At the last Mobile Monday London, Dan Applequist mentioned that Apple had started advertising the iphone app store in the US, with a screen by screen demo of how to download an app onto your phone. The point he made was that Apple are very successfully presenting this as a "new thing" and a lot of people will think that they invented the idea of downloadable mobile applications and software, despite the fact that this capability has existed for years on Symbian and Windows Mobile devices, not to mention Palms, Blackberries and handsets with Java and Brew built in.
Here is
the TV ad "Vicinity" which is also showing in the UK now and probably
all the other countries the iphone is available in.
What is amazing is that in all the years downloadable
applications have been available, no other company has every promoted
them in this way and made the process easy to understand for the mass
market of consumers. The ad focuses on the device and actually shows
you the process of downloading an app. If you look back at the way 3G
services and portals have been advertised by the big mobile operators
they almost never do this - the ad may show a specific thing you can do
with the phone but the whole thing is tied up in a glossy TV ad as if
they are almost ashamed of showing the device. See this one for
example for Vodafone Live! in Greece:
This says it all really - a mobile ad that gives you virtually no idea
what its about, and does not provide any value to the view in terms of
user education etc. I could post a whole load of similar commercials
featuring David Beckham, cool music and good looking young people but
never telling you what you can do with your phone or helping you to use
it.
There are loads of great apps Symbian and Windows Mobile devices such as Shozu, Opera Mini and Mig33 but at the moment its only really the early adopters and consumers in developing markets that are using them. If T-Mobile ever gets its own app store off the ground let's see if they can advertise it the same way as Apple or whether they a) dont bother to advertise it or b) do a load of adverts with celebrities and pretty cinematography rather than a clear and useful demo of the service.
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Posted by: sykoz | 06/23/2009 at 11:24 AM