New, inexpensive (under $150) cellphones for the holiday- 2008

Thanks to industry newsletter FierceWireless.com for this helpful overview we’re offering to parents looking to buy that first cellphone as a gift. These are the “new” phones that have just come on the market at various price-points. There are, of course, free phones as well, depending on the contract you sign.

Starting with the least expensive (just considering the phone price only)…

Click on the link under each label for more details about features.

Motorola VU204
Verizon Wireless- $29.99 (after $50 mail-in rebate and a two-year service contract)
http://www.fiercewireless.com/slideshow/pics-holiday-handsets-under-150?img=2

Pantech Slate
AT&T Mobility- $49.99 (after $50 mail-in rebate and a two-year service contract)
http://www.fiercewireless.com/slideshow/pics-holiday-handsets-under-150?img=4

Samsung Rant
Sprint Nextel- $49.99 (after $50 mail-in rebate and a two-year service contract)
http://www.fiercewireless.com/slideshow/pics-holiday-handsets-under-150?img=8

Motorola i576
Sprint Nextel-$70 (with a two-year service contract)
http://www.fiercewireless.com/slideshow/pics-holiday-handsets-under-150?img=1

Pantech Matrix
AT&T Mobility- $79.99 (after $50 mail-in rebate and a two-year service contract)
http://www.fiercewireless.com/slideshow/pics-holiday-handsets-under-150?img=3

Blackberry Pearl 8130
Alltel- $79.99 (after $100 mail-in rebate and a two-year service contract)
http://www.fiercewireless.com/slideshow/pics-holiday-handsets-under-150?img=5

Samsung Propel
AT&T Mobility- $79.99 (after $50 mail-in rebate and a two-year service contract)
http://www.fiercewireless.com/slideshow/pics-holiday-handsets-under-150?img=7

UTStarcom Quickfire
AT&T Mobility- $99.99 (after $50 mail-in rebate and a two-year service contract)
http://www.fiercewireless.com/slideshow/pics-holiday-handsets-under-150?img=10

Samsung Highnote
Sprint Nextel- $99 (after $50 mail-in rebate and a two-year service contract)
http://www.fiercewireless.com/slideshow/pics-holiday-handsets-under-150?img=6

LG Rhythm
Alltel Wireless-$119.99 (after $50 mail-in rebate and a two-year service contract)
http://www.fiercewireless.com/slideshow/pics-holiday-handsets-under-150?img=0

Samsung Sway
Verizon Wireless- $119.99 (after $50 mail-in rebate and a two-year service contract)
http://www.fiercewireless.com/slideshow/pics-holiday-handsets-under-150?img=9

Wild Card
Virgin Mobile USA- $89 (pre-paid service details at http://www.virginmobileusa.com/rates/minute.do)
http://www.fiercewireless.com/slideshow/pics-holiday-handsets-under-150?img=11

Survey: Why parents are texting their kids

Survey Shows Parents Are Learning to Text From Their Kids; Children Like Privacy, Cool Factor, Efficiency of Texting

A new survey released on Oct. 8 announced that, “Many parents view text messaging as a convenient way to stay connected with their children. The survey, conducted by Synovate for AT&T, “sought to better understand how and when parents text with their children and vice versa.”

AT&T’s survey came to the same conclusions at we did about texting and parenting.

“Text messaging has proved to be a powerful tool to help parents and kids close the communications gap,” said Alecia Bridgwater, director of Messaging for AT&T’s wireless unit.

“Not only does text messaging allow parents to enter their child’s world, but it provides an unintrusive way for families to stay in touch throughout the day as needed, whether it’s coordinating schedules, sending reminders about doctor’s appointments or just texting a ‘thinking of you’ message.”

WuduPlz was designed to help adults with texting. And who do adults often text? “Parents text most often with their children. Seventy-nine percent of parents surveyed said they text with their children most often to tell them to come or phone home, representing the most common type of parent-child text message,” according to the survey.

