For more than two weeks I’ve been testing the iPhone 4S and researching my options and I’ve decided to go with the Samsung Galaxy S II, an Android-powered phone. Why turn my back on Apple when the iPhone is king? Here are the 5 reasons why the Galaxy is better smartphone (in no particular order):

1. Overall form factor. The Galaxy S II is one incredibly sleek device. It is thiner and lighter than the iPhone 4S — measuring at 8.89mm and 4.13oz (vs. 9.3mm and 4.9oz for the iPhone).
2. Crisp, larger display. While the retina display, an LED-backlit IPS TFT screen, on the iPhone 4/iPhone 4S is ultra-sharp, the Super AMOLED+ screen on the Galaxy S II is equally sharp. But the big different is in the screen size – the Galaxy S II packs an additional 0.8 diagonal inches into their screen that it feels more like a tablet.
3. Faster processor. Both phones are powered by a dual-core ARM Cortex A9 CPU but the Galaxy S II sports an even faster 1.2GHz processor (vs. the iPhone’s 0.8GHz CPU).
4. Mobile application parity. While I have 50+ apps on my iPhone, I only use a select few on a regular basis. The most popular apps — like Facebook, Pandora, Skype, Kindle, Evernote, MapMyRun and the Starbucks Mobile app — have all been ported to Android so I won’t feel like I’m suddenly a second class smartphone citizen.
5. iTunes independence. I’ve been using iTunes to buy and transfer music since I owned an iPod. But over the last few months I’ve been regularly using Spotify to the point that I’ve stopped listening to my own music. Additionally, I generally buy music from Amazon and I can listen to these tracks via the Amazon MP3 Player/Amazon Cloud Drive app that iTunes doesn’t matter.

With all that said, there are drawbacks of going with the Samsung Galaxy S II:

• Unlike the iPhone, all of the carriers cram their own apps onto the  smartphone. Additionally, carriers control when you get to update your device with the latest OS. The good news is that Ice Cream Sandwich, the upcoming Android OS, runs smoothly on the Galaxy II S so I won’t feel the immediate need to upgrade in another 2 years.
• The Galaxy II S is pre-loaded with a custom User Interface (UI) called TouchWiz 4.0. Hopefully, this UI will be replaced with a standard Android UI when Ice Cream Sandwich is released.
• The new white Galaxy S II is not currently available but it is expected to ship by the holidays.

While there is no denying that Bing autogenerated the same results as Google, there are two important lessons that technologists and marketers should learn from this fight:

First, your browsing habits are not private. Are you surprised? I recall an incident from several years back where an administrative tool was accidentally indexed by Google. How did the spider find the tool? While there were no links to the tool, the admin manager had bookmarked the site using the Google Toolbar. FYI: the Google Toolbar shares links among computers by storing bookmarks in the cloud. So it seems that Google’s spider dipped into the manager’s bookmark data (as there were no links to this tool on the web) and just added it to their cache. Thankfully, the link disappeared once a rule was added to the robots.txt file to exclude the tool from Google. So Google clearly is not an innocent bystander in this fight to catalog the web.

Second, search is still an automated process. While there are a few engines that still curate search results via human-powered review (eg: Blekko and Mahalo), the majority of the searches for the foreseeable future will depend on algorithms that will be tweaked only when and if necessary. That trend will hold true until enough of us get tired of these giants and switch to the smaller alternatives.

As I was crafting a rebuttal to Joe’s latest tweet, I uncovered a recent study from international accounting and consulting firm Deloitte that suggested that apps do not appear to help companies sell more smartphone. According to the study, 58 percent of US consumers say a smartphone’s size, quality, keyboard style, and price factor into their smartphone buying decisions whereas just 18 percent of respondents said that mobile applications influence which smartphone they eventually decide to buy. NOTE: survey is based on responses by 1,960 people between the ages of 14 and 75 in June and July 2010.

Now before you call your marketing agency or tech department and cancel your mobile application development project, you should consider that research firm Nielsen revealed in an earlier article that Smartphones in the US are primarily used for email, a feature that doesn’t require custom mobile applications. If email is such a critical component of a smartphone, then it could explain why application development is not key in buying process. Additionally, consumers have come to expect that mobile applications are either currently available for their platform or will be in the near future so these apps are not critical to the decision making process.

The key to the success of these smartphone devices continues to be developers. If you need more proof that applications (and app developers) are critical to smartphone and OS development companies, then just check out the recent announcement by Nokia and AT&T regarding an application development challenge with $10M in prize money for N8. Nokia is attempting to attract mobile application engineers in the US and convince them to develop apps  for N8, the next Symbian^3 device. If Nokia believed in Deloitte’s research, they’d certainly wouldn’t need to bribe entice application developers to come to the Symbian side. As Balmer says, it is about developers, developers, developers (see video)!

