mobile
Millennials on Social Media
It’s hard enough to hold one person’s attention, let alone an entire generation’s. Millennials—now the largest generational group in the U.S.—have grown alongside advancements in technology and media platforms, placing them in intriguing territory with regard to media habits. When it comes to television, their eyes are glued to the screen. With commercials, they’re still tuned in—but their eyes are on their cell phones.
Source: Millennials on Millennials: A Look at Viewing Behavior, Distraction and Social Media Stars
The Future of Wearables
Have wearable devices and smart clothing been on the market for some time now? Yes. Have consumers been buying them? Not really. But that’s expected to change, in oh, five years or so.
AYTM Market Research polled 1,000 US internet users ages 18 and older in February 2017 and asked them if they ever purchased smart clothing or wearable devices. While roughly one in five respondents said they purchased at least one item, a large share—about three-quarters—said they had never purchased any. But many said they are at least somewhat likely to buy either smart clothing or wearables within the next five years. In fact, nearly half of respondents surveyed said that was their plan.
Source: Despite the Hype, Wearables Not Really a Thing – eMarketer
Mobile World Congress Four Years from Now
As over 108,000 attendees from 208 countries filed into the echoing halls of Mobile World Congress last week, I was reminded of the old First World War chant, sung by the soldiers on the front lines in a tone of heavy irony: “We’re here, because we’re here, because we’re here!”
Every year, Mobile World Congress positions itself as the world’s meeting place for the Mobile industry. That’s OK. I get it. But every year, I increasingly wonder, whether it’s really still all about the “mobile world” after all. The fact is that MWC is slowly but surely losing its reason for existing as a mobile-focused event.
A 20 minute taxi drive away from the Gran Fira of MWC is the strangely-named 4YFN (“Four Years From Now”). This conference resembles your average future-focused startup conference these days: there’s a pitching stage, a main stage for speakers and panels to pontificate, an exhibition hall — the usual. But although claiming to attract a healthy 20,000 people, it’s oddly removed from Mobile World Congress, even though anyone who has an entrance pass to MWC also has full access to 4YFN. All the devices which are unveiled at MWC, will eventually run the apps and cloud services which the startups down the road are producing. And yet, they are stuck back in the city.
I hope the rumours are true that next year they will co-locate 4YFN in a new, large, annexe at the main MWC exhibition area.For slowly but surely, the issues that are discussed at MWC, are gradually resembling the solutions and startups showcased at 4YFN.
Source: Let’s face it, Mobile World Congress isn’t about the mobile any more | TechCrunch
Google Assistant on Every Android Phone
Little things that seem unimportant — how many of us are interested in a particular movie or what time of day we tend to buy gas — are a gold mine of data for a truly smart computer. For Google, too, because the companies producing movies and selling gas are interested in working with the advertiser who knows these things. Assistant may seem like an altruistic offering from Google to mankind, but it’s a money-making opportunity first.
Source: Google Assistant for every phone was the best move Google will make in 2017 | Android Central
When Amazon’s Cloud Goes Down
The dynamics between public and private cloud tip a little more towards private cloud every time that there is an outage or with each new generation of IT technology that folks like Cisco Systems, Dell/EMC, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Huawei Technologies, IBM or Lenovo bring to the market. It is unlikely that businesses will halt their march to the cloud and move back to hosting all their applications on the traditional bare metal or virtualized server environments that had been popular for the last 20 years, but these episodes may cause people to think a little harder about data location and availability. This makes private cloud more interesting. Hybrid IT, gives businesses a combination of their datacenters, co-location and external cloud for hosting applications that could be traditional, virtualized, public cloud or private cloud.
Source: With Its Recent Outage, Amazon Web Services Is Helping To Sell Hybrid IT
Connected Spenders
Middle class income is no longer enough to define the consumers that drive the global economy. As technology revolutionizes shopping, it’s creating a new consumer demographic—one that’s plugged in, ready to spend and at the forefront of consumer trends. Connected Spenders span all income levels and are defined by two characteristics: They have internet access and they are willing to spend their discretionary income. What’s more, new research from The Demand Institute projects that they will account for 46% (or $260 trillion) of global consumer spending over the next decade.
Source: Meet the Connected Spender, Digital Consumer of the Future
Things Smartphone Users Don’t Need Anymore
Over the past decade, smartphones have made a number of once-popular gadgets all but irrelevant to society. While the dollar value of smartphone shipments has grown 536% in that time, those of the MP3 player, digital camera, and portable GPS have sunk.
Source: Devices killed by the smartphone: CHART – Business Insider
Tracking What You Look At
“Eye tracking sensors provide two main benefits,” says Oscar Werner, vice president of the eye tracking company Tobii Tech. “First, it makes a device aware of what the user is interested in at any given point in time. And second, it provides an additional way to interact with content, without taking anything else away. That means it increases the communication bandwidth between the user and the device.”
There’s a chance that soon eye tracking will be a standard feature of a new generation of smartphones, laptops and desktop monitors setting the stage for a huge reevaluation of the way we communicate with devices—or how they communicate with us.
Source: Unlocking the potential of eye tracking technology | TechCrunch
See also: Towson University eye-tracking lab
Why Snap is a Camera Company
Technically speaking, Snap is a camera company, and has been for a number of months. In September, it announced the launch of Spectacles, camera-equipped sunglasses that allow you to record a ten-second video by tapping a button near your left eyebrow. (For the moment, Spectacles are sold exclusively in itinerant vending machines called Snapbots.) But the company’s vision of the future appears to be more expansive than that. “In the way that the flashing cursor became the starting point for most products on desktop computers, we believe that the camera screen will be the starting point for most products on smartphones,” it writes.
