Posts filed under 'Mobile Applications'
After spending these many years in educating oneself, the one and only ultimate goal is to get a Job…! But how to get it and why most of them are not getting it? Is it the recession hindering or competition is tough? All these question’s answers point to one thing- Same Resume Content.
Recession and Competition inversely varies each other, balancing it is bit difficult. The thing that only matters is: How your resume stands different from others? A very simple answer lies in Tech & Skills part. That’s what you have to do, upgrade your Resume with one of these booming tech domains and see the difference. Let company approach you, you don’t have to approach them…..!
1 . Mobile OS – Trend has been changing so dramatically that now you won’t find silly Mobiles in everyone’s pocket, most of them are using Smartphones, Tablets, iPad, etc, and world is pivoting towards it. It’s all about Android, IOS, Windows, Blackberry, etc. The functionality and graphics provided by these OS’s are simply awesome! Learn the tech, develop an App and launch it to the App Store and you are in the market and if you really bombard the market, one of the Mobile developing companies will hire you…..!
2 . E-commerce – Who cares to go to the shops and purchase a thing? Everyone wants to relax at home, view the product on site, compare it, place an order and they’ll deliver to your doorstep. That’s what E-commerce means and its growing and growing day by day. Learn various E-com technologies like, Magento, WordPress, Prestashop, etc,. Develop a basic E-commerce site for yourself and launch it or highlight in your resume about your knowledge or start a service base program with your friends where you can develop an E-commerce website for others.
3 . Social Media Marketing – Everyone is aware with Social Media like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Linkedin, Pinterest, etc,; Most of them are aware with Marketing like sales, product, etc,; But very few are aware with a thing called Social Media Marketing. This is the field where all companies are going for, Marketing via Social Media in most inexpensive way. Who wants to pay 1000 bucks for advertisement where it can be achieved by 10 bucks. Get familiar with and try implementing instead of surfing it.
4 . Cloud Computing – Cloud is very cutting edge technology in the market and still most of them doesn’t know about it. Amazon, IBM, Eucalyptus, etc., played a major role in Cloud Computing. You want to access a resource from point A to B Cloud will help you, want to download in a faster way Cloud will help you. Still India is yet to flood with this concept as it is quite expensive and rare thing to implement and execute., but future is in and within Cloud.
5 . Big Data– The name itself suggests what it is, it’s like Big Dam storing trillions gallons of water….! On any field or domain, one has to deal with data storage and manipulation and it never decreases. Big Data has already influenced the market on very large scale. Facebook, Google, EMC and most of them are on this side of Big Data. Master in it and go for it.
May 21st, 2013
(excerpted from Harvard Business Review article on Advertising Analytics dated March 2012)
HBR has an interesting article on Analytics 2.0 which is driving advertisers and brands to fine-tune their effort allocations to the various media mix. Presented below is the crux of the article by the author Wes Nichols, CEO of MarketShare, an Analytics firm in LA, USA.
Until now, the advertisers are measuring ROI using swim lane tactics, which means that media spend on one channel is measured for ROI independently – it has to do with revenue attribution due to direct impact of that media channel advertising. In reality, the media is more complex, the various media have impact on each other which causes complex mixed media effect on consumer purchase decisions. Eg a TV spot on a Toyota Camry car may lead a user to dish out her smartphone to google search the Camry. The Google search shows a sponsored ad by a nearby Toyota dealer as well as it may lead the user to a sponsored YouTube video ad which plays the motion picture of the car ad. The user is thinking about Camry but purchase decision is still forthcoming. Later when the same person is driving down the highway, she notices the billboard advertising the Camry. She remembers the sponsored dealer ad and decides to drive by that dealer. This concludes in a purchase decision to buy the Camry.
In the above scenario, each media channel has an impact on each other and it is hard to attribute revenue to one or more media channels directly. As a result, firms do not know how much to spend on various media channels and how these channels cross-impact each other.
Such analysis of one data campaign revealed that swim-lane measurement grossly underestimated the revenues attributable to social-media marketing and display advertising while overestimating PR and paid-search revenue. For firms like Ford, which have a $1 billion advertising budget each year, such analysis is crucial to derive maximum bang for the advertising dollars.
Statistical models that reveal the effect of advertising on consumer behavior and business results must account for hundreds of variables related to market conditions, marketing actions, and competitive activities. A software analytics engine uses those models to attribute each variable’s effect accurately, to optimize the marketing mix, and to guide spending allocation. Data on consumer response and business outcomes feed back into the engine, allowing marketers to fine-tune their cross-media spending in real time.
