Consumer Product Strategy

Prepare For The Second Wave Of Apps

Thomas Husson — Mon, 21 May 2012 05:10:35 +0000

In July 2012, app stores -- first popularized by Apple -- will be four years old. There is still a lot of room to improve the discoverability and sharing of apps. For example, locally relevant content and monetization options are often missing. Adding social discovery, personalization, and recommendation features are key to improving the user experience.

However, app stores have already had a dramatic impact on the distribution of games and are starting to offer new forms of engagement between brands and consumers. Consumer usage of the most popular mobile apps has exploded in the past two years. A third of European online consumers ages 18+ who own a smartphone are using apps daily or more frequently. Seventeen percent are using apps several times a day. Stickiness and frequency of usage vary tremendously from one app category to the other. Among European online consumers ages 18+ with installed apps on their smartphones, 57% use social networking and 48% use news apps at least daily, while 69% use finance and banking apps at least weekly.

First-generation apps -- aside from gaming apps -- rarely made the most of the unique attributes of the mobile platform and were rarely integrated with back-end systems. We believe the market is poised for a second wave of consumer apps that are more personalized and contextual. Here's what to expect:

■ "Big data" will enable more contextual experiences on mobile apps.

■ We'll see smarter, connected apps.

■ There will be a shift from native to hybrid and web apps.

■ Multiplatform apps will reign supreme.

The Fight Over TV Is A Fight For Platform Power

James McQuivey — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:52:13 +0000

You're in for a big surprise. Microsoft is winning one of the most important battles in the digital world: The battle for the TV. The TV battle is important for reasons you already know: TV consumes more time than anything else and it generates annual revenues from $140 to $160 billion each year in the US alone.

But the stakes of the battle have risen sharply. The fight over the TV is really a fight over the next massive consumer platform that is coming up for grabs. Of platforms there are few: Google owns search, Amazon owns digital retail, Facebook owns social, and Apple owns consumer devices. Microsoft owns, well, nothing at the moment, despite its handsome revenue stream from Windows and Office.

That could change soon. Microsoft's Xbox 360 is already the most-watched net-connected TV device in the US and soon, the world. With more than 70 million consoles in households worldwide - as many as half of them connected to the Internet, depending on the country - Microsoft can rapidly drive new video services into tens of millions of households.

This week we released our newest report, The Fight To Control The TV Becomes A Platform War, describing the 32 million consumer households in the US that watch online video on a TV set. That number is up sharply from 25 million the year before, and of them, 18.4 million are getting the job done with a game console, the majority of them using the Xbox 360. Nothing else comes close, not Internet-connected TVs - which are selling well but connecting poorly - nor over-the-top video boxes like Roku or the Apple TV. (I talk more about the report in the brief video above).

With The Galaxy S3, The Samsung/Apple Fight Will Enable Smarter Product Experiences

Thomas Husson — Thu, 03 May 2012 21:13:21 +0000

After months of rumors and a good marketing orchestration, Samsung has just unveiled its new flagship device, the Samsung Galaxy S3. Samsung will first launch the HSPA+ device in Europe at the end of May to benefit from the current weaknesses of its competitors -- in particular, Nokia. It will release in the US in an LTE version later this summer. The aim is clear: to take the lead from Apple's iPhone in the high-end smartphone segment and do even better than the Galaxy S2, which sold more than 20 million units.

Samsung is positioning a wide range of products in all segments and in multiple consumer electronic categories, leveraging its scale and scope and its vertically integrated approach (screens, processors, storage components, etc.). Despite the growing dependence on the Android OS, Samsung does not have all its eggs in the same OS basket. However, it clearly needs to catch up in the software and services space. That's the reason I continue to believe that, in the premium segment, Apple is still in the best position to offer a seamlessly integrated experience across devices. Samsung's cloud component is still missing, and it will need to continue its efforts to close the gap with Apple.

On the contrary, Apple -- still one of Samsung's largest clients (chipsets and screens) -- has few models and higher margins and is in a position to leverage a different ecosystem around its OS, apps, and iCloud models. Thanks to the phenomenal success of the iPad, the Apple brand is reinventing itself and expanding into hardware categories that represent new growth drivers from which Samsung is not yet able to benefit.

Beyond the Samsung/Apple high-end leadership war, the great news is that these new smartphones will increasingly enable consumer-facing brands to launch innovative new product experiences. Some of the new services introduced by the Galaxy S III highlight this phenomenon:

With O2 Wallet, The Disruptive Mobile Payment Space Is Heating Up

Thomas Husson — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 11:44:22 +0000

A year ago, Forrester stated that mobile payments were entering a disruptive phase. More recently, my colleague Benjamin Ensor elaborated on the battle for the digital wallet.

