Barnes & Noble Almost Pull Off A Gutsy Marketing Move

July 1, 2011 By

Missed It“Missed it by that much….” – Maxwell Smart (Agent 99)

When I saw the headline, “Barnes and Noble offers 30 free e-books to switch to Nook” I thought, oh yeah, now we’re talking. When you are competing with the industry leader who has a stronghold on the market, you need to do something pretty dramatic if you’re going to get a leg up. Giving 30 free e-books to switchers would have been just the kind of bold, ballsy move that could have changed the tide, at least a little. Alas, it turns out Barnes and Noble isn’t that gutsy after all and this promotion isn’t going to do a damn thing. The 30 free books, you see, are chosen by Barnes and Noble and span a wide variety of titles from cooking to history to fiction. Great, you gave me 30 books, of which if I am lucky I might be  interested in one or two. They claim it’s a $300 value. Some value.

You see, the real problem is if I already have an Amazon Kindle, I have all my books already stored there. I don’t have access to them on the Nook and this creates a nice lock in for Amazon. Now if you allow me to take 30 of my favorite titles over, and make it even better, the rest of my titles for a nice discount price, you will be able to generate switchers. What would this cost Barnes and Noble? Plenty to be sure but what’s the value of a new lifelong customer? This game is hardball and either you step up and play or you’re going to be out of the game soon.

The same thing can be seen in the tablet wars. Apple is the dominant player with the iPad. Competition is coming now from various Android tablets and most recently HP. But the HP tablet starts at $500 and many of the Android tablets are close to the same price point. That’s the same price as the iPad and like it or not, those tablets are just not as good as the iPad yet. Price being equal, people are going to choose the iPad. If these alternative tablets are going to make any headway, someone is going to have to through down a price like $300. This is not about profit or loss at his point, when you are trailing a dominant player like Apple, you’ve got to grab market share anyway you can.

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Connected World Radio: The Connected Explosion

January 13, 2011 By

Connected World Radio

Topics include:

New Android tablets debut at CES

The new Apple Macbook Air and what it means for the future of mobile computing

The coming flood of Internet connected devices or cloud based computing

App stores in the connected world. Apple vs Google

What do businesses need to do to capitalize on all that’s been discussed on todays show

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New MacBook Air And The Future Of Mobile Computing

October 20, 2010 By

Macbook AirApple has announced their new MacBook Air and it’s truly a bold and revolutionary step in mobile computing. Apple has stated this is the future of MacBooks and the way all laptops should be someday. This is a pretty radical statement considering how the MacBook Air is put together. To me, this is a radical leap into cloud based computing for Apple. The machine has no optical drive, so installation of new applications will likely hinge on the also newly announced Mac OSX App Store. With limited solid state storage and no hard drive, customers will likely have to rely on cloud based storage for many of their larger files.

Gone are the days of large, powerful laptops designed to handle the work of a desktop on the road. Trends are moving toward smaller, lighter devices driven more from the power of the Net. As notebook computers eventually started to outsell desktop machines, I think we will see these smaller devices, call them NetBooks or tablets or what have you start to outsell typical notebooks. With this, I believe we will also see a resurgence of desktop machines as people give up trying to use one machine for home and mobile use. I have already made this move, as I gave up my laptop for an iMac at home and a small pc based netbook when mobile. Of course I still also have my smart phone when I want complete pocketability.

Apple had no entry in the super small and light portable and the iPad doesn’t quite substitute yet for one. The new MacBook Air fits the bill perfectly. The original Air was maligned with problems and never took off but I think this new model will see much more popularity. As with everything Apple, it’s a bit overpriced but drop dead beautiful and elegant. I think the real legacy of Steve Jobs will be the way he singularly blends cutting edge technology and art. Seth Godin always talks about making products remarkable. It’s an important lesson for all business and Apple gets an A+

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How Not To Do Business By AT&T

June 2, 2010 By

ATT Death StarThey’re one of the worlds largest and richest companies, and they have no idea about the most fundamental principles of business. Oh they think they know; it’s on their wall somewhere, buried in some mission statement or company goals. Plenty of lip service is given to it as it usual in large companies, but AT&T continues to treat their customers like dirt.

The latest and perhaps most shocking example is the story of Giorgio Galante, an AT&T customer who wrote emails to AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson in part to complain about several aspects of his AT&T experience. After the second email in as many weeks, Giorgio received a phone call from AT&T’s “Executive Response Team” thanking him for his feedback and at the same time warning Giorgio if he continued to email the CEO he would be served with a cease and disist letter. Threatening your customer with legal action because he tries to communicate with an officer of the company is so shockingly dumb I am at a loss for words. Is that what they teach you at B School?

