Future of Mobile Media – It’s The IPhone and Podcasting

I’ve been seeing a massive awareness around Mobile Media. The obvious example driving this is the iPhone. Apple saw the iPhone’s market share triple over the past year, capturing 12.9 percent of the worldwide smartphone market, according to a new Gartner analysis.  For the quarter ending September 30, iPhones accounted for 3.4 percent of the market in 2007. That figure was more than 3x higher on the same day in 2008. The future of Mobile Media is now upon us.

Nokia is the leader worldwide in smartphone sales, with 42.4 percent of the market. BlackBerry maker Research in Motion comes in second with 15.9 percent. In North America, Apple is in second place behind RIM, with iPhones accounting for over a quarter of all smartphones.  Gartner analyst Roberta Cozza also noted that this quarter marked the first time iPhone sales exceeded those of Windows Mobile devices; that’s pretty astonishing when you consider how many flavors of WM handsets are out there.

I recently sat down with the core management team at Volomedia to talk about to the Apple revolution, online media and advertising – mobile media. Brian Steel and Murgesh Navar shed some light on what’s going on. There are a slew of interviews here (enjoy).

I do want to highlight my talk with the Founder of Volomedia Murgesh Navar who talks about the current situation and the vision of how all of this plays out.

Click Here To Play Podcast with Murgesh Navar Founder of Volomedia

Podcast.com Has A New Look – Looks Like iTunes

Podcast.com has a new look and it looks a lot like iTunes. To me that is a good thing. The url is a great generic and presents and opportunity. I don’t think that they want to compete with iTunes but instead provide an alternative for hard core podcasters and possible a deal with Microsoft Zune. If I were Zune I’d do a deal with podcast.com and tie a device like Zune to it.

I spoke with Glenn Gaudet of Podcast.com and he told me that “Podcast.com is the leading podcast aggregation web site that contains over 75,000 podcast programs and over one million episodes of audio and video podcast content. As a result, it is quickly becoming the web location of choice for podcast consuming enthusiasts.”

Podcasts have become a popular message medium for companies to promote their message and educate the market. However, the challenge associated with podcasts is the lack of information about who is consuming the podcast. Traditionally, the only information a content producer could get from a podcast was the number of downloads.

Podcast.com solves this core challenge by allowing content producers to segment their content into “channels” that allow the content producer to incorporate a call-to-action offers such as a free white paper and also require the podcast consumer to answer demographic questions prior to consumption of the podcast.

This new service gives content producers strong analytical information about who is consuming their podcasts and can turn their podcasts into a lead generation program.

A channel on Podcast.com is a purchased location on the Podcast.com website that allows you to control the content and messaging. It also contains some powerful features such as:

• Lead Generation
• Analytics
• Search Engine Optimization
• Channel Banner Control
• Mobile Phone Publishing
• Channel Promotion

After years of quietly becoming mainstream podcasts have certainly hit a tipping point and are now mainstream. When you don’t here all the buzz around podcasts and see them on sites like ESPN and others you know podcasts are mainstream.

The big question is the business model and monetization for content owners and the ability or marketers to get their messages in front of targeted consumers.

Announcing Furrier.org Podcasts

After listening to some old podcasts from early 2005 and having a few that I never posted from end of 2007, I’ve decided to start doing podcasts again. So I’m adding podcasts to my blog.

I’ve done a few over the past month and it’s time to post them. I’ve always like the style that Doug Kaye and ITConversations pioneered. That style was the style of my original InfoTalk podcast back in 2004 that became the basis of PodTech.net. Hey even back then I got good review from Mike Arrington. In a feature on Techcrunch where Mike Arrington says “What got our attention is the sheer quality (not to mention quality) of people John is interviewing…”

I won’t be podcasting full time but will be adding what I ‘discover’ to be interesting. Look for one tomorrow. I’ll be posting from Alpine Meadows then off to Squaw for the Freestyle event on Friday.

If anyone wants to sponsor a podcast series let me know. Right now I have three slots open.