80% of Mobile Visits To Cabana Mobile From iOS

Recent Cabana Mobile Facebook Page Updates

I hope you guy are all following & LIKE the Cabana Mobile Facebook Page. For those of you who've been missing the fun 'cause you're snoozing at the keyboard, been too busy raising your next round or are conscientiously objecting to social networks (resistance is futile), that site includes all my blog posts & more quick commentary. It's like super-tweets about articles I find interesting and more brainfarts on the mobile/digital entertainment space in general. Check it out. Meanwhile here's a list of some recent posts...

10/16/2010 Re: Fast Company article Should Albums Cost $1.50?: "Consumer me loves the idea of a $1.50 album & MBA me sees the value of inefficiencies being taken out of the system across media as a result of consumer/OEM-centric digital distribution business models. That said, all of us vested in content should be wary of the rapid race to the bottom in terms of pricing. This will inevitably lead to less content being created, fewer risks being taken and the loss of thousands of jobs. Deflation is a dangerous spiral... once consumers begin to believe that content will be cheaper (or free) in the future, they get really good at keeping their wallets in their pockets."

10/15/2010 Re: Gameloft sizzle reel on YouTube: "Will the Samsung Galaxy Tab & the availability of quality game apps prove that the tablet market isn't only about iPad? What will the paid conversions on these impressive Gameloft's teaser apps look like if they rely on Google Checkout?"

10/15/2010 Re: Tweet from Google exec Mike Steib: "Perfect tweet to sum up Google's mobile business from Mike Steib: "$1B.""

10/15/2010 Re: Mobile Entertainment article Full Angry Birds Android game goes live on GetJar... for free!: "Interesting strategy. When a red-hot developer believes that the best path forward on Android is to give their trophy title away, sell some ads against it and figure out in-app monetization later, it really manifests the dire state of paid app monetization within Android Market. Frankly, I'm worried that this approach will just further contribute to price erosion in the overall mobile content space... but I'll be happy to be proved wrong by some mindblasting freemium success stories (outside Japan/Korea) in coming quarters. Meanwhile I'm getting the app for my Nexus One as soon as GetJar's site is back up."

10/14/2010 Re: PocketGamer.biz article Opinion: Why ngmoco is worth the $195 million DeNA might actually pay for it: "Perhaps DeNA isn't actually overpaying for ngmoco... what do you guys think?"

10/14/2010 Re: Business Insider SAI video interview with Gene Munster: "Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster stands by a 12-month price target of $390 for Apple and tells Business Insider that "Apple is in the best position of any technology company" for the next decade... assuming Jobs is at the helm."

10/14/2010 Re: The Register article When Dilbert came to Nokia: "Apparently the matrix organization structure that Nokia trumpeted for years played a large role in stifling product innovation..."

10/13/2010 Re: PocketGamer.biz article Opinion: The ten next best acquisitions in mobile gaming: "Nice opinion piece from Jon Jordan. I think Digital Chocolate is missing from this list... who else should be on the radar?

10/13/2010 Re: Mobile Entertainment article The numbers behind DeNA's ngmoco acquisition: "‎$403mil buyout on $3.16mil 2009 revenues & net loss of $10.9mil (significantly lower than I had guessed). Am I missing something or this just stupid?"

10/12/2010 "Yahoo! has $1.2bil in the bank, their embattled CEO is due to take a big swing & they haven't done anything crazy in mobile for years... just sayin'"

10/12/2010 Re: TechCrunch article Kleiner Perkins Harvests Over $100 Million From Ngmoco Acquisition: "Things are about to get super-extra-frothy..."

10/12/2010 "Google has got to fix Android Market if publishers of quality paid apps are going to support (or continue to support) the platform... buzz at CTIA was that despite impressive market penetration Android is still almost meaningless to publishers from a revenue perspective. Anybody experiencing anything different?"

Samsung's Galaxy Tab Looks Kinda Badass

• Android 2.2
• Video calling
• Google Maps Navigation embedded
• Flash Player 10.1
• and you can hold it in one hand

...take that iPad

Apple & The Balkanization of Content

Andrew Seybold wrote a great piece on FierceMobileContent this morning bemoaning how Apple has taken us back to the future by creating their own version of the walled garden from the bad ol' days (not that long ago) when the only way to get content for mobile devices was through a carrier deck. The smartphone revolution was supposed to liberate us all from those proprietary, AOL-esque environments, and give us access to a universe of content available across devices... right? Well Apple apparently didn't get that memo and/or think that was a good idea, at all... and instead took the opportunity to Think Different.