Analytics 2.0 requires that advertisers assign an elasticity factor between each impacting media – eg Paid search will have an elasticity factor due to TV ad spot and also from other media channels. So each media format is assigned an elasticity factor from every other factor that is likely to impact it, this is referred to as Assist factor. Such factors can include non-media factors like weather, competitive advertising, unemployment rates and like. This leads to a complex cross-dependency scenario across a wide gamut of factors. From here, the advertiser has to assign revenue attribution to each media factor followed by optimization and finally budget allocation. Optimization involves war gaming various scenarios across the factors in question to arrive at optimum marketing conclusions. Finally, this leads to re-balancing budget allocation to achieve the maximum efficiency marketing scenarios.
Factors -> Attribution -> Optimization -> Allocation-> Consumer Response -> Business Outcomes …….. -> Attribution again
The Business Outcomes influence the Attribution in real time so it is a constant feedback loop.
HBR gives the case study of Electronic Arts (EA) which used the above cycle of Attribution, Optimization and Allocation to increase it’s ad spend efficiency dramatically for the launch of it’s new Battlefield 3 online game. It seems that EA was placing heavy emphasis on TV spot ads for its game launches but these were having only a marginal impact on the success of games sales. An Analytics study led EA to shift advertising dollars to online and paid search, and the game launch revenues improved remarkably for EA.
For the full HBR arcticle, click here.
May 20th, 2013
Today there is a post in the Wall Street Journal as to how the websites are tracking all user activities, right from location, personal profile, profession, hobbies, likes and dislikes.
Today’s internet is perhaps “too open”, where users information is freely available to retailers, analysts, marketers alike. While this may serve the purpose of “personalizing” offers and deals to consumers, it risks being labeled discriminatory if such information is used to offer different product pricing or search results to consumers. Not to mention the bigger risk of spammers and ID thieves catching hold of such information and launching malicious campaigns against consumers.
A WSJ investigation found that the office products retailer Staples is offering different prices on the same stapler to two different consumers who were just a few miles away.
Retailers are justified in offering different prices to different customers – this is what happens in stores too especially in different stores of the same chain. Retailers argue that local operating costs, real estate pricing, manpower costs and other logistics etc influence local pricing. In that sense, the online differential in pricing is no different than it’s offline cousin.
“But the idea of an unbiased, impersonal Internet is fast giving way to an online world that, in reality, is increasingly tailored and targeted. Websites are adopting techniques to glean information about visitors to their sites, in real time, and then deliver different versions of the Web to different people. Prices change, products get swapped out, wording is modified, and there is little way for the typical website user to spot it when it happens”, says the Journal.
WSJ said that many firms resorted to such price tactics, including Discover Financial, Rosetta Stone, Home Depot etc. Office Depot told WSJ team that they use customers browsing history and geolocation to offer tailored product offers and pricing for online shopping.
Technically, this is all legal, but the boundary line to ethical or discriminatory behaviour is not far. Eg certain racial groups may claim discrimination or local governments may cry foul. It seems that 76% of Americans are opposed to this kind of differential pricing.
But there are advantages too for differential pricing. Eg certain services like movie theatres offer senior citizen and student discounts.
The key takeaways are :
- the fundamental premise of internet being an unbiased and same-for-all internet is bring eroded now as personalization increases and website behave differently for different people. The INTERNET IS NO LONGER AN EQUALIZER.
- while differential pricing is normal and legal, it can raise ethical and discriminatory haggles across sections of the society. So retailers need to tread carefully.
What is CellStrat view : Retailers and web commerce firms need to abide by laws and be careful in offering personalized offers and pricing. Tailoring offers based on user information or their location has to be considered in view of the prevailing laws and user acceptance. Otherwise, the online commerce firms risk alienating the consumers who took to the internet to find an equal society, in the first place.
(Excerpted from WSJ article titled “Websites Vary Prices, Deals, Based on Users’ Information” dated 23 Dec 2012)
December 24th, 2012
Since the launch of Apple iOS 6, one is seeing major activity in the world of Digital Maps. Both Apple and Google have been duking it out recently on this front. Before the iOS 6 was released, Google Maps was the default map application installed on the iPhones. But map application in recent times has become perhaps the most popular mobile app and hence substantial customer engagement and media sales get initiated with the map experience. The primary fruits of iPhone mapping app were being enjoyed by Google, until iOS 6 came along. With iOS 6 and iPhone 5, Apple decided to take the Map app internal and worked on Apple Maps for this version of iOS, thereby dropping Google Maps as the default Map app on the new iPhone.
