How Do People Shop for Mobile Phones?

Demand for mobile phones shows no signs of slowing down. Google teamed with Compete to gauge the impact of digital on mobile shoppers, and discovered that online has fundamentally changed the purchase path. With wireless related searches up 82%, and four times as many shoppers using online video to research, brands need to raise awareness and inform shoppers’ decisions online.

Source: google

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What I learned about mobile in China

In China I met several entrepreneurs and others at the Bluetooth World conference there. China has a very different mobile culture, so thought I'd share what I learned here:

1. Facebook and Twitter and many other sites don't work. Neither do their mobile apps. Yes, you can use a VPN or a proxy server, but most sites are very slow compared to when I use those sites in the US. (The government blocks those sites. Most of the entrepreneurs I talked with said the government does that to protect local businesses and their own pocketbooks).

2. Almost every high-end user had an iPhone. Others had Android. I never saw Windows Phone or Blackberry's being used. Android is coming on strong, everyone admits.

3. Every iPhone was jailbroken. Why? Because using the Apple App Store is painful at best and totally unusable at worst. Why? The speed of downloading apps from Apple is horrid. So, everyone makes their phone have a Chinese app store so they can download apps fast. That means Apple will see lower revenue per device than it does in the states, where it can sell movies, music, and apps directly.

4. Every service has a Chinese copy. In the shot I took below there is a YouTube copy. Actually several copies. 

5. The Chinese hate the firewall too, but they say it just means you gotta be "entrepreneurial" to get around it. Either by using Chinese copies of services you like, or by using VPNs.

6. There isn't LTE in Shanghai yet. That I thought was totally shocking, given how modern and wealthy the city is. My phones, back in San Francisco, are dramatically faster on videos and things like Waze. Everyone says that LTE finally got approval from the government and should be showing up by the end of the year.

7. There is a strong mobile culture. It felt a lot like San Francisco, with lots of apps for local food, transit, etc. Plus, the people i met with knew exactly how the local apps compared with things like Yelp or OpenTable.

8. Many apps have "offline" features. Baidu maps, for instance, aren't as accurate as Google's maps, but they work offline, which matters because of lack of LTE and also pricing plans that charge you per megabyte downloaded.

9. There are lots of low-cost Android phones and systems coming out. Think about how Facebook's new Home App takes over app launching and you are close to how these new Chinese phones take over your notifications and app screens. They also strip out all Google stuff and add in their own apps and search. 

10. Everyone knows how to get their phones customized. You can pay people to root your phones for a few dollars and load you up with the apps you want. This lets people who buy very low-end phones get similar experiences you'll get on more expensive phones.

For those of you who have visited China, or who live there (Google+ was the only social network I could use directly -- the others I used through Flipboard just fine) what other things have you noticed about how Chinese use mobile phones vs. how people in US and Europe use them?

Author:- Robert Scoble

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BlackBerry launches first Z10 device in India at Rs 43,490

BlackBerry today launched its much-awaited smartphone Z10, powered by its latest operating system 'BlackBerry 10', in India at a price of Rs 43,490, taking rivals Apple and Samsung head on in the world's second largest telecom market. The Canadian smartphone maker has launched its latest model in India nearly a month after the global launch of new operating system 'BlackBerry 10' and two devices Z10 and Q10 on this platform on January 30. "Without a doubt the BlackBerry Z10 is among the most important and much-awaited BlackBerry launches in the history of the Indian smartphone industry," BlackBerry Managing Director (India) Sunil Dutt said in a statement. 

With BlackBerry 10, the company has "re-designed, re-engineered and re-invented" BlackBerry to create a new and unique mobile computing experience, he added. "Although, the device is priced high, this positioning by BlackBerry was on expected lines. The operating systems looks good and has some excellent features," Gartner Principal Research Analyst Anshul Gupta said. The new device is powered by a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, and has 2GB RAM.

It comes with 16GB onboard memory, which can be expanded up to 64GB using a microSD card. It has 8 megapixel rear camera with LED flash, a 2MP HD camera in front and its connectivity options include Wi-Fi, 2G, 3G, 4G, Bluetooth 4.0, microUSB 2.0 and NFC. The device supports content in eight Indian languages - Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Devanagiri (Hindi), Gurmukhi (Punjabi), Gujarati, and Bengali as well as support for third-party solutions for Indian language input.

Source:- http://www.indianexpress.com

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Are you ready for BlackBerry 10?

It’s a Brand New Year. Are You Ready for BlackBerry 10 and BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10? 

It can be easy to mistaken BlackBerry 10 as simply another new smartphone that will get some space on the shelves. But for those of us who work in the industry, and particularly at Research In Motion, we see it quite differently. BlackBerry 10 is a whole new platform that has unparalleled multitasking capabilities, gesture-based interactions, and is rich with features that can serve your personal and work lives 24/7. Every feature, every gesture, and every detail is designed to keep you moving.

Read more on BlackBerry Official Website

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