A video about the future of society

And now ladies and gentlemen....a lighter side of market research...predicting the future. Someone has made a video about the future. We are especially fond of the police vehicle and the 3D screen. Will the future be like this? What do you think?

Internet addiction

Do you ever have the feeling that you are addicted to the Internet? That you somehow can not live without it. According to research done in 2003 when people were asked which technology they would be most willing to give up, 39% of Internet users choose their cell phone, followed by 33% who would first give up television. Only 28% of users say they would be most willing to give up the Internet. As you can see you are not alone to have an addiction. According to our research people express these feelings towards the Web. The reason is that the Internet is an interactive medium which lets you explore your own interests. So what about you, did you have an Internet addiction?

Buy my site for $2 billion

My site is for sale for $2 billion. Yes you heard right. Facebooks 22 y.o. owner, mr Zuckerberg, turned down a $750 million bid on his site. Was this smart? Consider this, www.facebook.com has become the seventh-most heavily trafficked site on the Internet, according to market researcher comScore Media Metrix. It racked up 5.5 billion page views during the month of February, the latest month for which complete data are available. That's more page views than the Web sites of Amazon.com, Ask.com, or Walt Disney. Yahoo is the number one site with 30 billion page views. Those figures are impressive and we are full of admire. The most amazing fact is though that Facebook has been one of the greatest Buzz projects ever. Together with sites as MySpace it is our time most successful mouth to mouth marketing campaigns. We are confident that we will see many more such projects and you should not be surprised by the attention they will get. Do you have any experience with Facebook or MySpace? What do you think about them?

Mobile TV the killer application

Is mobile TV the killer application? The industry hopes so but we are not so sure. Actually this is a perfect example of a push technology that is promoted by the companies. It has not been researched enough and honestly not many people know how it will end up. We think that the mobile TV is a nice feature. An impressive feature for most users because the mobile become so much more than just a mobile, it becomes a multimedia centre. But the question is, how will the users use the features and are they willing to pay for it? If you look at our traditional TV-behaviour it is formed for centuries. We usually sit at home watching TV in our spare time. Will we accept to change our behaviour? Mobile TV or TV on the Go as we call it is mainly viewed when people have nothing else to do. It is easy to see when we will not watch TV on the Go; at cafes, bars, when walking, driving, doing sports etc. This narrows the behaviour to just a few scenarios; mainly when we are bored e.g. when commuting. Then the natural question is how willing are we to pay for this service? According to different studies the price the customers are willing to pay is between 5 and 10 Euros. We think that people eventually, when the hype will lay down, will not want to pay for it extra. They will expect it to be bundled with the flat rate. The real winner from this technology will be the mobile phone producers. They will always need new features to be able to sell new phones. Does anyone out there have experience with mobile TV?

Google crashes

The paid search market is growing but we start seeing a small paradigm shift. More and more people start talking about click fraud. In combination with the high expectation companies have about paid search, which in many cases come short, the wheels have started turning towards a paradigm shift. Even though Google´s market share will increase to 57% of all paid search ad spending, up from 48,5% in 2005 according to Overture, the search market is in a shift towards more specialised searches. The next generation of searches specialises in finding exactly what you are looking for e.g. a special search engine for people who are looking for travelling information. Google´s response to this threat, is to either acquire small specialised search engines while they are still cheap, or start their own niches such as Google Finance. The click fraud business is still an fairly new problem that we do not know the full scale of. Google settled a few weeks ago with a company out of courts for just click fraud. According to a research in December 2005 as much as 42% of all advertisers say that they have been victim of click fraud. The above two factors will change the paid search advertising landscape substantially. It is will be interesting to see who the winner is. Maybe Google or do you think that there will be a new company like Google?

