The £27 million opening ceremony’s nearly over and it’s been hard to spot an athlete in the parade who was wielding a mobile that wasn’t an Apple iPhone.
Once the competition starts and we start seeing the athletes, their teams and fans using iPhones and iPads with online brands like Google, Twitter and Facebook that also aren’t official sponsors of the games I wonder if this will detract from the value of Samsung’s sponsorship commitment?
So far the brand that I’ve heard mentioned most is Twitter (only a few minutes pass before the TV commentators are quoting the tweet of another celebrity or athlete) and when mobile devices are so similar looking isn’t it now all about the services?
Outside those in the mobile industry how many of the 4 billion strong TV audience could actually identify (or cared about) which brand of smartphone Rowan Atkinson was holding?
Now of course the story would be very different if we could download “S Health” – Samsung’s mHealth app – and see how our own fitness regimes compare with that of our favorite athletes. Maybe I’d start with trying to sleep for longer than Usain Bolt.
UPDATE: 28/07/2012
Supporting my thoughts it’s interesting to note how many commentators have thought the mobile being used by Rowan Atkinson was a Apple iPhone. Perhaps he should have been using one of the “pebble blue” official Galaxy S3’s?
Shirley Brady at BrandChannel (a firm committed to providing a global perspective on brands):
Editor at Next51.net (a French source of information about what’s new iPhone):
