Indeed a pleasent news :)
Sony-Ericsson tops in cell users satisfaction
BS Reporter / Mumbai October 17, 2007
http://www.business-standard.com/common/storypage_c_online.php?leftnm=11&bKeyFlag=IN&autono=28924
Sony-Ericsson mobile phones topped the list of overall satisfaction by users in 2007, while Motorola was ranked as the 'most improved' brand on satisfaction for the last three years. However, the overall satisfaction among mobile handset users declined, according to International Data Corporation's ‘India Mobile Handset Usage and Satisfaction Study 2007’.
Motorola was in the second slot in overall satisfaction, displacing Nokia to the third place, while barring the top three vendors (Sony Ericsson, Motorola and Nokia) all other brands fared below the industry average.
According to a release issued by IDC, overall level users feel that mobile phones have become easier to use, have better voice clarity and longer battery life and thus the satisfaction on these three parameters have increased in 2007. This is in comparison with the previous two years, 2006 and 2005.
However, internal memory and entertainment features are the two parameters on which satisfaction has come down significantly.
"The mobile handsets with higher memory and good entertainment features are still priced quite high. The entry-level phones are relatively poor on these parametres contributing to decline in satisfaction scores,” IDC India Country Manager Kapil Dev Singh said.
Since higher memory and good entertainment features are the key drivers for upgrading to a new handset, the handset makers need to review the premium charged for the higher end mobiles, he added.
The study pointed out that integrated digital camera, music player and stereo FM radio are the three main features that drive users to upgrade their handsets. These features are available in mid-range and high-end handsets so far, but the common user now demands these features in the more affordable handsets.
Multimedia Messaging Service or MMS has failed to catch the fancy of the masses due to high cost of transmission over the networks and relatively cheaper alternate modes of downloading videos available through the internet. Speakerphone feature too has emerged as a driver for upgrading the current handset and can be the most 'cost effective differentiator' for low-end handsets.
"Indian mobile user is willing to spend Rs 6,900 on an average for the next handset. This price has declined in the past three years since the study was first conducted. The average price paid for the current handset by and Indian mobile user is Rs 3,700. The 'incremental spend' for the next hand has grown to Rs 3,200 indicating that the experienced users are willing to spend higher amount for purchase of their next handset," said IDC India Senior Manager Consumer Research Shailendra Gupta said.
IDC's India Mobile Handset Usage and Satisfaction Study 2007 was conducted on a sample of 4,760 mobile (GSM and CDMA) handset users in 18 cities including the four metros (Delhi, Mumbai Chennai and Kolkata).
The IDC India study indicates that a mobile handset is used for 56 minutes a day on an average for voice communication (both incoming and outgoing calls) showing an improvement of 5 minutes over 51 minutes per day a year ago.
On SMS, the second most commonly used service, usage has continued to increase in last three years. An average SMS user sends 8 messages in day, while the number of messages received is 10 per day. This is due to a number of messages from mobile service providers giving information about various downloads like ring tones, bill related information and promotional offers and contests.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Mobile advertising:The next big thing
Mobile advertising
The next big thing
Oct 4th 2007
From The Economist print edition: http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9912455
Marketers hail the mobile phone as advertising's promised land
Illustration by Claudio Munoz
ADVERTISING on mobile phones is a tiny business. Last year spending on mobile ads was $871m worldwide according to Informa Telecoms & Media, a research firm, compared with $24 billion spent on internet advertising and $450 billion spent on all advertising. But marketing wizards are beginning to talk about it with the sort of hyperbole they normally reserve for products they are paid to sell. It is destined, some say, to supplant not only internet advertising, the latest fad, but also television, radio, print and billboards, the four traditional pillars of the business.
At the moment, most mobile advertising takes the form of text messages. But telecoms firms are also beginning to deliver ads to handsets alongside video clips, web pages, and music and game downloads, through mobiles that are nifty enough to permit such things. Informa forecasts that annual expenditure will reach $11.4 billion by 2011. Other analysts predict the market will be as big as $20 billion by then.
The 2.5 billion mobile phones around the world can potentially reach a much bigger audience than the planet's billion or so personal computers. The number of mobile phones in use is also growing much faster than the number of computers, especially in poorer countries. Better yet, most people carry their mobile with them everywhere—something that cannot be said of television or computers.
