Mobile: The Game-Changer Marketers Should Beware
by Craig Hordlow, Chief Strategist
With so much excitement about the iPhone amongst both businesses and consumers, as well as the vertical market share growth charted by the device (from 5 to 10% between 2008 and 2009), it’s puzzling to see a recent Gartner Inc. report predict that Google’s Android, currently at 2% market share, will leapfrog to 14.5% by 2012, making it the second-largest mobile platform at the great expense of the iPhone’s market share.
The Gartner report predicts that the iPhone’s growth will become stagnant, growing a few points to a whopping 12% by 2012. Why such a slow-down for the iPhone? And what does this mean for marketers who are just now catching onto the surge of client interest and investment?
Most of the projected growth is attributed to Google’s own ability and efforts to promote the Android, as well as its own apps and the large number of manufacturers making the open source device, which will make it a cheaper option than the iPhone. Additionally, the iPhone, not being open source, has limitations, whereas an open platform allows developers to implement functionality the platform providers haven’t gotten around to yet, are not good at, or simply put: other people could do it better
What should marketers be doing?
- Follow Android’s market share growth and start talking to your clients or in-house teams about the emergence of Android so they are comfortable with the change if and when it happens
- Study the mobile apps already on Android, and what your competitors are doing on the platform
- Get your technical teams up to speed on Android by downloading the SDK:
http://developer.android.com/guide/index.html - Create your demo project long before anyone else does!
