A difficult question on any budding entrepreneur's mind is one of marketing, how to get one's product into the hands of the all-too-important consumer. The new topic on the tech world's mind these days is mobile advertising. Google and Apple were recently vying for AdMob (a huge player in the arena of mobile ads) Google ultimately won but Apple then spent $275 million to buy out Quattro, another mobile kingpin. It's obvious that mobile advertising is not just a fad and as entrepreneurs we must all take it seriously.
CES was a huge event for many reasons, one of which was the growth of the App Store model. Not just smartphones but regular candybar phones, TVs, landlines, DVRs, game consoles. We're living in a world in which apps have become the new type of website. So whereas a few years ago the question was: "do I need a website?" Now we're asking: "do I need to create an app?". It's another way to reach customers, and a cheap way too. Many App Stores are practically throwing money at developers to get onto their platform. Android and Palm's webOS are completely free to develop on, the iPhone OS costs $100 to become a developer but you get 70% of your app purhases plus it has the advantage of a wider customer base (with 31 million people), and there are many more: Blackberry's App World, Nokia's Ovi Store. The question isn't whether to create an app or not, but which platform to develop on, the best answer would be all of them. For budding entrepreneurs that's difficult, hence it's imperative to think of the demographic you are looking for. Whether it be corporate entrepreneurs with their Crackberries or young techies with their open-source Android devices, it's obvious that there's a relatively simple way for you to reach your audience in the mobile sector.