Yet the biggest selling point of mobile ads is what marketing types call “relevance”. Advertisers believe that about half of all traditional advertising does not reach the right audience. Less effort (and money) is wasted with online advertising: half of it is sold on a “pay-per-click” basis, which means advertisers pay only when consumers click on an ad. But mobile advertising through text messages is the most focused: if marketers use mobile firms' profiles of their customers cleverly enough, they can tailor their advertisements to match each subscriber's habits.
In September Blyk, a new mobile operator, launched a service in Britain that aims to do just that. It offers subscribers 217 free text messages and 43 free minutes of voice calls per month as long as they agree to receive six advertisements by text message every day. To sign up for the service, customers must fill out a questionnaire about their hobbies and habits. So advertisers can target their messages very precisely. “Britain is the largest, but also the trickiest European ad market, so if it works here it will work everywhere,” says Pekka Ala-Pietila, chief executive and one of the founders of Blyk.
Last year America's Virgin Mobile tried something similar with its “Sugar Mama” programme, which offers subscribers the choice between receiving an ad via text message or viewing a 45-second advertisement when browsing the internet in exchange for one free minute of talk time. Those who spend five minutes filling out a questionnaire online get five more minutes. Sugar Mama is proving popular: at the end of August Ultramercial, the company that manages the scheme, reported that Virgin Mobile had given away more than 10m free minutes.
Vodafone, a big mobile operator based in Britain, sees mobile advertising as a potentially lucrative source of additional income. For the time being, most of the ads on its network are still text messages, although it has begun displaying ads on Vodafone live!, its mobile internet homepage, through which subscribers access the internet and download videos and music. Vodafone is also running several pilots, says Richard Saggers, the head of its mobile advertising unit, in which subscribers receive free content in exchange for viewing ads. Earlier this year, subscribers in Britain were given the option of downloading footage from “Big Brother”, a reality-TV show, in exchange for viewing a promotional video clip. The firm has also offered free video games punctuated with ads to customers in Greece, and free text messages to Czech students who agree to accept ads in the same format.
Most mobile advertising strategies now rely on text messages, since few customers have taken to more elaborate services that allow them to download music, games and videos and to surf the web. Only 12% of subscribers in America and western Europe used their mobiles to access the internet at the end of 2006. Most people think mobile screens are too small for watching TV programmes or playing games, although newer models, such as Apple's iPhone, boast bigger and brighter screens.
That is not the only problem. While consumers are used to ads on television and radio, they consider their mobiles a more personal device. A flood of advertising might offend its audience, and thus undermine its own value. Tolerance of advertising also differs from one market to another. In the Middle East, for example, unsolicited text messages are quite common, and do not prompt many complaints. But subscribers might not prove so open-minded in Europe or America.
Another hitch, says Nicky Walton-Flynn of Informa, is that operators have lots of databases with information about their clients' habits that would be of great interest to advertisers. But privacy laws may prevent them from sharing it. Moreover, advertisers, operators and middlemen have not agreed a common format for this information, nor worked out how to share the revenue it might yield.
Some think these obstacles will confine mobile advertising to a niche for years to come. But others see a whole new world of possibilities, as more people use their phones to access the internet and consumers grow used to the intrusion. Mobile phones, some of which are now equipped with satellite-positioning technology (see article), could be used to alert people to the charms of stores or restaurants they are walking or driving past.
Tying ads to online searches from mobile phones is another potential goldmine. A subscriber typing in “pizza” for instance, could receive ads for nearby pizza parlours along with his generic search results. Such a customer, mobile operators hope, is likely to be more grateful than annoyed by the intrusion. What could be more relevant than that?
The next big thing
Oct 4th 2007
From The Economist print edition: http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9912455
Marketers hail the mobile phone as advertising's promised land
Illustration by Claudio Munoz
ADVERTISING on mobile phones is a tiny business. Last year spending on mobile ads was $871m worldwide according to Informa Telecoms & Media, a research firm, compared with $24 billion spent on internet advertising and $450 billion spent on all advertising. But marketing wizards are beginning to talk about it with the sort of hyperbole they normally reserve for products they are paid to sell. It is destined, some say, to supplant not only internet advertising, the latest fad, but also television, radio, print and billboards, the four traditional pillars of the business.