The crux of the matter, and content owners and creators need to understand this, is that (big headline) Apple is not in the content business... at least not the way most folks think they are. As I'm very fond of saying (eyes roll collectively) Apple is in the reverse razorblade business. Despite having a huge ecosystem of 185k Apps, thousands of movies & TV shows and millions of songs, they run iTunes, as Peter Kafka recently pointed out, as a pretty much a break even business. Content is a means to an end for Apple. Their interest is in creating a hyper-competitive market featuring proprietary, low-priced Apps and other entertainment content, that makes consumers excited about buying every form-factor of their high margin devices... and upgrading them regularly. You know all your friends who are crazy-passionate about Apple products? They've bought into this hook, line and sinker and now that they've spent a significant chunk of their disposable income on music, movies and Apps for their iPhones and iPads, (guess what?) they're never gonna switch to an Android device or a BlackBerry... but in the next year they'll probably spend what's left in their wallets on a new a sexy new razor to show off all those blades.

Content owners and creators who are hoping Apple will winnow the field of Apps or move prices higher in the market, so they may realize better margins, are deluding themselves. The model is all about you fighting for your very life, against hundreds of others, so Apple customers get the best content at the lowest price (why not free). They definitely don't want any one provider getting too much pricing power within their ecosystem. Oh yeah, and remember you're playing in Apple's sandbox... so that tech innovation leveraging their platform, that's giving you some competitive advantage... Apple might just decide one day to roll that out to tout le monde.

For some small companies this highly manipulated, low-price, high-volume market provides a real opportunity. Moreover, the sheer scale of it, the shopping experience and the elegant billing mechanism makes it an important place to play for all content providers. But iTunes is a very dangerous market in which to place all your bets. In terms of closed markets, content owners should ultimately be favoring those in which the owner's interests are more closely aligned with their own. More importantly, if we hope to see a healthier mobile content ecosystem, content owners and creators need to support, and advocate for, more open standards and markets.

2010 Will Be Remembered As The Year of...

The results of my latest poll are in... and considering that 2 of the most popular responses show that readers believe that 2010 will be remembered as a year of "pain" and "consolidation" it's pretty clear, despite consumer smartphone exuberance, the general mood amongst those that provide content for those devices is pretty negative. I must say that this echoes the majority of sentiment (with several notable exceptions) that I heard from mobile games publishers at GDC this last week. Competition is intense, iPhone growth is not offsetting carrier declines, price erosion continues on iTunes and no other smartphone platforms are close to providing meaningful revenues yet. Basically we're going through the mobile equivalent of a console upgrade cycle... where consumers (particularly those with a propensity to buy mobile content) are rapidly moving to sexier hardware. The problem is that the content distribution channels are developing unevenly, with business models that don't necessarily play to the advantage of incumbent players. No doubt the landscape of top performing companies in mobile entertainment will look quite different a year from now than it does today.

iSlate Will Help Apple Dominate ePublishing

Earlier today WSJ's John Paczkowski revealed that Apple is hosting an event in San Francisco on Weds Jan 27th (2 weeks before Macworld 2010), presumably to launch the hotly anticipated tablet device the technorati confidently call the iSlate. There's been rampant speculation for months in the tech press and blogosphere about this product's form factor, OS, UI/UX, hardware components, etc., but I think the most interesting discussion is around the digital content category it'll help Apple dominate. The iPod quickly allowed them to control digital music and the iPhone mobile apps... so what will it be with the iSlate? Stu Dredge had a great post this morning theorizing about which games would be best suited for a tablet-like device, and there's been a lot of talk about how its rumored 10" screen will make it the ultimate portable video player. While I think the iSlate has potential to be awesome for both of those categories... the big win for Apple will be in electronic publishing. I'm confident Apple has it's sites firmly set on Amazon's hot-selling Kindle, and believes it has the chops to deliver a much better consumer experience (the bar isn't set too high, frankly). Imagine all your favorite books, magazines and newspapers available for sale or subscription through iTunes, at super-reasonable prices (an Apple hallmark), that can be enjoyed in full color, with intuitive interactive tools and sharing features. Assuming they can get deals done with all the major publishers (talk about old media, oy vey!), that the hardware isn't prohibitively expensive (~$500) and that they also make ebooks & emags available for legacy devices (e.g. the iPhone), I think within 1 year they could easily dominate the space. Unless I've got this all wrong, publishers, particularly those on the newspaper/magazine side getting massacred by the online ad-supported business model, should be kissing Steve Jobs' (feet) about now. Meanwhile, I suspect Bezos & company are chewing copious fingernails in anticipation of the Jan 27th event.