Source: Why Is Snap Calling Itself a Camera Company? – The New Yorker
Top 20 Internship Fields
This is high season for securing a summer internship, an essential talent pipeline for employers and steppingstone for students. Postings peak in March, with 30,443 advertised positions in March 2016 (if you don’t have anything by May, you’re probably out of luck). But before sending that résumé, take a good hard look at what’s on it.
Source: Top 20 Fields for Internships: Get Your Skills On – The New York Times
How AR Will Change Mobile Shopping
People age 18 to 24 spend an average of 94 hours per month on apps, and those age 25 to 34 spend 86 hours. And customers now favor mobile retail apps, which take up 54% of all digital retail time. And yet, just 1% of all transactions take place on mobile, while we still spend $1.1 trillion in stores. In short, mobile time is not relative to mobile purchases. But augmented reality could help change all that.
Source: Here’s how AR can solve digital’s toughest problems – Business Insider
To get a copy of the slide deck, click here.
People Won’t Talk to Alexa or Siri in Public
Virtual assistants are supposed to be a linchpin of tech’s future. Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Samsung, and others have all made big investments in the tech. Many of them are using the idea of a disembodied, information-fetching helper as a selling point for new devices.But while these assistants are infiltrating more and more gadgets, they still face a few giant hurdles on their way to wider acceptance. One, as this chart from Statista shows, is simple: People just don’t want to use them in public.
Source: Where people use virtual assistants: CHART – Business Insider
Microsoft Declares Psych War on Apple
Even if Microsoft loses out to a sale to a MacBook, it has changed the mindset of a consumer from an automatic purchase to a considered purchase. The Surface range was in play, even for a short time. These tiny moments of mind share will add up over weeks, months, and perhaps years, and the thinking will be that these tiny drips will wear down one of Apple’s weakest areas in its portfolio to Microsoft’s advantage.
The connected car craze
The Internet of Things has created a new market in the automotive industry, which is showing no signs of slowing down. Connected cars and their associated services are expected to grow from $13.6 to over $42 billion by 2022.
A glimpse of our collective future can be seen in Cadillac’s Book by Cadillac entrance — an on-demand, luxury lifestyle-driven vehicles by subscription. The $1,500-a-month car subscription service allows members to swap out different models of high-end sedans and SUVs, beginning in New York in February. It’s the same business model as ClassPass or Netflix, but for the GM-owned Cadillac brand, competing with the likes of Audi’s luxury mobility offering, Audi on Demand.
Tostitos’ Party Bag Will Help Call Uber If You’re Drunk
Doritos might have crashed out of the Super Bowl after a decade of fun ads, but Frito-Lay still has a few party tricks up its sleeve for this year’s big game. The chip maker’s Tostitos brand has made a limited-edition “Party Safe” bag that can tell when you’ve been drinking, and will help you get home safely from that Super Bowl party.
The special bag, created by Goodby Silverstein & Partners, comes equipped with a sensor connected to a microcontroller calibrated to detect small traces of alcohol on a person’s breath. If any alcohol is detected, the sensor turns red and forms the image of a steering wheel, along with an Uber code and a “Don’t drink and drive” message. The bag also uses near-field communication (NFC) technology, allowing fans to tap the bag with their phone to call a ride. With Uber and Mothers Against Drunk Driving, Tostitos will offer partygoers $10 off their Uber ride during and after the Feb. 5 game.
Source: Tostitos’ New Party Bag Knows When You’ve Been Drinking and Will Even Call You an Uber | Adweek
The Rise of Programmatic Advertising
Ad tech companies are intermediaries between advertisers and publishers, and add value to the ad delivery process by consolidating inventory, automating workflows, and offering precise targeting capabilities at scale. The automation of ad buying is also known as “programmatic advertising” — that is, using technology and software to buy digital ads. Programmatic ad spend in the US is quickly ramping up: It will top $20 billion this year and reach $38.5 billion by year-end 2020.
Censoring App Stores
App stores backed by giant corporations have created choke points for the internet, which governments are now exploiting. In the last few weeks, the Chinese government compelled Apple to remove New York Times apps from the Chinese version of the App Store. Then the Russian government had Apple and Google pull the app for LinkedIn, the professional social network, after the network declined to relocate its data on Russian citizens to servers in that country. Finally, last week, a Chinese regulator asked app stores operating in the country to register with the government, an apparent precursor to wider restrictions on app marketplaces.
Source: Clearing Out the App Stores: Government Censorship Made Easier – The New York Times
VR Done Dirt Cheap
The Within app uses 360-degree video technology, similar to virtual technology.
A variety of apps, some using Google’s Cardboard viewer, allow users to sample films and games with 3-D imagery.
Source: Virtual Reality on the Cheap? Try These Apps on Your Phone – The New York Times
Net Freedom 2016
- Internet freedom around the world declined in 2016 for the sixth consecutive year.
- Two-thirds of all internet users — 67 percent — live in countries where criticism of the government, military, or ruling family are subject to censorship.
- Social media users face unprecedented penalties, as authorities in 38 countries made arrests based on social media posts over the past year.
- Globally, 27 percent of all internet users live in countries where people have been arrested for publishing, sharing, or merely “liking” content on Facebook.
- Governments are increasingly going after messaging apps like WhatsApp and Telegram, which can spread information quickly and securely.
Consumer Electronics Show 2017
A look at the trends that will matter at this week’s International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas: Ultra HD TV, smart home and drones.
Source: What to Know About CES 2017 – The New York Times
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