Category — i-phone

According to this leaked commercial, there really is an app for everything – including stalking your ex-girlfriend!

Thanks to Sasha for finding the original post on mashable here.

It seems that there really is an an iphone app for everything.

Marketers can download (for free) a new application by the Ad-ology Research called the marketing forecast app.

It’s essentially a news aggregator that pulls in content from newspapers, blogs and twitter around advertising, brand marketing, consumer spending, and digital marketing. With both Canadian and American content, this app may just replace my need to log into netvibes everyday.

Two things missing is an integrated way of sharing content through twitter, facebook, or through email and the ability to personalize the feeds. If they can address those points, this could turn out to be a great social networking tool for marketers by marketers.

So here it is – my official first video from my new iphone 3G S.

Quality if pretty good – and in typical Apple fashion, it was incredibly easy to capture and edit.

After taking a pass this time last year to upgrade my first generation iphone to the new 3G, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to upgrade to the 3G S – especially now that my first gen iphone could only keep a standby charge of about 3 hours.

Friday morning after an outdoor business meeting at the Hunt Club, I swung by a Rogers store in the beaches in Toronto. My theory was that a smaller shop won’t be as busy – and therefore more likely to still have one of the new devices.

I asked the sales rep if he had any left as soon as I walked in and he replied that they only had a few left and had to get one from his manager.  He then asked me a few questions – like was I a new customer or an existing one etc… A few minutes later the manager informed me that he was sold out. Hmmmm

After catching up on 83 emails, I headed to the larger Rogers store at Bloor / Royal York.  Within minutes I was in line to buy the new 3G S. The sale rep indicated that some people had spent hours on hold with Rogers to activate the phones and that she could not guarantee that the process would work.

I asked if I could buy the iphone outright (and not be tied to a contract). The sales rep said of course – it’s only $700!

I decided to go through the activation process. Twenty minutes later we were stuck – but not because of volume on the lines but because mysteriously my account did not include the iphone as an option for me to buy in my account.  The irony wasn’t lost on me.

I was instructed to call tech support to sort it out. After 30 minutes on the phone I was informed that my account would be submitted for a tech ticket and that the back office support team (who comes in twice a week) would look into it sometime this week.

Saturday morning I made my third attempt

As it turns out, my girlfriend was also eligible for an upgrade on Rogers.  We marched back to to the same Rogers location and as luck would have it, they had 2 white 16 gig iphones left.

The sales rep was amazing. Friendly, smart, and resourceful.

According to the rep, one person who was waiting for the store to open Friday morning didn’t leave the store until 2:30pm as Rogers had not scaled up enough to handle the volume of iphone requests.

Instead of making us wait on the phone to validate the contract, he took the phone from another rep (who had waited 45 minutes) and just extended that call. After confirming Sasha qualified for an upgrade, he hung up the phone and processed the new contract manually – to again save us time.

We were in & out of the store (including high fives) within 30 minutes. Arun should get employee of the month for how he handled the many variables thrown at him to get the order processed.

Once we were home I popped my SIM card into Sasha’s iphone & connected it to my laptop. Within 5 minutes the iphone was setup exactly as my old one and I was in business.

It was a great birthday present to myself.

28 hours after first popping my SIM card into the new iphone, I had to recharge it. This is a significant improvement over my first generation phone – especially when you factor in the fact that I’ve been downloading apps & test driving all the new features pretty much non-stop for the last day.

The phone overall is fast and the 100+ new features from the 3.0 software makes what was already a great device truly fantastic.

I’m loving the new video recording feature, improved camera (3 mega-pixels) and overall speed of the device. The global device search is very handy as well. I also just discovered the MMS feature – which is neatly integrated with the SMS application.

I’m really happy with the phone so far – and will post a fuller review in about a week.

This weekend I was in Collingwood for some rest & relaxation – and maybe a little golf.  With thunderstorms pounding the area all morning, we decided to go into town to do some shopping.

We popped into the Rogers wireless store to see if they had any 3G iphones in stock. We were in luck – they had both the 8 gig and 16 gig versions available.  I asked for the 8 gig version… and that’s when the fun began.

Rogers will not sell you an iphone if your existing contract with them is less than one year old.

If your contract is less than three years old, they will sell you one – but will add up to $100 more to the price.

