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Mobile Data: Ads, Carriers, and Devices

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009

Lots of new mobile data coming out over the past few days.  Since we are operating in an emerging category one has to make certain assumptions about how the mobile market will unfold.  Each new data point can validate or debunk ones assumptions.

Mobile Advertising

  • Mobile coupon redemption will hit $6B by 2014 according to Juniper Research [source].  Unless there is a new compelling scenario (e.g. eBay scenario helped create PayPal) this will be a very slow road.
  • Mobile will grab 11.7% of all digital ad spend by 2014 [source].  Mobile ad monetization is actually an area where lots of product innovation needs to happen.

Carriers and Connections

  • Mobile carrier wireless data revenues grew 27% y/y in Q3 2009 hitting $11.3B. While AT&T (with exclusive iPhone) is growing their data revenues fastest 6% q/q, but Verizon and Sprint are not far behind 5% q/q.[source]
  • T-Mobile (33M customers) even with some nice G1 Android phones lost 77,000 customers for the first time in history [source].
  • WiFi Hotspots hit 1.2B connections growing 47% in 2009 [source].  This is obviously good but big opportunity to provide centralized authentication and billing.  Its crazy that you need to create an account and enter credit card for each WiFi Hotspot provider.

Mobile Devices

  • In 2010 over 1B mobile devices will connect to the Internet vs. 1.3B PCs that are connected to the Internet. Mobile devices growing 2.5x faster then PCs so it won’t be long before more mobile devices are connected to the Internet then PCs. Happening incredibly fast.  [source]
  • 200M “Smartphones” (iPhone, Android, etc.) will ship in 2010 [source].  One smartphone generates as much data usage as thirty feature phones so this is analogous to shipping 600M feature phones [source] In my opinion this divergence will increase dramatically as the content (apps and web services) improve over the coming years.

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iPod Nano Pushes Polar into a Freeze

Thursday, September 10th, 2009

Here is another example of how single-purpose devices are being co-opted by Apple’s general purpose devices.  I am a weekend-warrior (i.e. prosumer) who bikes and runs for enjoyment, and competes occasionally in triathlons.  Put simply, I am exactly the kind of market Polar needs to capture to remain viable. A few years back I spent $300+ on a Polar watch that provided fancy heart-rate monitoring and motion sensors to capture my running rate.  Put that same purchase decision in front of me today and there is no way I would buy the Polar watch again; instead I would buy the iPod Nano.  It supports all of the capabilities on my Polar watch that I actually used. Not a good day  for a Polar Product Manager when a single purpose device like the Polar cannot do its single task better then a general purpose device like the iPod Nano.

iPod Nano | $199

  • Watch
  • Music/video player
  • FM receiver
  • Video camera
  • Pedometer
  • Heart-rate monitor (coming soon)
  • On device training tools (i.e. graphs and charts)
  • Online training communities

Polar FT80 | $349

  • Watch
  • Heart-rate monitor
  • GPS (in my own personal experience 50% of connections time-out)
  • On device training tools
  • Online training tools (very poor links and even worse communities)

I see two choices for Polar:

  • Go Exclusively Professional:
    • Sell to professional athletes and most shut down their prosumer “weekend warrior” business which requires significant investment in marketing and distribution.  Frankly, this is a tiny market — you are basically selling to college and pro athletes.
  • Embrace and extend general purpose devices
    • Build add-on devices like a heart-rate sensor for the iPod Nano.
    • Polar is a brand I trust in this space and I would be willing to spend $40 on a Polar heart-rate sensor.

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