Last week at Mobile World Congress, Andy Rubin, Senior VP of Mobile at Google, told reporters about their increased tablet focus: ‘2012 is going to be the year that we double down and make sure we’re winning in that space’. Despite Android being the most popular OS on smartphones, the same success hasn’t come easily to their tabs. At this stage, there are few Android tablet apps, very few good ones, and they are difficult to find in the store.

The release of the ‘new iPad’ on Wednesday brought with it nothing earth-shattering; evolutionary improvements including a higher-resolution Retina display, a bigger A5X processor, a better five-megapixel rear camera, and 4G LTE connectivity – which many countries, including the UK, do not currently have the infrastructure to support. Although it was definitely an anti-climax, the impressive screen capabilities will allow for further advances in rich media advertising.

Apple’s tablets have just over 60% market share globally, leaving Google’s Android OS struggling to compete in a saturated post-PC market. When the iPad was first released in 2010, Apple already had users educated in iOS. The iPad 2 brought the perceived necessary feature of a camera, and a flat back for typing, to what was already a revolutionary product. Apple sold more iPads in Q4 last year than any computer manufacturer in the world sold PCs. Viewers of the press conference were surprised to hear a direct attack on Samsung’s devices from Tim Cook, as Apple has traditionally focused on its superiority rather than others’ shortcomings. Samsung was quick to issue a rather compelling response.

The iPad is likely, yet again, to be the fastest-selling piece of tech ever invented, with InMobi finding last week that 1 in 3 US mobile web users intended to buy it. It will hit stores across the US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Switzerland and Japan on 16^th March, perhaps the most ambitious part of their plan. The simultaneous price drop of the iPad 2 will further choke competitors in the tablet space. Apple has also made a change to the App Store that now offers catalogues their own section, perhaps acknowledging the tablet’s impressive role in mcommerce, and once again demonstrating their market leadership. Given Windows 8 is now in beta, we are expecting Microsoft to level some kind of ‘screen agnostic’ solutions soon. The jury is still out on whether this is a feasible and viable competitor.

Apple has dealt another blow to Google, in the form of plans to drop their Maps service in favour of their own, just months after Google started charging businesses for use…  It seems very difficult for other developers to overcome Apple’s dominance in the tablet market. And each tweak of services, from Facebook to Amazon, is an attempt to inch ahead in the great global tech race.

As that war rumbles on, we can reveal that the search for the hottest man in mobile has finally been called off as NMA named Somo’s Innovation Director, Maani Safa. Our good friend Hugh Fletcher, National Digital Manager of Audi UK, was also voted the Most Innovative Individual at the UTalk Marketing Awards. Well played both of you!

Hugh Fletcher, UTalk's Most Innovative Individual

We know that social media is an increasingly popular medium for consumers to research, discover and share information about products and brands, including engaging with marketing campaigns which drive consumers in-store. Facebook is already the most engaging online property in the US, accounting for 14.6 percent of all time spent on the web, and so its move into mobile is an exciting prospect for brands looking to create deep engagement and extend their reach.

Currently, the US has 60 million Facebook mobile users, along with 30 million in the UK. India is expected to overtake the US as the country with the largest number of Facebook fans, and given that mobile penetration has passed 75% across Asia, there are many significant and exciting opportunities for advertisers, in both developed and emerging markets.

The potential of Facebook as an effective platform for advertisers will grow with its own ambitions to become the single hub for internet users – the place where they not only connect with friends but also brands – the only place you need to visit while online. Along with the advertising announcement, they have also launched a collaborative push to improve mobile web standards to give their fans the best mobile experience possible.

As the potential revenues from social media are beginning to be realised, other publishers, including Linkedin and Twitter are aggressively expanding their advertising programs. Although neither is as ubiquitous as Facebook, both have incredibly mobile users. Amazon also spotted its chance to move seamlessly from an online store to a lucrative publishing property. Business Insider reports that it is now generating $1 billion in advertising revenues. All of this news must be worrying Google ad execs as it potentially hits their primary business.

We expect more tweaks and changes as Facebook tests this as yet unproven inventory and their users’ tolerance for mobile ads. As they say at Facebook ‎‘done is better than perfect’.

