My teen daughter complains that I treat her like my own private marketing lab. Over the years, when a new cellphone comes in with apps to review, I learned to toss the black slab at her and say, “here, play with this and tell me what you think.” As a card carrying member of the mobile generation, she is as good a tester as I know, and she is pretty good at teaching her doddering pop how to navigate some of the stranger interfaces that bedevil phones. Except when she isn’t. Most of her friends envy the girl with the gadget Dad who snags all the cool new toys. Not her. “I am not a focus group, okay?” She is threatening to stamp that phrase onto a T-shirt. Occasionally, she mumbles vague threats about a tattoo. This is understandable. I imagine even the amusement park owner’s kids get bored of free roller coaster rides after a while. “I don’t want to look at another phone, thank you. You aren’t even paying me for this. Most of that stuff is for adults, anyway.” Teen girls say the word “adults” as if it tastes like asparagus. Until the next cool thing comes in the door. “Hey, you get Nickelodeon cartoons on this thing..Ooh, is that an Instinct?”
When it comes to the iPhone, the roles get reversed in my house. “Dad, will you put that thing away? We’re trying to watch Spongebob.” Listening to the Pandora streaming music app apparently clashes with the relentlessly unfunny shenanigans at the Krusty Krab. I admit that since, the App Store opened in July, now I am the kid in the candy store, exploring every possible application, even piling up iTunes fees. Impressively, Steve Jobs announced that we downloaded 60 million apps in the first month. I believe him. Without my App Store activity they might have had to round that number down to 59 million. For those of us who spent the last decade imagining a rich, diverse future of mobile media, the App Store is our Future World amusement park. With many of the apps free or 99-cents a throw, we get to rifle through an unprecedented range of trials just to see what sticks in our everyday use. For the past month I have become my own focus group, and my personal experiences with the iPhone suggest a few things about the future of mobile media generally.
#1 Either/Or Pricing
Some developers tell me that the sweet spots of App Store pricing cluster high and low, 99-cents or $9.99. In fact, putting even a nominal price on an app confers a sense of value users respect. Moreover, the superior merchandising platform in the App Store allows top tier publishers to make the case for a $10 download. Some developers are issuing free trial versions of paid apps, which is a very smart move, I think and brings a real shareware model to phones. The App Store also drives the first nail into the onerous application subscriptions carriers love to throw at us. Just as a la carte, per-track pricing for digital music downloads made more sense to consumers than “music subscriptions,” one-time fees for applications is a better way to go. True, publishers have ongoing costs associated with maintaining these apps, but then they should try to upsell premium services to their installed base.
#2 Push Button Mobile
As we suspected for a long time, surfacing application icons to the top of a customizable mobile interface accelerates use immeasurably. When Apple added home page shortcuts to its iPhone browser last year my mobile Web use soared because I was one button press away from CNN Mobile, Weather Channel, and iGoogle. The same is true of applications that used to sit on my deck, forgotten several levels deep in the “Applications” folder. Coupon apps, mobile Facebook, local directories, etc. have been on my phones for years, but now I actually remember that I have them. Mobile discovery isn’t the only issue in merchandising. Mobile memory is just as important.
#3 Mobile v. Web
When done well, mobile access to dynamic data is more compelling and usable than the Web and I believe in the long term it will negatively impact un-mobilized Web publishers. Facebook, eBay, news and headline reading generally is now easier for me on my iPhone than it is on the Web. The experience is more focused and less cluttered. Even with a laptop nearby in my living room, I will use the iPhone to multi task when the TV is on. Hence, “Dad, will you put down that iPhone?” Mobile access will affect the Web eco-system.
#4 It’s a Habit Not a Revolution
My final point actually comes to me again via my daughter. This veteran mobilista is unimpressed by all of the games and applications I toss at her, and she continues to sniff at my iPhone. The one application that matters most to her is texting. Everything else is a distraction. She is way beyond her dad’s infantile fascination with what a mobile gadget can do. She wants to know what it can do for her. I admit to seeing the light after a month gobbling the many sweets the App Store has to offer. In the end, of the scores of programs I tried, only a few slipped into my everyday use. To be sure, my peripheral vision expanded to include more apps on an occasional basis. But ultimately, the eye-popping novelty of mobile TV or a graphics-heavy handheld game does not sell this medium. This is a medium of habit. The winners won’t dazzle me. The winners will be frictionless and indispensible on a day to day basis.