Mobile digital wallets are emerging and going beyond payment. New technologies, mixing QR codes, apps, personal financial management software, NFC, and many more, are combining to convert mobile handsets into digital wallets that combine not just payments but also receipts, vouchers, and loyalty. Beyond the convenience of using the phone for payment, consumers will benefit from post-transaction elements such as location-based coupons or enhanced product information at the point of sale (POS).

We've not seen a single day without a new product launch, start-up creation, or acquisition -- or a new strategic alliance between banks, payment networks, Internet firms, or mobile operators.

So what's new today? Telefonica 02 just announced the launch of O2 Wallet in the UK.

We believe that the O2 Wallet is, for now, the most comprehensive mobile payment solution in the UK - available to a majority of smartphone owners, whether they are O2 customers or not. The new product combines the following functions:

Wearable Devices: The Next Battleground For The Platform Wars

Sarah Rotman Epps — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 14:13:10 +0000

Wearable devices, or "wearables" for short, have enormous potential for uses in health and fitness, navigation, social networking, commerce, and media. Imagine video games that happen in real space. Or glasses that remind you of your colleague's name that you really should know. Or paying for a coffee at Starbucks with your watch instead of your phone. Wearables will transform our lives in numerous ways, trivial and substantial, that we are just starting to imagine.

In a new Forrester report out today, we argue that wearables will move mainstream once they get serious investment from the "big five" platforms -- Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook -- and their developer communities, and we give advice to product strategists who want to stay ahead of the wearables curve. Key takeaways:

Drive Product Innovation To Mature Your Mobile Strategy

Thomas Husson — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 11:11:00 +0000

To gauge how far organizations have come with their mobile initiatives, Forrester conducted the Q4 2011 Global Mobile Maturity Online Survey among executives in charge of their companies' mobile strategies.

Since 2010, fewer companies report not having a mobile strategy in place. Between Q3 2010 and Q4 2011, the percentage of companies we interviewed that have no mobile strategy or are at the early stage of defining one has significantly decreased, from 57% to 31%. C-level executives are increasingly in the driver's seat, and mobile is moving away from a test-and-learn approach to fueling companies' corporate goals. Mobile is primarily viewed as a way to improve customer engagement and satisfaction.

However, the majority of companies face organizational issues and struggle to allocate the right resources for mobile and to measure the success of their mobile consumer initiatives. The main obstacles they face are these:

■ Lack of measurable business goals clouds early success.

■ Limited investment, resources, and expertise slow progress.

■ Cross-functional and cross-geographical complexity cause inefficiency.

There are plenty of new disruptive platforms emerging from tablets, from game consoles to connected TVs, but mobile will be the primary platform for global product innovation. Only mobile phones can offer such a global reach.

To prepare for the accelerating pace of mobile disruption, product strategists should help other internal stakeholders rethink the life cycles of their mobile applications and services and drive innovation via smarter apps, richer data, and converging technologies.

The Tablet-TV Connection

Sarah Rotman Epps — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 13:14:41 +0000

Analysts and press have paid much attention to the cannibalistic relationship of tablets and PCs -- but there's another screen whose relationship to the TV is worth considering. My colleague Annie Corbett and I published a new report today on the relationship between tablets and TVs. A few key takeaways from the report:

Thoughts About NFC, Contactless Services, And Nokia Lumia Devices

Thomas Husson — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 12:13:54 +0000

A couple of weeks ago, I stated that there was much more to Near Field Communications (NFC) than just contactless payments. The WIMA conference starting today in Monaco will showcase numerous use cases for the technology.

I continue to believe that most consumers using an NFC device in 2012 will more likely use it for device-pairing or data-sharing purposes than for payments. Pairing NFC accessories and reading NFC smart tags will open up new opportunities. NFC will be a key technology for interacting with the world around you -- and it is time to test it, as highlighted in this recent piece of research written by my colleague Anthony Mullen. There is an ongoing debate about bar codes' potential replacement by NFC; I think both technologies serve different objectives and have different advantages but will continue to co-exist. Radio and optical technologies are converging, as highlighted by French startup Mobilead, which does a fantastic job of delivering a great branded experience mixing QR codes and NFC tags.

