Top Click Media Staff Blog » Mobile

Google Nexus One. A Game Changer?

Simon King — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 16:37:37 +0000

For a while now, Google has made no secret of the fact that it believes that mobile is going to be a key growth area for the internet and internet advertising in particular. So confident were they of this that in 2008, with some assistance from the OHA, they built the first mobile only operating system and then, last year, took the bold step of actually releasing their own handset, the HTC.

Whilst HTC phones have met with a generally favourable reception critically, consumers still seem, for the most part, to prefer the Blackberry and the iPhone. All that could be about to change however (or at least that’s what Sergei Brin would tell you), thanks to the Google Nexus One, the latest handset to be produced by the search engine giant.

Nexus One will be the first phone to run, the latest version of Google’s operating system, Android 2.1, which boasts a raft of cool features like interactive wallpaper and improved customisation, even if it lacks some of the iPhone OS’s flashier features. The specifications also look excellent, the headlines being a 1 GHz snapdragon processor (the most powerful processor to ever feature in a phone), a 5 megapixel camera and a pretty impressive screen, that compares very favourably indeed with the screen on the Motorola Droid that wowed the industry when it was released at the back end of last year.

The phone is available unlocked and can be purchased for around £325 pounds off contract, £40 less than an iPhone. The first UK network to get it will be Vodafone though as of yet there is no announcement as to how much it will cost to get one on contract. However, if you want a guess (buckle up, conjecture fans) I would have to anticipate that it will be cheaper than the iPhone is on other networks.

Why? Well, the nearest contemporary of the Nexus in terms of individual price is the Nokia E72, for which Vodafone charge £30 a month (600 minutes, unlimited texts, 500 MB of mobile internet and webmail). It would certainly be hard to justify charging more. This price compares very favourably with the iPhone’s, a comparable deal for which will cost £35 from O2.

So, arguably better specs, comparable functionality for less money, logically this should be a decent rival for the iPhone. Only time will tell of course, though Apple would do well not to dismiss the challenge from Google, especially as the Nexus is unlikely to simply rest with Vodafone, like the iPhone has done withO2. The Nexus is expected to roll out across all, or at least many, networks in the near future, meaning that it could well become ubiquitous pretty quickly.

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German Hacker Cracks Mobile Phone Code

Jack Fox — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 13:07:39 +0000

A group of computer hackers led by German encryption expert, Karsten Nohl claimed this week to have cracked the secret code that keeps around eighty per cent of the world’s mobile phone conversations secret. The team then published the code online leaving upwards of three billion mobile phone users vulnerable to having their calls intercepted.

According to Nohl, the hack, that promises to force mobile phone companies into a costly security upgrade, was organised to demonstrate the weaknesses of security measures supposedly protecting the GSM (global system for mobile communication). Speaking at Chaos Communication Congress, a four day computer hacker’s conference, Nohl stated…

“We have given up hope that network operators will move to improve security on their own, but we are hoping that with this added attention, there will be increased demand from customers for them to do this,”

Nohl was also due to run a practical demonstration of the code in action, though he shelved that plan at the last minute, pending advice from his lawyers regarding whether or not it would actually be legal to do so.

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PPC School: Mobile Ads

Matt Thomas — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 08:06:29 +0000

The workplace is becoming less defined by desks and terminals every day, people are recieveing emails and surfing the internet anywhere and everywhere, increasingly through phones as well as laptops. It’s no different in social life either, a huge number of people now have an incredibly high standard of internet connectivity and computer processing sitting in their coat pockets, ready to use at a moment’s notice, almost no matter where they are. This is why any PPC professional worth their salt knows how to plan a good mobile campaign, and why you should too.

To that end, we’ve decided to let you in on a few of Top Click Media’s main mobile advertising tips, so sit back and prepare for liftoff.

1. Target devices individually. Don’t forget that one campaign will not work for every type of phone. Research the different demographics of say, smartphones as opposed to traditional devices and make decisions based on that. You’ll also need to think about the capabilities of various mobile operating systems and handsets.

2. Think beyond search. Your message can appear to mobile phone users who are searching via text ads as well as to site visitors via display ads. Have a think about which suits your message best and spend time researching the best and most visited mobile friendly sites for your business.

