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Hey Google – time to get serious about Android
Posted on February 3rd, 2010 4,527 commentsHey Google,
I’m sure it’s been a blast working on Android over the last couple of years but I’m afraid that if you don’t get a little bit serious about it then you aren’t going to take any meaningful market share. This would mean missing a great opportunity as Smartphones (or ‘Superphones’ as you call them) move from the early adopters into the mainstream market. It looks like most Android phones are really good and there is so much potential to connect them to your ever increasing on-line services that play to your strengths.
Up until the end of last year I worked for a mobile operator and I watched the HTC Magic Android get outsold by the iPhone by over 40 to 1. This seems to line up with recently reported NexusOne sales figures. We were the only mobile operator in our market with either the iPhone or the Android and we sold them on identical plans with the same subsidies – so a perfect head to head test case. In fact the HTC Magic could get 3G across our entire nationwide network but the iPhone only in main urban areas. The Android retail price at first was between the iPhone 3G and 3GS 16GB and then we dropped it to substantially below the iPhone 3G – but this had almost no effect. Also I have heard from several of your OEM’s that in the Asia/Pac region they are getting no traction at all with their Android powered handsets (across a number of countries and mobile operators) and they are frustrated that you seem to have no plans to turn this around.
This post was initially prompted by my 9 year old son who asked me the other day: “Dad, can I play a game on your phone thing…I’m not sure what to call your Google phone, I mean it doesn’t have an easy name like your other iPhone.” It struck me that even someone who has spent quite a bit of time playing with a phone running Android doesn’t know what to call it. I can hardly imagine the confusion for your customers in the U.S. who have to deal with the G1, G2, Motorola ‘Droid’ and recently the Nexus One which is somehow more Google than the others as it is sold on-line by you. And apart from the weird names they all seem to come out with slightly different versions of software which actually have quite different features!
I assume you are wanting to get as many Android based mobile phones into users’ hands as possible because this drives up mobile web usage that you can monetize – at least that‘s my simple understanding. For this to work then you are now going after the mainstream market – as are your competitors. You want everyone to at least consider an Android when they next upgrade their mobile phone.
Well, this mainstream market won’t know the subtleties of the Smartphone world (and neither should they) and the place they will go to compare your handsets against your competitors and get advice is the stores owned by the mobile operators or their resellers. This is partly because there will be questions around upgrade deals and contract sign-ups and waiving certain fees, but also because given the amount of money being spent they might actually want to see and touch the phones and have them explained by a real person.
When considering any Android powered phones a prospective customer will immediately come up with a number of good questions:
- What‘s it called?
- What’s does Google have to do with making an actual physical mobile phone? Aren’t they a web company?
- What can it do and will it do everything I need it to?
- What’s the difference between these different ones that all have Android on them?
- What’s this Chrome OS I am starting to hear about – how is that different to Android?
- Why should I get it instead of an iPhone?And the poor mobile operator or channel sales person really won’t be able to answer any of these because neither Google, nor the OEM, nor the mobile operators has clearly explained it to them. And neither has any other communications that they might have seen from Google or elsewhere. (Perhaps the US$100m spent by Verizon and Motorola went some way to addressing this in the U.S. only.)
I’m sorry Google but this situation is getting out of hand and unless you do something very significant and very soon your very capable Android powered phones simply won’t be in the running no matter how many OEM’s are supporting it and how cheap the devices become. The iPad reminds us again that this class of device is ‘Personal‘ – it is with us most of the day and performs several critical functions so we really need to be able to trust it. And we know this world is changing fast so we want to make sure we are in some way ’future-proofed’.
So guys, here’s what you need to do:
1. Decide who your customers are:
This is easy as outlined above it is pretty much anyone even remotely considering upgrading their mobile handset – which is nearly everyone at some point in the next 3 years.2. Nail the core proposition:
There must be a rock-solid set of features that must be in every Android handset everywhere in the world. And when a major new release comes out it will automatically upgrade on all existing handsets. Absolutely differentiate on your strengths of mobile access to on-line services but make that consistent.At the moment there are different features on different software versions which are coming out simultaneously on different devices. And some features (Near me now, turn-by-turn navigation) are only available in the U.S. You are Google – I thought you were about turning stuff on for the whole world at the same time?
You need to answer questions like:
- How do I get media files between my handset and my PC or the cloud?
- What music download service is widely available?
- How can I create ring-tones?
- Are all standard email attachment formats supported (incl. MS Office and PDF) and native MS Exchange support?
- How do I tether it?Only once all this is in place can you let the OEM’s layer stuff over the top – HTC Touch Sense or Motoblur or whatever – as long as they don’t interfere with the core proposition.
Oh, and please – what’s going on with Android and Chrome OS? This has the potential to cause real confusion.
3. Get your Channel Model pumping:
The on-line sales play is OK but I really think it’s a bit early for that until you have much more momentum and customers are comfortable to purchase this way. As above I’d argue that the starting point for most people in selecting a new handset will be the mobile operator they are already on and even mobile operators own on-line sales efforts do a tiny number of sales compared to their physical resellers.Frankly you have to get some feet on the ground in each region/country to engage the mobile operators and their sales channels directly. To position the proposition to their Marketing departments and to conduct channel training sessions for their resellers. To run sales incentive and rewards programs in combination with the OEM‘s. I appreciate this is a bit old-school for you but you’ve got to get momentum underway and you can’t just leave it to the OEM’s. If you don’t do this then the OEM’s aren’t going to be aggressively pushing their devices onto the carriers.
4. Get your communications together:
This might sound trite but please tell your prospective customers about your product, its features and the benefits to them. Excite them and give them trust and confidence in any Android powered device – and of course its differentiators. You need to talk about Android – with individual phones as examples of the core proposition.You have a number of amazing mobile features that are barely known about e.g. Latitude to follow your friends, mobile Streetview, local search in the browser, Google Goggles, heck even Google Talk and the Marketplace. Most of these are unique and there’s probably more than what I can keep up with.
What is your customer facing website with all the key info anyone could want – no matter where they are in the world? Neither android.com nor google.com/phone are up to scratch.
And perhaps you need an identifiable person or persons front and centre to represent this class of products and other similar ones that might be coming. I’ve seen some great interviews with Eric Tseng recently and that seems to work well.
I appreciate this is quite direct and I note the irony of one guy down at the bottom of the world dishing out advice to the Googleplex. I am writing this because I love my Android mobile and find features like Latitude and Goggles breathtaking in their ambition – and everyone I demonstrate them to feels the same.
However at the moment Android runs the risk of becoming a very interesting but fairly insignificant player in the mobile device market. This is a momentum game and at the moment I think the amount of tech media coverage is way out of step with your real world sales.
Good luck and all the best,
Tim.4527 responses to “Hey Google – time to get serious about Android”
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pornografia September 8th, 2010 at 16:41