Lumia 900: How Nokia And Microsoft Become Disruptors

Sarah Rotman Epps — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 13:30:00 +0000

The Nokia Lumia 900--the hero product from Microsoft's premier Windows Phone partner -- hits AT&T stores on April 8. In advance of the launch, the reviews have come rolling in. Mossberg focuses on the flaws, and while nothing he's written is inaccurate, I can say as a consumer that I find that the joys of the product outweigh its shortcomings. I will say it loud and say it proud: I love my Windows Phone. I liked the HTC Trophy (awful camera notwithstanding); I like the Samsung Focus Flash (a bargain at $0.99, with contract); and Nokia brings the platform to a new level with more sophisticated hardware.

Now, with my consumer hat off and my analyst hat on, what I've been thinking about lately is the product strategy and product marketing behind the Lumia launch. Nokia and Microsoft have done many things right: They've built a great product. They've picked the right price -- launching a premium product at an approachable $99 sends a message of both humility (we know we're coming from behind) and savvy (this product is cheap enough to entice unbetrothed consumers to try something new). Their pricing strategy for T-Mobile's Lumia 710, at $49, was equally smart and has paid off in reportedly brisk sales. Overall, though, Lumia sales across the product line pale in comparison to, say, the iPhone 4S, whose first day of preorder sales equaled analyst estimates of Lumia handsets in their first two months on the market. Launching Lumia at a major US carrier, as well as in China, the world's largest smartphone market, gives it a chance to gain momentum but also raises the stakes if it fails.

The New iPad: How A Gut Renovation Masquerades As Incremental Innovation

Sarah Rotman Epps — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 18:54:12 +0000

We've gotten greedy. We -- the media, the industry watchers, the tech enthusiasts -- have an insatiable hunger for novelty. The original iPad wowed us because it introduced an entirely new form factor. iPad 2 slimmed down and got a snappy cover. The new iPad shares nearly nothing with the iPad 2 hardware, according to Apple executives I spoke with. Its retina display has 1 million more pixels than a large-screen HDTV. The new A5X chip has, according to Apple, four times the processing power of Nvidia's Tegra 3 chip. Compared with iPad 2, it has a nicer camera, a video camera, dictation input, and 4G, while still squeezing out 10 hours of (Wi-Fi) battery life. It's a wee bit thicker and an ounce heavier. And yet, in my conversations with numerous reporters over the past few days, the theme they kept bringing up was "incremental innovation": Will the next iPad be innovative enough to maintain Apple's momentum?

If the iPhone 4S is a case study, the answer for consumers is a resounding "yes." The 4S, though not as dramatic an update as the technorati hoped for, has been the best-selling iPhone ever. The new iPad will fly off the shelves too: We expect tablets, led by the iPad, to reach 60.7 million US adults by the end of the year, or 19% of the US population. The engineering feats accomplished in the new iPad would have been inconceivable in the early days of personal computing, when colored pixels were in themselves a revelation. We the tech watchers may be jaded, but Apple's consumers still appreciate the mesmerizing beauty of an ever-nicer screen.

Forecast Update: Amazon Expands Tablets’ Addressable Market

Sarah Rotman Epps — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 12:47:46 +0000

Apple's anticipated iPad update comes as the tablet market is white-hot. In a new report published for Forrester clients today, we've revised our US consumer tablet forecast upward: We now expect 112.5 million US adults to own a tablet in 2016, which will equal 34.3% of US adults. In Europe, the numbers are similarly impressive, with an expected 105.7 million tablet users, or 30.4% of consumers 16 and older, in the EU-7 by 2016. With an assumed replacement rate of two years, cumulative unit sales will be much higher: In the US, we forecast that consumers will buy 292.5 million tablets from 2010 to 2016.

Tablets are a global phenomenon--we estimate that US consumers constitute only 43% of Apple's 55 million iPads sold through the end of its last fiscal quarter, with the rest going to consumers and enterprises in the rest of the 90 countries where the iPad is now sold. Tablets are also a worker phenomenon: Although the No. 1 place where consumers use tablets is in the living room, 37% of US tablet owners take them to work as well. In a recent Forrester survey of 9,912 technology end users at SMBs and enterprises in 17 countries, we found that workers in BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) and Mexico actually led demand for wanting to use a tablet for work--and being willing to share the cost of the device with their employers.

Thoughts From My Pilgrimage To Mobile's Mecca

Thomas Husson — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 01:02:08 +0000

Once again, I've just spent a couple of days in Barcelona at Mobile World Congress (MWC). Year after year, the show is opening up to non-telecom players and going beyond mobile. Think about the rise of personal cloud-based services delivering consumer experiences across devices, Sony's marketing efforts to promote seamless entertainment across different screens, or the emergence of the "phablets" acronym (devices in between a phone and a tablet, such as Asus Padfone or LG Vu).

