Rating: Antenna Software gives serious stick to Olympic committee
Those following the Olympic Games 2012 here in London will be aware that there was a considerable public backlash surrounding empty seats at certain events. Funnily enough this didn’t seem to apply to the women’s beach volleyball event held at the Horseguards’ Parade. Anyway, the situation has provoked Antenna Software into criticism of LOCOG’s [London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games] reaction to this public outcry and its attempts to sell more of the empty seats. In particular, Clare Grant, vp for marcoms with Antenna Software has criticised the Games’ poor mobile presence and asked, “Could a better mobile presence have helped LOCOG’s ticketing woes?” Grant points out that, “With so many new tickets going on sale at last minute – often just a few hours before the games – LOCOG has really missed a trick by failing to provide a dedicated mobile ticketing presence.” Antenna also supplied some web page loading times.Given that Samsung – with its handsets – is a major sponsor of the London Olympic Games 2012, GoMobile News agrees with this sentiment …
“LOCOG’s failure to develop a dedicated mobile website is even more surprising considering the event is sponsored by some of the world’s leading technology brands,” Grant observed.
It’s even more surprising since Olympic travel advice sites such as www.getaheadofthegames.com have been praised for optimising their sites to make them easy to access on the go.
Funnily enough the seats went at beach volleyball
With thousands of people still trying to purchase tickets, many will be relying on their mobile phones to attempt to buy the tickets.
They will be at a serious disadvantage to some-one with a laptop or tablet using Wi-fi because LOCOG’s site isn’t mobile optimised.
“Even with fast 3G networks, hopefuls trying to get their hands on remaining tickets face long loading times, and then have to navigate around a complex site with multiple checkboxes on a small screen,” Grant complains.
As an experiment, Antenna tried accessing the ticket site – http://www.tickets.london2012.com/ from Google (going from an ‘Olympic Tickets’ search) using three typical handsets. This test was conducted at 11.30am in London’s W1 district.
Boy did the Windows Phone 7.5 (W7 Mango) handset fare badly. It took a massive 23 seconds to load. Even more embarrassingly it was a Samsung handset – an Omnia 7 running on Orange’s 3G network.
Next up was a BlackBerry Bold 9700 on the Orange 3G network which took nine seconds but the winner was an Apple iPhone 4S on O2′s 3G network with a time of between two and three seconds. And you wonder why so many people buy iPhones?
These times should be taken as a rough guide rather than a comprehensive test report but they do give a good idea of typical consumer experience.
As Grant quite rightly points out, “Even a tenth of a second can make a difference when trying to purchase tickets for some of the most sought-after sporting events, putting those people trying to get tickets through their mobile phones at a significant disadvantage.”
Perhaps things will improve at the next Olympic Games?
