When Nintendo first introduced the Wii in 2006, they did so with a lower price point than the competition and a focus on capturing interest from all demographics.  Demand for the Wii was so high that finding a Wii in a store was a rarity until earlier this year.  Since then, Nintendo has dominated in sales of consoles leaving both the Sony Playstation 3 (PS3) and the Microsoft Xbox360 in the dust.  In August, both Sony and Microsoft lowered the price of their consoles to $300, but the PS3 came out victorious in September with monthly console sales surpassing Wii for the first time.  Interestingly, Nintendo retaliated and lowered the price of the Wii to $200 in September.

Continue reading ““Game Over” for Wii?” »

Hopes were high when Microsoft introduced the Zune in 2006. As the first MP3 player to feature Wifi and an FM radio, the Zune stood out by allowing owners to share music wirelessly with other Zuners. The concept never took off; Zune adoption was limited, while Apple’s iPod line continued to dominate the media player space.

In late September Microsoft launched its new Zune HD media player.  Rather than simply upgrade and refine the original Zune concept, Microsoft seemingly followed the lead of the iPod Touch, building the device around a 3.3 inch touchscreen, internet browsing capability and games/application downloads via the Zune Marketplace. 

Continue reading “Can Microsoft’s Zune HD challenge the iPod?” »

Despite carrying along my GPS navigation unit and an iPhone, with its featured Google Maps widget, I did not feel fully comfortable embarking on my drive until I also had my Mapquest directions printout laid out next to me. While I imagine many people may find it overkill to have both a GPS and printed directions, I wondered whether I was the only GPS owner still relying on online maps.

GPS units have become more and more popular recently thanks to falling prices and added features like music players and real-time traffic reports. USA Today quotes that The Consumer Electronics Association estimated that sales remain on track to surpass 2008’s 15.1 million units, despite the struggling economy. With summer traveling season coming to an end, I was curious as to the impact the growing popularity of GPS units has on online web mapping services like Google Maps and MapQuest.

Using Compete data, I tracked people who purchased a GPS in June and examined their online behavior from the month before their purchase to two months following their purchase. The chart below shows activity at the two largest online web mapping services, Google Maps and MapQuest, before, the month of, and after purchasing a GPS system at major retailers or OEM sites online.

Percentage of GPS Purchasers who used MapQuest.com or Maps.Google.com Before, During, and After Month of Purchase
(Compete data based on following sites: Amazon, Buy, NewEgg, TigerDirect, TheNerds, BestBuy, Costco, Walmart, J&R, Staples OfficeMax, OfficeDepot, CompUSA, TomTom)

What does this data tell us about GPS purchasers use of online map services?

• Not surprisingly, GPS purchasers visited Google Maps more frequently than MapQuest both before and after the purchase; this matches overall traffic trends seen at these sites (Google Maps had 24% more Unique Visitors in August ’09).
• Interestingly, while the number of people using an online mapping service dropped in the months following purchase (down 22%), a majority of consumers tracked still visited online mapping sites (58% of GPS purchasers tracked visited a mapping site the month following purchase).

One might think that owning a GPS would eliminate the need for other mapping services, but this is not the case. One potential explanation is that people use online maps as a backup in case the GPS does not work properly, perhaps in case of poor reception. Personally, I have experienced countless times where my GPS lost signal driving past skyscrapers. Perhaps a more likely reason is people like to use online maps as a reference before getting into their car to find out how far and what the general directions are for the trip.

Google Maps, MapQuest, and other online mapping services probably don’t need to worry about being made entirely obsolete by the GPS unit. However, as GPS usage becomes more and more mainstream, it might behoove online mapping services to try to improve and integrate their systems with GPS manufacturers so they have a greater reach – in the car and on the computer.

Earlier this summer, there were several reports that Dell has made $3M thanks to its use of Twitter, mainly to notify people about outlet deals on dell.com. The microblogging service that garnered media attention with reports on things as trivial as celebrity feuds and as serious as protest of the Iranian election results also had a tangible dollar amount associated with its use. The Dell announcement also provided a benchmark of sorts for marketers looking to measure the monetary impact of their social media use.

But where does Dell stand when it comes to getting referral traffic from Twitter, relative to other sites that sell products to customers? To find out, I looked Compete’s referral analytics data, which shows us what site people went to right after they were on Twitter. Although this doesn’t include referrals from mobile devices or Twitter clients (e.g. Tweetdeck, Tweetie, and Twitterific), it does give us an idea of how traffic from the site is flowing to other parts of the web.

To do this analysis, I compared Dell.com to the sites that sell products to consumers online (let’s call them “selling sites”) that got the biggest percentage of referrals from twitter.com. I also looked at the percentage of each site’s overall traffic that was made up of referrals from twitter.com, to gauge how big of an impact the microblogging site was having for them in the grand scheme of things.

The data is shown in the chart below. Each site’s rank in terms of getting referral traffic from Twitter’s website is in brackets, which you would read as “across all sites on the web, eBay ranked 15th in getting share of referral traffic from twitter.com.” The bars show the percentage of each site’s referral traffic that comes from Twitter referrals, which you would read as, “a tenth of one percent of craigslist’s referral traffic is made up of referrals from twitter.com.”

A couple of interesting points to note here:

• Among these selling sites, eBay is getting the largest percentage of the referral traffic from Twitter.com, even though those referrals make up about the same proportion of eBay.com’s overall traffic as they do for Dell’s site
• Etsy, a site where people can sell handmade and vintage items, saw the largest percentage of their traffic from Twitter.com in this group, at just over 2%
• In terms of getting Twitter referral share, Dell ranks 205th, and only about 0.1% of its site traffic comes from twitter.com

What does this mean? A couple of implications come to mind.

