Alfred says “It’s just common sense, really. Smart retailers make shopping a no-brainer by placing hot-selling items where consumers can see them.”

Read the article and contribute your thoughts and comments by visiting MSearchGroove here:

Long Tail Content & Discoverability; The Business Imperative To Make Finding & Buying Content/Apps A No-Brainer

See the full press release on Realwire.

Apple took a risk going with a credit card-only model, but they had absolutely nothing to loose and everything to gain. Nokia, Sony-Ericsson and others have life-sustaining relationships with operators in that the operator distribution model is critical to their success.

In running their own branded content portals, the manufactures have two primary billing choices:

1. Use the same old billing mechanisms (SMS, WAP) that many subscribers either don’t understand or have grown to hate, or
2. Use alternative billing like credit card and risk operator relationships.

The answer – Nokia uses both. Granted it’s a much smoother process than we are used to, but compare the following process to the one-click Apple model.

From Nokia:

1. Select the item you want to purchase.
2. Select Buy .
3. Enter your Nokia account user name and password. If you do not have an account, select Create a Nokia account , and enter the required information.
4. Select to pay using your credit card or through your phone bill. If you already have your credit card information stored in your Nokia account, and you want to use another credit card, select Edit payment settings , and enter the required information. To save your credit card information to your Nokia account, select the Save this card to my Nokia account check box.
5. Select the e-mail address to which you want to receive a receipt of your purchase.
6. Select Purchase

Behind the scenes, Nokia claims this iteration of Ovi is a bit of a band-aid to stop the flow of blood Apple has created with it’s game-changing App Store. I’m certain they have something better on the way and look forward to seeing what it is.

In contrast to the Build and Run it approach of Nokia’s Ovi and Apple’s App Store, the newly announced Sony Ericsson store will be powered by GetJar. This partnership demonstrates another approach – mandate someone to do it for you. Speaking from experience – we have done content aggregation for mobile operators – it’s an expensive and time consuming process to do well. In this case, GetJar has the experience to do it well and one assumes they can do it more cheaply through economies of scale.

One key take away from this, the best content will sit on the virtual shelves unless the buying process is clean and simple and the App stores provide excellent discovery tools. Customers must be able to find and purchase content with minimal effort. This will leave them with a good feeling and assure return visits, and more importantly, purchases.

Circulating since shortly after the release of Android, the theory that Google might be developing an operating system based on a modified version of the mobile platform seems unlikely in this case. Google has very clearly stated in the past that it has no plans to adapt Android to netbooks itself. The search giant prefers to leave that as an exercise for third-party adopters.

Ars however believes another possible approach might be that Google is building a separate lightweight Linux operating system that can be used as a host environment for Chrome.

Google has not yet issued a response to requests for official comment.

The Hero received positive marks from Sascha Segan, PC Magazine’s Lead Analyst for mobile phones and PDAs. In his review, Sascha credits HTC’s new user interface, Sense™, saying it “…breaks free of the dull Google-centric Android interface to deliver a fresh, smooth, sleek new way of staying in touch with people.” Sense introduces a more natural way for reaching out to the people and accessing your important information through an intuitive and seamless user experience.

HTC plans on introducing Sense across a portfolio of phones including those based on Microsoft’s Windows Mobile operating system.