In it’s haste to release the Map App along with iOS 6 launch, Apple mapping team seemed to compromise on reliability and accuracy in Apple Maps. The error proved deadly, as the Apple Maps app was widely criticized after iOS 6 was launched, being that rest of the iOS 6 as well as iPhone 5 was much appreciated. Apple Map Apps shows incorrect placement of landmarks and is frustrating mobile users around the world who rely on smartphone maps to guide them around cities.
This resulted in Tim Cook of Apple issuing an apology to Apple customers. Google, with a guilty pleasure, enjoyed the Apple Map criticism. Google has since announced that they are working on a custom Google Maps app for the iOS 6 platform. It is expected to come out before the end of the year.
Why are Map Apps such a big deal after all ? In an App survey conducted by Wireless Technology Forum, Atlanta, Google Maps was rated as the most popular mobile app. That means that navigation and directions via smartphone maps has become the most key use of these phones. One knew that Mapping Apps were popular and widely used, but who would have guessed that Map App is “the” most popular mobile app out there. Especially Google Maps. Obviously, smartphone users really use this app in their daily movements.
Maps are also used for the most cutting-edge of phone applications, that is Location-Based Services or LBS. LBS refers to finding businesses nearby and guiding customer traffic to those businesses. LBS also enables local advertising and shopping. LBS is key aspect of SoLoMo – Social Local Mobile – a concept referring to convergence between local commerce, mobile phones and social shopping.
Maps also facilitate searches now – Search is more relevant if locational aspects are added to it. Search Advertising has been a revolutionary concept and LBS makes Search even more relevant.
When the iOS 6 Apple Maps app faced ridicule, Tim Cook suggested that iPhone customers download Bing or other Map Apps from App Store. Google, of course, had not planned a iOS 6 compatible Map app, until it realized that iPhone users were clamoring for the Google version, after having experienced the cloogy Apple Map App. Apple Map flap has caused many a casualty at Apple office – with many execs including one of the most senior execs, Scott Forstall, being asked to leave. Just today, Apple fired another manager in charge of Map App.
With the Apple Map app mess, other mapping programs have gained eg Embark and Bing Maps.
Mapping wars are front and centre in the smartphone evolution, the various map providers need to check their coordinates in this new war.
November 29th, 2012
SoLoMo (Social Local Mobile) has become the new fad in town for most commerce firms and retailers, as well as technology providers. This concept refers to the idea of enabling hyper-local retail via mobile convergence and providing a social interaction between users and retailers for engagement, sales growth and loyalty.
What are the technologies which enable SoLoMo ? What products provide best of breed solutions in this space ?
Below is a sample list of some of the leading firms / products which offer solutions in this space :-
a) Digby – Leading Mobile Retail convergence solution. They have potentially the strongest Mobile Retail convergence solution and are considered a SoLoMo specialist - Digby solution provides integration between web store / offline store / mobile commerce / social commerce / QR code solution / real time messaging. Digby Localpoint software enables brands to create geo-fences around their stores and other points of interest and embed those geo-fences into the brand’s app
b) Capillary Tech - leading retail CRM / loyalty solution – one of the hottest startups from India, now a global phenomenon. High quality retail CRM / loyalty / retail analytics solution
c) Facebook Connect and Twitter API – for close Social integration to enable Social commerce
d) Pluck from Demand Media - Pluck is interesting as it allows social engagement, social commerce and social loyalty solutions. Pluck enables these concepts via communities, content generation and gamification.
e) Foursquare Enterprise solutions may offer robust gamification solutions - Foursquare is considered leading gamification firm around communities.
f) Groupon / LivingSocial / Snapdeal / mydala – these firms are known for the Group shopping experience and offer LBS capabilities. These are not products but full-fledged startups in the area of Social Commerce.
g) Antenna Mobile Platform / IBM Worklight / Sybase 365 - These Enterprise Mobility platforms offer Mobile app development which can enable a retailer to publish engagement and commerce apps for its customers. This includes Mobile POS on smartphones / tablets, mobile wallet and in-store apps.
h) Telibrahma – Telibrahma has solutions in the areas of virtual reality and LBS, which empower the consumer to have a closer interaction with the retailers. Telibrahma LBS relies on Bluetooth or Wi-Fi proximity marketing to allow retailers to engage the audience in the nearby vicinity.
i) ZipDial – ZipDial provides an intuitive missed call voting and feedback system, which allows a retailer to leverage the mobile shoppers in the store to respond to a retailer survey instantaneously. This helps retailer drive business intelligence and customer feedback about the store experience.
