Mobile Talk

Have you heard of FlashMob? A day when a group of people does silly things like stop and stare at the sky for a short while and then disperse to different directions all of a sudden. Or the case when a group of people search for something on the ground for a good 5 minutes and before finding the item, disperse to different directions. Like KL Freeze in Unison held on 13 April 2008? One carrier in United States used this concept to its advantage creating one of the most talked about and viral advertisement in the whole world. In my humble opinion, this could be one of the most out of the world and talked about campaign ever done by any brand.

In this ad, 400 dancers were hired to create a synchronized dancing where starting from just a few people dancing to a tune blasted in a Liverpool train station to a total of 400 people dancing to the tune. Throughout the whole video, you can see a lot of people capturing photos using their mobile phones (as this is an impromptu situation where most people might not have brought their digital camera but a good enough and enticing enough reason to capture a photo). This benefits T-Mobile as being the largest carrier in United States, most people would have used a T-Mobile phone under their phone contract to capture those photos. This is effective in promoting T-Mobile’s large range of mobile phones with high megapixels in capturing a cannot be missed moments. The best part is wondering how much virality this is going to generate esp those who have took those photos or videos and sent them through MMS as proof of what happened and later only to find out that this is a marketing gimmick by T-Mobile. I saw this ad when I was researching on T-Mobile and the YouTube video has such high traffic that I could see the link as the top three links after searching from Google. Up to today, the video uploaded on YouTube has more than 8,809,443 views and is still being distributed through various sites. A day later, my friend sent me the link to view the same video and I was glad I saw it first The point is the virality something like this can create.

Ingenius and out of the box! An advertisement that will be talked about all over the world and made a name for T-Mobile with the motto “Life’s for Sharing”.

When a Philipino friend working in Singapore requested me to buy him a few packs of OldTown White Coffee when I was back in Malaysia recently, the conversation below entails:

Emily: “Hey, I’m coming back to Singapore this weekend. Do you have anything you want me to buy for you in Malaysia?”
Jensen: “Nah, nothing. Wait, wait. I remembered. There is something. Can you get me OldTown White Coffee the 3-in-1 and Cappucino version? Can you get me 3 packets?”
Emily: “Oh, sure. I don’t drink coffee myself but I have definitely heard of it. I will get you 3 packets.”

So off I went to search for the coveted coffee powder which has carved a name for itself not only in the minds of Malaysians but also Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand. When I was back for a visit half a year ago, I was surprised by the number of OldTown White Coffee cafes that has sprouted all over Kuala Lumpur and Selangor and now to all parts of Malaysia. Starting from a humble beginning in Ipoh in 1958 as a roaster of white coffee where people travel far and wide just to have a cuppa of this delicious coffee which consist of specially roasted Liberica, Arabica and Robusta beans with small amounts of caramel, moderately roasted in high temperature, this small Hainanese shop has come a long way.

The secret formula to its success involves a unique product, great branding and an attractive franchising scheme. The unique product comes in the form of white coffee which by itself just taste different from the Starbucks and Gloria Jeans all over the world. If you want African and Brazilian roasted coffee beans, go there. If you want local white coffee with its aromatic but Malaysianised flavors, go to OldTown White Coffee. Moreover, the price of the product is more local (in order words, cheaper) than the highly imported price of Starbucks. Thus, the regular kopitiam goers who are seeking for a more high class and air-conditioned ambience can choose to go here and not burn their wallets when having a nice talk over coffee.  And besides white coffee, they also serve other unique food like kaya/peanut butter toast, ice-cream toast, nasi lemak and laksa (all our Malaysian favorites!).

The branding of this company was done by the advertising agency Publicis which has done a great job in creating a consistent and homely feel to a very local brand of coffee. Instead of Westernizing the brand to the likes of Starbucks or Coffee Bean which would have made it a competitor to those 2 established joints ( which would spell failure for the company), it has moulded the feel of a joint with local food like Nasi Lemak and traditional furniture and cutleries that is used by the old kopitiam frequenters. This gives a more homely feel for those who wants to settle for something more traditional in this country.

