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Thursday, November 19, 2009

Everyone’s selling Android phones… but who’s selling Android?

Mark Bridge writes:

Samsung. Huawei. Acer. HTC. Motorola. LG. Toshiba. Sony Ericsson. INQ. Dell. They’re all after a slice of the Android cake. (The Android cake is an éclair at the moment. Not particularly good for slicing. But I digress).

And my, what advertisements we’ve seen. Most recently Motorola has been knocking the iPhone while HTC has been playing with marker pens.

But those ad campaigns are mainly about manufacturers and phones. As you’d expect, really. Not about Android.

Compare and contrast with Apple, which sells its mobile operating system and its mobile phone together. You could even argue, given the recent TV commercials, it’s barely selling the phone at all. It’s all about the apps. Everyone who’s anyone has an iPhone that’s pregnant with applications… and they want you to know about each and every one of them.

Is that a problem?  Yes, for Android.

Android for saleIt seems that interest in Android is starting to fade – because no-one’s really selling the benefits. Recently, mobile game business Gameloft has said it’s cutting back its Android game development. “Google has not been very good to entice customers to actually buy products”, said Gameloft’s finance director Alexandre de Rochefort.

It’s a similar story from Gartner analyst Roberta Cozza, who says the Android platform is lacking a decent central marketing strategy.

So – what’s going to happen?

Are Google or the Open Handset Alliance going to start advertising Android?  I think not. Google’s rather too busy with its Chrome OS and the OHA’s members have way too many diverse interests.

Of course, we could see Google pushing Android with the much-rumoured ‘Google phone’ that’s expected next year.

Or – perhaps – we’ve already seen the beginning of the next stage. It is, surely, no coincidence that the Motorola Droid’s name contains the second syllable of Android. No coincidence that the Droid's iPhone-knocking ad campaign talked about operating system capabilities. And no coincidence that the Motorola Droid got version 2.0 of Android before the code was barely dry. If it really is no coincidence but is part of an agreement between Motorola and Google, who knows what could be next from this partnership?  Android-lovers just need to hope it happens soon enough to maintain the momentum.

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Opinion Articles

f u cn rd ths thn wts th prblm?

Iain Graham writes:

Text language. Why do they do it?  What an interesting question!  Normally asked by people who have never ever sent a text, believing it to be the invention of the devil!! "Texters are vandals, doing to our language what Genghis Khan did to his neighbours eight hundred years ago" asserted Jhn (sorry) John Humphrys of Radio Four fame writing in the Daily Mail. The new 'text language' has been blamed for many things including...

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Is Google’s new mobile phone distribution model really a big deal for the UK?

Mark Bridge writes:

“Google offers New Model for Consumers to buy a Mobile Phone”. Not my words but those of Vodafone as it announced it was the first operator to bring the new Google phone offer to Europe.

There’s a lot of talk about Google’s online ordering process for its Nexus One smartphone… or ‘superphone’ as the company described it at yesterday’s launch.

Author: The Fonecast
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Mobile shopping is worrying... and usually successful

Mark Bridge writes:

I really don’t like to complain. Honestly, I don’t. I’m an optimist. True, I can be a bit of a cynic – but that’s because I like to see things work first time.

So when I saw a headline that said “Shopping via mobile phone causes concerns for consumers”, I wasn’t surprised. Disappointed but not surprised.

And then I looked closer – and I got annoyed. Not annoyed at the companies that make mobile shopping so disappointing. No, annoyed at the organisation that published the report.

Author: The Fonecast
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Is mobile technology too young to predict?

Mark Bridge writes:

“Leave them alone, they’re just kids”

My word, Anakin Skywalker was a smart boy. Child prodigy. Wunderkind. Genius, some would say, albeit fictional.

But, without the benefit of hindsight (or the Star Wars box set, as many would call it), very few people would have expected him to marry his babysitter, fall into a volcano, turn to the Dark Side and end up looking like the late Sebastian Shaw.

Which brings me to the mobile phone industry.

Author: The Fonecast
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Did 2009 turn out the way we expected?

Mark Bridge writes:

At this time of year it’s something of a tradition – certainly within the mobile industry – to make predictions for the year ahead. It’s a trend we’ve followed with The Fonecast… and we’ve done reasonably well over the last few years.

We’ll be making this year’s predictions for 2010 in our programme on 23rd December. Ahead of that, I’ve been listening to our last show of 2008 to see what we thought 2009 would hold for us.

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Later in the programme, the team anticipates some of the topics that will be hitting the headlines during 2016.

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Podcast from Mobile World Congress 2015

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Interview with Chris Millington of Doro about mobile retailing, wearables and technology for older consumers

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A month of mobile: O2 counts on 3, Microsoft counts to 10 and Apple counts its profits

Podcast - 30th January 2015

We're back with a month of mobile industry news, including takeover talks and takeover rumours. O2 and Three are said to be discussing a merger... but is there any truth in the suggestions that BlackBerry could be up for grabs?

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