Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - There's Only One Band Worth A Grand

Hermes Apple Watch bands for $1,100 and $1,250? The only band that deserves that outlay is the E Street Band backing Bruce Springsteen.

One in four U.S. online retail sales were via mobile this back to school season, per IBM.

Here’s an IBM stat that is hard to believe – 96% of North American consumers are “excited” about mobile payments. Their activities speak otherwise.

And one more from IBM: 70% of business leaders feel that mobile integration is critical to digital transformation. My take? The other 30% won’t be business leaders for long.

“Siri, change the channel every time they show the damn last play of the Super Bowl.” #GoHawks

70 million photos are uploaded to Instagram daily with 2.5 billion likes per day, according to Salesforce.

A Fast Company story on iPhone 6S says that Apple's 3D Touch is trying to solve the biggest problem in mobile. You mean a bigger one than not being able to bring a selfiestick everywhere?

Sports now accounts for 37% of broadcast TV ad spending -- and 62% at Fox, per Advertising Age. Judging by the first NFL broadcast, more than 60% are seemingly for fantasy football companies.

40%+ of all digital time spent on TV properties is on mobile, comScore reports.

There was finally an update to the OpenTable app that allowed me to freshen the info on my Apple Watch for first time since Aug. 19.

Nothing says overkill than tweets about lines to get into Apple events. Oh, yeah, Periscopes from the same venue.

College kids are still using Facebook more than any other social site, according to eMarketer.

A tweet offers three basic reasons to go mobile. In 2015. Are we that far away?

Six-digit passwords instead of four in iOS9? That should be good for weeks of discussion.

The Amazon Fire is no more. I can’t say I ever ran into one person using one.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - Of Meaningful and Meaningless Looks At A Mobile Screen

During the same week that we learned (learned?) that many mobile users look at a device “for no particular reason” comes additional word that wireless interaction is dramatically improving health for some.

First, the meaningful news:

Out of a pilot study at New York’s Bellevue Hospital called Mobile Insulin Titration Intervention, or MITI, 88% of insulin-dependent diabetics were able to get their blood sugar in check after receiving a daily text reminder or phone call.

According to NPR, the program worked this way. Nurses reviewed individual blood sugar information daily online to check for values that were too high or too low, indicating the insulin dose needed to be adjusted. They then reached out to the patients who needed modifications, many of which were low-income New Yorkers who, while owning a phone, lacked access to computers and other resources to manage their health.

Note that text messaging was used, ensuring that even feature phone owners had the capability to view an SMS. A miss for this demographic would’ve been to rely on a smartphone app.

Only 37% of the comparison group that did not receive texts or calls managed to control their blood sugars.

MITI may soon become a hospital-wide program at Bellevue, NPR said.

Now the separate “revelations” about mobile usage:

A third of millennials take out their cellphones in public “for no particular reason”, Pew reported. 82% of smartphone owners rarely or never turn their phones off. 79% witness annoying and/or loud cellphone behavior in public at least occasionally.

Apple Watch users - any of you lose at least a bit of faith and won't buy Apple products sight unseen or untouched? I'm in that camp.

A tweet offered to help me find my next handbag. I’m waiting for the one hawking manpurses.

87% of Facebook's one billion daily users are on mobile for at least part of their experience.

Few are surprised by Amazon’s decision to exit the mobile phone-making business. Of course, it never caught Fire.

Almost three-quarters of all WhatsApp users access the messaging app on Android, per GlobalWebIndex.

Here are the top 10 magazine publishers with the biggest number of monthly mobile visitors, according to  Association of Magazine Media: 1. ESPN: 42.9 million. 2. People: 28 million. 3. AllRecipes: 24.5 million. 4. Forbes: 21.6 million. 5. Time: 18.1 million. 6. Entertainment Weekly: 14.3 million. 7. Cosmopolitan: 13.7 million. 8. Bloomberg Businessweek: 11.2 million. 9. New York: 9.8 million 10. Bon Appétit and Epicurious: 8.3 million.

Sizing Up Amazon's Fire

My first takes on the Amazon Fire phone:

Online pre-orders for version one of a product from a company that hasn't made a mobile phone before? That tests the brand trust notion that Jeff Bezos played hard during his presentation today.

Through Firefly, Amazon’s Fire aims to be the quickest way to buy stuff – of course, from Amazon. That’s like the mall sending a car for you and speeding you to stores. Only much more efficient.

My TiVo always underdelivered so I’m wondering about the promise that Amazon can predict videos that I’m likely to stream, leading to the video beginning instantly.

Google’s Jason Spero, long one of the savviest in the industry, tweeted: “Amazon just built a phone designed for showrooming. Not clear to me that they will sell many. This is a feature.” Except showrooming often leads to Amazon and customers know that.

Consumers have lots of choices at $199 with a contract. Smartphone prices are dramatically lower than just six months ago. Value for the price is the big question here.

A July 25 ship date gets the Fire out long before the new iPhones. You don’t think there was pressure on Amazon employees to hit this timeline, do you?

Recognition - voice, face, product, person - is the next huge innovation in mobile. Will Amazon further deliver on a relevant, personalized advertising product that brands will spend against?