3. Consider Bidding for Calls not Clicks. A very useful thing that’s started to happen recently is that you can now pay per call, meaning that you’re only charged when someone actually makes a call as a result of your mobile ad, which for some businesses could potentially be very useful indeed. I really cannot overstate how useful this can be if you get it right. It works by showing a link of your number number on the ad, when that option is selected you pay, and not a moment before. Not only is it a great deal, it’s probably the first proper mass market technique for tracking phone calls.

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D Day for Palm

Jenny Sanderson — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 09:28:45 +0000

After the Palm Pre finally went on sale last Saturday, the question on the SmartPhone industry’s collective lips this week has been, was the launch a success? The answer… Too early to say. In total, somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 phones were sold. This sounds impressive and represents the single best weekend of sales ever for Sprint Nextel (the phone’s exclusive mobile carrier), though is it all smoke and mirrors?

One thing that’s been pointed out is that, despite months of fevered publicity, the Pre failed to generate the kind of crowds that have greeted the release of the G1, the iPhone and even new Blackberries in recent years. In my opinion, an unfair comparison, for one thing, Palm doesn’t have the brand strength that Apple enjoy (no one does), so they were always going to come of second best there, they also don’t have the gimmick of the first ever specific mobile phone OS, like the G1 did.

Also, the technology behind SmartPhones is now pretty old – the law of diminishing returns is going to be a factor, as is the fact that many of the people who were ever going to get one of these phones already have one. As a result, I don’t really think we can judge the Pre on launch hype as it’s just not a level playing field.

What will be crucial for Palm is whether or not they can keep up the momentum for the next few weeks. This may be hampered by the fact that demand has outstripped supply, meaning that, in the words of Tim Donahue, vice president of business marketing – Sprint, “There will be constrained inventory for some time. And there will be spot shortages for the foreseeable future.”

The Pre has been touted as a hybrid of both the Blackberry and the IPhone. It’s touch screen and similar in functionality to an iPhone, though it also has a slide out keyboard and the ability to run several programmes at once, which is expected to appeal to the business users who keep Blackberry afloat.

Overall, I think that Palm have reason to be cautiously optimistic, a possible 100,000 in sales over a weekend is not to be sneezed at and the press have, thus far, been incredibly kind. It could be that Palm is back.

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Nokia Ovi Store’s Disastrous Launch

Eddy Philipe — Wed, 27 May 2009 09:18:48 +0000

Finnish company, Nokia may still be the biggest mobile phone company in the world though in recent years they’ve been consistently outperformed in the innovations stakes by their Smart Phone rivals, in particular Apple, whose success with the App Store pretty much caught Nokia napping. This lack of initiative has led to Nokia having to watch on in horror over the last few quarters as their profits and market share erode steadily.

Nokia’s Ovi Store was supposed to be the solution to this problem. It was supposed to be an all singing, all dancing rival to the app store where developers would have almost free reign to innovate and create exciting new programmes for Nokia devices. Much noise was made about the launch of the project yesterday and users logged on in droves to get their first impressions of the new store.

Unfortunately for Nokia those impressions are unlikely to have been good. According to reports when attempting to use the site last night users found that pages either didn’t load or were incredibly slow. Now, some slowness you could forgive due to increased usage just after the launch however, the issue continued for hours. There were also reports of products disappearing for no apparent reason and even very generic search terms yielding no results.

As anyone who’s ever launched a site, or anything for that matter, will know, the hours and days immediately after the launch are hugely important… So, not a good day for Nokia.

Here’s what the company had to say for themselves…

“Shortly after launching the Ovi Store at 2 am ET, we began experiencing extraordinarily high spikes of traffic that resulted in some performance issues for users accessing store.ovi.com and store.ovi.mobi. We immediately began to address this issue by adding servers, which resulted in intermittent performance improvements.”

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Mobile Internet usage becomes the Norm in the US

James Oliver — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 09:59:38 +0000

According to research collated by ComScore over the last year, mobile Internet use has now proliferated to the extent where it can no longer be seen as a niche activity. The magic number in the pile of data is daily use, which denotes routine and actual usefulness as opposed to novelty value this figure rose by 107% from 10.8 million daily users to 22.4 million from January 2008 to January of this year.

If the research is to be believed, it would appear we are moving out of the age where emailing somebody from the train could be seen as a novelty, and into an age where it is taken for granted that business people in transit or otherwise away from their desks will not be out of the loop.

