ABI Research just released a new white paper on mobile marketing strategies. It includes  the latest information on the market and forecasts mobile marketing spending will grow from $1B to $4B by 2014. 

According to Neil Strother, ABI Research Practice Director, Mobile Marketing Strategies

"Mobile Marketing is growing exponentially and advertisers can no longer afford to ignore this medium as a way to reach customers – especially in the most desirable 18-40 age range."

Click on the graphic to download the report.

From FierceWireless, check out the latest stats for the mobile market.

comScore, Inc., a leader in measuring the digital world, today released data from the comScore MobiLens service, reporting key trends in the U.S. mobile phone industry during the three month average period ending May 2010 compared to the preceding three-month average. The report ranked the leading mobile original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and smartphone operating system (OS) platforms in the U.S. according to their share of current mobile subscribers age 13 and older, and reviewed the most popular activities and content accessed via the subscriber’s primary mobile phone.

Interesting to note amongst Mobile Content Usage (towards the bottom of the report) that texting is still the largest share with 65% of the usage.  Trending up are web browsing and apps. The report gives you a good overview of the market and the most recent, freshest stats.

Everyone has a smartphone these days and marketers are wondering? Should I do e-mail campaigns or SMS text messaging marketing to their mobile audiences. 

I came across an interesting article by Derek Harding from ClickZ about mobile inboxes saying usage and progress will be slower than the industry thinks.  His predication is that SMS is and will be the preferred  delivery vehicle for mobile-specific, time and location sensitive communications:

In 2012, e-mail marketing will still be used for non-mobile focused communications, much like it is today. With SMS and MMS used for mobile-specific, time and location sensitive communications. SMS adoption had been slow in the U.S. but it has taken off in recent years. In 2009, the U.S. became the largest producer of SMS messages worldwide. Furthermore, SMS usage does not have the same barriers to adoption as e-mail with support on virtually all existing handsets. Finally, it doesn’t have the same mobile/stationary complications since it’s unused on the desktop.

So basically, you may want to rethink the use of email to communicate with your mobile audience. SMS gets the job done better because your text message will be opened and read 95% of the time, unlike e-mail. Just saying.

The 2010 United States midterm elections will be held on Tuesday, November 2, 2010. All 435 seats in the United States House of Representatives and 36 of the 100 seats in the United States Senate will be contested in this election along with 38 state and territorial governorships, many state legislatures, four territorial legislatures and numerous state and local races.

Right now, there are various primary elections in progress as a precursor to the November elections. More and more, text messaging is becoming an integral component of the campaigns. 

Even the politicos know that mobile technology is a great campaign tool to update their supporters on rallies or appearances because it will  likely be opened and read by the recipient.  Don’t forget that 97% of mobile phone users open and read text messages after receipt and most of them do it within the first five minutes!

Carly Fiorina is a Republican candidate for the United State Senate in California. Visit her site at http://carlyforca.com/.

Roy Barnes, a democratic candidate running for Govener of Georgia in the upcoming primaries, uses text messaging in his television advertising. You can find the commercial at his site: www.Roy2010.com.

Many states are still working to completing their primaries by September, and with the general elections in November of 2010, there’s still plenty of time to pitch mobile marketing to those in the running.

Engadget’s weekly podcast’s on mobile technology are worth the listen to stay ahead of the curve on the latest technology.  Of course, the new Apple iPhone 4 is prominently featured this week.  Happy Listening!

Engadget Mobile Podcast 044 – 06.27.2010

As if we didn’t already know this would happen, according to Mobile Marketing Watch, At&T has announced high demand for the iPhone 4, and it may even sell out on the first day. 

According to AT&T, demand for the iPhone 4 has outpaced demand for the iPhone 3GS at a rate of ten to one.

Despite Verizon and Motorola introducing their competition to the iPhone 4 yesterday with great fanfare, it hasn’t distracted much from Apple and its updated smartphone. In fact, the US inventory of available iPhone 4s could be depleted before the end of launch day, say some market analysts.

Read the article here.

I can’t say I didn’t see this coming. In fact I was going to mention in this morning’s post that Apple’s just asking for the FTC to come take a look. They have taken the stick out of Flurry’s hands and are now swinging it at the beehive that is the U.S. Federal Government.

While Flurry definitely made a serious error by pissing off Steve Jobs, Apple doesn’t want to go and do the same with the bigger kids on the block.

Federal antitrust regulators reportedly plan to investigate whether Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) fledgling iAd mobile advertising network unfairly restricts rivals like Google from extending their own mobile marketing efforts across the iPhone platform. Citing sources familiar with the probe, The Financial Times reports the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice are presently in talks to determine which unit will spearhead an investigation into Apple’s mobile ad initiatives in the wake of the computing giant’s decision to rewrite its iPhone Developer Program License Agreement to effectively block third-party analytics firms from collecting iPhone application user or device data to improve ad targeting.

Apple has now pissed of AdMob, which we all know is now owned by Google, a much bigger, and badder,  boy on the block. And as a business, the only one scarier than the FTC, is the IRS!

The developer license update is widely perceived as an attempt to stymie mobile advertising network AdMob, acquired by Apple’s archrival Google for $750 million following an FTC antitrust investigation into the deal. "This change threatens to decrease–or even eliminate–revenue that helps to support tens of thousands of developers," wrote AdMob founder Omar Hamoui on the firm’s blog Wednesday. "The terms hurt both large and small developers by severely limiting their choice of how best to make money.  And because advertising funds a huge number of free and low cost apps, these terms are bad for consumers as well." Hamoui added AdMob plans to speak to Apple "to express our concerns about the impact of these terms."

