Improvements of iPhone camera

Quality of iPhone camera improves from generation to generation. The photo collage shows how much the iPhone camera has improved since 2007.

The iPhone 4S is dramatically clearer and sharper than previous iPhone versions. Using separate focus and exposure in Camera+ on the iPhone 4 & 4S significantly helped create a more balanced exposure.

The device steadily improved from 3-megapixels, to 5-megapixels, with the iPhone 4S serving up an 8-megapixel sensor and dramatically improved lens technology.

To see the comparison in full, click here.

Top 10 iPhone5 Questions Before The Launch

The buzz about Apple’s “Let’s Talk iPhone” event is getting more and more strained. Several hours are left before we get to know what Tim Cook and his crew has to unveil, but by then, we all have our own expectations, suppositions and hopes. Mashable.com - the largest independent online news site dedicated to covering digital culture, social media and technology, has conducted a poll, to summarize what we all are expecting to finally be introduced. Here are the results:

On the question about what will be unveiled tomorrow at the company’s Cupertino campus, 48.11%of the respondents answered that they believe Apple will announce Both iPhone5 and iPhone 4S, that will be cheaper than iPhone4. The vast majority of more than 8000 participants answered that the new iPhone will definitely contain the iPad's A5 dual-core chip, and will have an upgraded camera.

75% of the sample also believes that the new iPhone will have system-wide voice interaction and larger display. As for the design of the new iPhone, 46.1% thinks the iPhone5 will look radically different, with new teardrop-shaped cross-section, inspired by the MacBook Air, but with the homebutton not redesigned at all. The respondents also hope that the turn-by-turn directions will be included, but 57% of them think that there won’t be any NFC chip inside the iPhone for easy wireless payments.

And finally, it’s known that Apple and Adobe will hold press events at the same time (10 A.M. PDT) on Tuesday morning. There has been a rumor that the companies have something in common to share with the public, but the audience seems not to hope that Apple’s problems with Adobe and Flash will ever be resolved.

Apple- The Most Admired Company In Terms Of Its Customer Experience

Apple has been crowned the most admired company in terms of its customer experience, in a survey of global business leaders. The survey, conducted by customer-experience experts Beyond Philosophy, looked at the risk that re-branding and other initiatives could have on customer experience for a company, but also at which brands the surveyed individuals most admired. Belos you can find the quote from the survey report:

The top three companies most admired by CE experts for the customer experience they deliver are technology companies, with Apple ranking first, followed by Amazon and Zappos.

“Apple has married all the elements of its experience and connected with its customers in a  deeply emotional, irrational way,” said Walden, adding, “Amazon put a stake in the ground when  it announced it would become the world’s most customer-centric company, and Zappos claims  to be a customer service organization that happens to sell shoes.”

“Well-established CRM technologies allow these companies to use the data they collect to deliver a highly-personalized experience,” said Walden. “But there’s something more inherent to the way these leaders deliver the experience; they use the copious data they collect to truly understand customers and their motivations in order to deliver a satisfying experience in a meaningful way.”

Other companies ranking in the top 10 most admired for customer experience include, in descending order: Starbucks (retail), Disney (entertainment), Tesco (retail), Virgin Atlantic(aviation), Vodafone (telecom), Nordstrom (retail) and First Direct (banking).

iPhone5- Stronger Demand Expected

According to a survey conducted recently among 2,200 potential cellphone buyers, it turned out that more people are likely to buy the iPhone5 than were ready to put their money down for an iPhone4 before that was launched.

The Research shows that 31% of users who are presently shopping for a new phone regard it as “very likely” (13%) or “somewhat likely” (18%) they will end up with an iPhone 5 in their hands. Compare that with the numbers for the iPhone 4 — 12% and 13% respectively — and what you have is a level of “bottled” demand that is exceptional in surveys like this.

Of course, that’s basically a function of the fact that we’ve had to wait so long for the iPhone 5. Its forerunner is nearly 15 months old at this stage; that’s a lifetime in cellphone years. Some 66% of current iPhone owners say they plan to upgrade to the new model, sight invisible. That includes a whole lot of iPhone 3GS users, who opted to skip a generation.