So what’s behind the jump in mobile usage? Well, ComScore believe it’s all down to advances in phone technology. According to the data, around 70 percent of mobile usage of the Internet is done using feature phones, meaning high-end phones like iPhones or a G1s. ComScore believes that the proliferation of these devices is the major factor in the normalisation of mobile Internet use.

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U2 Switch Sides

Matt Thomas — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 15:47:55 +0000

Remember a couple of years ago when Apple made such a big deal about the band, U2’ s association with the iPod? Remember the shiny, black device that came with the band’s signatures on the back and their latest album loaded onto it? It seemed like a marriage made in heaven, didn’t it? Well, unfortunately I have to break the news that the association between the self proclaimed ‘world’s biggest band’ and the world’s biggest mobile device has ended in divorce and, even worse, there’s another device in the picture.

Even more galling for Apple, that other device is the iPod’s biggest rival, RIM’s Blackberry. U2 have signed a sponsorship deal with RIM which entitles the manufacturer to sponsorship of the band’s latest tour to promote their ‘No Line on the Horizon,’ album as well as other, as yet undisclosed, tie-ins. The move is intended as a much needed shot in the arm for the Blackberry, which has faltered recently amongst reports of faults with their last two flagship devices and struggling sales figures in comparison to market leader, the iPhone.

Here’s what U2 manager, Paul McGuinnes had to say for himself…

“This tour announcement marks the first stage of a relationship and shared vision between RIM and U2 that we expect will lead to new and innovative ways to enhance the mobile music experience on the BlackBerry platform for U2 fans,”

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Apple controls two thirds of Mobile Internet use

Jack Fox — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 13:07:23 +0000

Anyone with even a passing interest in the mobile market knows that Apple is pretty much in charge at the minute. However, people might not have suspected by how much. It turns out that Apple currently controls just over two thirds of the mobile web traffic, at 66.61 percent. Its competitors, on the other hand, have little more than a foothold.

The next serious competitor is Windows mobile, which has 6.91 percent, just over 10 percent of Apple’s intimidating share. On similar numbers are Symbian and Google Android, though the latter is expected to rally strongly over the course of this year as more and more Android based phones like the G1 hit the shelves.

Indeed, the only genuine worry that Apple can have at the moment is Google, or more specifically the open handset alliance (OHA). The consortium of companies has the power to flood the market with a range of phones capable of competing with Google, which improves the chance that one of them will take off in the same way that the iPhone has. The acid test for the market as a whole will be whether or not the OHA takes custom away from Apple or the other small fry.

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The most expensive iPhone ever

Matt Thomas — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 13:00:18 +0000

It’s heartening/sickening (delete as appropriate) to see that even in these times of increased economic hardship, not everybody is struggling to make ends meet. It appears that there are some amongst us still willing to spend big, big and pointlessly. An Australian jewellery designer named Peter Aloisson has created a $2.5 million iPhone – yes you read the amount right.

The iPhone itself, whilst certainly not cheap by most people’s standards is not the main area of expense here. The price tag is justified by the 138 diamonds that surround the screen, the fact that the body of the device is made of 18-Carat gold and the small matter of the rare 6.6 carat diamond that serves as the home button.

This is not Aloisson’s first mobile phone masterpiece – he’s created versions of the Nokia, Sony and Motorola phones for the super wealthy in the past. He remains understandably tight lipped about the would be buyer or buyers of his latest creation, though whoever does buy it will have some nerve getting it out in public.

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Vodafone teams up with Opera

Eddy Philipe — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 11:20:50 +0000

One of the more interesting nuggets thrown up by this week’s Mobile World Conference in Barcelona is the announcement that Vodafone and search engine minnow, Opera, are to team up to create a mobile browser aimed at lower end mobile handsets. It’s essentially a new version of the Opera Mini mobile browser that will offer fully functional browsing, even on phones with systems as low-end as Java. The pages will be compressed by up to 90 percent making them to be viewable on even very budget phones and allowing fast browsing even in areas with slow network speeds.

The browser was recently trialled in Egypt where it prooved a roaring success, with 400,000 customers downloading it within the space of a month. It is now set to be rolled out to Asia, Africa, Europe and the Middle East where it will be available for download as well as embedded into existing handsets.

According to Opera CEO, Jon Von Tetzchner, the browser, “Empowers more people around the world to benefit from a fast and user-friendly mobile internet experience.”

The alliance could prove to be very profitable for the pair. In an industry racing to be top of the high-end side of things, SmartPhones, etc., they may have found an unguarded hole in the market.