Lastly and one most important factor in the growth of the coffee joints is the fantastically affordable franchising rates offered by the management, as low as RM100,000 to open a franchise with an established system and shop logos. This rate beats the normal franchising rate of international brands like McDonalds and Starbucks which would have costed you millions! Thus, OldTown gives you a faster breakeven if you chose a good location for the coffee joint.

Thus, I have to give my highest commendation to Alex Chuah Seong Meng, the group marketing general manager of the restaurant chain for doing such a good job to get the brand to such a level it is today to the whole of Malaysia. Recently, they have even signed a deal with AirAsia to serve the coffee to its passengers at RM5 per cup of OldTown White Coffee 3-in-1 Classic blend which would have elevated the name of the brand to consumers who flies AirAsia from Philippines to Europe and all over the world. As the estatic manager quipped “Now everyone can fly and drink OldTown White Coffee”. This coffee joint is definitely flying high!

Big applause to any brands that can create their own social media site and make it successful in a country that is still holding dear to traditional means of doing things like watching tv and listening to the radio. Malaysia is a country like this where people are not excited to embrace change in lifestyle in the name of advancement but fortunately, things seem to be improving.

There is one brand that has successfully embraced the new media and used it to their advantage. The company is called Berjaya Resorts that created a contest to allow users to pick their favorite wedding couple online by voting so that the winning couple enjoy free wedding photography and celebration in one of the beach resorts. Plus the winner can invite 3 of their favorite friends who voted for them to attend the wedding for free! What better way to create awareness to your travel locations through a contest like this but the best part is not the prize but the mechanics of the contest that requires participation from the voting public that created virality as the contest would have generated huge word-of-mouth from couple who are tryong to garner votes to win the coveted prize! There was 4 phases to the contest starting with the filtering of more than 500 applicants to just the top 50 so that users can vote for their favorite. This has triggered the lovely couples to spam their friends with pleas to vote for them as the winning couple to enjoy their dream wedding. Yours truly got an email from an ex-classmate of mine whom I admit looked beautiful with her groom but when I had the time to vote, the voting window was not open yet. And when the window was opened, I was too busy or impacted by the recession to vote. Sorry, pal.

Anyway, back to the story, after the voting has ended based on the videos created by the couples, 7 couples with the highest votes got selected from the 50. The top 7 couples were given the privilege to dress up in their gorgeous choice of wedding gowns in Colmare Tropicale, another resort by Berjaya which I am sure they are trying to promote to increase numbers of visitors. The 7 couples were invited to blog on their experiences and what better way to create virality to the website than to have the excited couples posting their beautiful photoshoots and brag about their experiences for all to see? While all this is happening, voting is still open for the best couple so the couple with a blog that readers can relate to or with the most numbers of supporters will surely win. Well, it got a huge enough traffic as this social media site promoting wedding couples was the first of its kind. Apparently, this contest was run on a tight budget which I feel was doable what with the prize sponsor being the brand itself and the only media buy being the single free newspaper in Malaysia - theSun. The social media site tapped into the narcissistic nature of human when they are their happiest: the days that lead up to their wedding day. Thus, the apt motto being ‘If you’ve got it, flaunt it’. The print advertisement merely created the awareness of the website ‘Love Me Do!’ and all other traffic, virality and buzz are created online through voting and the blogs. There was also plenty of awareness created towards the wedding providers like Edmund Tham being the wedding photographer and Bespoked and That Special Occasion as the provider of the wedding gowns. What more can these sponsors ask for?

With this, it was fantastic to have accumulated over 830,000 page views with 21,900 being unique visitors. There are more than 1000 fans to their Facebook group which is a good achievement for a Malaysian social site. This to me is a successful use of new media with the least amount of marketing budget during the downturn, targeted and viral.

“The challenge really is finding a good balance of marketing returns versus prudent cost control and churning out innovative solutions. It’s a lot about being different and standing out, knowing the problems and how best to solve them,” as aptly quoted by Thang Han-Ni, Marketing and Communications director of Berjaya Hotels & Resorts.

In marketing, one of the most important factors to success is in indentifying your target market. In every market, there are at least 2 schools of thoughts. The two most prominent school of thoughts are believer and non-believer, advocates or non-advocates. Even in the US Presidential Election, there are the Democrats, Socialists and Republicans with varied but some overlapping opinions. In the other countries, there are Communists and Democrats. In brands, there are people who loves and lives their life for Apple and some who does not use anything Apple related.

