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Thursday, August 22, 2013

Nook advertising campaign breached the ASA advertising code

The UK Advertising Standards Authority has upheld a complaint about recent advertisements for discounted Barnes & Noble Nook eBook readers.

In April Barnes & Noble cut the price of the basic Nook reader from £79 to £29, advertising the product’s availability at Argos, Asda, Blackwell’s, Currys, Foyles, John Lewis, PC World, Sainsbury’s and Very.

However, a complainant said they’d been unable to purchase the item from any of the listed retailers.

Barnes & Noble admitted the product had gone out of stock at its web store and at some retailer partners, although it believed it had made a reasonable estimate of demand for the product based on recent UK sales levels. It said UK retail partners had held stock of over 20 times the previous three months’ average sales when the promotion started.

Nook sales during the promotion were over 120 times the normal sales rate, causing some retailers to quickly run out of stock. Barnes & Noble worked to distribute remaining stock evenly throughout the market, put an ‘out of stock’ message on its UK web site and stopped running its press ad in early May.

Despite this the ASA upheld the complaint, noting that that Barnes & Noble had not provided it with sufficient evidence to show the stock estimate was reasonable. Although Barnes & Noble had based its estimate on recent UK sales data, the ASA considered that B&N should have based the estimate on responses to a previous similar offer.

[ASA adjudication]

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Opinion Articles

Last week at The Fonecast: 11th February 2013

WiFi goes on the attack

Mark Bridge writes:

Mobile networks aren’t what they used to be. As last week’s interview with Vince Russell of The Cloud demonstrated, more and more customers are relying on WiFi to augment their mobile data service.

Truphone is now planning to do exactly the same with voice calls and text messages by linking its mobile network with WiFi for even wider coverage.

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Last week at The Fonecast: 4th February 2013

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Mark Bridge writes:

Apple launches a new product and BlackBerry pushes it out of the headlines. Who’d have thought it, eh?

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Author: The Fonecast
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HTC smartphones are too good

HTC smartphones are too good

Causing HTC a serious headache

James Rosewell writes:

During December 2012 in the United States the HTC Evo 4G contributed 20% of web traffic from HTC devices. What is remarkable about this figure is that the HTC Evo 4G was first released in June 2010 and is almost three years old.

The HTC One series of devices were released during 2012 and contributed less than 10% of HTC’s web traffic in the same month.

Are HTC devices released pre-2012 too good at browsing the web?

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Future smart devices will extend our senses

Faiza Elmasry of voanews.com writes:

Imagine shopping for clothes online and being able to run your hand across the screen on your computer or smartphone to feel the fabrics. That kind of simulation technology could be available within the next five years.

Author: The Fonecast
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Mark Bridge writes:

Developing a successful mobile product or service isn’t just a question of having a great idea. There are all sorts of challenges, from the technical aspects of application development to the wider issues of branding and funding.

That’s where The Mobile Academy steps in. It’s a London-based mobile masterclass designed to give you a helping hand with innovation, whether you’re an entrepreneur, a business owner, a developer or a designer.

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