There’s also some fascinating news for the survey: Fully 54% of their subscribers say they are “significantly likely” or “somewhat more likely” to buy the iPhone 5, which reports suggest will be launched on Sprint complete with an unlimited data plan, of the kind that AT&T and Verizon no longer offer. But if current iPhone usage is any indication, the amount of bandwidth those customers will suck up may be more than Sprint can cost-effectively afford…

via Mashable

Apple is The World’s Most Valuable Brand!

The Apple brand is valued at $153.3 billion dollars, according to the just-released WPP 2011 BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands, the definitive annual study of brand value. Apple’s brand value increased 84 percent last year, according to the study, which is produced by Millward Brown Optimor, a WPP company. The Top 100 overall increased by 17 percent to $2.4 trillion last year.

The Apple brand increased by 959 percent since 2006, when WPP launched the BrandZ Top 100 study. In culminating its remarkable ascent, Apple displaced Google as Number 1 in brand value worldwide. The Apple brand value today is roughly equivalent to the combined value of the Coca Cola and McDonald’s brands.

The BrandZ Top 100 study is based on WPP’s BrandZ database, which contains information from more than 2 million in-depth consumer interviews in 30 countries. This proprietary data is combined with rigorous analysis of financial performance. The brand value quantifies an intangible asset that confers irrefutable credibility as the Apple Corporation pursues its business strategies and innovative leadership.

The results also indicate how Apple and technology in general are reshaping our world, transforming both business practices and the lives of consumers:

• One-third of the Top 100 Most Valuable Global brands are in technology.
• Four of the Top 5 Most Valuable Global brands are in technology.
• Facebook appeared for the first time among the Top 100 at Number 35.
• Amazon surpassed Walmart as the world’s most valuable retail brand.

For more information click here

Mobile Market Illustration

At a modern point cell phone market grows a lot and many Internet leaders are attempting to make most from it. Keeping eye on this Microsoft Tag recently come up with a infographics which completely shows that mobile market is large, local searches, games and YouTube doing pretty well on Mobiles.

To better illustrate the growing mobile marketing opportunity, take a look at these infographics we found to be the latest and most up to date.

This picture shows the total mobile market size and the shares of more than 40 countries of the world in the industry! The chart below responds to the number of mobiles for every 1000 people within the countries!

Now let's see what is the share of the smartphones in this huge market. The second picture shows the outline of the shifting landscape among the major players of the smartphone OS market.

Super Bowl XLV: iOS users vote on Steelers!

NPolls composed a survey of 1.244 iPhone/iPod/iPad users in US, asking who voters thought were going to win the XLV Super Bowl this Sunday between the Pittsburg Steelers and the Green Bay Packers. Results were close in percentage (51% and 49%)!

This poll was created with the NPolls iOS App between 24 and 28 of January, among iOS users across USA. Majority of people voted for a Steelers victory by only 1% difference. 65% of people agree that this year’s Super Bowl game will be close in score, with less than 7 points difference between both teams.

Supporters are extremely confident in their team’s win. 96% of voters who chose Green Bay Packers were confident their team would take home the Vince Lombardi trophy. Steelers supporters had a smaller confidence percentage of 90%. One thing is for sure, supporters for both teams agree that the game will be decided by less than 7 points difference (63% among Packers fans and 66% among Steelers).

Voters were asked to predict the MVP of this year’s Super Bowl, predicting quarterbacks, Ben Roethlisberger and Aaron Rodgers. Of overall votes, Rodgers received 36% of votes while the Roethlisberger received 33% of predictions. Packers’ wide receiver, Greg Jennings, was the third most voted player with 16%. 

