T-Mobile’s MyTouch 3G commercials may be all over the TV and internet these days, but most consumers viewing these commercials are probably not aware that HTC is actually the device’s manufacturer.  HTC has long been making innovative handsets that, more often than not in the US, are branded by the wireless carrier at which they are available.  In fact, HTC provided the hardware behind the first two Android-capable phones in the US: the T-Mobile G1 and the aforementioned MyTouch 3G.

However throughout 2009, HTC has not only offered more phones at the major carriers under its own brand but has also refocused its website to position HTC as a leading brand offering user-friendly smartphones that focus on the individual’s needs, both business and personal.

Continue reading “HTC Poised to Grow as Smartphone Market Expands” »

Anyone who has received a Facebook “friend request” from a parent should chuckle at a recent ad from Verizon Wireless.  As part of its back-to-school campaign, Verizon Wireless features a mom and dad annoying their children by Tweeting and Facebooking on their mobile phones.  The phones featured in this commercial, the Motorola Rival and LG enV3, are part of a rapidly growing phone segment – the “quick-messaging” device.  These phones are meant for the casual consumer rather than the business user, but still offer full QWERTY keyboards to allow for easy texting and social network updates.

LG was one of the first handset manufacturers to jump on this trend with its series of enV phones.  More interesting is the inclusion of Motorola’s Rival, as Motorola has been struggling to keep up with the competition after wearing thin the success of the RAZR earlier in the decade.

Given LG’s popularity and prominence in Verizon Wireless’s  advertising for the last several years, I wondered if the Rival could stand up to the enV3 head-to-head in terms of drawing online consumer interest.  The chart below shows the number of people who researched each “quick-messaging” device at Verizon Wireless each week, and the results surprised me.

Volume of researchers for the LG enV3 and Motorola Rival at Verizonwireless.com

•    The enV3had a huge launch with over 250K people researching the phone each week at Verizon Wireless in its first month
•    Interest in the Rival didn’t match that of the enV3 at launch, but increased steadily and surpassed interest in the enV3 in late July, about a month and a half after the initial launch
•    This surge in interest resulted in the Rival being the 4th most popular handset on the market in July

The most noteworthy thing about the Rival’s performance was how it completely bucked the normal trend seen when handsets launch. Normally, there is a spike in interest in the first week or two following launch, followed by a slow decline in researchers as consumers shift their attention to newer devices.  A popular and heavily promoted device like the enV3 may take longer to see consumer interest decline, but it clearly lost shoppers in the weeks following launch, unlike the Rival.

It seems the combination of Motorola’s non-traditional internet advertising (like its Thumb-Fu interactive campaign and Facebook presence) and Verizon Wireless’s back-to-school push helped the Rival reverse typical launch momentum and generate increasing online interest as time went on.

While the trend exhibited by the Rival was positive, Motorola shouldn’t stop looking over its shoulder at LG – the following chart shows the top 5 phones that Rival shoppers researched in addition to the Rival on Verizonwireless.com:

Percentage of Motorola Rival researchers at Verizon who also researched the following phones at Verizonwireless.com (July 2009)

This provides an example of LG’s strength at Verizon Wireless – the Rival’s 5 most cross-shopped devices were all LG devices, 3 of which are focused on the quick-messaging market (enV Touch, enV3 and Versa).

While LG will likely remain a force at VZW, Motorola has one ace up its sleeve– an upcoming device running Google’s much-hyped Android OS, rumored to be released at Verizon Wireless this fall.  The successful launch of the Rival could provide Motorola with great momentum leading up to this flagship launch and help steal some of LG’s spotlight at Verizon Wireless.

Last week, Sprint and Palm released the Pre to rave reviews that praised the device for being the first true competition to the iPhone juggernaut.

Palm and Sprint drove substantial traffic to their web sites with the announcement of the Pre at CES in January, in a move similar to Apple’s unveiling of the first generation iPhone at MacWorld two years earlier. Nearly 400,000 people visited Pre-related pages on Sprint.com and/or Palm.com the week of the announcement.

