Can you believe the year is over 1/4 over? I’ve been reporting a bit about Q1 (the first quarter of 2013) sales this week. Now let’s see which devices had the?best?2013 starts.
10. LG Optimus G: It’s 4.7 inches and 2 GB of pure power! A few months ago, it was ranked America’s best smartphone.
9.? HTC One: Any phone that can be used as a remote control, sign me up!
7. Blackberry Z 10: For the writing impaired, the keyboard will virtually do the typing for you!
6. Google Nexus 4: That Google mapping navigated me in a lost city; and possibly out of?a crime-ridden part of the city!
5. HTC Windows 8X: On my desktop, Window 8 is a boil on the neck! But on this smartphone, it’s smooth as butter. Coincidence? I think not.
4. Nokia Lumia 920: Another Windows phone, this?one?does everything and in style. I?read one critic say, “This is not a toy.”
3. Samsung Galaxy Note 2: It’s carried by all 4 big phone companies (AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Verizon) and gets lots of well deserved praise for it’s?pen use, CPU core, and lengthy battery life.
2. Samsung Galaxy S 3: If I listed all the ways this phone saves time, this posting would go on all day and night.
1. Apple iPhone 5: As of late, this is Apple’s biggest accomplishment. This may be their only accomplishment so far this year. What it lacks in mapping skills it makes up for in looks, camera, and pocket ability. And of course there’s the name Apple!
If you think I missed any smartphones, let me hear from you!
Yahoo is making a comeback. Or so the Q1 2013 numbers say. Their stock is up 50 percent since July 2012. And their earnings delivered more profit than in Q1 2012. But not all the news was good: display ads, and the revenue they produce, fell 11 percent. So there’s still more?work to do.
This is where CEO Marissa Mayer’s chain reaction comes in. That first?link was changing the work culture; this included insisting people coming back to work in the office. Now it’s a top place to work. This leads to the second link: getting talent. Applications and resumes have tripled during Mayer’s tenure.??During Q1 2013, 14?percent of?those hired were those who left the company and returned. Now this leads to the?links?three and four: building better products and reaching customers better. According to Mayer herself, by 2015, there will be more use of hand held devices than PC’s. Of the 700 million users, nearly half are subscribed on a smartphone or something similar (iPod touch).
Will the comeback continue? It sounds like they’re on the right track. Talent is coming back. Plus, talent is so abundant they can be selective in their choosing. This is always a good thing. They are trying to create apps, particularly for small devices. Yahoo execs believe this rebuilding process will take years. But there is already signs of growth now. One way they can speed up the comeback is better news articles. They’re becoming better at this, but what I’d like to see is less celebrity gossip and fluff and more hard news. I mean news you won’t hear anywhere else, like that 7.8?earthquake on the Pakistan/Iran border. What are some other ways Yahoo can improve?
Do you have the new Twitter music app yet? Twitter is launching a?new and uncomplicated?music app this weekend. Too bad you have to be a celebrity to have it now. You’ll have to wait until next week at least.
As of this weekend, it’s being introduced at the Coachella festival. This app has a ‘suggested’ tab for song recommendations, ‘now playing’ tab to link songs listened to by your followers, ‘popular’, for the most trending songs, and ’emerging’ to promote rising artist or help get your name out there if you’re a struggling artist. Ryan Seacrest is already tweeting good things about it. But that’s just one tweet from one man. There are some saying they absolutely hate the app.
And that’s the gamble here. Should you really release an app or anything else to celebrities before releasing it to the general public? I have mixed feelings about that. I understand why Twitter is doing it. If Ryan Seacrest and other famous people like it, they’re banking you will too. But what if they hate it, and I’m guessing some do. What if the haters tweet about how awful this app is? I’m sure people will avoid the app if that happens. And that’s the double-edged sword.?What will the next A-lister say about the upcoming Twitter music app?
