Apple’s scary sales figures

Apple® today announced financial results for its fiscal 2011 third quarter ended June 25, 2011. The Company posted record quarterly revenue of $28.57 billion and record quarterly net profit of $7.31 billion, or $7.79 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $15.70 billion and net quarterly profit of $3.25 billion, or $3.51 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 41.7 percent compared to 39.1 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 62 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

The Company sold 20.34 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 142 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 9.25 million iPads during the quarter, a 183 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 3.95 million Macs during the quarter, a 14 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 7.54 million iPods, a 20 percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter.

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Google+ Some stats from Hitwise

For the week ending July 19, 2011, the average visit time for Google+ was five minutes and fifty seconds up from four minutes and fifty two seconds the week prior. While the average visit time has increased since launch, in comparison, users spent an average of 21 minutes and fifty seven seconds on Facebook last week.

The combination of Google and Gmail accounted for over 50% of all upstream traffic to Google+ last week, with additional referrals from other Google properties like YouTube and Google Profiles. Facebook ranked 3rd among websites visited immediately before Google+, not surprising since many social network users tend to maintain multiple accounts, especially to experiment with new social networks.

The highest share of visits to Google+ since launch is from those between the ages of 25-34 and those between 18 and 34 were more likely than the overall online population to visit. The audience to Google+ tends to be more affluent, over-indexing for those earning a household income of $60k and over, particularly $150k and up.

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How brands can target on location

LocalResponse shared some results from three of its recent campaigns, showing how consumers have reacted to the outreach tool. An automobile manufacturer targeted consumers who checked in on Twitter, Foursquare, Gowalla and many other services at and nearby events hosted by this company. By timing the tweets to the actual events and hitting only people nearby, the manufacturer was able to get a 22-percent click-through rate and a 10-percent increase in followers over a three-day campaign, with 58 percent converting to the mobile website.

A consumer packaged-goods company looking to promote holiday dishes made with their products sent in-store coupons and recipes to people checking in at major supermarkets and people tweeting about the company. The tweets got a 15-percent click-through rate, and more than half redeemed the coupon.

A fashion retailer looking to drive traffic at a new location and build word of mouth targeted people checking in at the grand opening as well as people nearby with an offer to win a $2,000 shopping spree. The offer got a 40 percent redemption rate and impressions and click-through rates doubled, thanks to viral sharing on Twitter.

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Some examples of what Ford have done with their basic profile

“While Google has specifically requested that business users hold tight before playing around in business-consumer relations on Google+, a few companies have jumped the gun. Ford Motors is one company who took great advantage of the built-in features, even going as far as inviting users to step into a Hangout (a group video chat, and one of Google+’s distinguishing features) after a press conference. A captioning contest was also held where the +1 on the comments were the voting method.

Ford stated, though, that they’d “seen comments, both pro and con, about our presence” on Google+. Clearly, the mold for Google+ will be different than either Twitter or Facebook, but no one yet knows exactly what that difference will look like.”

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What Google+ it means for brands

The launch of Google+ apps sends a powerful signal – the personalized web has begun. What this means is that the way information is structured and accessed will turn on the individual, or rather their personal profile which is a composite of all the data collected on the basis of what they have searched for and shared. What this means for brands and their marketing is enormous.

As the individual becomes the filter through which all information must pass, the onus for brands to be defined and social becomes acute. Here’s why.

Till now, search was outward facing. When you wanted to find something you entered its name and in most cases, relied on Google to provide a list of ranked links to that topic. But now search, and the way information is structured and accessed is becoming increasingly inward facing with the individual as the filter. That means when you visit a website the ads will reflect brands, topics or causes that you have demonstrated a past interest in through what you searched and shared. In short, your experience of the web is being built from the individual out, in circles

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15bn apps have been downloaded from iTunes

Apple today announced that over 15 billion apps have been downloaded from its revolutionary App Store by the more than 200 million iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users worldwide. The App Store offers more than 425,000 apps and developers have created an incredible array of over 100,000 native iPad apps

In just three years, the revolutionary App Store has grown to become the most exciting and successful software marketplace the world has ever seen,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “Thank you to all of our amazing developers who have filled it with over 425,000 of the coolest apps and to our over 200 million iOS users for surpassing 15 billion downloads.”

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Facebook announces 750m active users

Mark Zuckerberg confirmed that Facebook had surpassed 750 million monthly active users today at a product launch in Palo Alto.He said the company had declined to announce it earlier because it’s become focused on other metrics, including how actively users are sharing information.“Hopefully, we’ll get to a billion at some point,” he said. “I think people generally think that’s going to happen at some point.”

The announcement suggest that Facebook’s growth, at least in terms of raw monthly actives, is continuing at a linear, not exponential, pace. The company has been growing at just under 50 million monthly actives every two months since late 2009. It last said it was at 500 million monthly actives a year ago.” 
Facebook’s official user count metric is determined when a user has logged in to the site for at least a month.

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One Facebook Like for a retailer leads to an average of 20 more site visits

“Our data shows that for the top retailers, even if they have no Facebook fans they can still expect to receive on average 62,000 visits from Facebook each month. However, by utilising this new service, brands can more rapidly build a fan base within Facebook and therefore drive more traffic to their website. Within retail each new fan acquired will drive an additional 20 visits to a retailer’s websites, which in turn will generate extra sales both online and offline.”

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Hangout could be the breakout feature

One interesting feature that could really put Google+ ahead of Facebook is its “Hangouts” feature. Google+ Hangouts are a kind of mashup of video chatting through Gmail, and the old “chat rooms” of the days when AIM was our only chat option.

First, you click on the “Start a hangout” button, and it takes you to a separate webpage and enables your webcam and mic (while it's loading it even gives you a “fix your hair and make sure your mic works!” message, so you’re not taken by surprise). Then, you invite circles of friends, or individual friends to the Hangout room for the video chat session. You can create Hangouts of up to 10 people.

Google puts the image of the person who is talking at the center of the screen. If multiple people are talking at once it moves the one who is talking loudest to the center (that’s a good lesson for you kids out there).

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Google+ - Google’s new social network

Google has learned the painful lesson of Buzz and has taken enormous pains to attend to privacy in the overall design and experience of the product.

It’s very easy to add people and organize them into standard or customized groups (see list below). This is one of the things that immediately impressed me, as well as the attention to privacy and selective sharing. There’s lots of control over who sees what updates, etc. You’re also able filter all messages and updates by category to see only those from “friends” or “professional” contacts. On the Plus homepage you can click down the list and get selective views from each of your groups.

Users can create and manage groups (“Circles”) very easily once you understand how Plus is organized. This takes relatively little time.

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