Category — i-phone

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!

Just as marketers are finally figuring out what the heck facebook is and why they should be embracing the platform as a way of reaching & engaging their customers and potential customers, there is a new trend developing that may impact facebook and other social mediums…

Enter social aggregators.

Aggregators won’t replace facebook – but much like RSS feeds have supplemented users visting websites directly, social aggregator services could mean marketers looking to reach and engage people through social media sites like facebook will find a smaller direct audience to engage with.

I’ve signed up with socialthing and others are raving about feedfriend. Both do about the same thing – they take updates from all your social media sites like flickr, facebook, twitter, yelp, linkedin and stream them as one interface in something called a “lifestream.”

The idea is great – instead of checking for updates on multiple sites, you can get them all at once – much like how i use Netvibes or Protopage to aggregate all my RSS feeds.

Personally I get everything I need from Netvibes. 

I can add twitter or facebook status updates to Netvibes… and i don’t really care for the extra features social aggregators include such as comments on the different feeds. When I also consider the fact that most of my friends aren’t as geeked out as I am on ‘web 2.0′, it makes even less sense. Just getting my friends on facebook was a monumental task.

Having said that, the mobile interface for Socialthing is a thing of beauty.

They also have an optimized interface for the iphone which makes checking out lifestreams on the go a pleasant experience.

I have a hard enough time keeping up with my RSS feeds (270 currently) – I’m not sure I have enough time (or care enough) to follow the lifestream of every person i know. Having said that, it could be really useful if you are stalking following a few choice people…

How can marketers get in on this?

Websites got around a similar issue when RSS feeds became popular by not including all the content in the feed – so users who liked the lead content were driven back to the site… where sponsored ads could be displayed in all their glory.

One suggestion – build your own branded social aggregator…. and include your own relevant content as one of the feeds.

I could see this working really well for Automotive, Financial, Pharma, Retail… well pretty much any brand looking to participate in & influence a person’s lifestream.

Ever since the return of my iphone from it’s odyssey in Vegas, I’ve been spending more time with the iphone installer to see how it can be better customized to my daily routine.

One of the most interesting applications I’ve installed so far is something called Twinkle. It’s Twitter with a nifty interface optimized for the iphone with location and picture capabilities.

The interfaced is optimized for the iphone – so i can check in my tweets easily throughout the day if i’m so inclined. I’ve included a screen capture from my iphone to the right (thanks to the iphone screenshot 1.2.1 app from robota)

The really interesting feature is the “near me” button which identifies other people in your area who are also on twinkle. You can follow their tweets and even send them private messages.

I also like the idea of taking a picture of where I am right now… and having that included as a tiny URL link in my tweet.

Twitter hasn’t taken up a lot of mind-share when i’m on my desktop(s) or laptop… but increasingly it’s getting a slice of my mobile time – and twinkle makes it that much more interesting.

I haven’t tested any twitter clients for my blackberry yet – but I’ll try and do so in the next few days and report back my thoughts.

How about you – do you tweet on mobile… or do you use something else – like mobile instant messaging (MIM)? MIM will also be the topic of my next post over at onedegree.ca 

Do you twitter? Follow me here.

Today Rogers made the long awaited announcement that the iphone was indeed coming to Canada to a Rogers store near you – sometime this year. No other details were made available. 

This is not great news for blackberry.

Since the iphone was launched last year, Apple has grabbed 27% of the North American PDA market while being available only in the U.S. and through att&t. Blackberry currently has about 42% market share in North America.

The fact that no set timeline has been set likely means that Rogers is waiting for the anticipated release of the second generation iphone which industry insiders say should be available around July of this year. 

It’s worth the wait.

Here’s what to expect: 

1. It will be a 3G phone – which means it will take advantage of third generation networks that are now widely available in Canada. This will be like going from the slow dial-up speeds we have today to near high speed. Think of it as broadband light. This will make browsing the mobile web a pleasant experience in Canada
2. It will have true GPS
3. It will look slightly different. I bit thicker to accommodate a bigger battery that is needed to support 3G and the back is rumored to be black instead of metallic – which should improve the range of the antenna
4. The headphone jack will no longer be recessed – so you can use any set of headphones now. Woo hoo!
5. New operating system that will come with new software. This will probably include new video editing / management software as well as GPS. 
6. Expect to pay around $500 for the new phone
7. No word on capacity – but it will be a minimum 16 gigs… although I wouldn’t be surprised if it comes with a 32 version too. 
8. All you can eat data plan should be made available for about $20
9. The iphone will be enterprise ready – which means many of the best features currently only available on blackberrys will be available for the iphone. The iphone will be secure enough and come with enough enterprise level management tools that there will be nothing preventing some corporations form switching from blackberry to iphones… or at least supporting both.