So bring it on. Us little guys will let the big guys fight it out and see who is left standing.  Since the release of the iPhone, Apple has been pushing the “antitrust” envelope. Everywhere from the proprietary iTunes store, to the AT&T only network, to the ban on analytics, Apple has been seeing how far they can take it.

So, “Let’s get ready to rumble……”

Well according to Fierce Mobile Content, it is official. The following language is in section 3.3.9 of the revised developer agreement with iOS 4.

“You and Your Applications may not collect, use, or disclose to any third party, user or device data without prior user consent, and then only under the following conditions:

“The collection, use or disclosure is necessary in order to provide a service or function that is directly relevant to the use of the Application. For example, without Apple’s prior written consent, You may not use third party analytics software in Your Application to collect and send device data to a third party for aggregation, processing, or analysis.

“The collection, use or disclosure is for the purpose of serving advertising to Your Application; is provided to an independent advertising service provider whose primary business is serving mobile ads (for example, an advertising service provider owned by or affiliated with a developer or distributor of mobile devices, mobile operating systems or development environments other than Apple would not qualify as independent); and the disclosure is limited to UDID, user location data, and other data specifically designated by Apple as available for advertising purposes.”

It’s still not very clear to me, but one thing is.

may not collect, use, or disclose to any third party user of device data

Running a software app on your servers that provides info on how your app is being used is NOT a violation of this provision. It is  not clear though if Apple has a problem with the tracking of handset type and OS version when that data is not shared. I assume not since developers often need these details to tailor their apps for specific handsets and capabilities. But if that is the case, we will simply remove that data from being collected in AppClix. Knowing what OS they are on, or what handset is not really that important.

You may not use third party analytics software in Your Application to collect and send device data to a third party for aggregation, processing, or analysis.

More details from the Wall Street Journal can be found here.

In the next few days we are going to being beta testing AppClix standard, our single server, developer installed solution for iPhone app analytics.

Since Apple and Steve Jobs’ have made it “Crystal Clear” that they do NOT want analytics data stored on a third party service, we have decided to move away from the shared hosted model completely, except for demo, development and free trial purposes. It will not be used in production applications.

AppClix standard can be installed on either a Windows server, or under Linux running Mono. Using one of the Cloud providers such as Amazon EC2 or GoGrid, you can get a server for less than $100.00 per month. You can also get physical servers from The Planet and other providers for close to that.

Using AppClix on your own controlled infrastructure is no different that having your own application that keeps track of your users and how they use your app. Apple would have a hard time saying otherwise. We are simply a software vendor, and do not have access in any way to your data.

What is bothering Apple is the fact that free analytics providers are harvesting your users’ data and using it as a product to sell to others. They are creating reports and getting trends from your data that is shared with companies completely unaffiliated with you. Announcing that the iPad was showing up in their analytics was purely a way to bring more attention to Flurry and get free PR. Unfortunately it backfired. They got too much attention. http://blog.flurry.com/bid/30019/Apple-Tablet-The-Second-Stage-Media-Booster-Rocket

This is why those services are free. You can be sure that since Apple has specificall banned there developers from using a service that does this, that companies like Flurry will start to charge for their service. Well when you start paying for it, you realize it’s not really worth the price compared to other paid solutions such as AppClix.

And all this is assuming that Apple lets developers use the service that stores their data at all.

We are offering the AppClix license as a one time purchase, or as a monthly lease for those developers that want to start off with a smaller investment. We are also offering “pre-built” Amazon EC2 AMIs that can simple be “turned-on” and used. All you need to do is setup an Amazon EC2 account for free, and you pay them a monthly fee for the server and our license. All billing is done through them, and you can be running in minutes.

For more info on our offerings, visit our iPhone Analytics Pricing page, or contact us.

Great blog post on Moco News by Tricia Duryee –

How A Company Recovers After Pissing Off Steve Jobs

We found out today how a company regains its composure after infuriating Apple’s Steve Jobs: Concede as quickly as possible.

That’s what Flurry is doing after its high-profile stunt earlier this year led to Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) changing the terms of its iPhone developer agreement and prompted Jobs to blame Flurry during his appearance at the D8 conference on Tuesday.

Ok, so they admit they were wrong and are making some changes.

Flurry said that well before the D8 conference, it was working on complying with the issues raised, and has since been taking steps to address them with the help of its 30,000 customers. Specifically in regards to “device data,” Flurry said it is updating their service to be in compliance and will no longer collect the data. All-in-all, it’s trying to fall in line as quickly as possible. “Regarding sharing some specific aggregated usage statistics, to which Apple is opposed, we will comply with their wishes. Our goal continues to be to add value to the developer ecosystem and be a strong partner to platform providers,” Farago said.

That’s all nice and wonderful, but does it really change much? Steve Jobs made it clear (but is it clear?):

His exact words are: “The use of third party software in Your Application to collect and send Device Data to a third party for processing or analysis is expressly prohibited.”

Flurry also says it will not share device data. But is this enough? Will Apple change it’s policy “BANNING THIRD PARTY ANALYTICS”? I guess we will have to see when the next developer license agreement is drafted.

So I have 2 questions.

1. How will Flurry make money?? Raising capital is not the same as generating income. I had assumed all along they were selling the aggregate data and generating some income from that.
2. Will apple let developers track device info themselves? I assume so. Developers need to know so they can tailor the apps and their capabilities depending on which device it is running on. I assume this will be even more true as the next gen is released.

So for now we will leave the device reporting in AppClix since we are not considered a third party if we do not host the analytics app or the data. As always, the developer is responsible for complying with their aggreement with Apple. If the agreement changes, we will release an update that complies.

Oh and I love this graphic on Flurry’s home page.  It’s part of their “Privacy First” initiative. I’ll leave that one alone.