At the moment, most mobile advertising takes the form of text messages. But telecoms firms are also beginning to deliver ads to handsets alongside video clips, web pages, and music and game downloads, through mobiles that are nifty enough to permit such things. Informa forecasts that annual expenditure will reach $11.4 billion by 2011. Other analysts predict the market will be as big as $20 billion by then.
The 2.5 billion mobile phones around the world can potentially reach a much bigger audience than the planet's billion or so personal computers. The number of mobile phones in use is also growing much faster than the number of computers, especially in poorer countries. Better yet, most people carry their mobile with them everywhere—something that cannot be said of television or computers.
Yet the biggest selling point of mobile ads is what marketing types call “relevance”. Advertisers believe that about half of all traditional advertising does not reach the right audience. Less effort (and money) is wasted with online advertising: half of it is sold on a “pay-per-click” basis, which means advertisers pay only when consumers click on an ad. But mobile advertising through text messages is the most focused: if marketers use mobile firms' profiles of their customers cleverly enough, they can tailor their advertisements to match each subscriber's habits.
In September Blyk, a new mobile operator, launched a service in Britain that aims to do just that. It offers subscribers 217 free text messages and 43 free minutes of voice calls per month as long as they agree to receive six advertisements by text message every day. To sign up for the service, customers must fill out a questionnaire about their hobbies and habits. So advertisers can target their messages very precisely. “Britain is the largest, but also the trickiest European ad market, so if it works here it will work everywhere,” says Pekka Ala-Pietila, chief executive and one of the founders of Blyk.
Last year America's Virgin Mobile tried something similar with its “Sugar Mama” programme, which offers subscribers the choice between receiving an ad via text message or viewing a 45-second advertisement when browsing the internet in exchange for one free minute of talk time. Those who spend five minutes filling out a questionnaire online get five more minutes. Sugar Mama is proving popular: at the end of August Ultramercial, the company that manages the scheme, reported that Virgin Mobile had given away more than 10m free minutes.
Vodafone, a big mobile operator based in Britain, sees mobile advertising as a potentially lucrative source of additional income. For the time being, most of the ads on its network are still text messages, although it has begun displaying ads on Vodafone live!, its mobile internet homepage, through which subscribers access the internet and download videos and music. Vodafone is also running several pilots, says Richard Saggers, the head of its mobile advertising unit, in which subscribers receive free content in exchange for viewing ads. Earlier this year, subscribers in Britain were given the option of downloading footage from “Big Brother”, a reality-TV show, in exchange for viewing a promotional video clip. The firm has also offered free video games punctuated with ads to customers in Greece, and free text messages to Czech students who agree to accept ads in the same format.
Most mobile advertising strategies now rely on text messages, since few customers have taken to more elaborate services that allow them to download music, games and videos and to surf the web. Only 12% of subscribers in America and western Europe used their mobiles to access the internet at the end of 2006. Most people think mobile screens are too small for watching TV programmes or playing games, although newer models, such as Apple's iPhone, boast bigger and brighter screens.
That is not the only problem. While consumers are used to ads on television and radio, they consider their mobiles a more personal device. A flood of advertising might offend its audience, and thus undermine its own value. Tolerance of advertising also differs from one market to another. In the Middle East, for example, unsolicited text messages are quite common, and do not prompt many complaints. But subscribers might not prove so open-minded in Europe or America.
Another hitch, says Nicky Walton-Flynn of Informa, is that operators have lots of databases with information about their clients' habits that would be of great interest to advertisers. But privacy laws may prevent them from sharing it. Moreover, advertisers, operators and middlemen have not agreed a common format for this information, nor worked out how to share the revenue it might yield.
Some think these obstacles will confine mobile advertising to a niche for years to come. But others see a whole new world of possibilities, as more people use their phones to access the internet and consumers grow used to the intrusion. Mobile phones, some of which are now equipped with satellite-positioning technology (see article), could be used to alert people to the charms of stores or restaurants they are walking or driving past.