It is with this that I thought it to be a great idea when one bar in Malaysia created an event to serve the underdogs of Valentine’s Day. This day has been so commercialised that any business seeks for the opportunity to make huge profits from the couples who are madly in lurve and willing to spend their money to make their loved ones happy or so they thought. Roses overpriced at 10 times the normal market price, romantic dinner menus at 10 times again the normal price and movie tickets even though not hiked up will be fully sold out on this day. It is a day to celebrate couples in love and the idea of caring for someone who takes a special place in your heart.

How about the not-so in love, unable to find love and people far away from their loved ones who wish they have found the one? This is the most dreaded day for them as they have to endure another nauseatingly sick day of watching couples staring into each others eyes over a romantic candlelight dinner while they themselves sulk in bitter anticipation of their turn. How about the singles who have just broken up and just hate this event as it reminded them of the times they used to have with their loved ones? How about the lonesome person who are stuck in a different country and unable to celebrate this special occasion with their loved one due to the distance?

It is with this ‘other’ market that this club in Malaysia called Scarlet located in Cineleisure, Petaling Jaya organised an Anti-Valentine party. A party meant exclusively for singles to drink themselves drown and to be with people of the same predicament as them. People say people who bond during the toughest times stay together. And it is with this bond that Scarlett capitalises to make a profit from a different target market. So, let’s celebrate this wonderful occasion by celebrating the joys and perils of being single!

When you are a great brand, you will have little problem creating hype for new launches of your products especially when you already have loyal followers. To increase the chances that the launch of your new product is successful, you need make sure your target has an affinity with your brand or product.

Apple is one of those brands with great brand advocacy. Any owner of a Mac will definitely wants to own an iPhone and is probably already the proud owner of an iPod. Despite this, the biggest challenge of a great brand is also to ensure the same hype and success can be created for the launch of each and every new product of theirs. Microsoft experienced a great challenge launching their X-Box after the launch of a fantastically great product in the form of Wii by Nintendo. Nokia meanwhile has been launching countless of new phones just to be overshadowed by other handset brands like LG and Apple that has more impressive products. So, how does Apple go about launching their new iPhone in new countries like Singapore? Today, we will look at the launch of 2 huge brands in the world through their new phones called iPhone by Apple and HTC Dream by Google, both being launched by Singtel, the largest operator in Singapore.

Singtel launched iPhone on 22 August 2008 through a huge event that started from the stroke of midnight. The keyword for the whole event being ‘experience‘. They created an experience so amazing that one would be proud to own an iPhone as it gives you a sneak peak into what would have been a great experience from start to finish. The lead up to the event was emails being sent to the VIPs and highest ARPU users as well as the longest serving Singtel user. Once the recipient registers to purchase the phone on the actual launch day, they will receive an invitation to attend the launch event on the 22 August 2008 (when the date was officially announced). The first person in the queue would have waited in line since 5pm or so and the queue just kept building up. At the stroke of midnight, fireworks were heard throughout the night. This created a big bang to the event (and a big budget!). As the customers who queue up gets chauffeured into the special room that was decorated with bow ties, etc in groups, the rest were kept entertained and occupied as they are brought to a different section of the room where they can see the features of the iPhone and learn how to use the iPhone through digitised screens and personalised customer service personnels. They are also served finger food while waiting. It was customer service and a full-fledged experience at its best. Subscribers who did not stand a chance to obtain their iPhone on the launch date can still purchase them over the counter while stocks last.

Another brand that did the same method of allowing an open platform so that developers can build their own applications to be used on the phone is Google. Personally, I feel the walled garden concept adopted by operators all over the world except Japan and Korea is now a thing of the past. That was how Japan managed to created such a dynamic and thriving mobile industry and I hope Apple and Google will set the path for this to happen to the rest of the world. I was astounded when I found out that the youngest person who developed an application for iPhone is 9-years old! It is with this intention that Google created an open mobile platform called Android which allows one to access their marketplace of applications developed through an open SDK. The first phone to be launched with this Android platform is HTC Dream and the first country in Asia to launch this phone is none other than Singapore through Singtel again.