April has been the busiest traveling month for me in years. A combination of conferences, client work and a work reward trip means that I’ll be physically in the office for three days this month!

My month began with a trip to Las Vegas for the CTIA Wireless conference. In the spirit of the week, I decided to try Air Canada’s new mobile check-in.  The way it works is that you check-in as usual on their website then in the final step you can choose to print your boarding pass or request one be sent to your mobile device. I entered my mobile number and waited. And Waited…. and waited.

My Air Canada mobile boarding pass never came.

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Many people buy Apple products because they are great fashion accessories.

The ultimate fashion accessory was big news last week as Steve Jobs announced the much anticipated SDK (software developer kit) for the iphone which will allow developers to create applications, utilities, and games leveraging the same platform Apple used to create their own widgets. Starting in June of this year, consumers won’t have to “jailbreak” their phone in order to customize it.

Also starting this June, enterprise users will no longer have to beg their I.T. / technical support department to open up the corporate email server to hackers and SPAM attacks in order for them to access their email from their nifty iphone.

The iphone will be getting some proper business chops.  

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Rogers is expected to go live shortly with a new data pricing structure that will offer unlimited data for just $20 a month under a new plan called the “communicate value pack” ….which is very similar to the ~20/ month plan offered by AT&T in the U.S. for those with an iphone.

Bell has been offering $7 unlimited data for months now – albeit on their slower 1x network.

This is good news for consumers in Canada looking for affordable packages….and certainly could be interpreted as a signal that the iphone will be coming to Canada this spring as speculated in this blog.

After calling Rogers today to change my data plan to their new $65 / 1 gig a month plan, I was enlightened by two things:

1. Their $80 / 500 meg plan a month was still the best plan available for a consumer mobile device on Rogers. The $65 / 1 GIG plan is available only for their Air Cards – or PCMCIA cards that you stick into your laptop to get Internet access when wifi is not available. Apparently switching to the Air Card program can brick your mobile device.
2. The Rogers CSR indicated that consumer data plans for mobile devices will be dropping again soon - most likely this spring.

Why wait until the spring to further reduce data plan rates?

The reason is simple - Rogers won’t lower their rates until they absolutely have to. Even with cheaper plans now available on Telus and Bell, there hasn’t been a notable customer migration away from Rogers. 

Everybody knows that Rogers will be carrying the iphone when it eventually comes here.

Rogers will likely continue to charge higher rates until the iphone arrives as Apple mandates that cheap or fixed rates are offered - similar to what we’ve seen from AT&T and other European carriers.

I’d wager a loonie that springtime will be our time to finally get the iphone.

Today Canadians everywhere waited with baited breath for news from the MacWorld 2008 Conference and Expo in San Francisco that the iPhone would finally be coming to Canada to a Rogers plan near you.

That news never came

Industry speculation is that Rogers won’t offer fixed or cheap data plans to match what other countries have offered. While you can get an all you can eat data plan for the iphone in the U.S. for around $20 / month, the best you can do right now on Rogers is an $80 monthly plan for 500 megs of data…which sounds like a lot, but wouldn’t be enough for those who want to take full advantage of the media rich features that come standard with the iphone.

Apple wants to control every part of the user experience – so getting an unexpectedly high bill for your fancy new iphone could negatively impact brand perception and advocacy for Apple. I certainly wasn’t thrilled with the $400 bill I received from Rogers the first month after hooking up my iphone on their network.

Now the good news

As reported in the Toronto Star this week, there is a chance that Telus will make the switch from CDMA (a common format in North America) to GSM – which has been adopted by the rest of the world.  An industry source also indicated to me this week that Bell is also investigating a potential switch to GSM.

The reasons are three-fold:

1. To get a piece of the global roaming fees that are currently exclusive to Rogers
2. To get access to a wider array of mobile devices that also offer more margin and more flexible terms
3. To compete with the pending new Canadian wireless carrier who is expected to build a GSM-based network as well

More Canadian GSM-based carriers mean more competition which means more choice and better value for Canadians.

It also means when new mobile devices such as the iphone burst on to the global scene, we won’t be the last industrialized country to get it.

It also means I will no longer be one of the few in Toronto with an iphone.. but I can live with that