Tying ads to online searches from mobile phones is another potential goldmine. A subscriber typing in “pizza” for instance, could receive ads for nearby pizza parlours along with his generic search results. Such a customer, mobile operators hope, is likely to be more grateful than annoyed by the intrusion. What could be more relevant than that?
7 Habits of Highly Effective Managers
7 Habits of Highly Effective Managers
[source : http://foundread.com/2007/10/18/7-habits-of-highly-effective-managers/]
I listened to a Webinar today billed as a tutorial on how to excel as a product manager. The session was led by a woman named Alyssa Dver who is CEO of a startup called Wander Wear, the founder of Type @ Consulting, and author of a successful book on the topic called “Software Product Management Essentials.”
Initially, I took in the Webinar because I figured the product manager is one of the most important employees a startup has; and a founder definitely needs to be able to tell if their product manager is any good, right? But half-way through, I realized Ms. Dver’s advice is applicable to any manager, to any founder, even to any employee who wishes to be ‘highly effective.’ So, I’ve summarized and translated her ’7 Habits,’ below.
There are some very good metrics in her program that ought to help you measure and improve product management within your company (like: what percent of your product manager’s time should be spent in meetings; and in what kind of meetings) so do go to Red Canary, another great founders’ site based in Canada, and listen to the whole program.
Meanwhile, just read ‘manager’, or ‘employee’ (or ‘person’!) wherever you see the term ‘product manger’ below.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective (Product) Managers
1) Know your limits. Great product mangers know their limits. They know their product, but they aren’t a ‘know it all.’ Don’t try to talk the technical talk or the financial talk or the marketing talk when those division heads are in the room with you. Let others present to management or to customers in their areas of expertise. Respect the various department heads. Product mangers lose their credibility very quickly by trying to speak to everything. Be OK with saying ‘I don’t know, but I’ll find the person who does know.’ In other words: have command of your expertise, but defer to those who know more than you do about other things. This conveys good judgement.
2) Listen first before speaking. Good product mangers are master communicators. They listen even better than they speak. They gather information that is important to their audience, from their audience, before they begin speaking at their audience. The audience might be a group of customers, or managers, the board, or investors, etc. Good product managers are information collectors and information vetters. But this means listening, to collect and vet, before you begin evangelizing.
3) Ask ‘Why?’ not ‘What?’ Why do you want this product feature over that one? So if I ask you, ‘do you want it red, or do you want it blue?’ You say ‘blue!’ OK, so I make it blue. But at the end of the day, I might have to change it to green because I didn’t ever ask you why you wanted it to be blue. The important information, Dver is saying, isn’t what someone wants, but their motive for wanting it— the reason why. If you know why someone wants something (e.g., a product, a term in a deal, a raise, etc.) you are more empowered to come up with a solution that will meet their real need, and in a way that works for you as well. The question ‘what do you want,’ will tell you exactly one fact. But asking ‘why do you want that’ actually gives you understanding.
4) Be decisive. Good product managers make the decision. Sometimes ‘the decision’ can mean saying: ‘I’m not ready to make a decision today, but I will make a decision by this date.’ Being decisive and not wishy washy is a key ingrediant of good product management. You will NEVER have all the information in hand that you would like. That is a fact of life. But you are always able to make the best decision you can with the info set you have at the time, this is very important. A good product manager will say ‘this is what we’re going to do.’ Then, if a key piece of information comes in later that [contravenes your decision], good product management means having the courage to say ‘OK, let’s take a look at that, and if it makes sense, we will change our position.’ This equates to confidence, which equates to credibility. Both are key attributes of great product managers.
5) Be responsive. You don’t have to answer every email or every phone call. But you should try. Ignoring people is NOT good. We know this intuitively. When someone is trying to get your attnention, it is because something is important to them. When you choose not to respond, or you choose to ignore them, they will take it personally. A lack of response says to that person ‘I’m not important to [my manager]; so [my manager] is not important to me.’ In this way, the manager loses credibility. The employee might be (unconsciously) thinking ‘if my manager can’t even answer my email, what else can’t he do?’ So when you don’t have the answer(s) to an inquiry, respond anyway with something like, ‘I plan on getting back to you I just don’t have all the information right now, but your message is important to me.’ Respond with something that makes the other person feel attended to, and important to you. Good product managers are attentive, and that means being repsonsive.