The launch of HTC Dream was held on 21 Feb 2009 and the media event was held one day before. It was a small event with not as big a fanfare as iPhone (due to the lower budget and simple nature of Google?). SingTel is collaborating with local application developers to introduce innovative Android applications that meet lifestyle needs of mobile users here. For example, one of the local Android apps that users can use on their HTC Dream is SG SavvyShopper. Simply scan the barcode of a product using the phone’s camera and the app will search and display the prices of the product sold in other outlets in Singapore. Google says that all its Android apps in Singapore will be free of charge!There will definitely be more applications like these in the future but while we anticipate the launch of both iPhone and HTC Dream in Malaysia, I would like to stress that both these brands have done me proud for their efficient marketing strategies. They have created incredible brand advocacy by being consistent, relevant and unique.

At 48, Barack Obama is more than a decade younger than his competitor, John McCain who is already more than 70 years old. Who would have thought that with less experience, wisdom and white hair, Obama would have beaten McCain during the Presidential Election until much later into the campaigns. Experience is not everything at this day and age. Knowledge is a powerful weapon and in Obama’s case, being young has also gained him the knowledge essential to win the election.

The reason I am saying this is while McCain used his old age mantra of experience is everything and selecting a female Vice President in the name of Sarah Palin to garner the female votes, esp the stay-at-home moms who could relate to her, Barack Obama went all out winning the hearts and minds of the masses through the mediums like Internet and mobile that could reach the masses. He selected Chris Hughes, a cofounder of Facebook (the No. 2 social networking site after MySpace in the US) to be the chief architect of his campaigns through using social networking, the most powerful and viral media to reach the youths of today. While McCain is preaching about his experience in the World War through standing on podiums and screening it across all TV channels which requires people to actively look for the broadcast, Obama spreads his messages through SMS which will arrive at user’s cellphones and has an immediate call to action since it is pushed to the most personal device of the consumers.

According to Nielsen Mobile, it is estimated that about 2.9 million subscribers received the text message announcing that Barack Obama had chosen Joe Biden as his running mate. How did they get so many subscribers? People opted-in because they are brand loyal and care deeply about the announcement, wanting to be among the first to know. Clearly these subscribers wanted to get the message because they feel involved in the Obama campaign in a personal way. Assuredly, there were John McCain supporters in there, too, following Sun Tzu’s advice to know your adversary as well as journalists who wants to always be in the know for everything related to Election.

Obama also created a mobile site that is updated so that while you are not at your laptop or TV, you can still follow the news on the election through your mobile phone which now has bigger screen and faster access to web. They also make it easy for anyone to access the site by simply texting the word GO to OBAMA (62262) or register online at http://www.barackobama.com/mobile. Supporters can then receive news and updates on events, download campaign images and ringtones, and even provide their feedback or questions via text messaging. As one example of the utility of the mobile solution, the campaign was able to alert its mobile supporters to the August 7th AFL-CIO Presidential Forum held at Soldier Field and broadcast on MSNBC, and to solicit their feedback and questions via text messages during and following the event. Supporter sent text messages providing commentary and asking specific questions about the Senator’s position on issues that were debated.

Obama jumped on the social networking bandwagon by creating his own social networking site called MyBarakObama.com which allowed members to create a profile, blog their campaign experiences, plan and attend events, find other supporters, and help raise funds for the campaign. On top of this, he also has presence on YouTube and Facebook which allowed people to support through being in the same community. It is not the mere creation and presence on these social networks that guaranteed the landslide victory of Obama with 8.5 million popular votes, it is the follow up and the strategy used to capture the attention of his supporters. He understood that the value social media could bring to the campaign grew exponentially if online advocacy was elevated to the campaign’s highest levels and integrated into all elements of the organization. The Obama campaign combined the embrace of online enthusiasm of Dean ’04 with the discipline, organization and hyper-targeting of the Bush ’04 re-election campaign. Obama’s campaign started early, was built to scale, brought in the right team and struck a difficult balance between inspiring the kinetic energy of a movement and channeling the enthusiasm into the precise activities that are needed to win a campaign – donations, organization and getting out the vote – in the specific neighborhoods, districts and states that the campaign needed to win. He turned everyone into engaged and empowered supporters through the power of social networks and technology.

