Companies with big brand names are hot to exploit the market for smartphone apps, but pushing programs without forethought into the market can do their reputations more harm than good. More than two-thirds (69 percent) of Americans say that if an app backed by a brand is not useful, helpful or easy to use, it results in a negative perception of the brand.

What's more, more than a third (38 percent) of Americans who use mobile applications say they are unsatisfied with most of the brand-backed apps in the market, according to a survey of 781 online adults conducted by Harris Interactive and sponsored by EffectiveUI, a user interface designer in Denver, Colorado.

Many big brand companies are entering the apps arena with the wrong orientation, said EffectiveUI's president, Anthony Franco. "They're viewing this channel as an opportunity to market to consumers," he told PCWorld. "They're viewing it as a 'campaign' -- a way to build out eyeballs and drive traffic and drive conversions and impressions."

"What the survey shows," he continued, "is that that is a pretty big mistake."

Apps shouldn't be confused with Web-based marketing vehicles like micro sites, he asserts. "If you launch a bad micro site, it falls flat," he said. "If you launch a bad application on the apps store, it creates a very negative perception of your brand."

According to the survey, consumers have certain expectations about brand apps shoved their way. Seven out of 10 (74 percent) feel the apps should be easy to use. Three-fourths want the app to do what they want or need it to do. And more than half (57 percent) think it should be well designed. "They don't expect to be marketed to," Franco said. "They expect to get something done in this channel."

If an app doesn't meet a consumer's expectations, that person won't hesitate to let others know about it, the Harris pollsters found. Almost a third (32 percent) of the respondents say they've told others when they've had a bad experience with an app.

On the other hand, when they like an app, they're not shy about letting others know about that, too. More than half (57 percent) say they've recommended an app based on a good experience, and nearly two-thirds (66 percent) say they've downloaded an app based on a review or recommendation.

"The takeway from the survey for brands is to treat this as a new channel," Franco opined, "and treat this as a channel that you have to offer your customers utility."

This little story here speaks volumes as to the necessity of a carefully thought out mobile strategy.

I have seen many mobile flops that could have been avoided.

- Going mobile because your competition is going mobile should not be your main driver.
- Going mobile for the heck of it ... is not a good reason.
- Going mobile as a personal career booster is not the right motivation (I have seen quite a few people lose their jobs because they went mobile 'poorly').

My Dad used to be a big critic of those people who shoot off the mouth and "don't seem to connect their mouths to their brains." By the same token we should connect our mobile implementations to our customer expectations. It is after about them (since that's what makes you money).

‘Economists, said John Maynard Keynes, should think of themselves as humble specialists, on a par with dentists. But his advice has gone unheeded. Over the past 50 years, economics and its jargon have penetrated every corner of human life. Decisions to marry and inject heroin alike are explained in terms of utility maximisation. Doctors, priests and scientists are lumped together as service providers or rent seekers. Schoolteachers are urged to “add value” to their pupils. The pig philosophy, as Thomas Carlyle called it, has become all-embracing.

Of the many harms inflicted by economics on the English language, “human capital” is the most grievous. Coined by Chicago economists Jacob Mincer and Gary Becker in the 1960s, it refers to the stock of personal skills and qualities that constitutes a worker’s economic value. Such skills and qualities are often costly to acquire and yield returns only over a long period of time, so are readily thought of as a kind of capital. Mincer and Becker’s work has provided the intellectual rationale for the huge expansion of higher education in recent decades. In an economy dominated by the knowledge and service industries, with personality and expertise at a premium, “investment in human capital” is the name of the game.

The phrase “human capital” is now so thoroughly naturalised that we seldom pause to ponder its implications. What is capital anyway? Capital is not a particular kind of good, but any good viewed in relation to certain interests. A donkey is capital to the wood-carrier. A derelict church is capital to the restaurant entrepreneur. Capital, in short, is wealth viewed not as an end in itself but as a means to more wealth. The phrase “human capital” insinuates that human beings too are to be viewed in this light—as instruments of the productive process. We have all of us attained the status which Aristotle reserved for slaves, that of living tools. What a triumph for the dismal science! Keynes naively supposed that economic growth was for the sake of personal cultivation. His modern successors have put him right: personal cultivation is for the sake of economic growth.’

Brilliant. ‘Human capital’ shall not pass my lips again.

Neither will it cross my lips (I hope).