6) Communicate frequently. This is the proactive side of ‘be responsive.’ You must also communicate of your own volition, and frequently. Send out status reports. Keep information flowing so that people aren’t harassing you with questions like ‘what’s going on?’ If it helps, Refer people to earlier emails or reports you’ve issued to keep the information flow going. But also communicate concretely, and concisely. People need status reports to make them feel ‘in the loop.’ This is easily accomplished if you communicate often. Just keep it short and sweet.
7) Manage passion. Passion is great, and great product managers are very passionate people. We love our products they’re our babies (sounds like founders!). We want to tell people about them and make others love [our baby], too. But somebody who has too much passion, who doesn’t shut-up enough to listen, or who doesn’t want to hear that their baby might not be ‘perfect,’ will also lose his/her credibility quickly. You need other people’s perspectives, and criticisms. So don’t be the kind of prodcut manager who won’t stop to hear that the baby isn’t perfect. Be enthusiastic but not so overzealous that you lose track of what the mission is: To succeed. Passion motivates you to execute, but passion is not execution. And without execution there is no success.
There was much more in Ms. Dver’s Webinar, so as I said, go to Red Canary and listen to the whole thing. She concludes by listing the 3 characteristics of a successful product manager: A humble leader. A careful communicator. An avid student. Her ’7 Habits’ will go a long way toward helping you acquire them, too.
[source : http://foundread.com/2007/10/18/7-habits-of-highly-effective-managers/]
I listened to a Webinar today billed as a tutorial on how to excel as a product manager. The session was led by a woman named Alyssa Dver who is CEO of a startup called Wander Wear, the founder of Type @ Consulting, and author of a successful book on the topic called “Software Product Management Essentials.”
Initially, I took in the Webinar because I figured the product manager is one of the most important employees a startup has; and a founder definitely needs to be able to tell if their product manager is any good, right? But half-way through, I realized Ms. Dver’s advice is applicable to any manager, to any founder, even to any employee who wishes to be ‘highly effective.’ So, I’ve summarized and translated her ’7 Habits,’ below.
There are some very good metrics in her program that ought to help you measure and improve product management within your company (like: what percent of your product manager’s time should be spent in meetings; and in what kind of meetings) so do go to Red Canary, another great founders’ site based in Canada, and listen to the whole program.
Meanwhile, just read ‘manager’, or ‘employee’ (or ‘person’!) wherever you see the term ‘product manger’ below.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective (Product) Managers
1) Know your limits. Great product mangers know their limits. They know their product, but they aren’t a ‘know it all.’ Don’t try to talk the technical talk or the financial talk or the marketing talk when those division heads are in the room with you. Let others present to management or to customers in their areas of expertise. Respect the various department heads. Product mangers lose their credibility very quickly by trying to speak to everything. Be OK with saying ‘I don’t know, but I’ll find the person who does know.’ In other words: have command of your expertise, but defer to those who know more than you do about other things. This conveys good judgement.
2) Listen first before speaking. Good product mangers are master communicators. They listen even better than they speak. They gather information that is important to their audience, from their audience, before they begin speaking at their audience. The audience might be a group of customers, or managers, the board, or investors, etc. Good product managers are information collectors and information vetters. But this means listening, to collect and vet, before you begin evangelizing.
3) Ask ‘Why?’ not ‘What?’ Why do you want this product feature over that one? So if I ask you, ‘do you want it red, or do you want it blue?’ You say ‘blue!’ OK, so I make it blue. But at the end of the day, I might have to change it to green because I didn’t ever ask you why you wanted it to be blue. The important information, Dver is saying, isn’t what someone wants, but their motive for wanting it— the reason why. If you know why someone wants something (e.g., a product, a term in a deal, a raise, etc.) you are more empowered to come up with a solution that will meet their real need, and in a way that works for you as well. The question ‘what do you want,’ will tell you exactly one fact. But asking ‘why do you want that’ actually gives you understanding.
