Last month I was on a panel for Mobile Portland on Mobile Marketing. I haven’t done one of these for a while but had a great time. The video is here (or at Vimeo’s web site). Enjoy!
Breaking Down Android Devices and OS Version [Survey Results]
As I have mentioned before, we have begun work on an Android version of powerOne calculator. Over the past few years we have accumulated a list of about 375 people who emailed us requesting an Android version of the app. To help get a feel for what is out there we conducted a brief survey. The response was incredible, over 50% response rate.
Two questions, I think, are most pertinent for sharing: 1) What device are you using; and 2) What operating system version does it run? Obviously this is a very small sample of people who were self-selected and are primarily in the United States. This data may not match the Android market at large.
Devices
The devices were scattered all over the place. The average per person was 1.2 devices per person, which means that one out of five responders had two devices. The most popular device series in use was the Samsung Galaxy S series, followed by a wide margin by the Motorola Droid devices and HTC Evo series. Of the tablets the Asus Transformer was the most owned followed by the Kindle Fire. Not surprising at all. There were a few votes for the Nexus 7 and a few more that said they would buy one in the future. Here’s the breakdown:
Other is just slightly a smaller pool than Samsung Galaxy S, an amazing array of devices.
Operating Systems
Luckily the operating systems were much more straight forward. There were two primary OS versions: 2.3 and 4.0. Apparently a few vendors are releasing 4.0 or 4.1 operating system updates as a number of customers mentioned that they were updating their OS version soon. Personally, I was pleasantly surprised by the uptake of Android OS 4.0. Based on all the public data I’d seen it looked like 2.3 was very dominant and 4.0 had little uptake. At least this group is reporting differently.
powerOne is the kind of app that cares less about the device and more about the screen size and OS version. powerOne doesn’t have streaming needs or heavy networking needs so we generally don’t have to worry about minute changes between devices. This is why I care more about the OS version data here than the device data above.
What We Have
Since I shared what this self-selected group has, I would be happy to share what we have here, too. We have three devices: a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, a Samsung Galaxy SII and a Nexus 7. The development is being performed by a partner and they have a plethora (I love that word!) of additional devices. The OS version is 4.0, 2.3 and 4.1, respectively.
Other Questions
As mentioned above device and OS were the two primary questions. We asked two others. The first is does your device have a hardware keyboard? About 10% of devices did. The second was more pertinent to powerOne: do you use RPN input mode? There were three possible responses: not important, prefer it but can live without it, and it’s a requirement for me to buy. 23% said it was a requirement. 48% said it was a requirement or preferred. I have no doubt that this is very high for the calculator population as a whole but the HP12c had a huge influence on the financial calculator market specifically. I’m sure many in this self-selected group were heavy 12c users before our software and the PalmPilot came out.
Finding Excellently Curated News at The Evening Edition
Just a couple of days ago I was lamenting the state of curated news:
The allure of web hits is a strong one and a self-reinforcing event. This is why most blogs post so much garbage: the more posts, the more page views; the more page views, the more revenue per ad.
The problem, though, is that I don’t want to see all this garbage. What I really want is someone to decide what the most important headlines of the day are and present them to me. Nothing more, nothing less.
The next day — THE NEXT DAY — I see a link to a new site called The Evening Edition that does exactly this. The folks who developed it, from Mule Design Studios, wrote this in a blog post:
Now, we’re all constantly awash in a torrent of news-like “updates”, in between fake celebrity death tweets, divorce notices on Facebook and new-puppy tumblrs. How is anyone supposed to sift through all of that to get to the important stuff?
To help answer that, we built Evening Edition. It’s a summary of the day’s news, written by an actual journalist, with links to the best reporting in the world, published once a day.
I’m so excited to have found this resource. It has become an evening stop over on my perusal of news around the web.
Managers v. Leaders
Horace Dediu on his Critical Path podcast:
Leadership is getting people to follow you in a direction they wouldn’t normally go. Leadership is about getting them to follow you in a direction that they actually feel is dangerous. There isn’t a lack of courage, there’s a lack of courage at the right time.
He goes on to express that true leadership includes a consideration for ethics and values as well, so he wouldn’t consider Hitler, for example, a leader, or at least not a good one.
Horace was discussing Microsoft, RIM and Nokia and their failings. He is more asking than telling: are these companies that are being managed or are they being led? As he discusses this, though, I can’t help but think of politics. We have two men running for president, neither of which are distinguishing themselves as leaders. In a time when we desperately need a great leader, our choice comes down to two managers.
Another great quote from Horace’s podcast:
When you need to do it, you are usually in a comfortable position. This is where I think the next highest level of leadership comes when you do the unpopular thing when everything is going well.
Exactly.
Of Android and powerOne Praise
We just completed a survey of some customers that requested an Android version of powerOne. I’ll report on the data soon but in the meantime there were a number of responses similar to this:
Elia, I don’t yet own an Android phone, partly because I can’t get powerOne on one! Your release of powerOne on the Android platform would make me look seriously again at making the switch from the iPhone. Michael
Thanks, Michael. No kinder words about one’s product can be spoken.
Yes, we are developing a version of powerOne calculators for Android smartphone and tablets with a likely release near the end of this year. If you are interested in being in the beta and/or be informed of its development, please email us here.
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