Following last week’s disruptive Google AdMob auction announcement, this is yet another development to shake-up the mobile advertising landscape. If you have any questions about what the changes might mean for you, get in touch…

Google Android bot creates sparkly cases for MWC visitors

There wasn’t a great deal in terms of new hardware releases, save HTC’s new smartphone that *whisper it* looks as good as Apple’s iPhone, if not better. Google’s Android stand seemed to be a hangover from their CES exhibition and Blackberry was yet again handing Playbooks out for free in a bid to get developers on board. Samsung is saving its big reveal of the new Galaxy S3 for an Apple-style launch event, while their S2 won Best Smartphone at the coveted GSMA awards.

But Facebook did finally made their big mobile advertising announcement, however, the ‘sponsored stories’ model, with little of the personalisation that they would be capable of, was something of a safe play.

Data privacy was a hot topic both at conference and at home. Helen @technokitten Keegan’s Heroes of Mobile World Congress held a fringe event with MEF and chaired by the notorious TechCrunch editor @mikebutcher, where top mobile execs, including our COO Carl @Uminski discussed the issue.

Google has found itself in hot water over the changes they have made to privacy settings, which the EU has now decided breach European law. This came just a few days after Path was found to be uploading all of their users’ content to its servers without permission, and US lawmakers, along with Apple, have kicked into action.

By this time next week, we should be in possession of our very own iPad 3. Despite the rather creepy invite, especially at a time when the media is a bit frightened that the big digital players are rooting through their bins, we’re keen to see what they have in store. And although it’s not clever to make predictions about Apple’s tech, we’re expecting a quad core processor, higher screen resolution and more RAM – as fast and as detailed as the tech allows.

Windows 8 is now in beta, and should be the first example of an OS that works smoothly across desktop and mobile. While advertisers might jump for joy at the prospect of developing across three platforms simultaneously, the usage patterns don’t lend themselves well to shovelling the same content from one interface to another. Just yet.

The rumour mill has started churning again for the release of Jelly Bean, Google’s fifth yummy instalment of the Android OS. If it’s anything like the ice-cream sandwiches, which were freely flowing at the MWC Google party, we can’t wait.

Why not? We believe that the biggest barrier for advertisers in this space isn’t apathy, it’s confusion. There are many decisions to make and much technical information to cut through. That’s why Somo was founded in 2009 – to help clients make sense of mobile.

Since then we’ve grown to become the largest independent mobile marketing agency in the world, operating in London, Los Angeles, San Francisco and, most recently, Singapore and New York too.

Today we’re welcoming a new look for Somo that reflects the global business we’ve become. It’s out with the orange and in with the blue! We hope you like it.

From this…

To this!

Somo’s original analysis of the IMRG/Hitwise Top 100 Online Retailers shows that only 26% of the most popular sites on the web have an iPad app, less than 20% have created Android tablet apps, and only 10% have built a website for tablet browsing.

Some of the other main findings from Somo’s research:

-  PC World, Thomson and BHS are among 20 top retailers with no tablet and smartphone apps or site

- 43% have no iPhone app and 63% no app for Android phones

- Only 57% of online retailers have a website that works on mobile

- A review of these retailers confirmed that the main consumer complaint was the lack of any payment process for apps and mobile sites

Tesco came out on top as the only retailer that had several iPad commerce, publishing and enterprise apps, and a website that works on tablets and smartphones. Although TopShop recently stated that around two-thirds of their mobile visitors came from tablets, they do not have a tablet site or app for their customers.

Given that shopping is the number one activity performed on tablets in the UK[1], these results show retailers are lagging behind consumers in embracing new technologies.

Nick Hynes, Chief Executive Officer at Somo, said: “The astonishing thing is that almost half of the top online retailers haven’t even got a mobile website. This is very basic stuff. A well built site does retailers the world of good, allowing customers to make shopping comparisons on their phones while in store, and browse leisurely at home on their tablet.  These companies have to start looking at the role that mobile plays in their customer journey; at the moment they’re missing a trick.”

For further insight Somo’s research is available to download at www.somoglobal.com/news.

Our friendly ad networks will be chipping in for drinks and all of you are very much invited to attend.

So don’t be Barce-lonely next Wednesday, make sure you put this in your diary and invite your colleagues. Party starts at 6.30pm at the Adventure Bar, 20 Bedford Street, Convent Garden WC2E 9HP.

RSVP to marketing@somoagency.com.