• Use third party development platforms, such as MonoTouch and Appcelerator, to create iPhone applications. In a blog post on the decision, Jeff Haynie signaled that Appcelerator was in the clear and thanked developers for their continued support.
• Use mobile advertising platforms other than iAds/Quattro. Google was also gushing about the new terms of service and how the mobile community will benefit by having multiple platforms in the mix.
• Use third party mobile analytics platforms, such as flurry, motally (now owned by Nokia) and Distimo.

On the third point however, the new terms reinforced the need for developers to respect user privacy.

The news terms specify that mobile applications must ask users for permission before collecting personal and device data. However, device data cannot be sent to third party providers. In essence, Apple is trying to prevent these mobile analytics software providers from leaking news of a upcoming device like they did in the past (see Flurry and the iPad).

Why the sudden change of heart?

Clearly, Apple needed to change things up. While some speculated that the projected growth of Google’s Android mobile platform forced Apple’s hand, this idea goes against the view of Steve Jobs who has always favored catering to a small, loyal crowd vs. worrying about the masses (see Doc Searls on Steve Jobs). While Apple could have forced Developers to jump through hoops to use third party solutions vs. Xcode, Apple did not want to entertain another cat and mouse game as they have with the developers that are constantly jail-breaking their iPhones. Instead, Apple shifted the focus back to the art of usability, content and design that the third party development platforms have to support. In fact, Apple provided a set of high-level guidelines that specified:

• “We have over 250,000 apps in the App Store. We don’t need any more Fart apps. If your app doesn’t do something useful or provide some form of lasting entertainment, it may not be accepted.”
• “If your app looks like it was cobbled together in a few days, or you’re trying to get your first practice App into the store to impress your friends, please brace yourself for rejection. We have lots of serious developers who don’t want their quality Apps to be surrounded by amateur hour.”

This may be a solid strategy to encourage developers to port quality apps from Android to the iPhone platform but it will work only if these development environments don’t impose additional limitations on the developer.

“Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.”

At last night’s AiMA event on search engine strategies, the speakers referenced a study where users showed no significant preference to Bing or Google. After a short web search (via Google), I found the research paper by the Catalyst Group (see below). In the study, users reported that they wouldn’t switch from their current search engines even though Bing possessed some favorable improvements to Google.

While the findings attempted to explain how Bing will never catch up to Google, I was surprised that the speakers chose to quote the study as fact. There were two glaring issues that I immediately noticed once I located the study:

• The participants used Google as their main search engine.
• The study involved only 12 participants.

While some may argue that the opinion of the participants was tainted (since none used Microsoft Search as their primary search engine), I was even more surprised that no one considered the small participants pool. While I subscribe to the notion that we’re creatures of habit and users won’t change when they can’t find a significant value in the new “shinny object,” the bottom line is that the study’s findings are statistically invalid. While I’m fairly certain that the speakers were not aware of flaw in the study, it demonstrates how easy it is to rely on and propagate bad statistics and how careful marketers need to be when they quote a study.

NOTE: I recently wrote a blog post about Twitter data and Rapleaf based on an NPR radio bit. Rapleaf reached out and explained the issue with the misinformation that I had referenced. It goes to show that we’re all human; we make mistakes.

Catalyst Group Bing V. Google Usability Study

The big news is that Microsoft’s search engine Bing picked up an additional 0.6% share of US core search in January 2010 from rivals Yahoo!, AOL and Ask.com. As can be seen below, Bing has experienced strong growth in the past two quarters, which are mostly attributed to new deals (source).

Based on trending analysis of the comScore data, it seems that Bing will eclipse Yahoo sometime between August 2010 and November 2010 (the latter point based on Bing growing while Yahoo remaining the same). While Yahoo has announced a $100 M global marketing campaign to promote its revamped web portal (source), it may be too late to save the Yahoo brand. After all, we know that:

• Microsoft has given no indication that they’re going to spend money on search, even if it is a losing proposition. In addition to committing $100 M to market the search engine (source), Microsoft made numerous attempts to showcase Bing at the expense of Google. These include a exclusive alliance with News Corporation’s websites, including the Wall Street Journal  (source) and deals to become the default search engine on the iPhone (source). Microsoft recently announced the integration of Bing search with Facebook (source), which means that 400 M social users will now see Bing search. For Microsoft to catch up to Google, they must produce a better search solution but they must remind consumers that Bing is a good solution.
• Traffic to Yahoo’s portal has lost significant market share over the past year. Yahoo properties’s share went from 67.7% in December 2008 (source) to 56.8% in December 2009 (source). The loss of eyeballs at both Yahoo and MyYahoo portal is likely the culprit of declining search market share.

