Monthly Archives: November 2011
Apple brings in-app purchasing into disrepute – yet again
Rating: 4-year old Brit runs up £87 bill playing rogue game Smurfs’Village
Despite it’s protestations to the contrary, Apple is bringing the whole practice of in-app billing into disrepute. This is despite its protestations to the contrary. The latest incident involves a four-year-old Brit, Oliver Allen – who cannot even read or write – managed to wrack up a bill of costing £87.48. Oliver was playing a children’s game – Smurfs’ Village, and incurred the charges because his mother – Sam Allen, was still logged into the iTunes App Store. The App Store has a time-out of 15 minutes and the purchases were made within that time period. The amazing thing is that the USA’s FTC had been asked to investigate exactly the same kind of incident nine months previously. Continue reading
W7 Mango rumours round-up
Rating: Best one – Lumia 900 to launch at CES
In our search for the Nokia Music for Lumia download (see our previous story here), GoMo News accidentally unearthed mobile rumours about a forthcoming Nokia Lumia 900 (codenamed Ace). We ran across was a great series of rumours from the Austrian publication Pocket.at created by Mag.HH. It operates the Austrian Lounge for Nokia Lumia Windows Phones which is a kind of forum for Lumia owners (in German, of course). What Pocket.at has done is spliced together a whole bunch of other stories – particularly from WinRumors here. GoMo News particularly likes the suggestion that the next model in Nokia’s W7 handset range will be the Lumia 900 and this is the same handset which WinRumors gave the codename ‘Ace’ to back in May [2011]. Continue reading
Nokia adds gig guide to Music for Lumia
Rating: We’ve no idea how you get the update, of course
Only days after the final release of its W7 Mango phones, Nokia has apparently created an update to its Music for Lumia app. The key addition here is a gig guide – Gigfinder. GoMo News has yet to discover whose technology powers this app. There are a few scant details on an official Nokia blog here. It says that the app, “Starts with your location and today’s date and lists the nearest, soonest gigs happening round you. Where available, you can click through to booking information. You can now also share the gig details with friends using SMS, email or social networks.” Great. But where do you get this update? The Mobile Indian here says, “Customers will get this update as and when they purchase and activate their devices.” Continue reading
Mobile Marketing Roundup: Vodafone NZ in trouble, HTML5 mobile advertising and more…
Here’s your Monday round-up of the hottest mobile marketing stories from across the globe.
Today’s edition looks at Vodafone in trouble in New Zealand;growth in Singapore with HTML5 based mobile advertiser, Crisp Media; Minority groups dominating mobile net use and more… Continue reading
Mixed opinions on how well Nokia Lumia launch has gone
Rating: After all, Elop has staked the company on this W7 Mango phone
Given that its future is staked on it, Nokia is pumping up the early indications of sales of the flagship Lumia 800 (W7 Mango) handset. It depends on who you speak to and how you interpret their answers as to whether Nokia will pull off a dramatic rebound. A buoyant Stephen Elop, Nokia’s current CEO, told a conference organised by Morgan Stanley last week that, “The reaction is remarkably positive.” The Finnish handset manufacturer got some moral support from Orange UK and there was good news from the Netherlands, too, where the Lumia sold out in some stores. Against this there were definite indications that consumers had been nowhere near as eager to acquire a Lumia than an iPhone 4S or even Android handsets from the likes of Samsung. Continue reading
Two more free games to reward BlackBerry loyalists
Rating: The Sims 3 and SimCity Deluxe appear as Thankyou gifts
Nobody else appears to be keeping a beady eye on the trickle of free apps becoming available for free as part of RIM’s Thank You Gift campaign. This is designed to reward those who have stuck with the BlackBerry after its unfortunate three day outage. Luckily, GoMo News has spotted that two new games seem to have appeared today [November 18th 2011]. The games in question are The Sims 3 and SimCity Deluxe. Continue reading
Rum winner in MMA Smarties awards
Rating: Coca-Cola the overall winner
We’re not quite sure whether the MMA (Mobile Marketing Association) is aware of this but it appears to have picked the name of a popular brand of children’s’ sweeties [candy] in the UK for its new set of awards. Anyway, the ‘Smarties’ were announced last night [November 17th 2011] at the Hotel SLS at Beverly Hills in Los Angeles, USA. The event was sponsored this year [2011] by Motricity along with Millennial Media. The MMA Global Award Winners were chosen from hundreds of entrants by a judging panel of international marketers and agency leaders. Somehow the global winner and North American regional winner appear to be the same thing. A bit like the hosting nation winning the Olympics. Anyway, the overall winner was Old Navy and Crispin Porter + Bogusky for ‘Old Navy Records’. Congratulations. Continue reading
Millennial Media launches creative tools for mobile marketing
Millennial Media has launched mmStudio, a suite of mobile advertising tools intended to enable advertisers and agencies to easily deliver compelling mobile ads on Millennial Media’s global mobile platform.
