In mobile-computing boom, a battle rages for marketing

GETTING COMPETITIVE: A man standing on an escalator passing by the Samsung Electronics new Galaxy S III smartphone advertisement boards at a store in Seoul. As the holiday shopping season approaches, consumer electronics companies are aggressively stepping up their spending on marketing. - Reuters

NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO: Amazon.com Inc CEO and founder Jeff Bezos, who quipped at a shareholder meeting a few years ago that “advertising is the price you pay for having an unremarkable product,” is eating those words.

Three years on, as the company moves aggressively into the mobile computing business with its Kindle tablets and e-readers, Amazon has already spent US$34mil (RM102mil) on TV advertising for the Kindle in the first half of the year, according to Kantar Media, and there’s more to come.