The reason? The sales guy said they don’t make enough money from you to pay for the phone subsidy otherwise. The fact that I bought a SIM card last September and not a phone (I alreaday had a few unlocked GSM phones) had no bearing on the outcome.

Any marketer with any customer relationship management (CRM) experience knows that it’s far more expensive to acquire a new customer than to grow an existing one.

By punishing new and existing customers with policies such as the one outlined above, they are actually decreasing loyalty and increasing the likelihood the consumer will leave Rogers the moment there is a competitive alternative. Instead of being an advocate of Rogers, they are creating badvocates as my friend Craig would say.  

I know what you are thinking – Rogers is the only GSM carrier in Canada and the only one with the iphone… so they can treat customers as poorly as they want because they have no where else to go.

That is currently true – but both those statements are not likely to be true by this time next year… at which point I’ll be switching carriers.

Up next: Upgrading my first generation iphone to 2.0.

For those who have been following my blog for a while will recognize this phrase “user experience will trump superior technology – every time.”

Apple has proven this again and again… and this past week as the world rushed to get their second generation or 3G iphone (and crashing Apple’s itunes server in the process!) it will again be the user experience not the technology that will give this device staying power.

Don’t get me wrong – a thinner version with better reception and real GPS is super awesome – but it’s what comes with the new software OS that really makes this device a consumer’s (and potentially a marketer’s) dream.

The 2.0 OS software on the iphone is backwards compatible with your first generation iphone – so the 200,000 or so first generation iphones in Canada will be able to upgrade and enjoy many of the benefits of the second generation device.

Specifically as a marketer, I’m most excited about the App store – think of it as itunes for software designed specifically for your iphone. No longer will you have to jailbreak your iphone to customize and personalize it to meet your needs. Like itunes, you’ll be able to select what apps (games, productivity software etc…) you want and let the app store do the rest.

iphone apps are like widgets for your blackberry – but far easier to download

Smart marketers will also leverage the localization capabilities of the device to bring you a mashup of something truly useful.

Marketers who think mobile marketing is all about text to win campaigns are missing out on the r/evolution of interactivity.  If you’ve hired one such company to work with your brand or agency, you need to rethink your strategy before submitting those 2009 budgets which are due shortly…

With yesterday’s report from the Globe and Mail that both Bell and Telus would start charging 15 cents for incoming SMS messages for customers who are not locked into an SMS plan and Roger’s announcement of a data plan for the new iphone that was widely seen as uncompetitive and unfair to consumers, I figured the future of mobile as a mass marketing medium would be still-born until new carriers enter the market next year.

All may not be lost

In reaction to all the negative press received over their original iphone plan, Rogers / Fido this morning announced a new data plan for the new 3G iphone to be released Friday of this week.  Here are some details:

Effective July 11, and as a limited time promotional offer for customers who activate until August 31, 2008 on a three year contract, a data-only offering of 6GB of data for $30 per month is being made available that can be added to any in-market voice plan. For example, with 6GB of data, iPhone 3G
users can visit 35,952 web pages, or send and receive 157,286 emails, or watch 6,292 minutes of YouTube videos each and every month.

You can read the full news release here.  Rogers has also indicated that they will not charge for incoming SMS messages either – making them appear far more pro-consumer than they did just a week ago.

Per my earlier post this week, I still wouldn’t rush to buy that new iphone. Rates and plans are bound to only get better from here.

What was cause for celebration a few weeks ago has turned into a national embarrassment and another reminder that the Canadian mobile marketplace is not yet a very competitive one.

The new plans announced by Rogers are not consistent with plans being offered south of the border by AT&T or in other countries where plans include unlimited data for around $30/month.

The Rogers iphone plan starts around $60 before system charges and other fees. It does include talk time… but only 150 minutes.  You also have a data limit of 400 megs of data… which is not a lot considering the iphone is heavily dependant on data for all their widgets and the average iphone user uses 8 of them on a regular basis.  

Americans on AT&T get 3 times more talk time and unlimited data for about the same price 

Even the Rogers heavy usage plan doesn’t offer unlimited data. Since the announcement and subsequent consumer backlash, they have now indicated that customers can use other “smartphone” plans instead of the announced iphone plans. For example, I could transfer my blackberry rates (~$100/month for data alone) to the iphone. Again, no big deal and still substantially more expensive than other iphone plans offered in other countries.

