Given the low penetration of smartphones in the UK why are marketers focusing their mobile strategies around iphone apps?
Imagine the scenario: You’ve created an exciting web site that showcases an amazing new mass market product. You've looked at everything: design, site architecture, its tone, character, look and feel. It's a killer proposition and the site will look beautiful on all the main browsers, including the newcomer, Chrome. Your boss will love it, sign it off and millions of people will visit the site. You show it off and sit back waiting for approval. There is silence. Your boss says, "Actually, I’ve a better idea – we’ll only make it work on Chrome. In fact, I don't want it to work properly on the other browsers at all". Coffee is spilled and you slide off your chair spluttering, "But Chrome only has a 3.17% market share, perhaps this decision requires some further thought... er... Sir."
In the alternate universe that is the world of mobile, this scenario is played out every day - all you need to do is swap some words. ‘Browsers’ becomes ‘mobiles’, ‘Chrome’ becomes ‘iPhone’ and 3.17% changes to around 4%.
Don’t get me wrong; for certain demographics and brands, building an iPhone app should be high on the list of things to do in mobile and arguably has a place in the majority of mobile strategies. Apps can do a great job in “completing” an overall mobile offering, bringing utility and longevity to the party too. However, given the low penetration of the whole smartphone marketplace, let alone the iPhone, why do so many marketers’ mobile strategies begin and end with the iPhone?
Partly, it’s because it’s an easy decision. You don’t have to integrate it with anything else. It’s not expensive unless you want a game in it. You don’t have to do any marketing as it’s on the App Store(!!). These simple facts are refreshingly in contrast to mobile marketing of old. Then, embarking on mobile marketing meant jumping into a muddy pond with no idea what was under the surface. In all likelihood it concealed bad things, such as rusty bits of old shopping trolley. In the mobile pond, there are too many browsers, too many costs, too much hype and probably a bad experience or two. Launching an app provides clarity. You build and launch one and the mobile box is ticked.
The waters, however, are about to be muddied again. The iPhone is not the only smartphone. It’s been easy to ignore the Blackberry (boring suits) and Symbian (hard work) and Windows Mobile (they do mobile?). However, I have no doubt that the Android OS will prove to be extremely popular and will spawn a whole new batch of apps that, in the end, will sell more than App Store. This is because there will be more Android devices than iPhones (See Mac OS vs. Windows). Blackberry phones’ touchscreen works and now they have a place to buy apps too. Microsoft Windows Mobile 7 will be here soon (perhaps sometime next decade when Android is already king) and there will be apps for that too.
So it will soon be impossible to just build an iPhone app as a standalone item without looking a bit silly. There will be a return to the old days of “Should we do this? Someone said you should do that! Let’s do a FaceTube app instead?”. Alternatively, it might result in “OK, is mobile a good place for me to market and, if so, what’s the best way to do it?”.
Overall, though, the iPhone app craze has been pretty good for mobile marketing as a whole, bringing mobile much more front of mind for marketers. In the medium to long term this will result in more requests for the inclusion of mobile into integrated marketing strategies. That can only be welcomed.
Author: Douglas McDonald, Head of Mobile Marketing, Tullo Marshall Warren