New Apple iPhone is marketer-friendly

By Mickey Alam Khan

June 10, 2008

Apple-polishing continues

Apple Inc. made life a little more difficult yesterday for rival handset makers with the launch of a new 3G iPhone that's not only faster and thinner, but boasts more memory at a better price-point. Good news for the consumer, but better for advertisers and marketers.

Steve Jobs, CEO of the Cupertino, CA-based company, yesterday told delegates at the annual Apple World Wide Developers' conference in San Francisco that the new iPhone would cost $199 for 8GB and $299 for 16GB. The new models will be rolled out July 11 in 22 countries.

"IPhone version 1 was already marketing-friendly," said Nic Covey, Chicago-based director of insights at Nielsen Mobile. "The upgraded version is an important opportunity for marketers because its lower price point and improved capabilities will help bring the iPhone to a more critical mass."

Now here's the interesting thing: The 8GB iPhone will cost a maximum of $199 in the markets where it launches.

A new advertising campaign will support the 3G iPhone, including an emphasis on its speed.

Mr. Jobs demonstrated the new iPhone's speed for downloading a photo: 21 seconds versus 59 seconds on the EDGE network. It's also 36 percent faster than a Nokia phone of its caliber.

Battery life too is longer on the new iPhone. It boasts 300 hours of standby time. However, while the 2G iPhone's talk time was eight to 10 hours, the new model's talk time is five hours.

The phone can browse for five to six hours at high speed, has seven hours of video browse time and 24 hours for audio.

And here's the killer: GPS is built in, with tracking capabilities. This is in addition to pulling data from cell towers and Wi-Fi. Imagine the possibilities for mobile marketing and, of course, the possible concern from consumer privacy groups.

Mr. Jobs told the audience that Apple has sold 6 million iPhones worldwide so far. Launched last year, the iPhone has 90 percent customer satisfaction, 98 percent of the users are browsing the Web, 94 percent read email, 90 percent text and 80 percent are using more than 10 features.

The Apple developers' conference this year has record attendance: 5,200 delegates to sit through 147 sessions, 85 of them on the Mac and 62 on the iPhone. There are 169 hands-on labs and 1,000 Apple engineers available to help.

In addition to announcing the new iPhone, Apple also debuted Mobile Me, a product that works like Microsoft Exchange. The application includes push email, contacts and calendars on the iPhone, Mac computer or PC. Email is pushed to all devices.

The new iPhone also includes Loopt to show where the user is and where friends are. A small yellow pin indicates the user's location and a blue pin the friends. Users can pinch, drag and tap.

Again, the location and contact information is advantageous not just to consumers but also marketers for geo-targeting marketing efforts to iPhone devices.

"Obviously, location-based services offer a uniquely mobile marketing opportunity and marketers should see this as their signal to begin thinking about how those location-based services will be part of their consumer engagement," Mr. Covey said.

Another useful nugget revealed at the event yesterday that affects mobile commerce: the iPhone is the No. 1 mobile device for auctions on eBay.

"EBay is the most mobile commerce site across all phones right now and as much as the iPhone helps to make mcommerce more closely aligned with e-commerce, it should encourage more consumers to try transactions over the phone," Mr. Covey said.