When the Passbook feature of iOS 6 was revealed, I thought it had great potential. I was surprised that most of you — the RPadholics that have used iOS 6, anyway — didn’t see the point or didn’t like Passbook. Do you know who likes it? Major League Baseball fans. In a pilot program used with four baseball teams, 12 percent of e-ticket buyers used Passbook to manage their tickets. For a new service that’s available on a limited amount of phones, that’s terribly impressive. Here’s more from Market Watch:
Passbook — which allows tickets and loyalty cards from a variety of outlets to be delivered to one iPhone app — proved to be an instant hit with fans, Bob Bowman, CEO of MLB Advance Media, tells MarketWatch. In its test run with four teams for the final two weeks of the season, 1,500 e-ticket buyers (12%) chose Passbook delivery. “That adoption rate really floored us — there is no question our fans want digital tickets,” Bowman says. “Fans can use the tickets, forward them to a friend, resell them, or even donate them to charity — and they never get lost or left at home.”
The MLB example shows the flexibility of Passbook and is a fantastic example of why I thought it had potential. That convenience is fantastic and the different things you can do with tickets is awesome. More and more companies are flocking to Passbook, which is no surprise considering the tens of millions of people that have or will buy iOS 6 devices. Hopefully these companies use Passbook in interesting ways, just like MLB.
What do you think of how MLB is using Passbook? Are you surprise by the relatively high adoption rate? Does this application change your mind about the service?
No my mind isn’t changed. There is still another app on my device that happens to use PassBook. Bad design.