Millennial Media is integrated with over 10 rich media vendors, and inside mmStudio, advertisers have access to wireframes that will allow them to design traditional ad creative like expandable banners and interactive video. Continue reading
Mobile Marketing Roundup: Google dominates mobile ads and measures them and more…
Here’s your Friday round-up of the hottest mobile marketing stories from across the globe.
Today’s edition looks at Google dominated mobile ads – and measuring them; Five best practices to increase mobile ad success; Apple adds false advertising charges to Amazon’s app and more… Continue reading
LiMo Foundation hits out at app store duopoly
Rating: Web apps are prospective third ecosystem
The executive director of the LiMo Foundation, Morgan Gillis, has hit out at weaknesses in the existing app regime. He argued that, “There are still some drawbacks with the existing pair of dominant ecosystems.” Gillis was speaking at the recent GSMA Mobile Asia Congress 2011 in Hong Kong (see report). Gillis didn’t name names but he was obviously talking about the two dominant mobile app stores – Apple’s iTunes and Google’s Android Market. Significantly, Gillis hinted that there could be an alternative – web based apps are prospective third mobile apps ecosystem. We assume this is a reference to apps based on HTML5 in particular because they can potentially run on all the major mobile OS and so are effectively platform agnostic. Continue reading
Book offers useful insights into Bluetooth marketing
Rating: Based on experiences of WCIT’s CEO - Petros Kondos
When the author of this book contacted GoMo News, we discovered that he was right. There are very few publications which comprehensively document the use of Bluetooth proximity marketing. So, as a reference work, ‘ Mobile phones, Bluetooth and location based marketing‘ by Petros Kondos is almost certainly unique. Given the glowing reviews it has received on Amazon, Kondos’ work also appears to be a jolly good read. This book is based on Kondos’ experience as CEO of WCIT (Wireless Customer Interactive Technologies). This South African company stopped trading in 2010 after five years but GoMo News is prepared to believe Kondos’ claim that WCIT pushed the boundaries of Bluetooth location-based marketing further than any other entity. The good news is that although it costs $3.46 for the Kindle version here, cheapskates can download the .pdf for free here. Continue reading
MMA offers White Paper on mobile barcodes
Rating: Everything you wanted to know but were too bored to ask
Regular readers of GoMo News should pride themselves in having no need to read a White Paper just released by the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA). It’s entitled ‘Mobile Barcodes: an Overview for Marketers’. For newcomers this white paper is intended to explain in clear language how marketers can leverage mobile barcodes. It describes how marketers can use barcodes to provide their customers with access to information; multi-media content; promotional opportunities; discounts and coupons. Alberto Benbunan, md with Mobile Dreams Factory and co-chair of the Mobile Barcode Task Force (which produced this) said, “This white paper is intended for marketers who are beginning or refining their mobile barcode consumer activation journey to learn how to best make it work for their mobile campaigns.” A bit of a clue, then. Continue reading
Swedes download more Android Apps than any other nation
Rating: USA the biggest but not necessarily the best market
How embarrassing in this? The Portuguese download more Android apps per user per month than us Brits. Top downloaders – well ahead of the Dutch in second place – are the Swedes. Is this anything to do with Sony Ericsson, we wonder? These are some of the results taken from a report just produced by Research2Guidance (which is German). The firm has spotted four trends in the Android app download market. One of which we could have guessed – namely that whileit doesn’t have the keenest downloads, the USA is still the largest market in terms of total app downloads. Actually, it holds more than 50 per cent of the total market share. Significantly, the Swedes, Dutch and Germans all download twice as many apps per month than the Yanks Americans. That doesn’t mean all Android app developers need to learn Swedish, however. Continue reading
Irish bookie – Paddy Power buys mobile game producer
Rating: 4 out of 10 of bets place in the Rugby World Cup were from Mobile
Here’s a stark example of how mobile has come to dominate retail activities. Irish based bookmaking (gambling) firm, Paddy Power, has figured that online/mobile has become so crucial to its business that it has bought a software house. Cayetano (CT Networks Ltd) is a Bulgarian developer headquartered in the Isle of Man which develops a range of games for the online and mobile gaming markets. The news comes as Paddy Power revealed some interesting statistics that betray its dependence on mobile. Continue reading
Blyk hopes to attact Olympic sponsors to messaging
This is a cross-post of an article from our friends at Analyst House Mobile Squared
Blyk hopes to attract Olympic sponsors to messaging channel
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