Voters considered players Heath Miller, Mike Wallace and Troy Polamalu, as well. Among iOS users, Dallas Cowboys are considered the most favored team in the NFL, with 13% of supporters. New England Patriots ranked second with 11% of the vote. When asked about this year’s worst team performance, voters did not hesitate in claiming that the Cowboys were the most disappointing in the 2010 NFL season, with almost one third of votes (30%). Minnesota Vikings ranked second with 17% of votes. 43% of Dallas fans claimed their team was the biggest flop of the season.

When voters were asked what team was the biggest surprise of the season, four teams emerged as front-runners with only 3 p.p. difference between them: Seattle Seahawks (20%), Chicago Bears (18%), New York Jets (18%) and Green Bay Packers (17%). The biggest shock of the season, claiming 42% vote of Chicago supporters, was the Bears loss against the Packers in the NFC final.

We LOVE Apps!

NPolls composed a survey of 5.013 iPhone/iPod/iPad users in 68 countries, concluding that the community is crazy about apps! In fact, 55% of individuals have downloaded more than 10 free apps in the last month and 69% have bought apps in the last month.  

This poll was created with the NPolls iOS App between 21 and 23 of January, on a worldwide level focusing on iOS user app behavior. 86% of people who answered to the poll have purchased apps, where 6% of them spent more than 20 USD on apps in the last month. However, it was found to be most common that individuals spent less than 5 USD in the last month (32%). From the survey, it was concluded that game apps are, by far, the most popular, where 74% of users have bought games. Sports and travel/lifestyle were among the less favored categories (19% and 20% of answers stating they have purchased these apps). 

In which categories have you bought apps?

Purchasing habits of apps varied from country to country. French users are very conservative in buying apps (every vote below the overall behavior), in USA and UK, individuals tend to purchase more frequently. UK users prefer entertainment and music apps, whereas Italian users tend to buy utility/productivity apps. German users behave very similar to the overall habits of users. When asked the type of business model app consumers prefer, the answer was “free!”. Period trials, limited features or 1 USD start price are rarely considered. People prefer free apps with advertising (66% of answers). 

Another interesting conclusion from our survey is that app consumers buy on impulse. 81% do not bother to research before buying software. More than 86% do not care if the app seems useful or not. Most of consumers buy apps after evaluating the description/reviews of the app (36%). 89% recommend apps to their friends and 70% frequently write reviews about purchased or downloaded apps. One thing is for sure, if people don’t like the app they downloaded, they will delete them… after all, only 1% of our users have never downloaded a single app and 53% have delete apps, claiming they were bored of it. 

What are the main reason(s) you would delete an app?

Among the iPod users, deleting apps out of boredom is very common, reaching an impressing 65% of users. While among iPad users, the percentage is 41%. Discarding apps in order to download/buy others is very popular among individuals younger than 25 (62% rid of their app due to boredom) while 34% of the audience older than 40 years declared the same.

For more information click here

Goodbye, $.99 iPhone apps!

Apps with a cheap, one-time cost will be replaced by apps that bring in advertising dollars or drive recurring revenue based on usage or a subscription fee. This is just one of many findings released today from a survey of 2,235 mobile app developers, jointly conducted by app development platform vendor Appcelerator and market researcher IDC. According to the report, developers are shifting away from free brand affinity apps and becoming less reliant on $.99 app sales. In fact, mobile app developers are weighing seven business models, the most prevalent still being app store sales with 59 percent of respondents using this model. Other models include advertising (43 percent), in-app purchase (42 percent), brand loyalty and engagement (34 percent), mobile commerce (26 percent), subscription (26 percent), and coupons and loyalty programs (10 percent).

So far, the fastest growing business model is mobile commerce. In a similar survey last year, only 14 percent of mobile app developers had mobile commerce as part of their business model mix. Today, one out of four have mobile commerce, a growth of 86 percent. Apps are also maturing and becoming more complex, evolving from simple content-based apps to apps that make use of location, social and cloud services to transactional apps that tap the power of mobile commerce, according to the study.

