Twitter announced yesterday that it is to acquire start up company, Cloudhopper. This will enable the micro blogging site to provide users with the facility to send tweets directly to mobile phones by SMS or MMS. Twitters move seems to be to allow anyone to interact with their platform even without an internet connection. Besides the huge potential to significantly increase the Twitter user base, it could also create a brand opportunity to send tweets as text messages directly to their followers phones. It will require brands to carefully work out their engagement strategy for it to work for them … and in the meantime Twitter will have to work out its revenue strategy.
Month: April 2010
Apple iphone Sales Stats: latest figures
I have been regularly reporting Apple iphone sales stats worldwide and in the UK iphone sales. And I have been regularly questioned about the validity of those figures. According to the latest reports, I was wrong. The figures are lower than I reported. Apple’s last quarter sales of the iphone were 8.75 million, with a total of just over 51m for the complete history of the iphone (all three models).
That makes it a very good selling phone by any standards. Not only that, but the iphone has made some major shifts in how we use our mobiles – apps being the most obvious one. BUT … the iphone is not the best selling phone ever. Neither is it the fastest selling phone ever. And at the same time, Android is catching up, selling 60% of the volume of iphones. OK, that’s across a number of mobiles. The point is that whilst the iphone is significant, it’s not the only handset out there!
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Can QR codes work?
Here’s an interesting example of QR codes in action. Argentina are putting them on driver’s licenses to give the police fast access to additional driver information. It’s not a branding example, and Argentina is something of a police state, but what it does show is how QR can be used to provide access to detailed information.
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Brands in social networks? It’s all about consumer recommendation
Research from Insight Consulting shows that most people look for consumer recommendation when engaging with brands through social media. No surprise really, but it shows that brand focus should really be on creating champions and reputation management NOT selling the product.
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Orange and T-mobile merger: it’s official (finally)
The Orange, T-Mobile merger is now official. And hardly surprisingly, Orange have emerged as the dominant partner, with UK boss, Tom Alexander announced as the new CEO. It is hoped that the merger will create savings of over £400m per year by reducing the number of base stations, rationalising stores and network operations. The merger will create the UK’s largest network by subscribers, coverage and just about anything else you care to mention.
At the moment each brand will retain it’s own name, but there is heavy speculation of a complete merger within a few years. What will be the new name? Torange? Morange? Orange-Mobile? Continuing a fruit based theme (not that Orange is supposed to be associated with the fruit, only the colour), how about Tangerine?
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Is there an app for that?
Most of the top appstore downloads (outside of games) are branded apps, but many of those are pretty poor. This is a good blog on from a number of brands on how to develop the right sort of app.
Brands, Innovation and Creative Technologies 