Though the iPhone-slagging ad campaign for its forthcoming Droid handset may make negotiations uncomfortable, Verizon is still very much interested in adding Apple’s iconic device to its smart-phone lineup. But if and when it does is entirely up to Apple, according to Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg.
Though Verizon’s new Droid ad campaign might seem to preclude one, Apple would be wise to ink an iPhone distribution deal with the carrier–if not to hasten iPhone adoption, then to slow rivals that would supplant it. That’s the argument put forth by Piper Jaffray analyst Chris Larsen in a research note to investors Monday.
If Verizon is in talks with Apple to become the second U.S. carrier for the iPhone, they evidently aren’t going very well. How else to explain the iPhone-slagging ad campaign for Verizon’s forthcoming Android handset, Droid?
Sprint best step up its marketing efforts for the Pre because according to Pali Research, demand for Palm’s new device is slowing, and quickly. During the week ending June 26, Pali estimates that Sprint sold 50,000-60,000 Pre handsets. In the weeks that followed, it sold “less than 40,000,” and then, “over 30,000”–again, according to Pali. Now the research outfit says sales have declined by another 5,000 units.
Microsoft COO Kevin Turner must be so disappointed. Remarking on the company’s “PC Hunter” ad campaign last week, Turner said he’d been ebullient when attorneys for Apple called to complain. But now the company has quietly modified the ad in question to address Apple’s complaints.
World-wide PC shipments will be lousy in 2009, but not quite as lousy as previously thought. Gartner says they’ll fall six percent for the year, which is an improvement over the 6.6 percent drop it forecast last month and the 9.2 percent decline it projected back in March.
With Microsoft’s February share of the search market weighing in at a paltry 8.2 percent and declining, the company is going to extraordinary lengths to reverse the public’s indifference to its search offering. It tried loyalty programs. It tried rewards programs. Now, as it prepares to rebrand its search engine under a new name–Kumo–it’s turning to a more proven method: an $80 million to $100 million advertising campaign.
In the end, Apple just couldn’t help itself. Microsoft’s new “I’m a PC … and I’ve been made into a stereotype” ad campaign was just too wide and deserving a target. Apple could no more ignore it than Steve Jobs could hold back his pitching arm upon finding Steve Ballmer sitting above the dunk tank at the Santa Clara County Fair.
With a 4.8 percent share of the search market, according to comScore, Ask has long been the inveterate fourth-place contestant in a sector overwhelmingly dominated by Google. And try as it might–with both redesigns and ad campaigns–the company just can’t seem to build any audience beyond that. So there’s little reason to believe that Ask’s latest redesign–its third in as many years and the 11th since it first launched–won’t be as ineffective as those that have gone before it.
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper.
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
Spectacular in the bellowing Russian sailor sense of the word …
“If you spell something wrong on your insurance claim, do you really deserve surgery? I don’t think so …”
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