After months of speculation from industry analysts and consumers, Sprint and Palm announced on May 19th that the Pre would be available for purchase on June 6th. As one might expect, visitors to the Pre pages on Sprint.com and Palm.com jumped after many weeks of flat traffic and jumped again the week the device finally became available for purchase.

This chart shows the number of people researching the Pre and the original iPhone, indexed to the device’s launch week. As you can see, the Pre may be getting a healthy amount of interest from consumers online, but it doesn’t rival the interest seen in the original iPhone launch. Likewise, Sprint and Palm’s traffic spike the week of the Pre launch didn’t match the massive jump Apple experienced upon the iPhone’s release.

• Aggregate traffic for the Pre from both Sprint and Palm’s web sites increased 84% the week of launch to over 475,000 unique visitors.
• Traffic to Apple.com’s iPhone content increased 102% the week of the iPhone launch to over 750,000 unique visitors. Note that this is just traffic to Apple.com – this number would be even higher if AT&T’s traffic was included.

Apple’s relentless hype machine and strong brand equity played significant roles in this major increase, but a significant factor may have simply been the relative sizes of the websites involved, as you can see in the following chart.

The truth is that Palm.com does not attract visitors at comparable levels to Apple.com, and, to a lesser extent, the same can be said about Sprint.com compared to Wireless.ATT.com. However, considering the relative sizes of these sites, Palm and Sprint did a solid job at driving interest in the Pre and are already reaping the benefits of this highly anticipated launch.

The next real challenge will be sustaining interest and sales of the device – one great sales week hasn’t propelled any of the previous iPhone challengers to the top of the heap.

Even in the midst of an economic downturn, interest in Apple products continues to increase. Strong sales and substantial media attention for high-profile products like the iPhone over the last year has resulted in more visitors to Apple’s website. In Q3 2008, an average of 15.3 million people went to Apple.com each month, up 5% over traffic during the same period in 2007.

Apple’s continued success at driving interest stands in contrast to one of their main competitors. In the chart below, we compare Apple’s traffic to Dell’s, another company that both manufactures and sells consumer electronics. In Q3 2008, Dell’s traffic shrank by 9% to 12.1 million monthly visitors, trailing Apple by over 3 million monthly visitors.

Apple has been successful at cultivating an image that resonates with a young audience. This strong brand identity led me to wonder if Apple was distancing itself from the large and growing segment of Americans over 50. To find out, we looked at the online behaviors of a “Seniors” segment that we defined as people who visit sites geared to older internet users such as AARP.org, Eons.com, and Medicare.gov.

Among this segment, Apple.com traffic declined 5% in Q3 2008 compared to the year before. However, Apple didn’t suffer as badly as Dell, whose Senior traffic declined 18% over the previous year. While Dell pulled in nearly 200,000 more Senior visitors a month in Q3 2007, Dell and Apple are now seeing approximately the same amount of traffic from this segment.

Older Americans seem to have been slower to catch on to the Apple craze, perhaps because Apple builds products and markets to smaller niches. For example, if you’re interested in a computer under $1000, the only Apple option is the technologically outdated Mac Mini. On the other hand, Dell offers an array of machines for every possible budget. Additionally, Apple has only begun to make a dent in the dominance of the Windows OS over the last few years; older consumers who have likely been using Windows for most of their computing lives will likely be slower to switch.

Another factor might be the large role that the iPod and iPhone play in Apple’s strategy. As we saw in an earlier look at the products that older Americans are shopping for, MP3 players are not high on the list, with interest in the iPhone similarly low.

Apple and Dell are now neck and neck in terms of capturing Older Americans’ interest, but the company that can get the right marketing and product mix to gain a foothold with this group may see healthy returns. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that there are over 96 million Americans aged 50 or higher, with the segment expected to grow 23% in the next 11 years - certainly a market worth pursuing.

