The Motorola Droid is here.  And though I’m a little disappointed it didn’t actually arrive via Stealth Bomber, it did come in with a bang.  From all of the buzz online and an aggressive advertising campaign, Verizon Wireless has declared the Droid as the poster child of its new line of phones running Google’s Android OS.

Speaking of Android, remember the T-Mobile G1 from last fall?  There was a ton of anticipation around the release of the G1, which was essentially the poster child of the first generation of Android phones.  How does interest in the Droid compare to interest in the G1 around launch?

Continue reading “Droid Really Does” »

I must admit, I am quite taken with the Palm Pre. The hype, predictably, has been enormous. And the handset itself is very well put together. Online reviews rave about it. After playing with my friend’s new Pre, I have to agree with them: it is one cool handset.

But before the Pre could bask in the media spotlight for long, Apple whooshed in two days later to announce its newest iPhone, the 3G S, and that the 3G would sell for as little as $99.

So how has this move affected overall interest in the Pre?

This chart shows the percentage of people viewing the Palm Pre who also looked at the Apple iPhone 3G S online in the same week. Interest in the Pre is defined here as anyone who looked at a Pre-related webpage hosted by Palm or Sprint (or both). Similarly, interest in the iPhone 3G S includes anyone who viewed iPhone 3G S-related web pages at Apple or AT&T (or both). Before the announcement of the iPhone 3G S, interest traffic for the iPhone represents the iPhone 3G.

Here we see that:

• Before the iPhone 3G S was officially announced on June 6th, only about 2.5% of people who looked at the Palm Pre online also viewed the iPhone 3G
• However, once the iPhone 3G S announcement was made, traffic to the iPhone 3G S by Palm Pre shoppers jumped 104%, signaling that the Pre definitely had to share the limelight with the new iPhone 3G S
• By the time the iPhone 3G S was available, just a week after it was announced, consideration of the device by Palm Pre shoppers dropped by about 25%

While the decrease in cross shopping seems to suggest that the iPhone 3G S will not continue to distract Pre shoppers, handset interest data shines a different light on the situation. Interest in the Pre predictably shot up during the week of its launch and the week after as marketing efforts and press coverage reached a fever pitch. However in the second week after launch, Pre interest dropped sharply to levels it had prior to launch, as shown in the chart below.

This suggests that the Pre may indeed have lost its thunder online, though it is unclear at this point if interest has transferred to the iPhone 3G S or simply faded away. Certainly, consideration of both models decreased after the initial excitement of the Palm Pre’s launch and the iPhone 3G S announcement passed, which could indicate that distinct fan bases have emerged for each phone.

Still, much remains to be seen over the next few weeks, as each phone works to establish and sustain its fan base. There are also more opportunities to drive online interest in the Palm Pre to counter the iPhone. Selling the device online is one possibility. Encouraging development of more applications to rival the iTunes App Store by releasing the software development kit more broadly (which Palm says they will do “by the end of this summer”) could also entice consumers.

Challenging the iPhone’s dominance is no small task, but we’ll be watching over the next few months to see if the Palm Pre is the device that will rise to the occasion.

I love new cell phone releases – a new cell phone makes me as happy as a kid in a candy store! Partly because I study cell phones here at Compete, but I also love these nifty little contraptions and all of the fun stuff we can do with them these days. Every new cell phone model boasts cooler features and smarter applications then its predecessors. Still, the allure of a cell phone comes not only from its features and software, but from the way it looks.

Last week, at the CTIA trade show, RIM announced their newest BlackBerry model. The new BlackBerry Pearl 8220, a flip phone version of the popular original, will appear exclusively at T-Mobile later this year.

Color me excited to see this new wonder added to the ‘miracle’ that is the BlackBerry. A flip version of the Pearl?! (I wonder if John McCain had a hand in this…)

This announcement got me thinking about how others will perceive the new addition to the BlackBerry family.

In August, only about 7% of smartphone shoppers looked at flip phone models. Thinking that this could just be due to a lack of flip phone models in the smartphone space, I took a deeper look at the interest smartphone shoppers are showing for flip phones.

Read as: 3% of smartphone shoppers also viewed the LG Voyager at Verizon Wireless in the month of August 2008.

• The level of interest here is very low – even the popular Voyager only sees interest from about 3% of smartphone shoppers
• The flip phone most interesting to smartphone shoppers, the LG Voyager, is itself a smartphone

So, based on the interest (or lack thereof) that smartphone shoppers are showing in flip phone models, the immediate outlook for this new BlackBerry Pearl flip phone is a little bleak.

However, now that BlackBerry is offering a flip phone, it’s possible the numbers will tell a different story in the coming months. Clearly they’re going for a new look to shake up the classic look of a BlackBerry. Could this be the start of something big for smartphone shoppers across the country? Will we start seeing more flip versions of smartphones? I’ll be watching the new model releases with excitement!

Have you noticed lately how many microsites (sites designated for a specific type of content) are dedicated to cell phones? Manufacturers are getting the “bug” and creating interactive microsites to market their hot new phones. Some of the biggest cell phone releases of late have been tied with the hyped summer movies: namely Iron Man and Batman: The Dark Knight. (Don’t worry, no spoilers here!)

Microsites are certainly not a new thing in the cell phone marketing world, but by linking them to a big-name movie, did LG and Nokia get more bang for their microsite buck?

