When you fire up the Paytm app for the first time, you are greeted with a message: ‘Handcrafted in India’. What if one were to list such ‘handcrafted in India’ apps? The response I got on Twitter included some common apps – Cleartrip, Zomato, Paytm to name a few. Most were commenting on the looks while some talked about the UX too. I have a 16BG iPhone and so I am pretty carful with the…
The iPhone launch in 2007 was unprecedented in many ways. There was hype and media attention during the launch alright, but what followed was even more interesting. A six-month window of pre-launch publicity, virtually unchallenged by any competitive activity. According to Harvard Business School professor David Yoffie, Apple generated $400 million in free iPhone advertising between its announcement and launch. Fast forward to 2014. What a difference seven years make. We have a spate of…
Apple’s retail strategy has been hailed as one of the hallmarks of the brand’s success. It’s ‘self-owned and operated’ stores in the US and few other countries have played a crucial role in building the magic around the Apple brand. They are built to a certain specific layout & design and are staffed by knowledgeable, helpful staff. The folks at Genius Bar have come to be known as Mac experts who can solve any technical…
Time and again, market share is mentioned by companies, analysts and media as a measure of how successful a brand is. Sure it is a measure, but just one of the measures of success. While market share is a motive for all companies, not all of them need to live and die by it. Companies can have different measures for success – from overall profitability to margins to average customer yield and so on. In…
Apple aired a new ad for the iPad Air on US television Sunday night. Titled “Your Verse,” features a voiceover by Robin Williams reciting a monolog from the movie ‘Dead Poets Society’. The ad got a positive response overall from critics (see highlights here) and social media users alike. Agency: TBWA There is a beautifully designed web page dedicated to such stories of iPad usage – including one of Bollywood’s Feroz Khan. I liked the…
The top 3 articles on why we love lists are : A list of reasons why our brain loves lists, 8 reasons why we love end-of-the year lists and The 5 Best Articles About Why We Love Writing Lists. Since it is the season for lists- Best of, Top Ten, Bottom Ten etc., here is my list of Essential iPhone Apps of 2013. These are not necessarily launched in 2013 (some may have been) but…
The latest spot from Apple, titled ‘Misunderstood’, tells a story of a teenaged boy who surprises his family with a ‘creation’ on his iPhone. The film has garnered positive reviews overall, especially on Twitter and has already got 1.5mn views on YouTube. Agency: TBWA/MediaArts Apple has had a good year as far as ads are concerned – ‘Pencil’ for iPad, the demo video of iPad and it possibilities (‘Life on iPad’) were well made and…
I had made a short list of iOS-exclusive apps (14, updated to 17) which, on hindsight required a lot more additions. So herewith another list of some beautiful, iOS-only apps: Mustbin: according to Techcrunch, backed by $4.5 million in funding, Mustbin wants to become the go-to service for organizing everything you have that’s important – including passwords, financial data, home and vehicle info, health and medical documents, and more – all securely encrypted in the cloud. Night Sky…
The number of apps on the various app stores is a topic often discussed in tech blogs and even mainstream media. One of the yardsticks of success is the number of apps and up until few years ago, the Apple blogs gloated about the number of apps on the iTunes store. And then Android grew in popularity across the world (that’s an understatement) and it was just a matter of time before the the number of apps on the Google Play store caught up with that of iOS (current number of Android apps in the market: approx. 875,000- just a wee bit lower than that of iOS).
When the iPhone 5C and 5S prices were officially announced by Apple India, the reaction was along expected lines. People were shocked at the astronomical price tag and some called it delusional pricing. Not surprisingly the Indian tech blogs (which border on anti-Apple anyway) mocked the pricing (in fact, that tone was adopted the day 5C was announced in the US) and so did the Twitterati. To be fair, paying Rs.53,500 (approx $857) for a…