Here are some relevant links in this area :
www.digby.com, http://www.capillarytech.com, http://www.pluck.com/, http://www.groupon.com, http://telibrahma.com/, www.zipdial.com
A combination of the above technologies / products will enable the SoLoMo experience for a retailer or service business.
CellStrat’s next conference, the India Digital Forum on 07th Feb in N. Delhi, will address a lot of the SoLoMo topics and technologies outlined above. Be sure to book your seat today and hear from top speakers in the Social Commerce space.
November 27th, 2012
(from our Bangalore desk)
I attended this conference in Bangalore earlier this week – it was most interesting with hundreds of company execs, entrepreneurs and thought leaders speaking about product innovation, development strategies and emerging technologies.
I will list some major themes I picked up at this conference:-
- In India, next decade belongs to Product development and these will have major impact on business and social empowerment.
- Hiring best practices and product quality differentiate successful organizations and individuals from all others.
- In the new world, individuals and professionals which take initiative and drive innovation will take their organizations to leadership positions. This applies to large and small firms alike. These individuals will be the ones in most demand going forward.
- Design and Image is crucial in the new world – this translates to User Experience and Engagement in all we do. Think Apple or Amazon.com
- The big opportunities are in Smartphones / tablets, Mobile, Cloud, Analytics, Big Data, Social – all usual suspects. These are all big enablers of new innovation and present opportunities for growth. At the same time, these technologies create a level playing field. As a result, larger firms now find that small startups can cause immense disruption in the former’s usual businesses – hence executives in the larger firms must think like entrepreneurs to create new opportunities and ensure customer delight via superb delivery and engagement.
- India has 900 million feature phones and only 10% of these are smartphones. So Mobile Apps and Enterprise Mobility offer incredible opportunity growing forward – this is true of western markets as well, as Enterprises there adopt mobile in a big way for all their applications. Mobile has truly gone from Mobile Also -> Mobile First – >Mobile Only strategy. Now, major new programs and initiatives in leading firms are planning to do a Mobile only strategy.
- Cloud Computing is the new way of doing almost everything in IT for end clients – IT investments are shifting to Cloud at an incredible space – so much so that most new projects or initiatives are looking at Cloud as a preferred solution over an in-house hosting strategy.
- Big Data is not a fad – with all the Social channels and frenetic transaction activity, Big Data is a problem which is growing in size everyday – as such, it offers major opportunities for solution providers and product developers to slice, dice and analyze, in order to achieve actionable intelligence and business decisioning.
- Open source technologies are now fully mainstream and driving major new development.
- Collaboration and leadership are key aspects in driving success. Most new innovation requires good collaboration and partnership skills as well as passion to succeed.
- Naveen Tewari, Founder and CEO of InMobi, said that the three critical factors for success for a startup are :
- Thing Big – you can do it
- Hire the best
- Focus on product quality. Good products sell themselves
- Naeem Zafar, Founder and CEO of Bitzer Mobile as well as more than a dozen startups earlier, said that for each CEO, the main responsibility is “Don’t run out of money”.
- IBM-mers Peter Coldicott (Chief Product Architect), Robert High (IBM Fellow in IBM Watson), and Daniel Yellin (Enterprise Mobility Chief Engineer) spoke about IBM’s Smarter cities program, Cloud and the new IBM super-computer Watson which is making waves.
- Sharad Sharma (ex-MD, Yahoo India), spoke about product entrepreneurs as transformers of the society.
- Deep Kalra, Founder and CEO of MakeMyTrip, spoke about his entrepreneurial journey and the Indian startup ecosystem.
The event is one power-packed event with almost 1300 delegates which included almost 150+ blue-chip speakers and thought leaders from India and abroad. The presence of so many Silicon Valley luminaries seems to indicate that action in Bangalore is accelerating and many westward folks are now looking east to this part of the world for next revolutions in tech and digital.