Interested in learning more about how consumers shop for and use Consumer Electronics? Join us at 2 p.m. EST today, February 5th for our next webinar featuring results from a joint study with the Consumer Electronics Association on older Americans and technology. Click here to register.

As someone always on the lookout for the latest and greatest gadgets, I find the internet is the best place to find out what is coming down the pipe and also the most convenient way to purchase. The wide variety of reputable vendors often ensures you can find a deal and internet shopping also allows you to make decisions at your own pace rather than dealing with a potentially pushy salesperson trying to upsell you.

But what factors keep people from buying Consumer Electronics (CE) products online? Compete’s recent survey on consumer electronics shopping behavior helped provide some insight. As someone who prefers to make purchases on my own, I found it interesting that nearly 60% of respondents said that they prefer to deal with a real person. Shipping was also an issue: nearly half (48%) said they didn’t want to pay for shipping, while 27% did not want to wait for the items to ship.

As greater numbers of baby boomers (generally considered those born from 1946-1960) move toward retirement, I thought it might be interesting to look at why older consumers in particular aren’t comfortable with purchasing CE products online. The data suggest that the actual process for shopping online does not dissuade older Americans as much as concerns over the security of their credit card data.

• Across age groups, concerns about providing credit card info online are consistently a greater deterrent than confusion with the online shopping process
• Discomfort with providing credit card information online increases dramatically among consumers over the age of 60: 30% of those in their sixties and over half of those in their seventies said it was a reason they didn’t shop for CE online

If online vendors want to capitalize on this growing segment of consumers, they should focus their efforts on informing them of their security measures. Site design and usability can’t be neglected, but make older consumers feel safe and they’ll be more likely to open their wallets.

As we saw earlier, over 25% of consumers aged 50 and up are interesting in purchasing an HDTV in the next year, one of the pricier CE purchases one could make. More broadly, 43% of consumers we surveyed aged 50+ were planning to spend over $500 on consumer electronics in the next 12 months.

Interested in learning more about how consumers shop for and use Consumer Electronics?

For more results from the CEA/Compete study, click here.

Join us at 2 p.m. EST on Feburary 5th for our next webinar featuring results from a joint study with the Consumer Electronics Association on older Americans and technology. Click here to register.

On the Compete blog, we’ve looked at how people are shopping for high-definition televisions (HDTVs) and found that interest is booming despite the tough economy.

We recently conducted a survey where we asked respondents what consumer electronics products they planned on purchasing over the next 12 months. HDTVs led the way, with 25% of all respondents indicating that they planned on purchasing one in the next year.

So who are HDTV shoppers? Does this product category attract younger consumers, who seem ready to splurge on the latest and greatest technology, or are HDTVs a product that people young and old alike have on their must-buy list?

As expected, we found that younger consumers were more likely to say they’re planning to buy most CE products. However, the picture changes when looking at HDTV shoppers.

The trend shown for respondents who expected to purchase an MP3 player or video game console is a good example of what we see for most other CE products: those in the 18-34 age bracket are most likely to say they are planning to buy the product in the next 12 months, with progressively lower proportions of people in the more senior age groups planning a purchase of the same item. As we can see in the graph, the HDTV trend is completely different, with each age bracket having a roughly equal share of respondents who are planning to buy one in the next year.

Why are consumers so interested in buying an HDTV in 2009? Across all age groups, just over half of those planning to purchase an HDTV said that a motivating factor behind the purchase would be to replace a current product. A desire to enjoy an increasing number of HD television channels, and other high-resolution content like Blu-Ray may also be a factor. Finally, the upcoming analog TV signal shutdown may be driving consumers of all ages to consider replacing their older sets.

Whatever the reasons, the appeal of upgrading to an HDTV seems to know no age boundaries.

For more results from the CEA/Compete study, click here.

Interested in learning more about how consumers shop for and use Consumer Electronics? Join us at 2 p.m. EST on February 5th for our next webinar featuring results from a joint study with the Consumer Electronics Association on older Americans and technology. Click here to register.