2012: Year of the Smartphone
Exactly five years ago, on January 9, 2007, Steve Jobs presented the world’s first iPhone marking a milestone in the development of smartphones. Even though there were some road bumps in the beginning, Jobs succeeded in the following years to create a whole new market which will be a decisive factor for growth in 2012 [...]
> Continue reading
Tablets for the masses
Tablets have been on the market since two years now, but they have become one of the hottest items sought after during Christmas sales. According to a survey conducted by Germany’s Federal Association for Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media (BITKOM), 13% of all Germans wanted to either gift or purchase a tablet during this [...]
> Continue reading
The big stand-off: Android vs iPhone
Smartphones have become an integral part of our daily lives. Browsing online, making calls, writing emails, updating the calendar and compiling To-Do-Lists, networking with others and much more – smartphones are in our hands 24/7. No wonder that invisible to our eyes a fight for market shares is going on. As soon as a customer [...]
> Continue reading
Navigating indoors: Finding the best bargains in malls and airports with ‘Indoor Google Maps’
Recently there is a boom for digitalized indoor maps. They not only lead customers to the shop’s front door, but also beyond to the inside and through the shop to a certain display shelf where the customer will eventually find his desired product. Nokia introduced its ‘Destination Maps’ service back in fall, which makes it [...]
> Continue reading
Case Study eBay: Pop-up store ‘Christmas Boutique’ to push mCommerce in London
Looking at last year’s sales figures, eBay expects to reign in this year’s best sales result on this weekend for eBay.de and eBay.co.uk. On Dec 4 2.5 million articles are forecast to be sold via online and via mobile in Germany alone. This marks an increase of more than half a million articles compared to last [...]
> Continue reading
Case Study Starbucks: Merry Mobile Xmas
With almost 26 mn fans, Starbucks is one of Facebook’s Top 3 brand sites. This year, the brand launched various Christmas campaigns on mobile devices in China and the US. To reach out to as many consumers as possible, Starbucks made use of QR Codes. Paying for your Grande Vanilla Latte in one of the [...]
> Continue reading
Augmented Reality Marketing: Hype or Added Value?
The real world and the virtual world become more and more intertwined. Thanks to the rapid penetration of smartphones with built-in cameras, augmented reality (AR) apps are blossoming in the recent past. Using the right app, live images can be cross-referenced with relevant information in real-time. Apps like Wikitude provide information about the surrounding area [...]
> Continue reading
Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends 2011: Going mobile
There is almost no other presentations which can bring out the current status quo and business trends of the digital media better than Mary Meeker, the star analyst of Morgan Stanley till 2010 and digital investment partner of a big US Venture Capital firm since 2011. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers have invested early in [...]
> Continue reading
ACTA 2011: Increasing Internet usage via mobile devices
Germans increasingly make use of their mobile devices to surf the Internet. This is the key message of the newly published figures by ACTA. The number of people using mobile devices to go online doubled in the past two years. 17% of the German speaking population aged 14 to 69 uses hand-held devices such as [...]
> Continue reading
Launch of Google Wallet: Turning your phone into a wallet
Announced in May, this week finally saw the official launch of Google Wallet, a smartphone application that enables customers to pay without cash and without credit card conveniently via their mobile. At the moment, the number of users is still somewhat limited: The app currently only runs on Google’s Nexus S smartphones via near-field-communication (NFC). [...]
> Continue reading