The AT&T press release quoted a mother of three as saying, “Texting is sometimes the easiest way to keep track of my kids,” said Janet Sturley. “They’re so much more likely to respond quickly to a text message, and it’s the most convenient and inexpensive way to keep tabs on them. I’ve become extremely fluent in the language of text.”
Some 73 percent of parents think that their children are more likely to respond to a text message. Half of parents surveyed had the impression that texting  makes them a “cool” parent.
The survey noted that “children like the privacy of text messaging (65 percent), the cool/hip factor (49 percent) and that it’s a better use of time than calling (48 percent).”

http://www.att.com/gen/press-room?pid=4800&cdvn=news&newsarticleid=26157

Young Adults: What U see (probably) isn’t (thankfully?) what you’ll get

“Consensus is emerging that an 18-year-old is not the same person she or he will be at 25, just as an 11-year-old is not the same as he or she will be at 18. They don’t look the same, feel the same, think the same, or act the same,” says A. Rae Simpson, the program director of parenting education and research at MIT’s Center for Work, Family and Personal Life, and the creator of the Young Adult Development Project.

Research gathered, analyzed and published this summer by her at MIT suggests that the years from 18 to 25 should be regarded as a specific developmental period with its own characteristics, milestones and limitations–a time of both stunning accomplishment and chilling risk as young adults are propelled into full maturity.

Many parents are using WuduPlz to communicate with their older children. This makes sense, according to Simpson’s work. Older children need the guidance of parents at times, too.

Still, it’s tricky. “I’m hearing from a lot of people in their 20s because they are feeling huge pressure to get it all together and make their mark,” Simpson says. “And that’s really unfair. There’s an enormous amount that happens after 25 or after 30 or after 40–some of which can’t happen any earlier.”

She bases her conclusions in part on research that indicates that some important developments in the prefrontal cortex of the brain don’t occur until the early 20s.

But she also considers cultural factors: Today’s American young adults are attending school longer, delaying marriage and often living at home due to economic pressure. “The kind of milestones that we have associated with adulthood are happening later in the 20s,” she says.

This isn’t to say the older kids are still children. The ages 18 to 25 are also a time of wonderful energy and creativity, Simpson says. The dualistic thinking of teenagers (everything is either bad or good) is being replaced in older children by an ability to see a complexity of viewpoints.

Learn more here

New openness toward phone consumers! (Er, who wanted that?)

Pity the poor family looking to buy new cellphones and reading how “in the last nine months, carriers, software developers and cellphone makers have embraced a new attitude of openness toward consumers,” as The New York Times reported this week.

Sounds great. Where is it in the store?

As the NYT explained, “The market for smartphones, which are really handheld computers, has quickly expanded beyond business users. They have gone mainstream, with teenagers and women finding novel uses for them — texting snippets of their lives to friends or tracking friends on maps. The carriers and the handset makers realize they have to make the phones adaptable to those new customers.

Super! So, therefore…

Well, deep into the article, it explains that “Of course, consumers should be careful what they wish for. Already there are at least six major operating systems for cellphones — Linux, Symbian and BlackBerry, as well as those made by Microsoft, Palm and Apple. And more are coming. Google expects the first phones in its Open Handset Alliance, which will use its Google Mobile operating system, to be out this fall.

“Consumers may find it confusing that some applications work only for certain phones because developers do not have the time or money to adapt projects to every operating system.”

“Consumers will also come to realize that “open” comes with an asterisk. The word means what the carriers, handset makers and software developers want it to mean.”

Of course, it’s even worse if you are a “mobile marketing” professional trying to figure out your next move.

Texting “A Pain in the Neck”

I loved the August 1 story in the Washington Post how seniors are tapping into texting. Kim Hart did a great job. But, really, the point of the article was: Not really.

The story starts off with:

“Jane Stohlman, 69, stared intently, trying to figure out why in the dickens that tiny envelope kept appearing on her cellphone’s screen.

The helpful young man sitting beside her explained. It was a text message, and it was far more useful than one of those old-fashioned voice mails.”

“Not at my age,” Stohlman informed him. “And who the heck was texting me?”

Hart reported that, “for wireless companies, senior citizens are a relatively underserved market. About 50 percent of seniors over age 65 own a cellphone, compared with nearly 90 percent of consumers 18 to 29, according to a survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project.”

Seniors make up the fastest-growing market for cellphone firms like AT&T, the article said.

The reporter was covering a demo for seniors by AT&T. One compay rep showed a woman how to designate her daughter as a contact under “ICE,” short for “in case of emergency.”

But when he typed the wrong letter, he was one who was stumped. He couldn’t find the delete button.

Now it was Esler’s turn to show off her cellphone skills. She proudly pointed out the correct button. “It may be old, but it still works fine.”

The story concluded with this:

Tap, tap, tapping away in search of the right letters to spell out “Hello” for a text message seemed a bit overwhelming to Stohlman.