While something big can always happen, it seems that Yahoo’s decline is inevitable. RIP Yahoo.

To test it out, I tried it both on my desktop and my mobile device (the iPhone). I posted a quick status update about a meeting that I had in the afternoon and then I used the GPS-enables search capability to search for buzz posts from friends and people that are nearby. And the verdict is?

While Google may have thought that it had a hit on their hands, it feels more like a buzz-kill to me. There are several issues with this new service:

1. It is force social networking in email. Google opted to directly introduce this feature instead of using the Gmail Labs capabilities to introduce this feature as an add-on (the way that Google normally introduces new features). Google also added a special icon to this feature to draw focus to this new feature, ensuring that gmail users pay attention to it.
2. Google didn’t make Buzz super-intuitive. As a Google Wave user, I’ve wanted to tie my Wave, which is collaborative message, to an email as a means of continuing the conversation. While I learned that Google Buzz has this feature, I didn’t pick up on it until I watched the video (source). I also had a co-worker asking me how they can tie Buzz to Twitter, which they didn’t think was very obvious.
3. People don’t seem to know how to to use Buzz. I must be a super early adopter because NO ONE (and I mean none of my technologically or marketing savvy friends) seemed to have used Buzz to post a single buzz. The worst part about this test is that I know that they checked their gmail account at least once today so I would have expected to see one buzz. I think that this is indicative that while Google may have a significant user base, the Google Buzz service in by itself is not enough to entice a user to post to an activity stream nor is it a good replacement of twitter.

For Google, Buzz is a necessary service. It helps Google:

1. Generate more traffic/interest in Gmail. Gmail has less users than Hotmail and Yahoo so they need a service to increase subscribers.
2. Google Buzz creates a solution to connects your email with Twitter.  This feature is incredibly value to marketers who want to understand the consumers that interact with their brands. While DandyID offers a similar capability, Google already has a larger user base so it is game over for DandyID.
3. Buzz establishes a new page view/instance to sell an add. Google isn’t doing this because they want to offer something cool/evolutionary — Google needs buzz to goose their ad revenue (even if they don’t roll this feature out immediately).

The one thing that I noted on the first evening of having access to Google Buzz is that interest was fading fast. While Google Buzz was ranked 4th in hot search topics in the USA, it dropped to the 10th spot within 20 minutes (see below).

Let’s hope that tomorrow’s a better day for this shinny new service.

While IE6 usage dropped significantly in early 2008/2009, the downward pressure has softened quite a bit this year. And a recent survey revealed that IE6 is used primarily at work and the majority of people unfortunately can’t upgrade/replace IE6 because they have insufficient privileges on their machines/their company won’t let them upgrade (source). So without significant force now, it may take another two years before IE drops to a level where enough developers stop coding UI tweaks for IE6. Since coding for IE6 takes significantly more time, marketers are unnecessarily spending money on outdated technology (like paying for a telephone land line or dial-up internet service).

Last week, six solid punches in one swing were taken at IE6. I am speaking about the announcement that Google is planning to phase out support for IE6 (source). The announcement indicated that key functionality in Google Docs and [international] Google Sites will be disrupted starting on March 1, 2010. Since no other popular web destination is stepping up to the plate, we’ve got to applaud Google which owns 6 of the top 20 destination on the web (source) for their efforts. So what we really need to do is convince several US-based companies, such as Microsoft (thank you @cubanx!), Yahoo! and Amazon, and Chinese companies, including Baidu, QQ.com and Sina.com.cn, to jumped on board. While it may feel like we’ve made progress, the short list below demonstrates that we still have a long road ahead of us.