It’s not the first time, however, AT&T has acted in such a way. As they were being barraged by complaints about the poor network service AT&T said it was the customers who were using too much data and they would have to look into doing something about that. Yes, our service stinks and it’s your fault mr. customer, so I will have to find a way to penalize you for that. And in fact, AT&T has now found that way, this week announcing dramatic changes to their data plans for smart phones like the iPhone. Unlimited access is gone and customers now much choose between two data plans, both with data limits and charges for going over the limits.

How does AT&T get away with this nonsense? Because they have the iPhone, the most popular cell phone in the world and you cannot buy it from anyone else. Apple may have signed a pact with the devil on this one and like it or not, there is some blowback that Apple suffers from all this as well.

I believe something needs to change drastically in the mobile world. We can no longer allow companies to sign us up for long term (2 year) contracts and then treat us so poorly. Since all the mobile companies seem to be in league with each other on most of these egregious practices, it’s going to take some kind of government action to step in and fight for the American consumer.

In the end, I don’t know what AT&T is thinking on this one. Is Giorgio Galante a pest? Unnecessarily filling up an important CEO’s email with trivial complaints? I don’t care if he is a nusense . He’s a customer, he has a right to be a nusense. He deserves to be treated with respect. He deserves an answer to his questions, not a threat of legal action.

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Kids and Ease of Use in Technology

April 4, 2010 By

Any parent with kids probably realizes this, but kids are incredibly savvy with technology. They have no fear or preconceptions about anything, so they are willing to jump in and try anything. It’s one of the things that’s so beautiful about kids, before they get tarnished by the world.

I learn so much from watching my kids work with technology. I learn about the future. Having kids is like living with your own personal crystal ball. I also learn a great deal about user interface and ease of use in tech products. My daughter, when she was just nine, picked up my iPhone and knew just what to do with it, no instruction needed. That’s when I knew it was a most amazingly built device. I think every technology company should have kids employed in their labs to do their user testing. If the 5 year old can master it, you’re ready to ship.

Tyler Gray realized the same thing and put it further to test with his iPad and his 5 year old son Cash. I’ve included the video in this post, and here also is a link to the original Fast Company article.

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Comic Books and the iPad

February 5, 2010 By

iPadI’ve been saying this for awhile now, comic books on the Apple iPad are a massive opportunity. The large color screen is perfect for this kind of content. I would even argue that it’s a big strategic advantage the iPad has over the Amazon Kindle. The Kindle is the perfect device for black and white books with it’s superior e-ink display but when it comes to content like comics or color magazines, the iPad can do things the Kindle can only dream of. As a comic book lover, I’m pretty excited about the possibility of comics on the iPad and I would seriously consider getting one if for no other reason than to read comics.

There are indications now that Amazon may try to make a new Kindle with color and multi-touch technology, bringing it much closer to an iPad. I think it’s very dangerous for Amazon to rush headlong into a competition with Apple on their own turf. Maybe the smart play is to remain the dominant player in black and white e-ink technology and let Apple have the rest. Amazon’s strength has always been traditional black and white books, not magazines or comics. Here’s an even smarter play, make a full iPad version of the Kindle reader. Amazon needs to remember their focus, they are a bookstore not a hardware manufacturer. By making a great Kindle reader for the iPad, they stand to sell more books from their online bookstore, even possibly cutting into Apple’s store.

2010 will be THE year of the tablet computer as Sony has also said they want to enter this market. No doubt there will be others. 2010 could also be THE year traditional publishing makes the turn to digital distribution. People have been predicting the death of traditional publishing for years now. These new tablet machines go a long way to bringing that prediction to pass.

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Apple, Verizon, LTE and the iPhone

October 2, 2009 By

File part of this story firmly in the rumor category, but it does give us an interesting look at the future of mobile communications. Currently the world is split between two main wireless cellular technologies; GSM, used by AT&T and T-Mobile among others and CDMA, primarily used by Sprint and Verizon. It looks like the next generation of technology beyond the current 3G, the so-called 4G technology will be LTE or Long Term Evolution. LTE is being rolled out currently by Verizon and has acceptance from AT&T, T-Mobile and most other vendors. For the first time ever, we may be on a single standard.

Part of the problem with the iPhone is that it is a GSM technology phone, so it will not currently work with Verizon or Sprint. Apple would have to develop a new handset altogether. If the new generation iPhone is LTE, however, this would open up a world of possibilities as it would be technologically compatible with most vendors. I think at this point we may see the ending of the long standing exclusive arrangement with Apple and AT&T. And if Apple ships the phone before AT&T can roll out it’s LTE network, AT&T stands to loose a great deal of customers. AT&T has been running at least a year behind Verizon technologically for the past several years, so I see a dark future for AT&T. AT&T’s customer satisfaction has also been plummeting lately due to their inability to handle the iPhone as it is today.