Wow, have things changed! I’m going to date myself here a little: in high school, I was fortunate to have a pager. In college, we still used land lines in dorms. Those days are gone: Nearly half of US teens own an iPhone. That doesn’t include the competitors.
According to a survey, 91 percent of teens want to buy a smartphone; that’s up five percentage point from last spring. Of these stats, Apple seems to be in a commanding lead. Fifty nine percent want an Apple device, compared to twenty percent from Android device. The third most popular choice: They don’t care, just as long as they have a smartphone! Oh, and just six months ago, just 40% of teens had an iPhone, so that stat has increased 8% in a short time period. Tablets are getting popular too. Over half of teens own one now, up from 44 percent last year. And?17% plan on buying one in the near future. Of those, two-thirds plan to buy I-Pads.
So why do I bring this up? One statistic suggests there are more teenagers today than when baby boomers were teens back in the 1960s and ’70s. So they possess a lot of economic power! Plus, when a young?consumer develops a bond with a certain company, that bond often goes on for life. So it looks like Apple gets this concept, and will have customers for life. It seems like Blackberry needs to get on the ball. Plus, technology is only going to increase, so these companies are doing what they can now to hook the younger generation. Where do you think this market will go?
On Mashable.com, there are articles about technology and space topics, like the Hubble Telescope. But these aren’t blogs or journalistic stories. These articles are being paid for and sponsored by Snapdragon.
Welcome to the next trend in advertising. There have been around 2,000 articles on Google Glasses popping up everywhere. It’s not known whether these are journalistic articles?written bought and?paid for by Google. Many speculate the latter. This brand of marketing has been called everything from branded content to native advertising. They look, sound and read like unbiased articles, but they are anything but.
They can’t even calculate how much money is being spent on sponsored content. Even well noted publications from Huffington Post to Business Insider are using this marketing tool. In fact, Huffington collaborated a sponsored content deal with household product giant Johnson & Johnson. Publishers love this marketing scheme because of the abundance of ad space and to them, it’s easier to make money than with traditional advertising.
But is it ethical? When I read an article, I expect it to come from an unbiased source. Do you remember these things called newspapers? There, an actual journalist writes and publishes the story. ?But with sponsored content, any major company can write what it wants, give it to a publisher they’re in cahoots with, and that passes as journalism. That’s my concern here. And what about?mom-and-pop businesses that have to compete with the Johnson & Johnsons and the Snapdragons?of America for space? If?sponsored content just has to be the wave of the future, they need to?come up with a fair system so every business can get?it’s?chance. But I don’t even think this is possible. What would you rather read: An independent story or a corporate based article with subliminal messages to buy their product?
Are you ready? It’s almost Facebook phone time! April 12 is their big day, and now they’re pushing this monstrosity by any means necessary, from ads to Facebook?itself.
It’s using it’s own?site,?like page?and ?suggested posting. They’re using layout pages and stories meant to touch the heart. One such posting claims, “Your friends are waiting inside your phone.” That might work on kids from grades K-2, but to use that line on a tech savvy generation and tech savvy public? Another says to put your friends first, as if you can’t do that on a desktop, laptop, smartphone or iPod/iPad app. Did you see?Facebook’s spoof commercial of the 1980 comedic movie Airplane? I liked the creativity, but I doubt cats running through an airplane and half naked people in the overhead bin are going to make me run purchase the HTC First.
To their credit, Facebook is doing some things right. This commercial debuted during the Final Four, a huge draw for Americans. They’ll probably have that commercial on Monday night during the Louisville vs. Michigan championship game. They’ve announced software, Facebook Home, that will be complimentary for Android phones. The cost of the HTC First will start as low as $99. I don’t know what hoops you’ll have to jump through to get a price that low, but I’m sure they’ll be plenty.
Don’t get me wrong: I love Facebook and I’m a borderline Facebook addict. I’ve reunited with hundreds through this social medium. I’m thankful every day for this social medium. ?I just don’t thing this phone is a good idea. Why make people pay for something with one device they can get for free everywhere else?