While it is difficult to summarize all the news and announcements, here are some thoughts on MWC 2012:

Share Your Experience With Product Innovation!

Doug Williams — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 16:32:48 +0000

Are you a product strategy professional? Are you involved in product innovation at your company? Are you aware of how your company approaches the product innovation process? If so, I'd like to take this opportunity to invite you to participate in a brief Forrester survey, available here: http://forr.com/ProdInnovation.

The survey has three main sections: 1) how your company approaches product innovation in general; 2) whether/how your company embraces the principles of open innovation; and 3) whether/how your company embraces social media/technology/platforms and leverages those tools in the product development process (e.g., co-creation).

The survey should take approximately 10 minutes and will be open at least through the end of this week. As a thank-you for your time, participants will receive a piece of research based on the findings of the survey. Toward the end of the survey, we ask for contact information if you are interested in scheduling a follow-up interview about the product innovation process at your company. Please consider saying yes! I'd love to hear about your success stories as well as more detail around the challenges you face in the product innovation process.

Thank you in advance for your time and consideration. Stay tuned -- we'll share some results of the survey on this blog as well.

Amazon Makes Debut In India Through Junglee.Com: What It Means For Buyers, Sellers, And Competitors

Manish Bahl — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 14:27:53 +0000

In early February 2011, Amazon launched Junglee.Com as a marketplace in India. In 1998, Amazon had acquired Junglee (which means "wild" in English), an online virtual database-making company, and after 13 years now it has shown its affection to the "Junglee" domain name. The reason is that Amazon can't sell directly in India due to FDI laws that restrict foreign companies on multibrand retail in the country. Nevertheless, the Indian law does allow foreign players to operate as an online marketplace to connect sellers and buyers with each other. Amazon is following this approach by partnering with both online (Snapdeal, Univercell, etc.) and offline (HomeShop18, Bombay Store, etc.) players in the country before it makes a full-fledged entry through an "Amazon.in"-type domain. Also, Amazon just received the Indian Government's FDI approval to set up a logistics operation. The company plans to invest INR 15 crore (around US$ 3.06 million) to set up a wholly owned subsidiary to undertake the business of online marketplace operator and retailer inter-alia courier services.

Let's look at what Amazon's entry through Junglee.com means for online buyers, suppliers, and competitors:

Sellers: More Business And Some Risk

Calling All Product Strategy Professionals!

Carlton Doty — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 22:48:18 +0000

We're looking for a new analyst to join Forrester's Consumer Product Strategy practice. Are you experienced in the field of product planning, development, and innovation? Do you have an insatiable curiosity for where the digital economy is headed and how digitally disruptive products are changing the world in which we live? If this sounds like you, keep reading . . .

Digital disruption is transforming consumer products, inverting industry economics, and redefining customer relationships for companies in all industries. Forrester is helping our clients adapt their businesses and innovate their products in response to the unprecedented pace of technology change that characterizes this revolution. We need a Senior/Principal Analyst with cross-industry experience to join the team and help serve Forrester's clients with forward-looking research and advice on how product strategists can capitalize on digital disruption.

If you're interested, apply online. We look forward to hearing from you!

Consumer Product Strategy

Prepare For The Second Wave Of Apps

Categories:

The Fight Over TV Is A Fight For Platform Power

Categories:

With The Galaxy S3, The Samsung/Apple Fight Will Enable Smarter Product Experiences

Categories:

With O2 Wallet, The Disruptive Mobile Payment Space Is Heating Up

Categories:

Wearable Devices: The Next Battleground For The Platform Wars

Categories:

Drive Product Innovation To Mature Your Mobile Strategy

Categories:

The Tablet-TV Connection

Categories:

Thoughts About NFC, Contactless Services, And Nokia Lumia Devices

Categories:

Lumia 900: How Nokia And Microsoft Become Disruptors

Categories:

The New iPad: How A Gut Renovation Masquerades As Incremental Innovation

Categories:

Forecast Update: Amazon Expands Tablets’ Addressable Market

Categories:

Thoughts From My Pilgrimage To Mobile's Mecca

Categories:

Share Your Experience With Product Innovation!

Amazon Makes Debut In India Through Junglee.Com: What It Means For Buyers, Sellers, And Competitors

Categories:

Calling All Product Strategy Professionals!