(source from Endelman.com)

Last but not least, Obama is the first US President Nominee who used purchased ad space on in-game advertising platform as he knows that games is the most effective and influential way of reaching out to youths from as young as 8 to as old as 28.  Obama promoted his ‘Vote Early‘ ads through an X-box Driving Game called Burnout that is created by Electronic Arts. Despite the game being a car racing game that promoted violence and accidents, marketeres view this move as strategic due to its creativity and effective targeted approach. Anyone who sees the virtual billboard that links to Obama’s website would actually talk about this as noone has seen anything like this before which created fantastic buzz and hype for his brand among the younger generation who will continue to vouch for Obama (a symbol that he understand the youth culture). Nevertheless, I would give him brownie points for taking the risk.

See Malaysia’s own research by PULSE on Obama’s political influence and the media he uses for his strategy.

One of the most powerful tool in the world today is the power of the mass or ‘crowdsourcing‘! Even though using the mass to make an impact like through demonstrations and war have been going in since man existed, there is a more powerful and positive tool created by the mass today. The ongoing ability to do content creation in the forms of blogs, images and video uploading has created a phenomenon so huge it can be considered a Tipping Point. Websites nowadays are self-sustaining as long as it is open. Having numerous people inserting comments and uploading images and videos onto a website will create unprecedented ongoing traffic. In shorter words, this is also called social media where contents are contributed entirely by the public be it for a fee or for free. This is where Wikipedia, Blogspot, YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn play a part and now the proliferation of many more social media sites.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg knows this. He’s young, sure, but he’s no rube. Zuckerberg knows exactly what’s at stake. “The full potential of the web is to make the world more open, so everyone has a voice and can share what is important to them,” he wrote in a recent blog post.

Zuckerberg wants his company to be the gateway to openness. So does Google. So does Microsoft. So does Yahoo! All of them know that the gateway is where the money is.

Closer to home, we have so many Web 2.0 sites now that are using the same crowdsourcing method through the use of not only videos but also uploading interesting MMS of daily occurences to the website. STOMP in Singapore does quite a good job in this and even creates their own videos like a reality series based on blind dates and all the series can only be watched online. Sad to say, I do enjoy the corny lines spoken by real-life people filmed for the series plus the shaky video filmed by the inexperienced videographers (or did they do it on purpose?) being uploaded onto the website. Driving traffic to the site was easy by assigning a few local pretty faces and bloggers to blog weekly on a given topic. Each of the bloggers have their own personalities and it was interesting reading about some of their adventurous. Some more bimbo comments than the others but those make for good reading right?

Now what about Malaysia. It is catching up with the launch of so many social media sites from The Star’s R.AGE (with a nice layout and readable contents, I must say), AllMalaysia.info (that allows people to blog about anything and everything Malaysian) and the recently launched YouthMalaysia.com. These social media has definitely tapped the right target market which is the youth market who are hungry for information. always looking for something new and enjoys getting recognition for their contributions. There is so much room for growth in this country as people are getting more outspoken and innovative and with the emergence of the latest technology, the youth are empowered to find their own outlet of expression. It is no more only about feature writers penning their daily thoughts but the public who captures interesting photos, blogs about the amazing events they participated in and uploads videos of extremely funny characters. This definitely creates a platform for charity especially when the work of voluneters and donors are highlighted by the people themselves and thus setting a role model for others.

A flash flood of ad dollars is waiting to flow to social media, but the models need to be proven. MySpace failed its proof-of-concept test with Google, and your less-than-$600 million valuation for Facebook suggests it will, too. Facebook has valued each user profile on their site as $4 a person which comes up to $600 million for the whole site due to its 150 million members and counting. Twitter meanwhile is a phenomenon no one can avoid and practically useful to everyone! Imagine updating your friends with just a few words and click! Your friends can catch up with what you are doing and you get the opportunity whenever someone finds you. Investors have valued Twitter at more than $1 billion in a public offering with 6 million users, which means each user is worth $167 or 42 times the approximate value of a Facebook profile.

