How Many Apps Are There

There are an endless supply of Apps out there for the consumer to download.  Really, the challenge at this point, is for the consumer to find the app that works for them and download it to their smart phone.  There are also apps for Apple iOS devices, and apps for Android devices, and apps for Windows devices, and the list goes on.  In addition to the question of "how many apps are there", let's begin with how many app stores there are, first.

There are four major app stores sponsored by large companies in an effort to increase their share of the smart phone consumer market.  There is the Apple App (iTunes) store, Google Play (Marketplace), the Microsoft App Store and the Blackberry App store.  There are also move than two dozen 3rd party app stores, ranging in size from Handango to mJelly, that developers will turn to in an effort to get their app more exposure before making their app available in one of the larger commercial app stores.  As we mentioned in the previous post on Mobile Marketing, the personal endorsement and sharing of apps from one person's smart phone to their friends smart phone is still the most common and most effective way a customer will download an app.

We did want to have one example of the explosive growth in apps over the past few years.  Using just the Apple App store as an example, the chart below shows the amazing year over year growth.  You will also notice as the number of mobile devices has grown, the number of apps has too. 




Based on Apple announcements and press releases

  According to ABI Research, "there will be 29 billion apps downloaded in 2011, up from 9 billion in 2010. In Q2 Android overtook Apple in terms of app downloads with 44 percent of downloads, compared to Apple’s 31 percent." 

While the rate of growth in the number of apps will begin to decrease in the next few years, the complexity and integration of mobile apps to corporate ERP systems will continue to accelerate.  Providing customers the information that they want and need to make a purchase or consume your services delivered in their hand, right to their pocket is the next marketplace for a company to win. 

12 mobile marketing lessons

Top 12 Mobile Marketing Lessons from Tim Hayden

Wed Oct 24 2012

All of Your Marketing is Mobile, You Just Don’t Know it…Yet.  That’s the presentation Tim Hayden, the SVP of Mobile Strategy for Edelman Digital, gave at today’s virtual event: The Best of B2B Marketing Forum.  I added a few of my notes and comments below Tim's 12 lessons.  Great presentation!

1. Like social media, mobile should not be departmentalized. Both transcend across the brand.

As I have already mentioned, a mobile app is an extension of your website and your brand.  Just as the website content and development is not departmentalized, neither should mobile be departmentalized. 

2. Social media is big. But, mobile is bigger. It plays a part in our daily lives: home, work, store, and play.

I would rather lose my wallet than my mobile phone.  Aside from my driver's license, everything in my wallet exists on my phone -- credit cards, business contacts, pictures of my family, etc.

3. In fact, 90% of us are never more than 3’ away from our phones. From a business perspective, you’re 3’ away from your audience 24/7.

It could not be said any better!

4. Mobile goes places where laptops and desktops can’t. Tablets are still seen as “lean back” behavior. They’re what you crawl on the couch with.

Correct again.  My phone travels in my pocket...everywhere I go. 

5. Smartphones are for “on the go” behavior. We take them everywhere. And we don’t stare at them like we do desktops. We glance and we go.

6. Smartphones are social devices. Texting is the most popular thing we do peer-to-peer. There’s nothing more direct or personal.

Back in my days of Business 101, I learned a personal endorsement is more significant than any TV commercial ad campaign can be.   I text, send photos through Facebook and InstaGram, check-in with Facebook, and my wife takes pictures of Christmas gift ideas so there is no confusion about size or color.

7. Offline ad exposure leads to mobile search. We use our smartphones to search for answers to our questions and to help us make decisions. It’s our personal info kiosk. And our tour guide.

8. You need to make things simpler for your audience. It’s a missed opportunity if you’re making people look deeper for the relevant information. They may not look harder than where they are at that minute.

The best practices of web design stated that if you require  customer to make more than three clicks to find the information on a website, they will give up and move on.  Now, the first two clicks are go to room in house where computer is located, and turn the computer on.    

9. Most people don’t care about your PR or your board of execs when they’re on their mobile device. If they don’t have a pleasant and painless experience with your website, they’re going to leave—and they may not come back.

User interface and the user experience is key to success!

10. Facebook knows that more and more people are interacting with photo-based apps like Instagram and Path. A picture is worth a thousand words. This is why your pictures are now bigger on Facebook. They want to keep you engaged.

11. Mobile gives us a better and immediate way to share our experiences in life. But people are now expecting faster reaction times. The average social media user expects a response within 60 minutes. The immediacy of mobile makes us expect things to be there when we need them.

Once again, 90% of us are never more than 3’ away from our phones. From a business perspective, you’re 3’ away from your audience 24/7.

12. You have a responsibility as a marketer to educate your audience. If you’re going to introduce a new technology (like QR codes), you need to show them how to use it and what to expect.

An App is a "Convenient" Extension of Your Web SIte

A website allows a business to be open for customers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  Whether it is for window shopping, placing an order, answering a question, your businesses website acts as the first line of customer service.  However, your customer is not sitting in front of a computer screen 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  It might feel like it to some of us, but it is true,  But how many of us always have our smart phones with us?  Now, your businesses website can be always accessible as a Mobile App installed on your customer's smart phones.  Whether they are home, at work, at a movie, or at a baseball game, if they have cellular service, they can reach your website.

In addition to having the same information or being able to buy something from your store, a Mobile App has the advantage of sending marketing messages, coupons, or even directions to your nearest store right to your customer's pocket.  There are businesses I have purchased items from more then once, but have never been to their store, if there was a store.  Imagine being able to have your website pop up a window and letting your customer know about a special 2-Day sale every time he or she turned on their computer.  With a Mobile App, now you can.