Our new Innovation Director, Maani Safa, who was formerly Product Director, has been chosen in the Innovative Individual category as well as Hugh Fletcher, the Head of Digital Marketing at Audi, who Somo works with on a retained basis for all of their mobile products.

Well done to everyone at Somo and good luck for the event on March 6th!

Somo’s Andrew French, one of the few specialist Trading Directors in the mobile industry, was quoted speaking in the US to Chantal Tode at Mobile Marketer about the huge fluctuation expected in the coming months, particularly when Facebook enters the market.

His broad experience in strategy and sales  helps him to understand the complex media mix, including ad networks, CPI operators, ad exchanges and working directly with publishers. Today, he personally negotiates with our partners to get the right media at the right price globally.

This means that advertisers will only pay the maximum amount needed to secure a click and not necessarily the amount bid. The advertiser’s ad rank will be calculated by multiplying each maximum bid by their Google quality score, which is mainly determined by click through rate. So the ad that is served will not automatically be the one with the highest bid. The minimum bid floor has also been removed.

Disrupting the mobile landscape

 This hugely disruptive move by Google, just after Facebook’s record-breaking $1billion filing, has turned the mobile advertising world on its head overnight and will cause erratic pricing and performance across many campaigns.

In December, Facebook reported that more than half of their 845 million users were accessing the service via mobile, and its move into mobile advertising would have made them one of the biggest publishers overnight. With 1 in 4 online display ads delivered by Facebook, with excellent targeting, they were tipped to take the lead in personalised mobile ads, but from today, they will be presented with a very unstable landscape. Apple’s iAD has quickly followed this news by cutting their prices, and other networks have tied up budgets ahead of these changes.

Competition hotting up in mobile

Mobile is the space where advertisers are starting to move their budgets to catch-up to the amount of time users spend here. As ad dollars start to move, there is inevitable competition between the biggest global players to secure those budgets. There’ll be further disruption when Facebook enters the market but this is likely to work in the interests of advertisers as not only will there be more ad placements to choose from, more should become available with relatively good targeting options.

What’s in store for the future?

There will definitely be a time of instability until the market finds the right equilibrium in the new auction, and the landscape will be further complicated in the coming weeks by Facebook. We may see online quality scores mirrored on mobile – paying extra attention to relevancy of ads and the quality of landing pages. This moves the focus onto users and would be in-line with Google’s push to improve the mobile experience.

The Somo founders, and many of our team, have been through similar macro changes before in the search marketing industry and our data analysts are already working to establish trends and patterns across all clients.

We’ll be making sense of this complexity for our clients and putting our experience to good use in optimising their campaigns for the best results.

If you have any questions about what the changes might mean for you, get in touch…

Love is in the air between Facebook and mobile payments solution firm Bango as they signed an agreement this week. Although the love nest may be a little crowded, with deals already drawn up with Amazon and EA, the new relationship with Bango indicates that Facebook is keen to replicate on mobile the success of in-app purchases via desktop. With all the distinct pleasures of sharing and competing with friends, in the most convenient way possible, is there a social mobile app store on the horizon?

Relations have become increasingly frosty between Apple and rogue developers who are playing the App Store system to get high rankings, and therefore more downloads. We have always advised our partners against such practices, offering them advertising-led solutions instead. Apple takes very seriously its position in high quality and rigorous standards. Hell hath no fury like a tech giant scorned.

Sad news from The Verge this week; online dating site algorithms don’t necessarily bear any relation to how well you might suit potential love matches found on the net. We’d have thought the last place techy jargon would help would be in the dating game, instead hoping a mutual love of hockey would be a good start, and that the secret fascination with badger baiting might be something you could learn to enjoy together…

There really is nothing like distilling anything and everything into numbers and pictures, so here’s some excellent Valentine’s infographics:

For the singleton, ever gotten a date online? Find the most popular online dating sites, breakdown of users, and the things men and women are most likely to lie about on their profile…

For romantics, how to pull of the perfect marriage proposal. 88% of people are waiting for their soulmate, 50% of people blow the surprise, and the average age for marriage in the US is 27 for women and 29 for men. So either breathe a sigh of relief of start to panic!

And for those who can’t get enough love, Valentine’s Day by Numbers. Did you know, the festival of fertility was first celebrated in Ancient Rome?

And finally, an elaborate proposal. You’d have to be very confident she was going to say yes!