It is with the rise of the importance of social media which brings me to an event in Singapore one would not want to miss to talk about where social media will go and where will it bring us. I have had talks on this with so many people and if not wrong, it would have to be a gateway that merges the needs of everyone from uploading videos to micro-blogging to posting your photos or songs which Facebook is doing very well now. But will we see more of a merging in the near future? I will not be suprised. Now, I am back to racking my brains about how I can utilise this power of the mass for more value and dollars.

Reading news on the way to work when you are on the train. Watching episodes of your favorite tv drama on your mobile while you are waiting for your friend. Reading a novel or manga when you are traveling to pass time.

These are normal occurences happening on your personal mobile device if you are in a country like Japan. However, we have yet to see it here in Malaysia or even Singapore. Of course, the unlimited data transmissions at a fixed rate charge helps. In countries other than Japan, the mobile phone is merely used for the purpose of talking and sending SMS messages. That was the initial reason of owning a phone anyway, to be contactable anytime anywhere. In days of today, mobile phone has evolved to functions way over that.

In Japan, a publisher do not need to publish their novel on hard copy, spending thousands of dollars to get the right book cover and printing pages after pages of those stories and speaking to book distributors to get their books distributed to bookstores all over the world. One novel called ‘Koizora‘ written by author Mika was uploaded on the cell phone novel site, Mahou no Land as an electronic book. More than 3 million people start reading the novel on the mobile and it got famous! The rest is history when the story was turned into a novel, a movie and now TV drama. Another author called Yoshi created a story called ‘Deep Love‘ in small installments which also grew in popularity from its presence on mobile. See how easy and cost-effective one can start sharing their stories on mobile first and stand a chance in getting famous? This only happened in Japan due to their culture of reading on the go be it news or entertainment. There are more all-you-can read mobile sites with plenty of electronic books to choose from existing in Japan today, for example Shincho Cell Phone Collection which now boast more than 30,000 subscribers with the largest demographic from female readers who choose to read from the convinience of their mobile rather than going to bookshops. If only I can do that in Malaysia now. According to a publishing company active in this market, sales of electronic books in Japan in fiscal 2005 (April 2005 to March 2006) doubled to ¥9.4 billion ($78.3 million at ¥120 to the dollar) from the previous year. Cell phone sales accounted for ¥4.6 billion ($38.3 million) - nearly half the total - a whopping 3.8-fold increase.

In US now, people are starting to get news feeds and even mobile videos on the mobile through the use of iPhone. By connecting on Wi-Fi, 3G or GPRS once a day, news get updated daily and you can consume it non-stop. Imagine, no more messy papers to flip just articles being displayed on your nifty phone. If you like a certain article, just save it onto your mobile. If you think an image is useful for your use, save it on your mobile and transfer it to your PC (with copyright protection of course!). With widgets on your phones, you can now open up mobile applications or simulcast with the click of a button. Imagine watching the latest episodes of Victoria Secret fashion show or follow the encounters of your favorite reality TV like Survivor or American Idol direct from your mobile. It will soon be a reality.

Noone predicted how this small device is changing the face of our daily lifes. Sooner rather than later, when iPhone penetrates our shores, we will be affected as well. And the reason why? I will explain in my next blog.

What is the hype with iPhone? When Singtel announces it’s launch of iPhone this 22 August (the first operator to bring this phone into Singapore), I least expected that people would line up to get the phone just to be the first few to lay their hands on an iPhone. There was a queue to get the phone hours before the 12am launch time and finally one boy became the first person to get it at the stroke of midnight for his girlfriend.

Least that I expect that I will be one of them in the queue to get the phone too since I am not a Singtel subscriber. So, today, I found myself joining the crowd and became a proud owner of the ‘I Got iPhone’ handbag as I signed up a Singtel line (iOne Plus) just to get the phone at SGD848 for a friend in Malaysia who found out that Singtel is the only operator that did not sim locked the device. A bit pricier than United States but Singapore is the closest place to get this phone.

