Posted: March 24th, 2010 | Author: Jon Lund
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Hopes are high that the iPad – Apples new tablet computer – will open up a new life for online magazines when it starts shipping in early April. With good reason, my latest report shows. Danish experience with “traditional” online “flip-pages” e-papers, indicates a massive appeal of the printed-edition-metaphor in online publishing. In January 2010 15% of all adult Danes visited at least one e-paper, up 26% from same period 2008.
The report (“Waiting for the iPad: the track record of Danish e-paper solutions” – find reference below) shows the time spend at Danish e-papers to have doubled from 5 to more than 10 minutes per user during the past two years. Also the study shows users of e-papers flips a lot of pages during a visit – actually e-paper readers turn 3 times the number of pages of ordinary web-site users. However they don’t spend more time, simply browsing quickly through the e-paper. The study builds on data from the two largest e-paper solution providers, zmags and i-paper, powering a host of online weekly ad circulars and e-magazines.
Originally I myself was quite hesitant embracing the e-paper concept, which seemed strangely archaic in it’s attempt to restore “good old days” publishing, imposing limits to yourself which did not make sense in an online world. Lately, however, I’ve come to recognize the value of the book (or printed newspaper) as a browsing medium: it holds the promise of selection and quality, of covering all relevant aspects of a subject, of bringing you the satisfaction of getting to know what is worth to know in a limited time. Also the advent of videos and rich media content during the past years have enriched the epaper, actually allowing for image galleries, embedded videos, overlay text presentation, search, integration of social media elements, comments, integration to facebook and twitter and the web at large.
In the report I predict some low-cost projects and a few show-off prestige projects to emerge during 2010, but find major take-off unlikely to occur before at the earliest 2012-2013. The reason is, that iPad publication faces a number of barriers, which will need to be addressed. One is off course the number of iPads on the market. In a previous report I estimated first year sales to reach 20.000 units in Denmark, growing steeply to some 200.000 sold in 2013. Also the revenue-split model laid forth by Apple, claiming 30 percent for themselves poses an obstacle, like the lack of support of Flash in the iPad meaning most established e-paper (which are Flash-based) will need to be re-programmed. Finally most of the e-papers surveyed in the report are relatively simple e-papers, basically being static images without much interaction apart from flipping pages and zooming in and out. A more full-blown e-paper concept will increase the cost – and production time – of producing e-papers: Story-lines, content, text, images and videos will have to be created, the complexity of lay-outing the e-paper will increase and – if social elements are added to the e-paper – the dialogue at the e-paper will have to be monitored and nursed.
Send, download and print. Price: 345 ddk/€45,50 (ex. VAT)
“Waiting for the iPad: the track record of Danish e-paper solutions”. 14 pages, 3 illustrations.
To order the report, send an email to jon@jon-lund.com including your contact information with subject: “Buy Jon Lunds Epaper succes”, and you’ll receive both the report as pdf-file and an invoice.
Posted: January 28th, 2010 | Author: Jon Lund
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The Apple iPad doesn’t challenge one, but seven (today) distinct markets with yesterdays launch of the iPad tablet flat-screen-computer. This is one of the key findings after I’ve analysed the market potentials of the new fabled device. Read all about it in my new report “The seven faces of iPad. Accessing the potentials of Apples new tablet-device” (link below).
Not only net-books find themselves in a new uncomfortable situation. Also the gaming console industry (Nintendo), the e-book readers (Kindle), the GNDs (Garmin), portable media players (iPods (!)) and the smartphone-market (Androids) are, in varying degree, under fire. The iPad may also give rise to a whole new market, professional and private-use applications, taking the promises of the iPhone app store to yet higher levels.
Why? Because the iPad manifests itself as the first true convergence-device to this day.
I also estimate the market potentials of the iPad and find find all the affected markets selling a total of two billion devices a year on a worldwide basis. Given this potential I find the iPad to be able to sell some 50 million devices by 2013, starting out with some 5 million i 2010.
Here’s what I find the iPad-market to look like:
Send, download and print. Price: 345 ddk/€45,50 (ex. VAT)
“The seven faces of iPad. Assessing the potentials of Apples new tablet-device”. 16 pages.
To order the report, send an email to jon@jon-lund.com including your contact information with subject: “Buy Jon Lunds The seven faces of iPad”, and you’ll receice both the report as pdf-file and an invoice.
Posted: January 13th, 2010 | Author: Jon Lund
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I had a hunch from international stats – now it’s for sure: iPhone-owners really do use their phones extended capabilities. Neither talk, texting or music does it in itself. You’ll have to add barcode-readers, geo-contexual weather forcast, GPS, gaming and similar apps (programs that runs on smartphones) to get the full picture of what iPhones are really used for by their owners.