Wait at least a month if you still really want one and here’s why…

Bell just announced that they will be releasing the new Samsung Instinct on August 8th which will include an unlimited data plan. The Instinct is a touch-based phone like the iphone and offers many of the same features. The user experience isn’t quite as great as the iphone… but it’s a great alternative. Thanks to Kate for sending a tweet on that announcement yesterday!

I wouldn’t be surprised if Telus came out with a similar data plan for their HTC or other smartphone products too… which means Rogers will likely update their plans if they don’t reach their targets with the iphone.

There are two more reasons to wait to buy that iphone…

1. The Rogers deal to sell the iphone isn’t exclusive – which means another GSM provider can sell it. With at least one new carrier coming to Canada after the current spectrum auction finishes up in the next few weeks, it’s almost a certainty that they’ll be GSM based. Expect them to be in market later this year or early next
2. The iphone is a great device… but what makes it really super awesome are all the utilities, enhancements, and UI hacks available for those who were brave enough to jailbreak it.  As of today, there is no jailbreaking solution for the new 3G iphone… but it’s only a matter of time

If you haven’t made the dash to Buffalo or some other U.S. border town already to buy a first generation iphone, you can probably stand to wait a month or two for better rates and more flexibility in customizing & personalizing it.

In the meantime, feel free to join the following online petitions against the new Rogers plans:

• 
• Petitiononline.com

Finally the wait is over.

Your new iphone is coming July 11th and it’s twice as fast as the one you bought in Buffalo a year ago and half the price – making this a device made for the masses.

It’s also coming with pretty much everything we were hoping for. My predictions were mostly right – 7.5 out of 9. The .5 was for saying the new phone would look different… I guessed that the new battery for 3G would make it a thicker device and we now know it will be thinner!

Some are disappointed that the new iphone isn’t coming with a front facing camera (for video chat), or a flash – or even a better camera. Nokia has a 5 meg camera with the N95… couldn’t we at least have a 3 meg camera?

Mobileme is a new feature that looks really interesting. Similar to other services i’ve seen such as SugarSync, Mobile me essentially allows you to synchronize your email, contacts, calendar and documents across multiple computers and your iphone. It also comes with push email – so like the blackberry, you will be instantly notified when email comes in. You even get your own login at me.com (I wonder how much they paid for that domain!) where you can access all your info through a web interface – much like MS Exchange today if you are on a corporate infrastructure.

Besides the business / enterprise updates, there wasn’t much to get excited about on the software front – but that’s ok. The official and non-official developer communities will fill in any missing pieces like they did with the first generation phone.

Having said that, it’s very cool that loopt is now part of the iphone 2.0 platform. Loopt is a mobile social networking platform that incorporates location. I blogged about this months ago here when i said the future of social networking is creepy. At the time i was more jazzed about a similar product from Alcatel called geopepper.

What is interesting is that Steve Jobs used the Treo 750 and Nokia N95 as comparison devices for loading webpages. It’s interesting because he didn’t mention 2 new products that will challenge Apple for downloading speed; the new blackberry bold and thunder (expected to be out this fall) as well as the new Nokia N96 which is a faster & updated version of the N95.

The new iphone, or iphone 2.0 or 3G iphone is a huge leap forward from the first version released over a year ago, but it’s still not the mostly technically advanced or sophisticated when compared to devices that are already on the market.

Having said that, who cares.

It’s not about the technology, it’s about the experience. Like I’ve said before, a great user experience will trump great technology and Apple has improved on something that was already pretty super awesome.

Why is that good news for Marketers?

Consider this… 98 percent of iphone users are browsing online, 94 percent are using email and 90 percent are texting. Approximately 80 percent are using 10 or more of the phone’s features.

For marketers who think mobile marketing is only about text 2 win campaigns, the introduction of the iphone and other competing products this year will make the mobile device a rich environment to acquire, retain, or grow customers beyond the 100,000 or so iphones that already migrated here in the last year.

Today Steve Jobs is expected to announced the new iphone which is rumoured to be 3G based – meaning it can take advantage of high speed mobile networks.

The Rogers 3G network covers all the major city centres and / or about 60% of the country. It’s expected that the new iphone will be made available to 50 new markets this year – including Canada.

Back in April when Rogers announced that they had an exclusive to sell the iphones in Canada I made some predictions on what to expect.

Read those here and let’s compare notes in a few hours after the announcement!