Edmund's shared items

Ich werde häufig nach Marktzahlen, Statistiken und/oder Studien gefragt. In einigen Fällen kann ich mit einem Hinweis dienen, aber es ist nicht leicht, jede Studie, Auswertung oder jedes Whitepaper zu katalogisieren und so wieder auffindbar zu machen.

Um so glücklicher bin ich, dass Stuart Dredge von Mobile Entertainment (@MobileEntBiz) “157 Mobile App Stats You Should Know About” zusammen gestellt hat.

Live: Best Jobs in Mobile – Kostenfreie Jobbörse auf mobile zeitgeist

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Das Geschäft mit Mobile Apps brummt. Bis 2013 sollen die Umsätze allein in Deutschland bei einer jährlichen Wachstumsrate von 84 Prozent auf rund 700 Millionen Euro steigen, wie horizont.net die Managementberatung Mücke, Sturm & Company (MS&C) zitiert. Angesichts der steigenden Verbreitung von Smartphones prognostiziert MS&C, dass bereits 2010 in Deutschland 112 Millionen Euro mit dem Verkauf von Apps und darin geschalteter Werbung umgesetzt werden können. Rund 100 Millionen Euro davon sollen auf den reinen App-Verkauf entfallen. Bis 2013 könnten diese Vertriebsumsätze auf 523 Millionen Euro anwachsen. Die Werbeerlöse sollen bis 2013 auf 176 Millionen Euro beziehungsweise 25 Prozent am Gesamtumsatz klettern.

In einer schrittweisen Anleitung für den Aufbau mobiler Services empfiehlt MS&C, dass Unternehmen über die Apple-Plattform (iOS: iPhone, iPod touch, iPad) in das App-Geschäft einsteigen, um dieses dann zunächst um Anwendungen für Googles Android zu erweitern. Im Business-Bereich sei auch die Blackberry-Plattform sinnvoll.

via horizont.net

Just when you thought the only differences between the iPhone 4 and the iPod Touch were the size and the phone, a closer look reveals that the Touch actually has a different camera.

Apple’s specifications page for the Touch lists a resolution of 960-by-720 pixels for the rear camera, which is roughly one megapixel. That’s several steps below the 5-megapixel camera seen in the iPhone 4.

Then again, the iPod Touch is about one millimeter thinner than the iPhone 4 (which is significant when it comes to pocketability). Anything bigger than a one-megapixel sensor probably would have been a squeeze, especially when you consider that the Touch includes a front-facing camera, too.

When Apple refreshed its iPod family last year, many expected the iPod Touch to gain a camera and were left disappointed when it didn’t. However, a teardown by iFixIt revealed that was just barely enough room for a camera. iFixIt CEO Kyle Wiens speculated that the feature was omitted due to engineering challenges.

Long story short, the iPod Touch’s camera probably isn’t great, but we’re glad it’s finally here.

See our earlier posts for more details on the new iPods announced today.

Via DaringFireball

See Also:

• Live Blog: Apple’s iPod, Music Event
• Sporty New iPods Tout Tiny Touchscreens, Retina Display

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

On the surface, Google Places and Facebook Places would seem to have a lot in common.

Both services are out to create a landing page for every local business in the world.

Both services allow local merchants to “claim” their pages, giving the merchant some editorial control over content on the page.

And both services no doubt expect to grab a chunk of what is projected to be a $32B digital, local advertising market by 2013 by claiming the middleman position between the merchant and the end user.

But where the two services break from each other – and in a non-trivial way – is in their respective distribution strategies.

Google relies on Search.  Facebook relies on Social.

And this is where things start to get interesting.

Search vs. Social

Whichever service is able to attract the most consumers will likely attract the most local merchant ad dollars.  The merchants will follow the users.

Let’s take a look at how consumers are exposed to merchant pages on Google Places and Facebook Places respectively.

On Google, it’s via the Google Search box.  If I search for something with a geographic component, say “San Francisco Taquerias,” Google shows me a massive seven pack of their own Google Places results, before showing any organic results.

As queries with local intent are estimated to make up roughly 20% of all queries, and almost everybody clicks on one of the top three results, this aggressive placement of their own Places pages on top of the search results is no doubt driving massive traffic to merchant pages.

Some back of the envelope analysis tells me this:

6,500,000,000 total queries per month * 20% (local intent) * 90% (to seven pack) = 1.17B local merchant referrals per month.

Massive.

Now, let’s look at Facebook Places.

Facebook users are exposed to Facebook Places pages via one of three ways; A) Search; B) When a friend’s checkin shows up in their newsfeed; or C) Via the Facebook Places feature on the Facebook iPhone app or touch.facebook.com.

Facebook Places is a brand new service (see our coverage here, here, and here) that allows people to “check in” to local businesses, and share those locations with their friends.

Put another way, Facebook Places is a delivery engine for person to person local merchant recommendations.  Every check in represents an opportunity for a local business to go rocketing through Facebook’s interconnected social graphs via comments and likes.

If this service takes off, it could result in an awful lot of exposure – via trusted sources – for local businesses.

While Facebook hasn’t yet shared specific numbers around adoption of the Facebook Features, we do know this: social networking is overtaking search in terms of usage in some markets.

