Speaking of the non-PC/Non-Mac video player market share study from FreeWheel, I don’t think it is all that insightful to lump iPads with gaming consoles that are wired up on a permanent basis in the living room instead of conducting a study that would let the readers compare them to laptops that allow users to view videos almost anywhere. Do viewers prefer watching online videos on their TVs together with the rest of the family or by themselves on their laps? Based on this type of categorization, who knows. Do tablets provide a better viewing experience than laptops? We cannot say.
Isn’t it crazy for any company or researcher to proudly put out statistics (and for journalists and bloggers to quote them) when the results do not pass the laugh test? Here is All Things D quoting a study declaring Xbox as the most popular media player in the US. Doesn’t anybody wonder about the reliability of these numbers, when Xbox share is at 28%, but PS3 or Wii is at best lost in the category of “others” at less than 1%. FreeWheel also wants you to believe that the market share of TVs and Blu-Ray players with streaming video apps are also negligible… When the results are so radically “surprising”, what would a journalist should think of first? Would you say “This does not make any sense, there is probably something wrong with the methodology” or “It seems reasonable to assume that this is at least directionally correct.” Mr Kafka believes it is the latter.
Despite what Siegler says, I distinctly remember seeing “Promotional Considerations Furnished by” a long list of companies including Apple in the credits following House, a Fox TV show. The characters in Castle, an ABC show, keeps switching between Android and iPhone. I doubt that is because it is what the artists or writers are using in their daily lives from one season to another, as there were scenes with an obviously forced, should I say tacky, unnecessary commentary on how this phone can do this or that. Of course, I cannot be sure whether they use Android phones when some companies pay for the product placement and iPhones when nobody is willing to pay up, but that sounds unlikely. There will always be companies willing to pay some amount for product placement, especially if the producers are willing to botch the flow of an episode for the sake of some extra income and a sort of management structure is already in place to accommodate advertisers.
Yet another subtle, but important advantage Apple has over competitors: their products are all over popular television shows and films — and Apple doesn’t pay a dime for such placement. The creative talent uses them because, well, they use them.
Some people are quite resourceful. Paul Santos did some digging around the financial reports from an Amazon supplier for the e-ink screens used in Kindles and came to believe that e-ink ereader sales fell off a cliff after Amazon released Kindle Fire. I guess most consumers prefer the versatility of a cheap tablet with a colorful speedy screen rather than the long battery life of a dedicated ereader that cannot be read at night without turning on a lamp.
Maybe Target did not have to feel like Amazon’s showroom. Target management may have been miffed that the consumers checking out Kindles at Target seemed to be buying them later at Amazon at a bigger discount or without paying sales tax. Instead, it is quite possible the consumers were just not buying them at all anywhere. I guess the end result would be the same. If Target is not earning money off Kindles for one reason or another, discontinuing the sales would be the only logical next step to open up shelf space for something that brings in more revenue.
Sony just announced a $5.74 billion loss this year. Is it really a surprise though? Here is a picture of the screen of a Sony tablet at a Sony store. It is inside arguably the highest end mall in Taiwan, the one attached to Taipei 101 Tower, the tallest building in the world at when it was completed in 2004.
The screen is full of non-descrepit blue “g” icons, with the exact same name printed under each one, along with multiple “Pinball Heroes” and “Angry Birds” icons. How did they end up on this screen? Why would one of the store employees not clean this up? Does that look like Sony understands the meaning of “attention to detail”? No wonder the store was as empty as this at around 6pm on a weekday:
To be fair, the store received a couple customers “just browsing” a couple of minutes later and the mall was not teeming with shoppers in general. On the other hand, there was a store named Studio A, selling mainly Apple merchandise just a few shop windows away. Its location was not as good as the Sony store, which is right next to the escalators, but it had about 8 or 9 customers, many of whom were actually asking questions and purchasing items. (They asked me not to take pictures in the store, so that moment is going to stay undocumented for now.)
Bruce Lawson has a nice article about why you don’t really need mobile websites. Make your desktop website as focused and useful as what you expect the mobile website needs to be. He sums it up with this Venn diagram.
Funny, but true…
There are so many institutions who do not seem to be the least bit interested in how really useful their home pages can be. Maybe, somebody can come up with another Venn diagram for the retailer websites with tiny “Store Locator” links hidden at the bottom. :)
To help Oro Verde, the rainforest fondation, no need of humans to raise money but only the free and principals actors: Trees.
This is from a tourism booklet for Hsinchu.
To send these postcards to your good sisters, do not forget to send to unseen friends for a long time.
Boy, I hope we do a better job translating brochures to Mandarin in the US.
