Who would pre-purchase an iPad?

How many people are buying an iPad this weekend? I have no idea, I’m not a gambling man. If you asked me to hazard a guess? Maybe not so many right now, but wait until a toddler picks one up.

OK, stop laughing, seriously; if my son was still four years old, I would buy him one. The iPad looks kid-proof, no moving parts, no camera, hey, not much of a battery charge, what could possibly go wrong? Like the OS, net access is easily controlled.

The iPhone isn’t something you can give a child to play with, it’s mummy or daddy’s phone. An iPad will keep the little blighters occupied for hours without being an inconvenience when you want to communicate. When they’re asleep, you can use it to read a book, watch a movie, play music, catch up on your mail, browse a newspaper or flick through a magazine. You’ll pick it up as easily as you put it down.

The iPad has all the makings of yet another connected device middling-income folk wouldn’t want to be seen without. If you’re a harrassed parent, the price is something you’ll just put on the credit card.

Image Babesta

Monetising Mobile Apps: Shazam’s Coverage means Conversions

Speaking at MIDMEM, Shazam CEO Andrew Fisher stated that his ‘name that tune?’ app generates some 300,000 track purchases every day. From song tagging, he estimated a 13% conversion rate. That’s quite impressive, even off the back of 50m downloads.

Attributing the success of the app Fisher recognised the value of covering all mobile platforms, not just those most popular in the press. I completely agree, commercial app developers should be embracing device and OS fragmentation, not choosing sides.

We live in a world with some 2,000 different global name brand legacy and new model mobiles, if you’re serious, it’s not hard to keep them covered.

via musically

Opera acquires AdMarvel

Here we go, Opera comes out fighting ahead of MWC and buys up mobile advertising management AdMarvel. Opera CEO, Lars Boilesen says:

“In our fast-growing industry, mobile advertising represents an interesting long-term revenue opportunity. Every month, nearly 50 million people access the Web using Opera on their mobile phones and together with AdMarvel, we think we can play an important role in the evolution of mobile advertising,”

Riding on the back of positive reviews for Opera Mini 5, Opera Mobile 10 and the recent mass exodus from IE, things are looking up for Opera.

Bottom line: would I pay Opera to manage my mobile ads? Yes, I would, as they have proved yet again, they know and understand mobile.

Google Nexus One Customer Service Train Wreck

Would you like some cream with your schadenfraude pie? Hoof on over to the Google Mobile Help Forum and have a quick read through the Nexus One pages.

It would seem as though the likely-to-know-everything-about-you-lads forgot perhaps the most important thing in shipping the Production 1 Nexus One ’superphone.’ Customer Service. Whilst every other manufacturer can get away with debugging P1 in the marketplace, they do have the benefit of operational support systems, both their own and those of their Operator customer’s.

Google has gone live on a rushed hardware release with only a forum and an email address for customer support. They are promising a response within 48 hours. Well, you live and learn. I am sure they will throw a lot of money at this and recover.

Perhaps the Internet is being unkind and Google are victims of their own success? To a certain extent, maybe that’s true but you don’t need to go to MIT or Stanford to understand the importance of Customer Service. No, you just need a dash of common sense and a soupçon of humility.

Image: McCord Museum

…and a Happy New Year

If a somewhat belated one.

A little busy last week closing down the latest release of the MO-Call app for PC (and very soon, Mac), taking on new developers and pushing through some great new features (bookmark Rich and Peter’s MO-Call blog to make sure you don’t miss out on our new releases).

Here in Beijing, as in the UK, we’ve had a record snowfall and apparently there is more on the way. Unlike the UK, public services are still working…and so are we.

Merry Christmas from Morodo

The Morodo team wishes you all a very Merry Christmas.

It’s the time of year when, traditionally, we over-indulge a little. In the event of any accidents or mishaps, you might find this advice from the Wired How To Wiki, how to save a wet mobile phone, rather handy.

There’s no rest for the wicked: we’ll be working throughout the festive season, online and available as and when you need us.

Remember, if you can’t be with them, MO-Call them.

More Mobile and Internet predictions for 2010

ReadWriteWeb has posted the readership’s top ten products of 2009. No major suprises here, in the USA, everyone is Twittering, Googling and on Hulu; if I make one prediction for 2010, it’s that Android will enjoy a comfortable position in this top ten next Christmas.

On the subject of predictions, Dean Bubley’s predictions for 2010 are not only insightful but also a joy to read. As he suggests, from now on, I will be referring to Mobile Networks as Happy Pipes instead of Dumb Pipes.

My own occupational language overuse bête noire is the term ecosystem ascribed to, variously, Operating Systems, App Stores and Development Environments.

Mobile end of year reports

Two weeks until the end of the decade and the mobile industry reports are starting to come in. First up, on the report-lite front, the GSMA’s round-up of 2009 begins with these suprising words from Matt Ablott:

“It’s amazing to think that mobile application stores didn’t exist 18 months ago..”

That’ll be news to Get Jar, Handango and Handmark then, these mobile application download aggregators have been around since WAP was a boy. Get Jar’s Ilja Laurs is not the kind of fellow you’d want to upset, this week he’s already got up close and personal with Nokia over the cellphone giant’s claim to the coveted number two app store spot.

On the report-intensive front, Morgan Stanley weigh in with a 424 page meisterwork: The Mobile Internet Report. Quite generously, this has been posted for anyone to download. There’s plenty to take issue with here but also a wealth of facts, figures and plain old data. Taken from the report summary, here’s a superb example of how fast things change:

It’s a contentious document, that’s for sure and it’s already ignited a few heated discussions in our office; great stuff for the grey cells. I’ve no doubt we’ll return to this again and I’m certain there will be a few more reports, top-tens and best-of-decades to discuss before we see out 2009.

Nokia flagship stores closing

Old news I know but Ewan at All About Symbian has posted an amusing question, Top Ten Things Nokia Could Have Done With Their London Nokia Store.

No. 7 on the list is the key for me, the helpful addition of a cash-till might have made all the difference. Obviously, Nokia didn’t want to actually sell phones in the store, that might have upset their other customers, the Mobile Network Operators. Ridiculous.