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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Facebook Update for Android App

Facebook is out with another update for its Android app exactly one day after it released an update for its iOS app. This new app lets users change their profile picture using the app. Additionally, users can even choose and control what News Feeds they want to receive notifications for and what information they want displayed.

Users can hide stuff they don’t want to appear, and can even report spam on a post in News Feed. Users can also initiate a group message easily and without going through several steps. The app itself lets users check in on what their friends are up to via their activities. Its possible to share updates, photos and videos instantly with people you pick from your friend list. Notifications about every time a friend likes or comments on a post will appear on the app. Chatting and texting is also possible directly and the messages go and are received without any lags.

iOS got a new version the version 5.6 with which users can update their cover photos directly. Being able to change the cover photo is a feature that is happily welcomed in the Facebook world. The Facebook iOS app works with the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, running iOS 5.0 or higher. You wont miss what your friends are up to, on Facebook and even if your business trip has you off shoring somewhere too far to know what is going on during the weekend life back home, you can stay updated with this app on the go. If you want to instantaneously share an update, video or pictures you can do so with this app. You can even receive notifications each time someone comments or likes a post.

Facebook knows the importance of having to update their app constantly and even though the features on Facebook have not had many changes, people want to have access to those all the time through their very portable devices. January saw two updates, one where pictures load up faster this again is dependent on how quick your system is. The second change was in the form of giving users more control over their account.

The app lets users even send voice messages, which is uber cool since you can simply speak into your phone and have a fun message carried along to your friend in an instant. This brings out the messenger aspect of Facebook. The Messenger app for Android and iOS both work seamlessly. Through the Messenger, you can send a voice message by clicking the record voice option, and then by long pressing the red button during the record. Releasing the record button will have your message recorded and ready to go out. At present the Messenger lets you record only a minute long message. This seems sufficient as written messages don’t usually take up more than a minute of reading. Longer messages could hamper the whole Messenger appeal and will also result in unwanted lags. Facebook however is focusing on promoting and improving the Messenger app.

Source: - 91mobiles

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