Kudos to Nasscom, Nasscom President Mr Som Mittal and all the dedicated NPC volunteers for putting together what we consider is a remarkable show.
For more updates from this event, click here.
November 12th, 2012
The year 2012 has seen an exponential increase in adoption of navigation into automotive platforms, with over 200,000 cars scheduled to come with built-in navigation systems in India in 2013.
MapmyIndia, India’s leader in digital maps, GPS navigation and location apps for consumers and enterprise, today announced that India’s top-selling car models now offer GPS navigation powered by MapmyIndia. The leading car models include Honda City, Tata Manza, Mahindra XUV 500, Mahindra Ssangyong Rexton, Ford Endeavour, BMW 7, 5 & 3 series, Jaguar-Land Rover Freelander 2, Fiat Linea and Renault Scala. MapmyIndia has upgraded its navigation solution to include the latest version 7.1 maps of India. The maps – India’s most comprehensive, exhaustive, detailed and updated map coverage – cover 7.1 million places of interest, 1.9 million road kilometers, 600,000 towns and villages, 4,751 cities with street-level details, 39 cities with house-level details and 36 cities with full 3D city models and includes best-in-class advanced and localized navigation and driver assistance features such as extended lane guidance, junction views, sign-posts, live traffic, city guides and rich points of interest, regional voice guidance and regional maps.
MapmyIndia’s maps are being aggressively adopted by Indian consumers and car manufacturers, with MapmyIndia occupying the dominant market leader position in automotive navigation. Top-selling car models have introduced MapmyIndia navigation as part of their offering, starting this festival season – such as the new Honda City sedan, the new Tata Manza entry-level sedan, the top-selling Mahindra XUV 500 SUV and the premium Mahindra Ssangyong Rexton SUV, the Ford Endeavour SUV, the BMW 7, 5 and 3 series luxury sedans, the Jaguar-Land Rover Freelander 2 Luxury SUV, the Fiat Linea sedan, the Renault Scala sedan, among others. MapmyIndia has already collaborated with all leading car manufacturers across India to offer MapmyIndia GPS navigation to their consumers, including BMW, Jaguar-Land Rover, Mercedes, Toyota, Honda, Volkswagen, Renault, Mitsubishi, GM, Ford, Tata, Mahindra and Maruti.
MapmyIndia’s own GPS navi-tainment systems, including Portable Navigators, CarPads and fitted in-dash systems, are the best selling navigation systems and MapmyIndia has sold over 140,000 such systems already through its network of over 1500+ car showrooms and car accessory shops across 100+ cities in India. MapmyIndia’s version 7.1 maps provide first- and best-in-class advanced navigation and driver assistance features with visual cues, such as:
- Extended lane guidance (telling the user which lane to get into prior to a turn or exit)
- Junction views (how the upcoming intersection looks in real-life)
- Sign-posts (which major landmarks, localities and cities lie in the direction of upcoming turns)
- Day-time based turn restrictions (based on time and day, whether the particular road is 2-way or one-way in a particular directions)
- Live traffic (what is the live congestion on roads in the city)
(Source: MapMyIndia)
November 8th, 2012
Ford’s Telenav solution and Chevrolet’s MyLink are adapting cellphone map/navigation applications for safe and convenient use inside vehicles as a way around costly in-dash navigation systems. The $25-a-year Car Connect app allows Android phone users to feed their driving instructions to the screen of Fords equipped with Applink. The Chevy Spark uses the BringGo app to integrate iPhone or Android cell phones. The use of such cellphone app links might make the integrated navigation system option obsolete, John Quain writes.
(via Smartbrief for Apps)
October 22nd, 2012
Almost 1 in 4 gamers say they only play on mobile devices, which account for 59% of all game play, according to an NPD survey. “Many mobile gaming consumers have grown accustomed to gaming for free, making it essential to find the sweet spot for pricing that encourages purchasing by as many consumers as possible,” NPD Group analyst Liam Callahan says. Gamers on average said $3 was a good price for a purchase or an upgrade, according to NPD.
(via Smartbrief of Apps)
October 20th, 2012
An affluent global market of more than 40 million tablet owners is the target for Mojiva’s new mobile ad network. Mojiva Tab is “a specific ad network with dedicated resources and dedicated packaging,” said Mojiva CEO David Gwozdz. The idea is to take advantage of the wider mobile canvas afforded by tablet screens, compared with the tinier screens of smartphones.
(via MMA Smartbrief)
October 19th, 2012
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