Mobile Marketing Mashup

Mobile is hot. We get that. What makes something hot in the Internet marketing space is the amount of information that is flying around about it and if that’s one of the main barometers of success mobile has hit the big time for sure.

Here is some of the latest mobile information that you may find interesting.

Android v iPhone – So What’s the Real Story?

If you want to support the dominance or preeminence or whatever-it-is-inence of your favorite mobile platform there is data out there for you to do just that.

For instance, Piper Jaffray asked 216 people on the streets of Minneapolis about their mobile preferences and called it a survey. The results of this seem to point to the end of the Android platform as we know because Android users are ready to hop to an iPhone ASAP. This “data” was found at Business Insider. We put parentheses around the word data because, for all we know, this information could have been collected outside an Apple store.

So as a marketer you begin to think “Gee, the iPhone and the iOS really is the place to put my efforts. Then if you happen to go to Reuters you read this headline:

“Android Conquers Almost 50% of Smartphone Market”

You go on to the article to read:

Google’s Android platform has taken almost 50 percent of the global smartphone market, dominating in the Asia-Pacific region, research firm Canalys said on Monday.

Android, which Google acquired in 2005 and launched on phones in 2008, is used by almost all the major phone makers including HTC, LG, Motorola and Samsung.

It was the number one platform in 35 of the 56 countries Canalys tracks, resulting in a market share of 48 percent, the research firm said.

By comparison, Apple, which shipped 20.3 million iPhones, is a distant second with a market share of 19 percent but it overtook ailing Finnish handset maker Nokia as the world’s largest individual smartphone vendor.

Now, we have gone from the people of Minneapolis telling us that if they had the chance that most would run to the nearest iPhone, hug it and take it home to more information saying that Android marches on toward word smartphone domination.

Extra Points

As the marketer trying to divvy up your marketing budget between all things online you are now perplexed and possibly moving toward a little pissed. What’s the truth?

Now we look at Google who, while obviously vested in the Android platform, is also getting positioned to do what they do best: sell ads. This video from their Mobile Ads blog hits the high points for you.

So there you have it. If you are a marketer trying to figure out mobile you have quite the job on your hands. It’s becoming more and more important but it broken into two large pieces that will force you to either make sure you cover all your bases or place some bets on which platform will be the winner. Either way, it’s a classic PITA that is not going away and will likely get more confusing with the introduction of the iPhone 5 in whenever the latest rumor puts the time of it’s release.

So how do you handle mobile marketing? What is your secret for getting through this sea of information and disinformation so you can make an actual decision? Let us know in the comments.