It’s all about rhythm, she was encouraged by Damon Frazier, also an AT&T sales representative. It just takes practice.

“It’s a pain in the neck!” Stohlman said.

Actually, Frazier said, texting can be quite addictive.

“Trust me,” Stohlman said. “I have plenty of other things to do.”

WuduPlz sell more ads

As a recent article in The Wall Street Journal outlined, the new online ads newspapers are managing to sell are cannibalizing their print-ad revenues.

The number of local salespeople peddling online ads for newspapers has ballooned to 15,500 from 5,900, according to estimates from media-research firm Borrell Associates. But, newspapers now control only 27.4% of the local online ad market, down from a 35.9% share in 2006, according to Borrell.

WuduPlz has packaged itself for newspapers to address this.

Because online ads are far less expensive than print ads and thus offer lower commissions, it’s difficult to get salespeople to focus on selling the digital products.

WuduPlz, however, is a premium online product which can demand higher rates. And, WuduPlz offers materials for both editorial and advertising to create a compelling print tie-in.

WuduPlz uses the typical, easy-to-deploy banner ads that are directed to specific local markets. WuduPlz works for both small and medium-size local businesses as well as large regional or national accounts.

Local local online ads are growing — that market expanded at a 57.2% clip last year. The big winners so far are Internet companies like Google and Local.com, which collectively control 53.3% of the local online ad market, up from 25% in 2006, according to The Wall Street Journal. “And they’ve done that with only 1,400 ad-sales reps. They specialize in selling ads that target consumers searching the Web for a particular product or service, whether it’s a plumber or a neighborhood pizzeria,” the Journal noted.

WuduPlz provides newspaper with a unique way to compete for ads with both Google and local bloggers .

Small- to medium-size businesses are a prime target for WuduPlz because their limited ad budgets price them out of the daily print paper, but they are eager to market.

The online audience is often about a third of the size of a newspaper’s print circulation, but by offering a clear path to a prime target market, WuduPlz can overcme that objection.

“Unless you take practices that have been in place for 50 years and shake the dust off the rugs, you’re not going to move the needle,” says Mark Contreras, senior vice president of Scripps newspaper division.

Evolution of the cellphone

Understanding all of the excitement and confusion about mobile marketing is summed up in this 90 second fun video.
via videosift.com

Ads welcomed with valuable content

“We see an increasing trend of consumers willing to trade off and receive advertising to gain more–and better–mobile content,” Nielsen Mobile VP of mobile media Jeff Herrmann said today, looking at their most recent research.

“Successful mobile marketers will meet the challenge offered by consumers by engaging with them in a way that adds value to the mobile user content experience,” he concluded.

Easy does it

As we’ve noted, mobile technology is getting cheaper and cheaper, which is great news for users and content providers.

But, don’t get too excited because users are not getting excited. Last month, the Israeli “Service Adoption Management” firm Olista published the results on their in-depth analysis of who is doing what in the real world of mobile. Their findings, from from monitoring over eleven million mobile users across five different mobile operators, using their software is worth noting. As Cellular News first reported, usability rather than price is slowing the adoption of new mobile data services.

One eye-opening stat: 85% of mobile TV users abandoned the service after the first viewing and after passing through the advice of notice charge without hesitation. “The indication from the Olista findings being that the user was experiencing navigational difficulties in moving from one TV channel to the next,” Cellular News said.

Even more interesting was that over 70% of users who sign up to content bundles failed to consume any mobile content. They had paid for it but did not use it. Another worrying statistic for content providers showed that around 50% of all application downloads failed to complete successfully.

Oren Glanz, CEO of Olista, said in releasing this data, “The key to unlocking the pent up demand for mobile content lies in understanding and addressing these barriers to adoption.”

Mobile data continues to get cheaper

Sprint has announced a new plan called “Simply Everything.” The U.S. pricing plan is said to offer subscribers “unlimited voice, data, text, email, web surfing, Sprint TV, Sprint Music, GPS Navigation, Direct Connect and Group Connect for $99.99 per month.”

Gad. Now, if there could be come progress on getting mobile devices to use similar formats for display and agree on some software standards, the market for mobile data really might boom. And, you know it’s going to happen.

But, we’re not there. Yet, at the same time people’s habits are forming, new channels are being created. Mobile can’t be ignored, but who has a lot of time and money to risk on formats that may or may not work.

The same week Sprint announced this, they were in the news with a reported $29.5 billion fourth quarter loss.