After toying it with the phone for a while, I realised why I for one will not consider buying this phone. One is the inability to switch sim cards easily as one has to poke a hole at the top before opening the sim container. Without the needle, my sim card is as good as stuck on the phone, reason why it made sense for US and Australia operators to sim lock the device. Singtel meanwhile did not take the trouble to do so thus making the device usable on any numbers, encouraging even non-Singtel numbers to get the phone. The battery is non-removable making the task of replacing batteries one that can only be done by sending the phone to a service centres.

The phone is only 2 mega-pixels and the photo quality seem to be quite blurry especially when comparing with Sony Ericsson’s 5 megapixel phones. Videos cannot be recorded using this phone and MMS cannot be sent. Not of high priority but will be good to have on a phone.

However, the phone does win my approval in terms of the incredible touch screen that allows websites to be browsed fully across it’s large screen and zoomed easily using the touch of fingers. This means loads of YouTube that can be easily viewed clearly through this screen. The GPS features are also good allowing its users to search for location and be pinpointed it’s location when they are lost. Last but not least is the phones easy integration to iTunes allowing one to download as many songs as they want into the 8GB or 16GB memory. I also liked the phones’ repository of applications that allows users to read iBooks, play games and install productivity softwares.

I am still not convinced to buy an iPhone but owning one for a short while today made me hip and happening especially when I can show off the sleek interface and thin structure of the phone. The buyers are buying its brand, not its functions as I am sure a lot of its functions can be improved. An iMac or iPod owner will most likely get it due to brand loyalty, something Apple has successfully done to the people of the world. Those who did not own iMac wil get this as a status symbol and to make themselves look good. All in all, Apple has done a good job branding their products with quality to boot. A good move by Apple is to open it’s API for the development of more applications to be downloaded onto iPhone making it one of the phones where designers and programmers will grow to like and there will be more things for consumers to try on their iPhone. I for one would enjoy free applications on my phone. It is no wonder the line to get this phone has not stopped since day one.

With the current craze now to be able to do everything on the phone, below are my wishlist for my phone. iPhone has done for the phone what Facebook has done for the web. User generated applications that allow ongoing applications being developed to be downloaded by others for free or for a minimal price. Imagine the excitement you get when you see the hit counter of your game increasing by the seconds and soon you can make money out of this.

Thus, below are my top ten list:
1. To-do list - With schedules packed to the maximum and things that need to be reminded, an always available iPhone appliaction to keep track of to-do lists will be helpful.

2. Shopping list - What is the one thing you take with you when you go shopping besides your wallet? Your phone of course? Thus, instead of writing the list on a piece of paper which you might lose, insert them onto
http://onetrip.org and check the list using iPhone when you are at the shopping mall.

3. iZoho - to keep track of my projects as it is a daily tasks maintenance, deliverables and prioriy list. Good to be synched to the laptop as well since it is synchable with Zoho Projects on laptop.

4. Photo uploading and editing software - Not that I will use an iPhone to take photos (what with its only 2.0Megapixel cameras) but I will be delighted to use a software to edit those photos since they are blurry anyway. One software I can find is iPhlickr.

5. Instant messaging - using Skype on iPhone, not only can I be constantly in touch with my friends but I can make free international calls through Skype on my iPhone.  Anotherall in one messenger for iPhone can be found here.

6. Movie booking - Always on the go, always seeking for entertainment, having a movie booking facility on your phone will be handy. Just search for the movie you like and select, keying in all your details will not be a hassle, using iPhone user-friendly interface.

7. News reader - As my iPhone will be with me all the time, it will great if my iPhone can satisfy my insatiable desire for media and the latest news. There is a nice one with graphics and feeds from my favorite sites like Channels News Asia and Wall Street Journal.

Of course since I get my news feeds from Google anyway, I would naturally use Google Reader with nice skins to be downloaded.

8. Stocks & financial news updates- Time sensitive news that one can’t live without

9. Twitter updates - most common sense tool to be used with an iPhone since I can now update my status every free second I have and get updates on what my friends or people I follow are doing since the iPhone will be planted in front of my face 24/7.

10. Navizon - for recommendations on places to go by identifying the location I am at or want to go. Useful tool when I am lost and need directions, beats having a separate GPS device.

Get more here. Thus, even though I am not an iPhone user, having the ability to explore and download as many applications as I like might just excite me enough to get one.