The study concludes, that as the customer experience evolves, so does application sophistication, customer expectations, business transformation opportunities and the underlying business models. On the tablet front, the survey found that Androids and, to a lesser degree, the BlackBerry PlayBook are gaining mindshare among developers at a faster rate than the market-making iPad. Seventy-four percent of respondents said they are "very interested" in developing for Android tablets, up from 62 percent last year. Twenty-eight percent are eyeing the BlackBerry PlayBook, up from 16 percent last year. The iPad leads with 87 percent, only a 3 percent increase from last year. Web OS tablet interest remained flat.

All tallied, this year mobile app developers plan to triple their app development efforts, according to the study. The average app developer will build for four different devices, a two-fold increase from the year prior. The top device continues to be the iPhone, with 92 percent of mobile app developers "very interested" in developing for the iconic phone. The iPhone is followed closely by the Android phone (87 percent), iPad (87 percent) and Android tablet (74 percent). After the big four, the drop off is severe with the BlackBerry phone (38 percent), Windows Phone 7 (36 percent) and BlackBerry PlayBook (28 percent).

One More Look at App Prices...

The startup found that more than half of mobile apps are priced below or equal to $2 in Android Market, Apple’s App Store for iPhone and iPad, Nokia’s Ovi Store and Palm’s App Catalog. The exceptions to the rule: BlackBerry App World (which doesn’t allow apps priced below $2.99) and Windows Marketplace for Mobile.

As mentioned earlier, the research found that more than 50% of apps get priced below or equal to $2.00 in most stores. Zooming in on the different App Store versions, the research shows that the percentage of applications priced $0.99 ($0 – $1) is much higher in the App Store for iPhone than in the App Store for iPad. The percentage of applications priced $1.99 ($1 – $2) is similar between these two stores, while the percentage of applications priced higher than $3.00 and below or equal to $10.00 is higher in the Apple App Store for iPad than in the Apple App Store for iPhone.

Android Market sticks out with a 57% share of free applications, way more than what the other stores average. Most of them clearly circle around 25% free vs. 75% paid, according to the research findings. In fact, the only other app store with a share of free apps larger than 1/3 is Palm’s App Catalog.

Android is now the second-largest application store with 19, 297 apps. It's still a far cry from Apple's 150,998 apps, though. And other competitors are farther still. Ovi, we were surprised to discover, is the third largest with 6,118 apps available while Blackberry has a respectable 4,756. Palm has only 1,492 and Windows has 693. Apple is also the fastest growing store with a shocking 13,865 new applications added per month. Android's growth is picking up too - they now have 3,005 new apps per month (15%). Relative to the number of apps housed, Android is actually the fastest growing store.

The average price of all paid applications and the 100 most popular paid applications in the Apple App Store for iPad ($4.65) is higher than in the Apple App Store for iPhone ($4.01). However, the average price of the 100 top grossing applications is higher on the Apple App Store for iPhone.

PC versus Mac

NPolls made a survey among iPhone/iPod and iPad users worldwide and got to the conclusion that 84% use normally a PC computer (Only 28% have an Apple computer). But if price was not an issue 67% would choose a Mac!

Most of Apple computer users have Macbook Pro (39%) with iMac coming on second with 32% and Macbook Air at the bottom with only 4%. Among Mac OS X users, 45% have a Windows partition or a virtual machine with it. 56% of Mac OS X users told NPolls that the main disadvantage of Macs is that hardware is more expensive. This relates with advantages and disadvantages of Mac OS X: Interface, performance, installation and stability were very well rated as the best advantages of Mac OS (above 4,5 in a 1-5 scale). Price was, obviously, the only problem found...

Windows was rated well on software and hardware compatibility (above 4 in a 1-5 scale), while stability, system configuration and price comes more as a problem. Also, Macs were considered prettier than Windows. 66% Users told NPolls that they were happy with the computer they have while 7% we really unhappy. But one of the most staggering findings is that 67% of all the people said if price was not an issue they would choose a Mac...