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Blackberry Storm continues to struggle

James Oliver — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 10:30:17 +0000

After Verizon Wireless and RIM (Research in Motion) spent the better part of two years developing it, hopes were high for the Blackberry Storm. Some at both companies even dared to believe that it could compete with the iPhone. Now however, as the new device deals with a reputation that is plummeting rapidly, it seems that was too much to hope for.

The Storm, released towards the end of last year, got off to a good start, selling 500 units in its first month which, although it is nowhere near the figures for the iPhone’s first month would have had RIM execs rubbing their hands with glee. However, soon the phones started coming back to the shops, with many early buyers complaining of a vast array of technical problems and bugs in the device – everything from clunky performance, to issues with the typing software and camera. Software patches have dealt with some of the issues, though the damage to RIM’s reputation is done.

It emerged recently that the device was rushed to market in time for Christmas despite known glitches in the OS. It would appear that decision has returned to haunt RIM, not that they’re prepared to admit it – an RIM spokesperson recently described the Storm as an ‘Overwhelming success.’

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Google poised to dominate Mobile Internet use

Matt Thomas — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 10:23:44 +0000

Towards the end of 2007 Google unleashed Android, an operating system for mobile phones. 15 months later, the first phone to run on Android, the Samsung G1, is on the market and many more from companies like Sony and Samsung are expected to follow this.

The really clever thing about Android, and the major reason I think it’s going to eventually dominate the market, is the fact that it’s completely open source. Developers have free reign when it comes to building applications and programmes for it, and placing it in stark contrast to the apple iPhone which runs on a closed system, whose software remains closed to third parties.

This spirit of cooperation also translates to Android’s other main advantage, the Open Handset Alliance. Despite the fact that it sounds like something out of Star Wars, the OHA is a very powerful group of 50 handset manufacturers, component makers, mobile operators etc. formed by Google and committed to an open-source approach to mobile technology. The group contains some very big names like Sony Ericsson and Vodaphone.

At least four OHA members plan to bring out their own Android powered phone this year. If just one of them is capable of competing with the IPhone then Apple have a big problem on their hands.

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Blackberry in a spot of bother

Alexei M — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 09:00:06 +0000

Just as Palm gears up to launch what by all accounts is a fairly impressive new SmartPhone, another runs into trouble. Orange are believed to be on the verge of removing the Blackberry Bold from its range, due to persistent issues.

There is said to be an abnormal level of returns of the device, with customers bringing the phone back in droves. They are complaining of a whole range of issues, the main culprits however, seem to be poor reception and dropped calls.

This is not the first time there have been issues with the Blackberry Bold. Orange actually decided to stop shipping it towards the end of last year when similar issues were revealed. The team behind the phone thought that they had fixed the problems with several software updates and patches, though it appears the phone is still running into trouble.

This will not come as welcome news to RIM (Research in Motion), the phone’s manufacturer, particularly as they are also having problems with their most modern phone, the Blackberry Storm. Apparently the Storm experiences a number of software glitches which can make it slow to perform tasks that other SmartPhones carry out with ease.

If it’s not sorted out very quickly this could lead to serious problems for RIM, the SmartPhone market is hugely competitive and any weakness will be pounced upon by their competitors.

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Details of new Palm Device

James Oliver — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 11:08:27 +0000

Over the past few months we’ve been telling you all about the imminent arrival of Palm into the SmartPhone market. Palm are essentially betting the survival of the company as we know it on their new device which will be premiering at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show. Up to now the reporting on this has been pretty much all conjecture, but now we’re finally in a position to reveal some actual details.

The phone appears to be trying to occupy the middle ground between the iPhone and the G1 Android phone by adopting both an Apple style touch screen and a slide out QWERTY keyboard like the G1. As far as the operating system, for now named Nova, goes, feedback is good. Bloggers luckier than me who have actually been allowed to play with the thing have been pretty positive.

Some have cruelly called this device Palm’s last stand. They’re right, mean, but right – the company lost $506.2 million dollars in Q2 last year as well as making huge layoffs. It really doesn’t have another failure in it. The phone is going to have to be every bit as good as its hype and probably better, especially as it is competing with three established, successful names (iPhone, Blackberry, G1).

It will also have to deal with a recession and a market that is stagnating as more and more of the narrow band of people who want/can afford a SmartPhone already have one.

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