Let's look at one example.  The Starbucks App is a free downloadable app from the iTunes store.  It is free because if it is on your phone, the more likely you are to purchase their product and every person that downloads their app is now another customer to collect information about and refine your marketing.  The features include:

There are five opportunities for a customer to purchase something with the Starbucks App and only two opportunities with on the website.  Directions to the closest store are delivered right to the customer with the App, and special offers and coupons are delivered via SMS directly to the customer, without other e-mail messages cluttering their view.  the chance of a customer not opening an e-mail is eliminated with the App.

And once again, a customer will only view a website when they are in front of their computer.  With a mobile App, a customer can view a "website" while they are at home, in meetings, driving, or even while sitting at Starbucks enjoying a double decaf non-fat frappuccino double shot with a hint of cinnamon.

What is Web 3.0?

The last post claimed that Mobile Apps was the next Web 3.0.  So, before we explain Web 3.0, lets review some of the history of the web.

Web 1.0:  Way back in the year 2000, and everyone was trying to avoid the Y2K bug, every business was clamoring for a website of their own.  Now, instead of advertising in the yellow pages once a year, or the weekly insert in the newspaper, business could create colorful, customized advertising letting every customer for miles around all of the goods and services you could provide them.  Big businesses, local business, non-profit organizations, school, and even individuals created their own website and made a land grab in the world of the internet.  Radio and television commercials that ended with announcers repeating the familiar jingle now had an additional tag line to "check us at www.mybusiness.com"  Businesses no longer needed to name their business AAA Plumbing so they would be listed first in the yellow pages.  Instead, they could build brand identification, name recognition, and depending on the service, reach customers that lived outside their normal geographic region.  The world wide web had reached main street.

It is estimated that by April 2000, there were 15.6 million websites on the World Wide Web.  The growth from there was exponential.  According to CNN Technology, four years later there were more then 50 million websites and just 30 months later in October 2006 the number had doubled to 100 million websites. At the start of 2012, it is estimated that there are over 555 million websites.

Web 2.0:  Although the name sounds different, Web 2.0 was the same World Wide Web, but rather to the cumulative changes in the ways software developers and end users used the web.  In 2004, Web 2.0 blossomed and websites became interactive tools that allowed communication, orders, and information being exchanged between the business and the customer.  Some of the more well known examples of Web 2.0 technology was blogs, wikis, mashups, social networking, and photo/video sharing websites.  A business website was no longer a static page providing information outward only, but now a website was a tool that facilitated business, information, and collected user feedback.  End users were no just as likely to create content as they were to consume content.

Web sites were re-designed and re-configured so web applications would expose their functionality so hat other applications could leverage and integrate the functionality providing a set of much richer applications. To put it more simply, businesses were able to open up the large amounts of data and customer information to more effectively share it across their entire business.  Silos of information were broken down as websites with web-oriented architecture enabled a customer order made on a website to automatically, and simultaneously be shared with sales, accounts payable, warehouse and shipping, and the marketing department already working on the next sale.  Web 2.0 brought efficiency to businesses and an explosion of data to be leveraged by the business.

Web 3.0:  To many, Web 3.0 is something called the Semantic Web.  It is a term coined by Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented the first World Wide Web.  In essence, the Semantic Web is a place where machines can read web pages much as we humans read them, a place where search engines and software agents can better troll the internet and find what we are looking for.  "it's a set of standards that turns the web into one big database" according to Nova Spivak, CEO of Radar Networks, one of the leading voices of the new age internet.

So how does that translate into mobile apps and smartphones?  Each app is a software agent that can be designed to search the large database of websites and deliver the information that a customer is searching for to the computer in their pocket.  Additionally, we can use data mining and GPS location to deliver even more finely detailed search information that is relevant to each particular customer.  The same app can deliver different search results based on key information provided by the customer.  Think of the change in advertising from the world of the 1960s Mad Men, if Don Draper could design one advertising campaign that was uniquely tailored to each individual customer.  They would have been even more successful than they are now!

The other part of Web 3.0 that is part of mobile apps is the push notification that allows an app developer to be able to communicate directly to each customer.  These updates can take a passive approach such as notification that a new version is available for upgrade to a more directed marketing message that a customer can download a coupon to a new feature is now available for use.  For example, Shazam pushed a notification to me, and potentially all their customers, that I can now listen to the World Series and track statistics during the game.  The other possibility is that this message was sent just to me as a baseball fan, and a different message could be sent to a 30-year old female who is a movie fan that the Academy Awards broadcast is available on this same app.

Web 3.0 is here, and the possibilities are endless.

Mobile Computing is the New Web 3.0

Things are changing as more people have computer in their pocket and Internet access any where they are at. Providing information to people, to customers, in a concise, compact manner is now foremost towards your success.

The first change that has been fairly well documented was the change in behavior of Christmas shoppers last year. Consumers would go to the store to look at the different products and compare the different features to determine which model they wanted, but then would use the computer in their pocket and scan the bar code for a price comparison. Amazon.com even had a $10 discount if you used their mobile app one weekend. So now, how can you deliver your information directly to a mobile audience with a four inch screen.

Now, computing technology is tied to GPS and other location based services to maximize information delivery to your audience. The Entertainment book has developed an application that allows the user to display the coupon on their mobile computer, and will detect all available coupon opportunities located around you. Complete with directions to each of the businesses. They have delivered all of the information included in the actual paper book in small chunks of information that includes location enhancements in small easy to display screens.