Analyzing the data carefully we can see that the issue about users you prefer Mac is a little less pronounced in USA, with 63% preferring the Mac if price was not an issue. In the rest of the world the percentage is 70, the same as among the women. Also, people with ages between 25 and 54 years tend to accentuate this preference (about 70% also). The percentage of people who have a windows partition is a little shocking. Among Arts & Design and Computer & IT professionals this percentage is much higher (46% in Arts & Design). Of course, students come in the end of the list with less than 21% using Macs.

Although 7% of users are completely unhappy with their computer, this percentage is very low among Mac users (only 2%). The Windows users are pulling this percentage high, even in users who are “more or less” satisfied with their computer. Note that the sample size was 1035 polls answered from 67 different countries, from 19th of January.

For more information click here

Limited Price range for Apps?!

The Apple’s iPhone app store is loaded with thousands of applications produced by different people for different usage situations or just for fun. The diverse of the categories indicates that there is an app for everyone, corresponding even the most unusual needs of Apple users. 

It appeared that despite the legitimate and extremely powerful distribution channel for the content, the customers still seem to be reluctant to pay a lot of money to get desired app. The price limit for the apps usually varies from $1 to $9.99. 10 USD is the maximum price to pay when purchasing apps for the majority of users (68%). This fact is steadied with the rating of the apps, which shows that the most popular and commonly purchased apps are those with the price up to $10.

It turned out that circa 6% of apple users do not by apps at all, as they see no need to waste money in something, that you can from some other source, while the rest 28% is ready to pay more than $10 to get the desired app. There sure are the exceptional apps, that are either distinguished from others with the unique content or intellectual property, or provide beneficial experience or value for customers.

iPhone outruns BlackBerry in app use and social networks

Compete, a TNS Media company, today released the results from its quarterly Smartphone Intelligence survey, which provides behavioral and survey-based insights into how consumers are using their iPhones and other "smart" devices.

iPhone owners are much more likely to download apps and get involved with social networking than their BlackBerry-owning counterparts, Compete revealed today in a new study.

Key findings include:
- 73 percent of Blackberry owners have downloaded 5 or fewer applications; in contrast, 72 percent of iPhone owners have downloaded 10 or more applications.
- Facebook is hot among iPhone owners: 71 percent of iPhone users report accessing Facebook from their mobile device, 37 percent listed Facebook as one of their top three most utilized apps and 18 percent claim it's their favorite app.
- 30 percent of all smartphone owners are either comfortable or very comfortable receiving targeted marketing on their device.

The researchers add that iPhone owners are more willing to buy their apps than BlackBerry owners.

iPhone users are also significantly more likely to have a Twitter account (26% versus 15%) and are more than twice as likely to actually use Twitter on their phones, at 26% compared to 10%. Industry-wide, only 45% have Facebook accounts and 19% have Twitter accounts, and 85% of smartphone Twitter users actually choose to use the website instead.Regardless of platform, 83% of users prefer apps that cost below $5.

In addition to networking activities, smartphone owners are open to receiving targeted marketing via their device. What types of offers make the best candidates for marketers trying to reach networked consumers? Impulse and leisure purchases tend to be easier to digest than big, highly considered ones. Therefore, nearly half of smartphone owners are receptive to location-based offers at restaurants and offers to save and pursue at their leisure, and 45% would use mobile grocery coupons.

Reference:
http://www.prnewswire.com/mnr/compete/40019/
http://www.tnsmediagroup.com/index.htm
http://compete.com/custom_/telecomSmartphone/
http://www.kantar.com/

iPhone is the #1 Mobile Browsing Device in the US

According to AdMob, which serves ads for more than 6,000 mobile web sites and 400 applications around the world, worldwide iPhone requests grew 86% month over month to 668 million in December, giving the iPhone a 10.8% share of total requests. Further, according to the report, the iPhone OS has already surpassed the RIM OS and Windows Mobile combined. iPod Touch has been enjoying huge growth as well. As you can see in the pie-chart, in the US, in December, iPhone generated a whopping 48% of smartphone requests, up from just 9% in May.

The report released by AdMob is very interesting and can be viewed in full detail here.