IM is a killer application, sort of…

The IM scene is coming to a phone near you! This is how one can imagine the promoting campaign for the MSN Messenger function in 3G enabled phones. This is a killer application for the younger generation brought up with Messenger. Let us see if not the business models kills it before it is off the ground. People do not expect to pay for IM services, therefore you can not charge for them even on a mobile platform. If you want to be successful you have to sell add on services. If you want to know how, just give us a call…

Bad e-shopping experience

Have you ever encountered an excellent web shop which makes you impulse shop just like you do when you shop groceries? We haven’t done that yet. It is surprising to find the lack of effort put in e-shops to make people shop on impulse. Grocery stores have long mastered the ability to make you shop that little extra that was not on the list you brought with you. Why is this not applied to online stores? If you have ever visited a travelling site with the above requirement please, let us know. Travelling sites are usually built out of the fact that the customer knows where he wants to go. They are not made for people that just want to see what can be offered. These sites are in an excellent position to offer more experience, a tendency that becomes more and more important in peoples life. The travelling sites are playing with our imagination, our dreams, but they are doing it poorly. Very poorly we would like to say. Technology today offers so much more, why limit yourself to a one way communication platform. The development of the Internet is growing every day, but it seems that many web shops do not have the will to keep up. What do you think?

The future of mobile phone software

There is something big happening in the mobile software area. Due to the fact that the mobile phone becomes more and more like a computer we see that the software becomes more important than ever. When mobile phones will be equipped with WiFi/WiMax capabilities this becomes even a more important factor for the user. Our prediction is that Microsoft is in a very good position to be able to increase its market share based on our research, that most people request familiar user interfaces. Our research shows that most of the users prefer the same user interface on all electronic gadgets; mobile phones, PDA, computers, TV etc. The research further shows that those who have tried Microsofts mobile software have a positive experience. There are several business models to consider both for Microsoft and the mobile phone providers. We think that the most attractive one from both a business and a user point of view is if Microsoft gave away their software for free to all the mobile phone providers. This would have positive effects both horizontally and vertically in the business chain; service providers, hardware developers, users etc. What we see is that we are slowly moving towards a integration of systems, but it will take some time. Until then it will be interesting to see which company/companies will succeed best. What do you think?

3G services more complicated

The debate about 3G services are as ever alived. According to a UK study, 79% of respondents believe mobile phone services are getting more complicated to understand and configure, compared with 71% of respondents in a similar survey carried out in January 2005.

• 73% of the early-adopters that already own 3G phones rarely use the 3G services and applications available to them.
• 28% never use 3G services at all.
• Of those that did not own a 3G phone, 47% were confident that they would find 3G phones and services easy-to-use.
• Only 8% of respondents are considering upgrading to a 3G phone.

59% of 18 to 29 year olds - the early adopters with high disposable incomes that are being targeted for next-generation mobile services - think that quality online customer self-service facilities (such as the ability to set up new services, resolve problems or analyze bills yourself) will make 3G services easier to understand.

It looks like self-service is set to become the primary channel for mobile customer service with around 60% of survey respondents indicating self-service as the preferred way to manage their account - compared to 13% opting for the call center and 9% for going to a high-street store - and 90% of self-service users finding it "quite useful" or "very useful" for managing their accounts.

There was also another report released the other day saying that price drives the use of 3G data not 3G services. We do not agree though, due to the fact that the flat rate price model might increase the use of 3G data but people will not 3G surf just for fun, they need to have something uesful. The 3G medium offers a poor user experience to just surf aimlessly on the Internet. Just consider that there are very few websites that are tailored for moble phone screens. As a 3G operator you have to have useful services to attract your customers and these services have to be built on true needs for every single user. There is no fast speed lane. Every user has to have its tailored service.

We are wondering what the figures would be for the Swedish market. What do you think?

Pay with your body

What does the future hold? Who knows, now we would need these Oracles that they used to have in ancient Greece. Anyway let us demonstrate an interesting device that Fujitsu has introduced. Is this the future of payments? Maybe, mabe not, but it makes you think. The below article was found on a blog at the magazine Businessweek. "Fujitsu has just outdone itself in biometrics. Nearly two years ago, the company got rave reviews for developing a security system that can read the veins in a person's hand. That's right--the VEINS. Now, the system just got better. It's smaller, faster and less expensive, and it's so compact that techies might want to hook one up to the USB port of a notebook or desktop PC at home ($4,000, anyone?). Practically speaking, the technology will probably spread in the business world first. Imagine this: You stride up to your bank ATM, hold out your hand and within seconds VOILA! Access to your account. No plastic card and no passcode. Fujitsu thinks its system can be tweaked for home security, library book lending, and--who knows?--maybe even as a payment method for commuters taking the subway. Called Palm Secure, the biometrics system works by sending out near-infrared rays from a camera/sensor pod the size of a small Post-it note (and an inch thick) to your outstretched palm. In your hand, red blood cells that have let go of their oxygen molecules absorb the rays. That allows the pod to distinguish the veins of your palm from everything else in your hand (which reflects the rays). Fujitsu technicians demonstrated how the software processes the image: A web of black lines signifying the deoxidized blood cells against the white silhouette of a hand." What do you think, does it have a future?