These are at least the implications of my latest report, which surveys the use of Apples Danish app-store in December 2009, and finds that more than 2,2 million apps downloaded during the Christmas-month (For more detail se below: “Christmas sales at Apple App-store. Accessing the Danish market for iPhone applications”). 2 million downloads in a country with a total population on some 5,5 million people and with something like 200.000 iphones in circulation. That’s a huge number.
No cash-cow – yet
In the report I also find total December app-sales revenues to reach some 3 million dkk (€ 400.000) – estimated 200.000 paid apps at an average price of 15 dkk (€ 2). 60 percent heroff is left to the guys who’ve made the apps, when Apple and the Danish VAT has taken their shares. That’s not really enough to make anybody rich. Not even though it represents a growth of some 150 percent since last Christmas, according to the report. I actually doubt anyone would be able to make a decent business selling apps in Denmark – at least not if the confine themselves to the less than 6 million Danish-speaking worldwide audience. (Go English and it’s quite another story – the “Outside“ weather-app of Danish Robocats might actually make some money. Sales are bound to be good given the excelent reviews it has received)
The real potential is in free apps
By far the largest number of downloaded apps – more than 2 million in itself, actually – I found to be free. In the report I particularly look into stats given to me by Danish Broadcasting corporation, DR on their radio-programme app “P3“.
In the first two month after release, it was downloaded 60.000 times – close to 1/3 of all iphone-owners have actively engaged themselves in installing and using the app! This to me shows were to find the true benefit of apps: if you do it right, apps really have the potentials of bringing you very close to your customers. Actually right in their pockets. And allthough iPhone penetration still has a long way to go, it has reached enough – actively interested – people to give it a go.
Send, download and print. Price: 345 ddk/€45,50 (ex. VAT)
“Christmas sales at Apple App-store. Accessing the Danish market for iPhone applications” is in 15 pages and includes 4 graphs and 3 illustrations.
To order the report, send an email to jon@jon-lund.com including your contact information with subject: “Buy Jon Lunds December app-store report”, and you’ll receice both report as pdf-file and an invoice.
Posted: April 22nd, 2009 | Author: Jon Lund
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The success of the Apples App-store (from which you can dowload applications to your iPhone) has taken the world – and Nokia, Ericsson, Samsung and the lot of competitors – by surprise. Launched only some 8 months ago, Apple now gears up to celebrate download number 1 billion. As we speak the count has just surpassed 992 millions compared to 956 millions one week ago. With this pace it looks like they’ll hit the 1 billion mark tomorrow.
Move towards ubiquitious computing
The iPhone/application store-phenomenon is – I think – by all means extremely interesting. To me it witnesses the coming of a new era in which computers finally move away from being office-machines and steps into real life. Moves away from the keyboard-writing metaphor into an intuitive-omnipresence paradigm. Let go of ridig written “commands” (“run” or “save”) and embracing a much more physical interface, in which it understands instructions like touches, moves, blows and noice.
Draws on and urges to transparancy
In the iphone/application store combination I also see the embodyment of an era of openness and transparancy. The first tech-pieces that actually holds the possibilities of large-scale drawing the tons of data out there in the cloud (that is: the internet) together in applications, that are really meaningfull. That finally promises to condensate the vast amount of information and utilize them in applications that runs intuitively and in context with you’re present whereabouts, on your handset. And that thereby fuels the transparency paradigm: give and you shall be given.
Application store
Apple not only created a great piece of technology (the iPhone). They also opened up their APIs allowing everybody to develop their own applications which could run on the iPhone, set up the application store which is tied into all iphones and ipod touches, making one single one stop marketplace for consumers to find and buy new applications. And then Apple adopted a revenue sharing model with developers (70 percent to developers, 30 percent to Apple), giving a fantastic incentive for devellopers to create apps. In the wake of this, all other mobile manufactures and their surroundings have woken up and are now all getting into the race as well. Nokia is set to open their app store (OVI) in may, and Microsoft their maketplace over the summer, all copying the apple-move.
Keynote at Børsen Executive Club the 19th of may
I’ll elaborate on this on the 19th of May, when I do a keynote-presentation at Børsen Executive Club in Copenhagen. In my presentation I’ll give a run-through of my own favorite apps, highlighting exactly how the era of the mobile phones that are dawning also paves way for a new user-experience and a new business possibilities for virtually all industries. The presentation explains in a simple and easy to understand what the new phones, apps and app-stores are all about, and ties on to how the new phones draws on the fruits of the social network-revolution, on the emergence of crowdsourcing and customermade technologies, how it builds on longtailed, networked, economics and how it heralds the coming of an age of openness, not only in the social sphere but also on the data and applications.
