iPhone 3G for free in Japan..so unfair!

Is Japanese wireless carrier SoftBank making way for a new version of the iPhone, or are sales just sluggish? Who can say, but from Friday through the end of May, you can sign up for an 8GB iPhone 3G in Japan for a grand total of zero.
Announced on the Japanese carrier's website, the promotion offers significant savings for customers interested in upgrading to the iPhone in Japan. The 8GB version of Apple's popular smartphone is now free (original release, translated) with a two-year contract that can be tied to one of three promotional plans including basic, premium, or student. The 16GB iPhone, meanwhile, isn't paid for in full up front. Rather, it costs 480 yen per month ($4.96 in U.S. dollars) for a total price over the two-year contract of ¥ 11,520 ($119.11).

Via Shopabble.com

New Product Development and planning

A new exercise to think about. Why are we doing new product? is it driven by opportunity or driven by passion . All these will determine the development and executions of the new product launching.

Recently i have a new project to work on. Marketing a new website for shopping/women. This is a very complex product development to work on . The founders started the website out of common interest and so the project is driven by passion but i think it have to be driven by both opportunity and passion. Only with opportunity then the product(website) will grow tremendously. Passion is the starting point here.So my job now is to look for opportunity in the product itself.

We always talk about niche marketing. Alot of success stories on passion driven individual,but there are  many more not so successful examples ,just that nobody likes to talk about their failure. I mean in theory ,niche marketing do work at the start,but seeking opportunity is the key to success allowing growth.

First cut, how do we seek opportunity in the new founded product.We need to make sure that everyone loves it, love what we are doing.It will make things easier in seeking opportunity. How we going to do it? we target the niche,easier to fall in love with. But how do we grow faster ? we need more people to love us ! by seeking opportunity and development , alway perfecting our product.So where is niche now if we are catering for more mass crowd..It starts  with the influencer,which for this case is the media..

We need to win the hearts of the media company.By innovating the product! how beauty is our products! or something more controversial..so define your strength in the product,package it well and opportunity will comes eventually..

To be continued...

About Innovations

Economic doom and gloom does have an upside. It has laid the foundations for a fertile new landscape of creativity and innovation. When the market gets tough brands have to work harder to keep their customers, they have to find more creative ways to engage them. Innovation becomes a must in the design process. It's a case of innovate or risk a likely death. Which is why we predict a rebirth of creativity across product design, marketing and retail design. This new era isn't about big dollars, it's about big ideas and originality. 

Via: coolhunter

Driving Growth through New Product Planning

How do we drive growth in a fast-growing small startup?

First, we have to re look into the core products itself. 

Now we talk about innovations,emerging from the crowd and competitors. 

We talk about purple cow 

The essence of purple cow -- the reason it would shine among a crowd of perfectly competent, even undeniably excellent cows -- is that it would be remarkable. Something remarkable is worth talking about, worth paying attention to. Boring stuff quickly becomes invisible.

This becomes the starting point before any business planning. First we are driven by opportunity then we form the startup. So now we need to look into our core products planning,so purple cow is a very good reference.

We will elaborate more from this.