The importance of the segmentation key

Have you ever considered if you are using the right segmentation key? Well many marketers have fought with this questions many times during their careers. According to a study 59% of the senior managers of large companies have during the past two years conducted at least one major segmentation exercise. But only 14% of the executives said they derived real value form the exercise. Are you surprised? I guess not. The importance of the segmentation key has the last couple of years lost its meaning. It used to be tool for finding new products that people want, what price they would like to pay, through which channels they would like to receive the goods but most of all find out what segment is the most profitable one. Now days it is mostly used as a tool for advertising needs. No wonder that 96% of all products coming out of the R&D department fail to generate adequate revenues. The segmentation key for e-markets when targeting consumers is a tricky one. The behaviour of e-consumers is shaped continuously. What was a fact a few years ago is not any more. Therefore a company needs a segmentation key that captures the changes in peoples lives. When designing a segmentation key you also need to consider aspects such as the company strategy and the environmental influences. Do you think that there is a segmentation key especially designed for e-markets? What is your experience with segmentation? Does it work or not?

What is the future of IP TV?

“Yahoo is backing away from TV-style Web shows, according to the New York Times. Lloyd Braun, the head of Yahoo's Media Group, said his team will now focus instead on outside content from other companies and, more notably, user-generated media. Finally people are coming to their senses that new media is its own world. You can't take what worked in print or TV and repurpose it for the Web. Somewhere along the lines it needs to be remixed and increasingly this means bringing in consumer creations. “ We could not say it better. It seems like a few of the influential players starts to understand that the Web is another medium with special needs. You can not just copy one technical platform to the next. People´s TV-watching habits have been formed for years and they are not just transformed to a Web platform, there need to be some modification. To deliver good content you need big resources. This is why companies start to build their business models around a more customer empowerment. Trust your customer and they will step up to the challenge of offering good content. The secret is how do you attract the most creative customers when everybody starts competing about them? A note: We are not talking about IP TV which means TV watched on your regular TV, the only difference is that you could choose when to watch your TV show. This service or if you want to call it business model, has a great future. No question about it. This article is about TV/video you stumble over when you are surfing. We consider these as two different behaviours and services. So what do you think, how will the IP TV model evolve? Do you agree with us?

How many Websites do you visit a day?

Most Web users only visit six sites on a regular basis, according to a UK study. What is even more interesting is that 95% say they go online with a specific destination in mind. This is why you need a biiiiiiiiig marketing budget. People have to know you when they are looking for a specific product or service in mind. The most successful companies are those who already have a well known offline-name and a winning online-model. One good example of this is the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet. Their online business model is supported through the whole distribution chain. They capitalize on their well know offline brand and support their online activities rigorously. Their core values are made clear on all levels. Do you have an example of other successful on and offline companies?

Googles super move?

Google offers unlimited storage space on the Internet. We see that Googles strategy follows our predictions. If you really want to know what customer valued services are we recommend the Google example. They understand the customer in a deeper level and see the future more clearly than most of us. We wonder what segmentationa key they use? Does it look like ours? Maybe, maybe not, but it has the power of our segmentation key. What do you think, do you agree with us that Google is here to stay and will be one of the most innovative in history?

It is my best friend I can not live without it...

The above statement was made at a research study. Do you know what this person is refering to? It might as well have been me or YOU who said it...it is a statement of the importance of the mobile phone. We think that this statement reflects the deep relationship we have made towards our mobile phones. Ask people around you and most will tell you the same story. Especially the younger generation below 35 y.o. Do you know which three things we always take with us before we leave our home? Money, keys and our phone. This sense of friendship is today just towards the phone as a physical and technological phenomenon. We think that these feelings can be made for the operator that powers the mobile phone. For the last two months we have researched and found a business model that capitalises on these feelings. Do you want to know how?