This week’s Carnival of the Mobilists comes to you from Kansas, more specifically from Steven Hoober, and here’s what he has in stock for you:
- Will larger screens lead to poorer mobile web sites?
- Do apps beat browsing?
- What will be the best mobile advertising networks 2012?
- Do QR codes work? Someone had a look at TfL’s (better known as the operator of the London Tube) numbers.
- What can advertisers expect from the Kindle Fire?
- Would you close your business for two days per week? A look at retailers and the benefits of mobile-optimized websites.
- Will Windows Phone 7 be cutting it?
- Android and Apple have not won the smartphone war.
- Have you ever heard of a “wearable computing equation”? Check it out!
- What is the spectrum/bandwith crunch in Boise, Idaho?
- My little piece on the revolutionary (well, perhaps, “only” disruptive) French operator Free.
- Image processing in Generation M
The carnival is live here. Go read! 
A new year, a new carnival (which will returned to weekly editions now, too). This week’s edition is hosted by Mark Bridges over at thefonecast.com, and he includes posts, such as:
- Lots of reminiscing on the past year (on mobile marketing, the greater scope of the mobile landscape and – albeit in Spanish – a reminder of a joke from all the way back in 2004 when someone suggested in April Fools’ fashion that Apple – hold your breath – might launch a phone bypassing traditional network operators).
- Of course some predictions (general ones as well as a look on where mobile development specifically might go) and Tomi Ahonen’s latest on why all roads lead to Mobile (as in tech, not as in Alabama).
- A couple of posts on what might or might not happen to WebOS following HP’s open-sourcing announcement (comparisons to Symbian’s fate included).
- More on dying platforms with a piece on mobile flash.
- Ad performance benchmarking (Admob vs mobfox).
- A call to prepare for the (presumed) ascent of the Kindle Fire.
- And, finally, a nod to my two posts on Angry Birds and my take on the dubious assertion that “social lost its sizzle“.
The carnival is here! Go, read it! And if you’re a blogger wanting to participate, head over to the Carnival’s revamped homepage where you will find everything you need to know about submitting entries and even hosting one on your own blog if you are so inclined.
This is (slightly) off-topic as it looks at a new book written by a guy who has come to fame not in the mobile but “only” in the online world (or click-and-mortar as would be more accurate). But it is a book that will give everyone who has to deal with value chains, investors and people (vendors, customers, employees) a couple of interesting insights on how it can (also) be done.
The book, of which I received an advance free copy (which I was told I needed to disclose here), is by Tony Hsieh, the iconic CEO of Zappos, and it is called – unsurprising to anyone who has ever heard im talk – “Delivering Happiness”. It is available for sale from today.
The book has two very distinct parts. The first one gives you an interesting and humorous account of the journeys of an entrepreneur – all the way from a worm farm when ickle Tony was 8, via LinkExchange, which he managed to sell to Microsoft for $265m, through the start, near-death and eventual exit with Zappos, which sold to Amazon when it was valued at some $1.2bn on the day of closing.
Part 2 could be termed the introduction to the Church of Hsieh. Tony is famous for preaching the importance of happy employees in order to run a good business, and there is many an example from the world of Zappos that raises eyebrows elsewhere in the corporate world (to pay new employees $2,000 should they leave within X weeks being one of them). Most of it comes from one of the 10 core values Zappos set itself, namely the “be fun and a little weird”, and I find it almost insulting to judge a company or its policies by random examples alone.
At the very least, the book shows you that there is much more to it than the wacky ideas of a driven entrepreneur (and I’ll get to more in a moment). If you take, for instance, the story of the $2,000 leaving-bonus and look into it a little deeper, some very sound thinking reveals itself:
The idea is that people should only stay if they really feel aligned to Zappos’ vision and principles and the idea is that only people whose mindset is a real fit will not be tempted enough not to take it; it also shows a lot of respect to the nature and common sense of their employees: if the job [and the company] is really that good, $2,000 is very little! According to the book, less than 1% take the cheque.
