What Apple’s latest iOS means for mobile media
Scott Thompson, digital research manager at Starcom MediaVest Group, says that while the tech world gets caught up with the smartphone platforms and the competition between them, a more interesting and important area to look at is the users, and the way the platforms are designed to configure different kinds of behaviours…
This week, over 5,000 developers took the trip to Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference, where Steve Jobs announced the latest revisions to the Mac and iOS platforms, and unveiled ‘iCloud’, Apple’s new system for storing users’ photos, documents, emails, calendars, messages and music ‘in the cloud’.
While the bloggers and the technology press gets caught up with what it all means for the competition between different smartphone platforms, those of us with an interest in mobile media should be focusing our attention on the area where it really matters; the users. For smartphone buyers, it isn’t just about a choice of handset anymore; it is a choice of platform.
From our perspective, the interesting thing about the different platforms is the way that they are going to be used. The tasks that platforms make easy, and the activities that users want to perform, are what define the way the mobile media space is used. In turn, this is what defines the value to advertisers.
Apple and Google: 2 different approaches to mobile advertising
Apple’s commercial focus is on the users who pay a premium for their devices. On the other hand, Google’s focus is the online services that they can now access when away from a computer – which leads to more use of the web, more reliance on search engines, and in turn, more value in search marketing.
When Apple launched ‘iAds’ last year, they were for iOS applications only, and were criticised for being very highly priced. As far as Apple is concerned, it seems that advertising is primarily a way to keep developers happy, and able to make money out of free applications. Happy, profitable developers means a thriving app market, which means an attractive platform for consumers.
A new feature in Apple’s mobile web browser has interesting implications for advertising to iPhone users – ‘Reader’ takes the text of web pages (including articles that stretch across a number of pages) and presents them in a simple, easy to read format.
Or, as Apple describe it on their website, it “displays web articles sans ads or clutter so you can read without distractions”.
In other words, it becomes a bit harder for advertisers to reach iPhone users on the mobile web – so in-app iAds become a bit more valuable. Bad news for mobile advertisers, perhaps, but good news for iOS developers, and for publishers selling their own in-app advertising.
iCloud
Apple have been talking about the iPad being a “post-PC” device, and iCloud is another step in this direction. The idea is that instead of the computer being the “hub” to which your other devices need to be connected (if you want to copy or edit files, print documents etc.) the centre of the Apple system is now in the cloud.
We are used to this idea with email – delete some junk mail on your BlackBerry, and it disappears from your inbox on your desktop. With iCloud, this idea extends out to your music, photos and files. Instead of files living on a particular device, they will live “in the cloud”, with copies kept up to date on all your (Apple) devices.
What this means is that the ‘computer’ becomes less important – and by extension, mobile devices become more important. What you buy into with Apple devices isn’t just a collection of devices any more, but the provision of an online service that ties them together. Again, tying customers into Apple’s system of devices.
What does this mean for publishers and advertisers?
Understanding the mobile media landscape isn’t just a case of knowing whether your audience is likely to own a smartphone, or even what kind of smartphone they are likely to own, but understanding the difference between the way the different platforms are configured and used. Adoption and usage of the mobile web is growing rapidly – clearly past the ‘early adopters’ stage and into the ‘early majority’.
In the same way that understanding the different newspaper titles is essential to understand press advertising, and understanding the difference between a Sky+ household and a Freeview household is essential to understand the TV marketplace, an understanding of the different smartphone platforms is an increasingly important element of understanding the rapidly growing mobile media space.