Top 20 Companies that don’t support the IE must die movement:

1. Google (starting 1-Mar-2010)
   
2. Facebook (as of 24-Jul-2008)
   
3. YouTube (starting 1-Mar-2010)
4. Yahoo!
5. Windows Live
6. Wikipedia
7. Blogger.com (starting 1-Mar-2010)
8. Baidu.com
9. MSN.com
10. QQ.com
11. Yahoo! Japan
12. Twitter
13. Google India (starting 1-Mar-2010)
14. Google China (starting 1-Mar-2010)
15. Sina.com.cn
16. MySpace
17. Google Germany (starting 1-Mar-2010)
18. WordPress.com
19. Microsoft
20. Amazon.com

In my discussions with Marketers, I’m regularly asked whether iPhone app development or iPhone mobile campaigns make sense considering the dominance of rival smartphone devices such as RIM’s BlackBerry. There’s valid concern if you consider only the number of mobile devices but that number isn’t as important when you consider usage. While RIM currently outsells Apple in smartphone devices (RIM sold 10.1 million devices in the quarter ending November 28, 2009 whereas Apple sold 7.4 million iPhones in about the same period), the iPhone accounted for 60% of page views AND 75% of mobile revenue at the top online retailers this past holiday season according to Omniture (source). So while BlackBerry devices are more prevalent, users avoid using this device to browse the web. This decision is likely based on the poor web browsing experience. And Marketers that are considering the accessibility of their website should optimize it for the iPhone.

So Marketers that want to interact with the largest group of mobile users should first focus on the iPhone platform — nothing else compares. But besides usage, Apple provides plenty of additional reasons for why the iPhone platform will also win in the long run:

• The current quarter’s iPhone unit sales numbers exclude the 55% year-over-year growth in sales of the iPod Touch. The iPod Touch is a Wifi-enabled mobile device that supports many of the iPhone applications. The iPod Touch user segment represent a group that is not bound by telephony service but are still connected (likely to be a younger demographic).
• Sales growth was driven by strong global demand. This implies that marketers can now expose their application/campaign or brand to an international audience (while facing the challenges that come with such a relationship).
• With the introduction of the iPhone 3GS, demand for the iPhone has spilled from the consumer market over to the enterprise market. Apple reported that 70% of the Fortune 200 are either deploying or piloting the iPhone. While marketers may have previously focused on the business to consumer or B-to-C market segment, they now have an opportunity to create applications that address the needs of the business to business or B-to-B market.
• Apple continues to invest heavily in customer service, whether it is through training of mobile carriers on device or one-on-one coaching of new customers at their 283 stores (currently present in 10 countries). This is a critical tactic for Apple to attract and service an older demographic of users that may not be as comfortable with touch-based technologies.
• The numbers did not account for the  upcoming product introduction of a tablet-like device. This highly anticipated announcement is expected tomorrow but the value of this news is that Apple will give marketers yet another device that will support mobile applications. The segment of the users that select and use this device is still unknown but it is potentially a new group of untapped users.
• Lastly, Apple has completed two recent acquisitions: music streaming service Lala and mobile advertising platform Quattro. Both represent the company’s continued future-looking view on revenue generation and demands.

Apple seems to be benefiting from a positive feedback loop. While the iPhone does have its flaws (it is not a perfect mobile device!), Apple has built an elegant smartphone unit that is extremely user-friendly. Additionally, iPhone users regularly promote their smartphone to other non-users in their social circles so the masses are choosing iPhone when deciding to go mobile (source). For brands that are still on the sidelines or ones that are only focused on the alternatives (which is a mistake; source), there’s no better time than now to jump on the iPhone platform bandwagon.

• This was a financially motivated decision. Microsoft was offering Apple a bigger revenue slice of the advertising pie for incorporate Bing than Google.
• This was an effort to thwart Google’s recent jump into mobile. It seemed that Google was moving in on Apple’s territory with their introduction of the Nexus One device.

While some may buy into this rumor, there’s very little reason to believe it. Here’s why:

Apple is in the business of designing beautiful devices with exceptional user-experience for the consumer market. Google has dominant position in the web search market. Google reached this point by creating a simple, user-friendly search engine so having Google Search on the iPhone makes for a perfect match. While Google may not want to share more of their search revenue, they’ve bowed to the pressure of News Corp owner Rupert Murdoch when he proclaimed in November 2009 that Google was stealing his paid content (source) and that he would switch to Bing if he had no other option.

Regarding the competitive threat, there are two reasons that Apple may not be worried. First, John Paczkowski of AllThingsDigital wrote about a rumor that Microsoft is planning to release a Zune Phone in the next couple of months (source). In case you’re wondering, this rumor originally surfaced back in late 2008 (source) but this is the FIRST time that there’s thought that the phone will be pink. Currently, there’s no proof that Microsoft or any other phone/mobile OS marker is going to magically recapture Apple’s market share with their mobile offering. This rings true considering that Nexus One sales estimates reached a paltry 20,000 in the first week of offering according to mobile analytics service Flurry (source). If the Zune rumor is taken as fact, then Microsoft is a rival to Apple as much as is Google so there’s no real rush/need to switch.

In my opinion, it feels more like Apple is playing a good game of chicken with Google and Microsoft is just caught in between.