So what do you get from that? 1) employees that should be a better fit than average, and 2) reduced recruitment cost. The first part is invaluable whenever you run a business that has customers (so, always) because employees that fit with your culture and vision should be better enabled to communicate this – internally and externally, which helps the business. The second part is self-explanatory.
The relentless focus on company culture is as awe-inspiring as it must be spooky to some. And it is, arguably, amongst the reasons for their sale to Amazon (or so VentureBeat interprets this part from the book). Sequoia pocketed $248m on $48m investment and were keen to liquidate (and, according to Hsieh, his board was not entirely convinced of “Tony’s social experiments”).
One should however not forget over this that Zappos operating principles are based on hard-nosed facts (from vendor relations, logistics, finance, employees to customer relations), and the “secret sauce” might then indeed be the company culture (Tony Hsieh is of course not the first one to propagate this). If he tried to take things too far is beyond me to say but I would say that a company that strives to make its customers, vendors and employees happy is not following a necessarily wrong path – even under cold-nosed corporate standards:
- Happy customers will help you by coming back to you (low retention costs and follow-on revenue) and by recommending you to their friends (low acquisition costs and incremental revenue);
- Happy vendors will be more likely to accommodate your requirements as to your stock (lower cost of supply), delivery schedules, etc, etc.;
- Happy employees reduce your employee churn and will – arguably – provide for higher productivity of the company as such (lower operating cost).
It is, in short, a very worthwhile book to read. And if you read it with the right glasses on, you will be able to look through what might sound like the preachings of Hsieh to find some real benefits for your own company (whether it exists already or is in the formation stages in your mind only and whether it is mobile, online or good old brick and mortar). If you are then still a believer, check over here for more…
And if you want to buy it?
The Carnival of the Mobilists is hosted this week over at “A Consuming Experience” and deals with handsets, learning, Amazon’s recent entry into mobile payments (on which I also blogged here) as well as an excellent post from Ajit Jaokar expanding on a talk he gave at CTIA (which I sadly missed). Go there, read it and become a better person… 
It’s here.
Here’s a nice deal: smartphone content specialist Handmark integrates Amazon’s new mobile payments service into its mobile content stores. This includes, most notably, also the famed (and sometimes damned) 1-Click functionality whereby users can (just like on iTunes; Apple licenses the 1-Click patent) buy content with just one click. The store will then use whichever credit card they have previously entered. To mobile users, bruised and tired of multiple clicks and onerous navigation to purchase a single piece of content, this is a true piece of added value (and one that was often hailed on Apple’s benchmark app store).
From what I can see, Apple still leads in the fewest number of clicks but Amazon’s offering comes relatively close. Amazon’s service seems to offer a wider range of functions though: a user can pay, reserve, settle, run refunds, cancel, etc, etc, and, last but not least, a fairly established and recognized dispute resolution system, all through the Amazon API. Rather neat indeed! The transaction fees then are a dream for every mobile content provider: in the ranges customary for mobile content ($0.99-9.99), the fees range from 1.5%+$0.01 for Amazon Payments balance transfers to 5%+$0.05 for credit card payments. This, dear carriers, equates to a revenue share to the provider of 90-95%!
We will arguably see a whole range of app store providers taking this model up, in particular amongst those without a prior billing relationship. Carriers might be tempted to license the model, too, in order to facilitate the order flow (although I doubt that they will adapt the revenue shares, too): I would be surprised if Amazon could not adapt the back-end to integrate with a carrier’s billing module (although those commercial discussions would surely be interesting…).
It is a compelling case of transferring an existing brand with proven ease of use to the mobile web (where it will thrive first) and app stores the world over.
Not really mobile but at least digital and interesting in any event: a news release has it that Apple‘s iTunes had overtaken mighty Wal-Mart as the US’ largest retailer of music. Best Buy was ranked third and Amazon.com and Target tied for the fourth spot in January and February, it is reported.
iTunes apparently sold more than 4 billion tracks since its launch in 2003. The survey counted every 12 digital downloads as one CD but excluded mobile music sales. Apple claims more than 50 million customers. This is a rather impressive development: They sold around 25m tracks in 2003, surpassed the 1bn mark only 3 years later and hit 3bn in July2007.
