Myne

Game over for QR Codes in Australia? The evidence.

For some time now QR Codes have been off the radar. I've gone from having multiple conversations a week to one or two a month. They are still appearing in market (more often than not poorly executed), but the conversation has definitely slowed.

The only response I got back to the question above in the Twittersphere was simply "QR was never in the game" (thanks @holabendez), [which  highlights either an apathy issue or my serious dearth of followers, probably both].

But I digress, WOW! so is it game over for QR Codes in Australia, before it even really started?

Or is it possible that QR is going the same way as many nascent technologies, wallowing in the trough of disillusionment, ready to burst through into the mainstream?

Lets consider for a moment what are some of the barriers to widespread adoption of QR codes in Australia...

Aussie 3G quietly climbs to 46%

 

Not yet being quoted by Mediasmart in media sales material, Telstra 3G penetration was placed at 54% in March by CEO Sol Trujillo. A quick scan around the other carriers indicates no change in their reported 3G numbers making a reported total at 46%, almost 10% higher than the government stats of 8.55M or around 37%.

Why is this important to marketers?
Our belief is that mobile is still largely a missed opportunity for marketers. In a market that's moving so quickly it's hard to get a good bead on the reality of course, that's why tracking like this helps. Still there remains a lot of very smart clients and agency folk who think that mobile is still too nascent.

Yet at the base level we continually see ad performance that is ten times better than web. In a market becoming more obsessed than ever with ROI that's got to be attractive right?

Mobile activation from traditional advertising is really taking off with consumers responding to ads "in the moment". Who still seriously believes that someone seeing an out of home ad will write down the url and remember to visit a web site? This is extreme inertia working against the advertiser and mobile helps to solves this.

An extension of this, QR codes, the latest so-called bleeding edge mobile technology is damned by naysayers as a "wait 2 years and see" tactic. The fact is that (with correct implementation) QR codes are CONSISTENTLY OUTPERFORMING other response channels sometimes by a large factor - we hope to share some data on this soon.

The fact is that our customers are still way ahead of the marketing industry in mobile. Some marketers  are working hard to close this gap.

Where do you stand?

VodaHutch – a new number 2 force.

 Wow, no such thing as a dull day.

No sooner had we done a round-up on 3G than it looks like things will change again. Based on this morning’s announcement of 3 and Vodafones likely merger as reported, here, here, here and from a media perspective here we wonder what the new carrier landscape may look like?

In terms of total customer numbers Vodafone would still be in third place, but in the key area of 3G would move ahead of Optus.

From a media perspective, this would make Vodafone VHA the #2 player in the mobile marketing and advertising arena. Optus has a nascent commercial model, whereas both 3 and Vodafone are well experienced in commercialising their mobile portals albeit in very different ways.

It will be interesting to see how this blend manifests itself – Vodafone’s team have been very open to trialling opportunities, whereas 3 has tended to favour a more protective stance on customer experience (and making the customer pay for more content). No doubt learning’s from both sides will prove very useful.

The other obvious point is that the new entity will be very strong in the 18-35 segment, a traditional hot spot for many advertisers. As ad dollars begin to flow into all carriers mobile portals (with e-Marketer and several other players predicting 300% growth this year) this should see some stiff competition.

The reality: it will be 6 months before we see any real changes, and it still has to get through a shareholder vote in April and meet with ACCC approval -  although one would think the prospect of a third heavyweight in the market would be appealing.

Any other thoughts?

Australian 3G Penetration at 43%?

Mobile data.

That is good data about mobile. It's pretty scarce. 

It seems that's partly because there's not lot of it about and partly because it changes so quickly.

So many presentations about mobile (mine included) start with the stats piece designed to generate a lean forward moment from the audience - its the same myth-dispelling exercise that online used to have to go through. No issues with that, we just don't think it's in anyone's interest to use out of date data so here's another view on 3G data.

QR Codes – Australian Market Update

Many agencies and clients are asking whether they should be including QR/mobile codes on campaigns, and it’s timely therefore to assess how well on the road to mass adoption this standard is.

QR codes arrived seriously in Australia in August of 2008 with Telstra’s launch of the standard.

There have been a number of campaigns employing the technology to date, driven by clients like Lion Nathan, Toyota, Sony Ericcson, NAB and of course Telstra with their Olympics inspired launch campaign and others subsequently such as Yellow Pages.

For this post we’re going to confine ourselves to the following question:

How well are QR codes faring and what is the prognosis for this still nascent standard?

Lets take the first part of this question.

There is no independent market data available on QR codes so we’ve been thinking about this based on our own experiences and canvassing expert opinion.

Should Aussie marketers be concerned about iPhone?

Three months in and with nothing official from Apple, we'd like to know how many iPhones have been sold in Australia.

Anecdotally we have heard that Apple allocated 900,000 phones to Australia in the first consignment and that 50,000 sold over the first weekend. We doubt those phones have all sold but lets see how feasible that might be. The total installed base of mobile phones is around 21M units. Assuming that conservatively a third of these turnover in a year we're talking about 7M units per year or 1.75M per quarter.

So what percentage of the last three months new mobile sales could iPhone have attracted?

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