Bottom line: Apple and its’s customers stand to be big winners and AT&T stands to be a big looser unless AT&T can latch onto another phone that knocks the iPhone out of the box.

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YouTube and Apple: Together We'll Take Over The World

July 1, 2009 By

Well the online video world at least. The latest statistics on the new iPhone 3GS and YouTube are staggering. The iPhone has a history of taking something that has been around for awhile on other mobile phones and blasting it into the mainstream. Browsing the web was nothing new on a mobile phone when the iPhone was launched, but Apple took it to such a level and made it so easy and fun to do, mobile web traffic has exploded since. Now it’s happening with video. Nokia phones especially have always been great for taking video, but it has taken the new iPhone 3GS with it’s built in video capabilities to make it massively popular. Again, Apple takes mobile video to the next level by allowing simple on phone editing and super simple distribution to YouTube. I’ve always thought mobile video was going to be the next big thing and it looks like the new iPhone is going to confirm that thought.

What does it mean for your business? All this new video is going to drive more people to YouTube to watch. It will solidify YouTube’s dominance in the online video world. If you are doing any kind of video for your company and you do not have a YouTube channel yet, you are passing up a massive opportunity. You simply cannot afford not to be on YouTube. You should also be watching and monitoring YouYube for videos about your company or your industry. What are people saying, what are they thinking? This is the best market research/customer opinion lab you have ever had. You may not like all the content, but you had better pay attention and be ready to respond and engage.

What kind of opportunities are you giving your customers, your raving fans to share their videos? Maybe you should share the best YouTube videos on your main website. What other ways can you encourage people to create good video content about your company? These are the kinds of things you should be brainstorming with your social media consultant. Don’t have one? You might want to give me a call, I’m happy to help.

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Big Step for Amazon – Kindle on iPhone

March 4, 2009 By

When Amazon introduced the new Kindle 2 ebook reader, somewhat overlooked was what may end up being the most important announcement of all, that Amazon was looking to put the Kindle technology on other devices. It came much faster than I expected when last  night I discovered the Kindle iPhone application was available.

The app itself is very well done and after purchasing my first Kindle book, opening the app synced my purchase right over to the iPhone, easy as can be. The reading experience on the iPhone is surprisingly good. Of course it’s no match for a real Kindle with the larger screen and eInk technology, but I was perfectly happy with the experience. You can control font sizes, create book marks and the software remembers where you left off.

It’s a significant development because it effectively drives the price for a Kindle reader down to $199 from a regular Kindle price of $359. For people who already own the iPhone, which is far more people than the Kindle device, the app to add Kindle functionality is free. This is going to put Kindle books into far more hands far quicker than Amazon could do on it’s own. It will also likely sell more Kindle hardware as well as people want to upgrade to a better reading experience. As I said in the last podcast, Amazon is in the book sales business not the hardware business. This is a great first step and I can’t wait to see where else Kindle technology shows up.

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Steve Jobs: Mortal

January 18, 2009 By

No sooner do I blog about Steve Jobs and Apple than the other show drops and Jobs himself announces a leave of absence until June. If speculation wasn’t already running wild, it’s gone completely gonzo now. What it tells me is that Steve is mortal and he hasn’t found a way to clone himself yet. Seriously, here is a short term and long term plan for Steve Jobs and Apple.

Short Term

Jobs should return to Apple as a “chief architect”. This is very similar to what Bill Gates did at Microsoft during his last few years. Basically, someone else is running the show but you are there daily to oversee critical strategy. Lessen the load of daily grinding management may extend your years at the company. In addition, it is a more easy and graceful exit without the jarring effects of just leaving when you get too sick.

Long Term

Also, while serving as chief architect, you are installing the long term solution. Take a look at Disney and you could say as well that Walt Disney was everything to Disney. Where would Disney ever be without his singular vision and passion? How could Disney ever survive without him? But it has. Disney is one of the premiere companies in the world and is as great today as it was is Walts time. But how?

I think the answer is that Walt Disney was able to inject his dna into the company in such a fundamental way that it has stuck all this time. I think people at Disney think to themselves, what would Walt do? Would this make Walt proud? Continuing to honer and stick to Walt’s principals and ideals has kept Disney strong. So it will be Steve Jobs task to inject his dna into Apple in the same way. If he can do this, I think Apple will be a strong company for years to come.

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