4) Be decisive. Good product managers make the decision. Sometimes ‘the decision’ can mean saying: ‘I’m not ready to make a decision today, but I will make a decision by this date.’ Being decisive and not wishy washy is a key ingrediant of good product management. You will NEVER have all the information in hand that you would like. That is a fact of life. But you are always able to make the best decision you can with the info set you have at the time, this is very important. A good product manager will say ‘this is what we’re going to do.’ Then, if a key piece of information comes in later that [contravenes your decision], good product management means having the courage to say ‘OK, let’s take a look at that, and if it makes sense, we will change our position.’ This equates to confidence, which equates to credibility. Both are key attributes of great product managers.
5) Be responsive. You don’t have to answer every email or every phone call. But you should try. Ignoring people is NOT good. We know this intuitively. When someone is trying to get your attnention, it is because something is important to them. When you choose not to respond, or you choose to ignore them, they will take it personally. A lack of response says to that person ‘I’m not important to [my manager]; so [my manager] is not important to me.’ In this way, the manager loses credibility. The employee might be (unconsciously) thinking ‘if my manager can’t even answer my email, what else can’t he do?’ So when you don’t have the answer(s) to an inquiry, respond anyway with something like, ‘I plan on getting back to you I just don’t have all the information right now, but your message is important to me.’ Respond with something that makes the other person feel attended to, and important to you. Good product managers are attentive, and that means being repsonsive.
6) Communicate frequently. This is the proactive side of ‘be responsive.’ You must also communicate of your own volition, and frequently. Send out status reports. Keep information flowing so that people aren’t harassing you with questions like ‘what’s going on?’ If it helps, Refer people to earlier emails or reports you’ve issued to keep the information flow going. But also communicate concretely, and concisely. People need status reports to make them feel ‘in the loop.’ This is easily accomplished if you communicate often. Just keep it short and sweet.
7) Manage passion. Passion is great, and great product managers are very passionate people. We love our products they’re our babies (sounds like founders!). We want to tell people about them and make others love [our baby], too. But somebody who has too much passion, who doesn’t shut-up enough to listen, or who doesn’t want to hear that their baby might not be ‘perfect,’ will also lose his/her credibility quickly. You need other people’s perspectives, and criticisms. So don’t be the kind of prodcut manager who won’t stop to hear that the baby isn’t perfect. Be enthusiastic but not so overzealous that you lose track of what the mission is: To succeed. Passion motivates you to execute, but passion is not execution. And without execution there is no success.
There was much more in Ms. Dver’s Webinar, so as I said, go to Red Canary and listen to the whole thing. She concludes by listing the 3 characteristics of a successful product manager: A humble leader. A careful communicator. An avid student. Her ’7 Habits’ will go a long way toward helping you acquire them, too.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Google Buys Jaiku
Google Buys Jaiku
[source :http://mashable.com/2007/10/09/jaiku-google/]
Breaking: Google (GOOG) has bought Jaiku, a Finland-based mobile IM and presence company. The news just broke, where else, but on Jaiku. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The details of the deal are on the Jaiku blog, and the company has put up FAQ for current users. This is indeed good news for the small Jaiku team, and another piece of the Google Phone Puzzle.
Activity streams and mobile presence are important areas where we believe Google can add a lot of value for users. Jaiku’s technology and talented team are a great addition to Google’s current application and mobile teamsAt first glance, this is an excellent acquisition on the part of Google. OK, time for me to sit down and start making sense of all the Google acquisitions in the mobile and VoIP space.
[source :http://mashable.com/2007/10/09/jaiku-google/]
Breaking: Google (GOOG) has bought Jaiku, a Finland-based mobile IM and presence company. The news just broke, where else, but on Jaiku. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The details of the deal are on the Jaiku blog, and the company has put up FAQ for current users. This is indeed good news for the small Jaiku team, and another piece of the Google Phone Puzzle.
Activity streams and mobile presence are important areas where we believe Google can add a lot of value for users. Jaiku’s technology and talented team are a great addition to Google’s current application and mobile teamsAt first glance, this is an excellent acquisition on the part of Google. OK, time for me to sit down and start making sense of all the Google acquisitions in the mobile and VoIP space.
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