So are your employees assets? Capital? Furniture?
Are they only a means to an end? That end being making a profit for your shareholders... for you?

How you view your employees will determine how well they perform for you and how difficult a new implementation will be. If they feel valued and taken into account they will take ownership of the work and the new tools you are providing for them. If it is mobile technology... how will it help them? Will it improve their workflow? Their work-life balance?

If we see them as assets they will only perform to their stated specifications. If we see them as collaborators in our success they will give more... much more.

It may be suddenly fashionable to say so, but the new Apple iPad tablet won’t kill the Kindle from Amazon. Here are three reasons. My colleague, Nick Bilton, has weighed in on this topic from the opposite side. Please add your thoughts in the comments section below.

The Kindle is for book lovers, and the iPad is not.

Sure, the Kindle’s potential market may have shrunk today, since the two-books-a-year folks will now choose the more versatile iPad.

But the Kindle (and other devices with E Ink screens) will continue to be the best device for lovers of long-form reading, period. (And they do love it; check the Kindle forums for the passion of Kindle owners.) The iPad’s backlit screen, higher price and more limited battery all make it a poorer choice for curling up with a novel.

Also, there’s the distraction factor. When you read a book, you just don’t want to have e-mail, Twitter and the ESPN Web site beckoning from the browser. The absence of those services on the Kindle — sure, it’s also a flaw — actually make it better for focused leisure reading.

Amazon will continue to improve on the Kindle.

A Kindle with color? With a Pixel Qi screen? A Kindle tablet to rival the iPad? One indication that Amazon plans to continue releasing new Kindles in the months and years ahead comes from the Web site of its design division, Lab126, based in Cupertino, Calif. I count a whopping 46 new job postings on the Lab126 career board in the last two months alone.

The Kindle store will continue to thrive.

Amazon smartly separated its Kindle hardware division from its Kindle e-book store and has since released or announced Kindle apps for the iPhone, PC, Mac and BlackBerry. Despite the fact that many consumers will now choose an iPad over a Kindle, Amazon will likely undercut Apple on e-book prices. (If publishers band together to withhold cheaper e-books from Amazon in favor of pricier ones on Apple, there could be some legal issues — more on this later.)

Commenting on the Apple announcement today, an Amazon spokesman, Drew Herdener, said this: “Customers can read and sync their Kindle books on the iPhone, iPod Touch, PCs, and soon BlackBerry, Mac and iPad. Kindle is purpose-built for reading. Weighing in at less than 0.64 pounds, Kindle fits comfortably in one hand for hours, has an E Ink display that is easy on the eyes even in bright daylight, two weeks of battery life, and 3G wireless with no monthly fees — all at a $259 price. Kindle editions of New York Times best sellers and most new releases are only $9.99.”

Bottom line: books, music and movies — its worldwide media business — constitute half of Amazon.com’s overall revenue. Jeff Bezos and Company have a huge stake in protecting that business as it inexorably shifts from analog atoms to digital bits.

In theory yes - a different audience. Pure readers versus multi-taskers. I could see Amazon dropping the price of tis Kindle to just under $200 to make it more palatable for those that want to have multiple devices. If I just want to read and am in the waiting room somewhere I will either check emails or my feeds on the BlackBerry or I will pop out the Kindle and go back to my book.

Regardless of whether it is the first time your mobile workers receive a device, or if you are deploying a new application, your people and your processes will never be the same. Mobility changes the way we work; it is transformational and because of this you need to pay very close attention to your processes. If you are not looking (and I mean really looking) at how to best integrate your new technology or application into your existing workflows you will be faced with anything from poor adoption to outright failure.

So what do I mean by process peddlers?

Process peddlers may be vendors, mobile application developers or even the junior resource in that other department on the fourth floor. These process peddlers talk about the importance of process mapping but at the end of the implementation, all they have done is connected a few boxes with some arrows (current and future state workflows) without adding value to the ultimate success of your project. Sadly enough, I have seen them far too many times. In fact I have even worked with them or had to come in and fix their mistakes to try and revive a failing implementation.

In case you don’t get  through the long post here are the two main takeaways:

1. Process peddlers are a waste of resources.
2. Real process integration experts are invaluable to the success of a mobile implementation.

This was actually our most popular post over at the Mobile Strategy Blog for 2009 and we wrote it towards the end of the year and with some frustration after seeing and hearing so many people claim their expertise in process integration. We want to turn it into a little PDF and perhaps a series. The entire post at the source.