IDC: Mobile Phone Market Continues Slide by Mark Walsh

Don't expect the mobile phone market to make a comeback this year. Handset shipments in the second quarter fell 10.8% from a year ago, according to the latest figures from IDC, and the technology research firm forecasts the worldwide market will decline 13% in 2009. The second quarter drop wasn't quite as bad as the 17.2% fall-off in the previous quarter. ...Read the whole story

  • AT&T's All-In-One Mobile-Social Play by Mark Walsh

    AT&T's exclusive deal for the iPhone has benefited the wireless operator enormously, pulling in new subscribers and boosting its bottom line. But the carrier's own application storefront -- the AT&T MEdia Mall -- has been unquestionably overshadowed by Apple's App Store, generating more than 1.5 billion downloads in the last year. But AT&T has sparked some app buzz of its own. ...Read the whole story

  • retail L.L.Bean Goes Mobile With 'Moosentration' by Tanya Irwin

    The game features three skill levels, 24 game variations and eight pictures sets to choose from. Gamers can test their memory skills by matching images hiding behind L.L.Bean-branded card tiles. Images include L.L.Bean and Maine iconic items such as Bean Boots, lighthouses and wildlife critters. The mobile app will be promoted on social network sites as well as in an email blast to customers. ...Read the whole story

  • mobile Don't Forget About SMS by Mark Walsh

    A new report makes the case for SMS text marketing on mobile phones: Texting has become pervasive and generates response rates two to ten times higher than Internet display ads, it says. That's partly because messages are directed only at "hand-raisers," since SMS marketing requires consumer opt-in. ...Read the whole story

  • Report: Facebook Android App Coming Soon by Mark Walsh

    Facebook hasn't shied from expanding to mobile platforms, offering applications for smartphones such as the iPhone and BlackBerry and Windows Mobile and Palm devices. Phones running Google's Android mobile operating system have been a notable exception. ...Read the whole story

  • WaPo Debuts New Mobile Site by Mark Walsh

    The Washington Post has rolled out a redesigned mobile site aimed at offering cell subscribers a more customized experience. The newspaper's new mobile presence features more intuitive navigation and a simplified structure focusing on five main sections: politics, business, metro, arts & living and sports. ...Read the whole story

Brands Who Think We Can't Wait to View the World Through Their Silly Mobile Apps? Priceless by Steve Smith

For the benefit of those consumer brands that weren't listening the first few hundred times this has been said, consumers do not wake up in the morning thanking the lord they live in a country where they get to worship your brand and see life through its narrow self-serving lens. That only happens in the retro-fantasies of Don Draper and the households of top executives at many of these major brands. The only people who really should or would "love" a brand the way many brand managers think we do (or could) are the vested upper-level managers whose stock in ...More