LG got its hands on Iron Man; in the beginning scenes of the movie, you’ll see an LG VX9400 prominently featured in the hands of Tony Stark. Their microsite, insidethesuit.com, incorporates images from the movie – visitors look at 3 of LG’s latest new phones and check out mobile content from inside the Iron Man suit.

Nokia, meanwhile, synced up with Batman and the release of The Dark Knight for the debut of their “batphone” – Nokia 6205 – The Dark Knight Edition. Their movie-based microsite, fightforgothamcity.com, allows the user to choose a side (Batman or The Joker), then navigate through the streets of Gotham City looking at the new “batphone” and all of the Batman-themed mobile content and games designed for Nokia phones.

I got to thinking about how these microsites actually work for the OEMs who use them.

I took a look at the unique visitor traffic to each site over the past few months. Traffic started to show up for insidethesuit.com in April, and peaked during May, the month that Iron Man was released. Meanwhile, fightforgothamcity.com started seeing traffic in June, when the site went up, corresponding to The Dark Knight premiere. However it peaks in July probably because the movie was released closer to the end of June. I’m curious to see in the coming months whether fightforgothamcity.com will also lose almost all of its traffic after a two month run.

I also took a look at the time users spend (on average) on each microsite, compared to when the movie opened.

As expected, hype seems to play a role in driving people to spend time on these sites. The peak in time spent on site occurs right around the opening weekend when advertising, reviews, and buzz is greatest. A couple of interesting points:

• The time spent on fightforgothamcity.com actually went up in July after the release of the movie.
• In the case of insidethesuit.com, the average time spent per user is relatively steady in June, even though the count of unique visitors drops to almost zero. But that average time spent drops off in July, as the hype around Iron Man waned. It will be interesting to see if the same thing happens on fightforgothamcity.com in August.

Is a movie-themed microsite the way to go from now on? To figure that out, you really need to compare these two campaigns with other, more traditional microsites we’ve seen in the past year. I took a look at two others, each centered on a phone that was popular when it launched: palmcentro.com and samsungjuke.com. I decided to look at the percentage of total OEM traffic that each microsite saw in a given month to see if the insidethesuit.com and fightforgothamcity.com were successful in getting more traffic to their microsites than a more traditional microsite.

Though both movie-based microsites saw a better share of their respective OEM’s traffic than palmcentro.com, neither insidethesuit.com nor fightforgothamcity.com did any better than samsungjuke.com at attracting traffic to their respective sites. Samsungjuke.com actually did better than insidethesuit.com at the peak of its traffic. It seems the movie link has no significant effect on the traffic to a microsite.

Curious if the movie link has any effect on microsites, I took a look at the average time spent per visitor to palmcentro.com and samsungjuke.com.

It’s clear that this is where palmcentro.com and samsungjuke.com differ from insidethesuit.com and fightforgothamcity.com. On both palmcentro.com and samsungjuke.com, the launch of the phone sometimes has an effect on the engagement of its visitors, but this effect is short-lived at best. The movie-based sites saw much more sustained engagement, showing that the movie-based content is keeping visitors at the site for longer, and thus giving LG and Nokia a longer timeframe in which to expose visitors to their brand and product. So if engagement is what OEMs are looking for by designing these microsites, it appears they should start thinking about campaigns for the summer 2009 movie premiers. Popcorn anyone?

By now you’ve probably seen the new Alltel branding campaign Head-to-Head on TV. In the ads, Chad, the cool Alltel rep, does battle with the geeky, dorky and all-together uncool “sales guys” from the Big 4 carriers. Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile seem to make it their life mission to take down Chad and Alltel. And, of course, they’re always unsuccessful.

Not a bad branding campaign for standing out in the saturated US wireless market, but Alltel went even further (into Web 2.0 territory) by creating a virtual world for these characters in the Man Cave, a place where the carrier sales guys can hide out and scheme up ways to fight Alltel. The Man Cave is a glimpse into their uncool, yet strangely fascinating, world.

Take a virtual stroll over to officialmancave.com. The Man Lounge, the Man-brary, the Kitchen, the Spy Wall… there’s a lot to explore here. I’m not going to give the whole site away – you’ll have to check it out yourself (which I highly recommend; I played with the site for 45 minutes the first time I went there)!

While it’s certainly a fun way to kill an hour, I started wondering if officialmancave.com was drawing significant traffic – and how that traffic relates to alltel.com. The site launched in July, so I took a look at traffic levels to both sites from August to October.

Predictably, officialmancave.com pulled in its highest traffic to date close to launch in August. Then that traffic level shrank in September as the newness of the site wore off. Traffic had no significant change in October.

Continue reading “Have YOU been to the Alltel Man Cave yet?” »

Obopay is the new way to send money… over your phone! This online company has designed a system for sending money via text message, your mobile phone’s internet browser, or an application downloaded on your phone. Just sign up for your free account, wire some cash into your new “cell phone wallet” (i.e. an Obopay account), and you’re good to go!

So who’s interested in Obopay? AT&T customers are 20% more likely to show interest in Obopay than total wireless customers at all four major carriers, whereas T-Mobile customers are 24% less likely to be interested in Obopay’s services.

Continue reading “Obopay: Turning your cell phone into a wallet or just a cellular fad?” »