First, there is still an opportunity for these selling sites to increase their traffic from Twitter.com to make up a larger portion of their traffic, and take advantage of Twitter’s strength of delivering simple information quickly to a designated audience.

Second, a little seems to go a long way. Dell was able to make money using Twitter without garnering a large percentage of twitter.com referral traffic, and without a big chunk of their overall traffic coming from Twitter. Again, this data doesn’t include traffic that came from Twitter clients or mobile devices, but it does give us an insight into the traffic patterns from the website.

Third, a couple of the sites ahead of Dell in this analysis are places where people can buy, but also post their own items. It could be that people are using Twitter to promote what they are personally trying to sell. Although sites like Dell probably won’t (and shouldn’t) enable the average person to sell on its site, encouraging the audience’s participation through retweets could help boost traffic.

Twitter may be enigmatic, but it has potential for marketers. Typing 140 characters isn’t hard, but figuring out how much, and how to tap into it, is the true challenge.

Convergence of mobile technologies is often treated as a foregone conclusion; the assumption is that, at some point, all of today’s gadgetry will be consolidated in a single device.

Sony Ericsson recently released the 905a mobile phone to AT&T subscribers. The 905a mobile phone features an 8 megapixel camera bearing Sony’s Cyber-shot moniker usually reserved for its line of digital cameras. This is clearly a sign of convergence, but is it also a sign of impending obsolescence of the stand-alone digital camera?

At first glance, it looks likely. Buying even a basic mobile phone without a camera has become very difficult. The once premium feature is now available in virtually every phone offered by the Big-4 carriers, and in many cases on phones that are free with a contract.

Are mobile phones featuring high-powered cameras replacing the conventional digital camera in the minds of consumers? To explore this, I looked at Compete’s data to see what proportion of shoppers interested in digital cameras from major manufacturers* were also shopping for mobile phones with high resolution cameras (5 megapixels or moreˇ) between November 2008 and June 2009.

The high resolution camera phone is not a true substitute for the digital camera. The data above shows a low level of active online cross shopping between the two products; consumers aren’t actively comparing digital cameras to the phones that offer the most comparable photographic performance. Less than 2% of digital camera shoppers also shopped for a mobile phone with a high resolution camera during the same month. Compete’s Smartphone Intelligence data seems to support this; 79% of smartphone owners surveyed during Q1 2009 stated that they owned and regularly used a conventional digital camera despite having a built-in camera in their phone.

Resolution could be an obstacle to displacement of the digital camera. With the exception of the Samsung Memoir, all of the mobile phones included in the consideration set featured cameras with resolution just above 5 megapixels, inferior even to inexpensive digital cameras on the market. Mobile phone cameras are likely subject to a different set of expectations; decent picture quality suffices for spontaneous snapping and sharing.

It will be interesting to see how consumer habits develop once we start to see diminishing returns from increased picture resolution. Once picture quality offered by mobile phones is indistinguishable from that of a digital camera, true substitution could be in the cards.

For now, the digital camera seems safe.

We’ve all heard the term ‘Christmas in July’, but have you ever wondered where it came from? It originated in Europe to describe overheated residents’ summer cravings for cool December weather. And just as the Europeans yearned for a break from the heat, US retailers are dreaming of strong sales for the 2009 holiday season after months of trying economic times. But is this upcoming holiday season the one that will bring retailers back to better days?

In my work, I focus on consumer technology (e.g. wireless, computers, printers, handsets, etc.), so in order to “write what I know” I looked at clickstream data from December 2007 and 2008 to gauge the trends in holiday shopping activity online. I then compared June data for 2007-2009 to get a read on where we’re headed so far this year.

Despite a weak economy in 2009, consumer technology retailers may get their wish, at least online.

The chart below shows the percent growth in both the traffic and online order volume at consumer technology sites* from December 2007, as compared to December 2008.

What does this data tell us about holiday shopping?

• Despite the poor economy, about 85 million people visited the designated consumer technology shopping sites in December 2008, up 12% from the same period in 2007.
• This increase in traffic also meant more buying, with online orders increasing 23% from December 2007 to December 2008.
• Additional data (not charted) shows that individuals made more online shopping trips last year. In December 2008, online visitors shopped on these designated consumer technology sites an average of 3.3 times throughout the month. This was 17% higher than the 2.8 times visitors shopped online in December 2007.

So it looks like traffic and sales on these sites have been trending upward when we compare December 2007 and 2008. However, given all that’s happened since December, I decided to look at how interest and orders in June 2009 compared to previous years to see if there are any signs that sales or interest are flagging. The chart below shows this comparison in terms of year over year growth.

Again we see that there was significant growth in both traffic and orders year over year. What does this data tell us about what has transpired so far in 2009?

• Growth in online traffic more than tripled from June 2007 to June 2009, with an increase in visitors from 66 million to 83 million.
• Although big product releases like the Apple iPhone 3GS and the Palm Pre helped drive June 2009 traffic volumes and orders, other retailers like Dell and Verizon Wireless also saw significant increases.

Obviously, there are limitations to looking back in time to predict the future, especially when we’ve seen so many changes. In the consumer technology industry, we’ve seen several significant product releases this year, particularly new wireless devices. We’ve also seen big macroeconomic changes in the forms of a stumbling economy and a new administration.

So, what are my predictions for Holiday 2009? The early indicators look positive for consumer technology. As my daughter’s Magic Eight Ball says, “signs point to yes” – meaning that online shopping and buying should be good this year in the consumer technology space. You can be sure we’ll keep an eye on it and let you know.