Android for the people
There’s nothing like the mall at Christmastime. Especially when that mall is on LONG ISLAND.
Saw this huuuuge advert hanging from the ceiling of Roosevelt Field shopping mall. There’s the little Android dude in the lower left hand banner of the banner. Is there a comparable iPhone app?
Interesting for a couple of reasons:
*Suite of services (money mgmt, advertising, location) bundled into one application.
* Brought to you by a financial services company, which, assuming you have a visa card, actually has a pretty good understanding of your spending habits (can i buy you a gigante starbucks, big brother?)
* Huge ad! Do people (normal people) see this and say “Sweet app! I definitely need to download this for my device which runs the Android operating system.” ?
Advertising of mobile phone apps is a pretty non-existent thing. Of course Visa’s got the bucks to do it. I suppose I’ve seen BofA advertise their iPhone app as well. But will other companies (not finance-related) start? Interesingly, one of Apple’s latest ad campaigns showcases off individual iPhone appsm concluding with the tag line “That’s iPhone. Solving life’s problems one app at a time.” Different approach. Will Google start mass-marketing individual Android apps?
And who’s really the audience for this? My guess is, if Android goes the way Google wants it to, most people who own a phone running Android wonlt even know or care that their phone runs that operating system. Just as now, no one can tell you that their RAZR runs linux or whatever.
G1 is an exception to this, a novelty. People don’t own an HTC device, they own a T-Mobile phone that has the new Google OS on it. iPhone is different too, because the hardware is tied so tightly to the software. Anyone with an iPhone knows that it can download apps.
Surely there was a time when people were jazzed at the prospect of a phone that ran Windows, and for which applications could be downloaded OTA and installed. Android is indeed infinitely more powerful than WinMo, and mass adoption will only make it stronger and more robust. Something about WinMo never generated the third-party development buzz that iPhone, and now Android, has.
But I think that there will always be something about the notion of downloading an application to one’s phone, that will limit its appeal to a certai demographic. And as the mass adoption of a platform increases, the total overall percentage of this adopter population decreases. As the leading edge of adopters get their information elsewhere – blogs, social networking, etc. – the efficacy of advertisements such as this one becomes highly limited. Especially when they are hung in places such as shopping malls. On Long Island 
That being said, it would be neato to include a 2D barcode on there so I could download directly from my device. Easy way to track impressions, effectiveness etc.
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