOS relatives, these apps are strictly HTML5-based and have limited capabilities–no heavy data crunching or extreme graphics. That said, they also don’t require high-end processors. Since most people aren’t hardcore gamers and don’t manage servers from their phones, this isn’t an issue. FXOS app development is far easier and less complex as these are basically web applications. Many popular apps are already FxOS-ready: Angry Birds, Facebook, and WhatsApp.
  5. And it’s a mobile web world after all: The ZTE Open offers what few feature phones provide–access to the Internet as well as access Google Maps, news content and even email from an $80 (unlocked) smartphone.

Considering these points, how else will the ZTE Open impact our mobile world?

Target, Walmart & 20 Other Companies to Watch in Mobile

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The dog days of summer are a time when most of us check out, escape to the cabin/beach/abroad and recharge. Many of us also take time to reflect for the coming fall.

This is a good time to look at mobile. More than 40% of American companies have yet to incorporate mobile into their customer acquisition and retention efforts.

If you’re one of them, consider this your opportunity to explore mobile further.

Here are five mobile stories that you might of missed in June:

#1: Smartphones & Americans
#2: Think Behavior, Not Equipment
#3: Target’s App Accelerator
#4: Mobile the Walmart Way
#5: 20 Mobile Startups to Watch
Bonus: Mobile Email Presentation

 

 

#1: Smartphones & Americans

Pew Research is one of the few organizations who’ve tracked the impact of mobile across many areas of American society. So when they publish data on smartphone ownership trends, it’s always a must read for marketers and app developers: http://bit.ly/13dw2bC

 

#2: Think Behavior, Not Equipment

Those distracted by “new shiny thingies” often are left little from their investment in mobile. (Think of the hordes of dead apps created after executives got their first smartphone.)  Companies that start by mapping mobile to customer behaviors reap higher rewards. Here’s a great AdAge piece on how this thinking applies to mobile advertising: http://bit.ly/11ATPB8

 

#3: Target’s App Accelerator

Internal innovation is tough for most enterprise-level companies, and Target is no exception. That’s why the retailing giant struck a partnership with FastCompany’s Co.Labs to uncover app innovators. Judging from the mix of winning finalists, the effort just might prove successful: http://bit.ly/122x8ZB

 

#4: Mobile the Walmart Way

Forrester provides a great summary from the CTIA presentation of Gibu Thomas, Walmart’s Global Head of Mobile. Here’s a tasty tidbit: Walmart’s mobile-engaged shoppers spend 77% more each month and make four more trips per month: http://bit.ly/13dpB8j

 

#5: 20 Mobile Startups to Watch

Lack of resources and big barriers to entry often drives revolutions. And while the mobile innovations that we see stateside are often “cute” (think SnapChat), the real mobile revolution is happening where we least expect it. Mashable highlights 20 mobile startups worth tracking…from Africa: http://bit.ly/11AUouz

 

Bonus: Mobile Email Presentation

I spoke late last month to about two dozen nonprofit techies and communicators on mobile’s impact on email. Over 40% of all email is now viewed on mobile devices. If you’re not optimized for them, you’re losing eyeballs, conversions and subscribers. You can grab a PDF of the presentation here.

The Dirty Truth About Smartphone Owners

Pew’s recent study on US smartphone ownership offers that 56% of Americans now own a smartphone. What’s impressive is that it was 46% in April 2012.

The dirty truth is that those numbers are actually quite higher.

Here are the specific demographic groups of smartphone owners:

  • 90% of millennials (18-29) with incomes exceeding $75K
  • 60% of Hispanic Americans
  • 64% of African Americans
    • 16% are iOS users
    • 42% are Android users
  • Men edge out women as users, 59% to 53% respectively
  • Those reporting “no cell phone” dropped from 17% in 2011 to 9% today
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Income impact smartphone ownership differently depending on age

Marketers who are trying to reach any of these audiences best pay attention.

Harvard, Drive-Bys & Fat Tire

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As most analysts have expected, mobile’s grow exceeding their estimates. A few days ago, Pew Research released a study that showed 56% of Americans are using smartphones (for Latino and African American users, those numbers are 60% and 64% respectively.)

That said, most businesses are still lagging in mobile adoption. According to a survey 1,800 digital marketers commissioned by Adobe, only 27% of companies have a mobile-optimized web site and 7% have developed a mobile app.

Congrats if you’re within either or both of these groups. If you’re not, there’s is still plenty of time to incorporate mobile into your enterprise.

Here are five mobile stories that you might of missed from last month:

#1: Insights from Harvard

Few would consider Harvard on the cutting edge of marketing thought. That said, the Harvard Business Review provides a great summary on the growth trends of mobile-only users: http://bit.ly/ZqLZhE

#2: SMS for Healthier Eating

Birdseye partnered with Share Our Strength and Healthier America to provide tips for better grocery shopping. Users receive up to eight messages a month that include ideas on how to save money, what to look for in the shopping aisles and links to recipes.

Why SMS? Households earning less than $30K annually use twice the volume of text messages than those earning more than $75K.

Learn more about this innovative behavioral change campaign at Mobile Marketer: http://bit.ly/11l4w9q

#3: The March of the Latino Shopper

It is no surprise that communities of color are more sophisticated mobile users. This is especially true in Latino communities. Research shows that 16% of Latino shoppers are making purchases on their mobile devices. That’s 25% higher than the general marketplace.

Check out the piece in Progressive Grocer: http://bit.ly/ZqMCaU

#4: Mobile Drive-Bys

Approximately 200 Clark, Marathon, Phillips 66 and Sunoco gas station in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana are capturing the attention of drivers. The system connects to WiFi and Bluetooth-engaged mobile phones that pass within 300 feet of a transmitter, and the sends them an offer via push messaging.

Unfortunately, they do so without mobile user opt-in. So expect that loop-hole to close with the first class action lawsuit.

Read more in AdAge: http://bit.ly/11l2TIN

 

#5:  Social, Mobile & Fat Tire.

Some of the best campaigns rarely come from big brands. Case in point is New Belgium Brewing. Having launched a mobile app for their flagship Fat Tire Amber Ale last summer, NBB expanded their 2013 summer campaign to mesh mobile and social with more traditional media.

Catch the whole story at Mobile Marketer: http://bit.ly/ZqP810