The Value of a Click

From a local merchant’s perspective, not all referrals are created equal.  In order from most valuable to least is:

- A first time customer who discovers your business and becomes a repeat customer
- A long time customer who is reminded of your business, and re-engages
- A person who is exposed to your business but never comes
- A freeloading customer who comes only for a loss leader deal, with no intention of coming back

Search traffic has proven to be highly actionable and highly valuable.  If I am searching on Google for a “San Francisco Taquerias,” I am likely quite ready to go eat some tacos.

Social’s correlation with intention is less clear.  If I am browsing my Facebook feed and see that my friend just want to El Farolito Taqueria, it is less likely that I am actively looking for a Taqueria recommendation.  However, depending on the friend, it is possible that I might make a mental note to check the place out at some point.

Let’s take a deeper dive into some of the use cases around consumer behavior and local search.

The Use Cases

Here are some sample local search use cases from the consumer’s perspective along with our thoughts as to who has the edge as of today.

Any way you measure it, Google is pretty far ahead at the moment.  Their venue pages are robust.  Merchants can add coupons on a self serve basis, and users can read and write reviews.  In terms of structured data lookup, it’s hard to imagine anyone will ever choose Facebook over Google.  Google’s mobile apps do a nice job of providing “near me now” categories, whereas Facebook place just shows you a list of nearby venue titles.

But the wild card here is the lucrative discovery / recommendation use case.  At the end of the day, this is what matters most to local merchants – finding first time customers, and turning them into lifetime repeat customers.  And if Facebook can prove that local merchant recommendations delivered friend to friend via social check-in can beat search based research, they have a fighting chance to win the dominant share of local merchant ad dollars.

Social and Mobile are Rising Tides

When two companies are competing head to head with similar products and similar strategies – e.g. Foursquare vs Gowalla – whoever executes better will likely win.

But when two companies are betting on entirely different distribution channels… well, this would seem to portend larger industry ramifications.

Facebook has plenty of question marks ahead of it as it enters the local search market.  Are people going to check in at all given privacy and social graph issues?  Do friend to friend recommendations beat expert recommendations?  Are check-ins worthy of showing up in the newsfeed or will they be considered just noise?

But we do know this.  Traffic to social networking sites is growing more quickly than traffic to search engines.  And mobile is emerging as a significant point of control.

Facebook owns social, and is doing a strong job with mobile.  Google exerts influence over the fastest growing mobile operating system (Android), and also has one of the largest mobile app (Maps).

And what about Yelp?  My personal opinion is that the Google / Yelp showdown that we’ve all been following recently may soon become a Google / Facebook showdown.  And that whoever snags Yelp might have a big leg up (those new Facebook venue pages would look awfully strong with some Yelp reviews on them and would help them rank nicely in Google).

There are lots of moving parts at play in the face off between Google Places and Facebook Places.  Some are feature specific, some are company specific, and some are occurring at a macro, industry level.

It will be fascinating to see how things play out.

Original title and link for this post: Google Places vs Facebook Places: It’s Search vs. Social

Samsung App Store On TV

Last January, Samsung announced that it would bring support for Apps to their upcoming HD TV’s, with distribution through Samsung’s existing App Store.

Now Samsung opened up their Apps platform for TV’s, with the launch of an SDK and the first applications available to download on the new Samsung TV’s.

Together with this announcement, Samsung is opening a competition for the best TV apps, offering $500,000 in cash and prizes for the individuals or teams that develop the best looking, most brilliantly conceived, and most functional apps. More info on how to enter this competition can be found here.

To vitalize the Smart TV market, it is crucial to provide quality local content tailored to consumers of different countries. We are expanding the Samsung Apps Contest from Korea to the US and Europe and will work hard to create an environment where developers, consumers and Samsung win together. (Boo-keun Yoon, president of Samsung’s Visual Display division via Mobile Entertainment)

A European version of the contest will launch later this year.

iOS 4.1 wird kommende Woche für iPhone und iPod touch veröffentlicht und umfasst u.a. das Game-Center, HDR-Fotos, direkte HD-Video-Uploads per WLAN, Unterstützung für die neue Möglichkeit TV-Episoden zu leihen sowie eine kräftige Bugfix-Komponente, z.B. für den wankelmütigen Annäherungssensor des iPhone 4, das unter iOS 4 bislang erschreckend humpelnde iPhone 3G sowie für nicht näher spezifizierte Bluetooth-Probleme.
iPad-Besitzer werden sich noch bis in den November hinein gedulden müssen und erhalten dann zusammen mit iPhone- wie iPod touch-Besitzern iOS 4.2, das sämtliche bekannten iOS 4-Funktionen (endlich) auch dem iPad beschert und zudem iOS-Geräten kabelloses Drucken erlaubt und das AirPlay unterstützt - damit können Fotos, Musik und Filme vom iOS-Gerät aus an Apple TV gestreamt werden.

Update 22:05 Uhr
Laut Apples Pressemeldung zum neuen iPod touch erscheint iOS 4.1 am kommenden Mittwoch, den 8. September. Für Entwickler steht bereits jetzt der "GM Seed" von iOS 4.1 auf unterstützten iPhone- und iPod touch-Modellen zum Download bereit.