Economy of Social - Social Media Tips, Marketing and Business

A few months back I had no smartphone. Life was much simpler. The phone ringtone was loud enough to be heard even when the phone was buried under the pillow. Even the one alarm that I could set on it was loud enough to wake me up. Only a few rare occasions drove me to the world of smartphones and their extravagant displays, with a smooth touch navigating through a web of mesmerizing applications.

It started with a simple tweet by Nokia.  Breakfast in New York on a big day for us! Today we dine on Jellybeans: twitter.com/nokia/status/2… — Nokia (@nokia) September 5, 2012 It wasn't going to be that simple considering the unveiling of Nokia Lumia 920 with the next phase of Windows phone comes a day after Apple announced  its next-gen iPhone event on 12th Sept. 2012. It clearly seemed like a big day. Nokia's social media blitz was on. With the campaign slowly building up, the blitz initially seemed to have lost steam with people questioning the lack of announcement dates and price points for the phone. Also rumors  due to a couple of claimed leaks about the phone were flooding the social media space. An interesting take away is the lack of control brands today have on social media. Controlling the brand narrative is important to make sure consumers get to hear brand's version of the story. With this being touted as a "boom or bust" event for Nokia...

In the present scenario with a far from perfect use of social media by marketers there are instances when they get it right. Samsung Canada got it right when they used it to give a free custom Samsung Galaxy SIII to a Samsung fan with his artwork on it. Shane posted a pic of his conversation on the Facebook page of Samsung saying that he was a big fan of Samsung and wanted a free version of Samsung Galaxy SIII. Samsung responded by saying that they couldn't give a free phone everyone and returned the favor with a pic of kangaroo on a unicycle. The entire conversation went viral on reddit . Finally Shane got a custom made Samsung Galaxy SIII, the only custom made SIII in Canada. Brand managers at Samsung will feel the heat due to loss of reputation and confidence in Samsung Smart Phones as a result of the lost patent law-suit against Apple . From a brand building perspective such activities on social media can mitigate the impact of loss in reputation. ...

In a landmark case Apple was awarded $1.049 billion in damages by the jury examining the case. There are two important perspectives in this case - First is to calculate the money gained by Samsung in infringing the patents and the money lost through this lost suit. Second is the long term impact on their market share. Apple had made Samsung an offer of $30 per handset and $40 per tablet as a licensing fee to use its patent. Experts say this would've roughly cost  Samsung $250 million dollars in 2010. So clearly considering that Samsung has to pay four times this amount in damages due to patent infringement does not indicate that it was a wise decision. WSJ reports Apple said, it iwas willing to offer a 20% discount to Samsung if the Korean tech giant agreed to cross-license its technology to Apple. Assuming an unsubsidized price of about $600 on a handset, $30 would amount to a royalty rate of about 5%. Payments under the proposal would have com...