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Posted: 03/28/11 by Jonathan Spalter
I am truly amazed by the mobile technology that has been unveiled at this year's CTIA Wireless show in Orlando, Florida. It seems only fitting that in such close proximity to the Magic Kingdom, the innovation on display in the convention center has made a trip around the exhibit floor a futuristic and magical experience.
Check out some of our team's favorite emerging wireless technologies and apps:
- Software technology that recognizes faces and automatically tags your friends.
- A wireless fertility monitor that indicates optimal fertility based on body temperature.
- An app that promotes safe driving by automatically silencing cell phones when the car is moving over 10mph.
- Remote physiological monitoring that measures key vitals and sends to the cloud for medical monitoring via cell phone or computer.
Augmented reality is the new reality for next generation mobility. This is just taking-off, and it is an exciting moment for the future of mobile user experience and interface. Ericsson's "Connected Tree" -- a live, mobilized orange tree which is now turbo-charged with augmented reality pop-ups viewable on your handset.
Speaking of taking off, Key Ring Reward Cards by Mobestream Media won first place at the CTIA Emerging Technology Awards in the Mobile Applications -- Mobile Commerce category. Key Ring is a handy app that consolidates consumers' plastic loyalty cards onto their smartphone to make saving more convenient and it helps retailers communicate real-time with their customers.
Bill2Mobile received second place honors in the Mobile Applications -- Mobile Commerce category. Its iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch app allows customers to opt for paperless bills and makes it more convenient to monitor statements and accounts with a mobile device.
In addition to perusing a seemingly endless exhibit floor hosting infinite apps, smartphones, tablets, and other handheld devices -- one very hot topic weighing on everyone's mind is spectrum.
In the conference keynote, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski explained:
"This explosion in demand for mobile services places unsustainable demands on our invisible infrastructure -- spectrum. Spectrum is the oxygen that allows all of these mobile innovations to breathe. Whether or not most Americans know the physics of spectrum, they know what it feels like to have a dropped call or a slow connection or cranky Wi Fi...
It is essential that we move quickly -- not because of the benefits of action, but because of the costs of inaction. If we do nothing in the face of the looming spectrum crunch, many consumers will face higher prices -- as the market is forced to respond to supply and demand -- and frustrating service -- connections that drop, apps that run unreliably or too slowly."
As we continue to take huge leaps forward into the exciting and futuristic realm of mobile, the message is clear: we must have more spectrum in order to keep pace with innovation and consumer demand for the products we just can't live without.
This article was originally posted on Huffington Post.
Posted: 03/03/11 by Mobile Future Team
A few new stats caught our eye this week:
- Smartphones outsold PC’s.
- According to IDC, in the fourth quarter of 2010 100.9 million smartphone devices were shipped compared to 92.1 million PC units.
- Mobile app revenues projected to reach $38 billion by 2015.
- Forrester Research analysts also estimate that by 2015 mobile applications, services and business management revenues will reach $54.6 billion a year.
- By 2015, e-commerce is expected to reach $278.9 billion in the United States according to Forrester.
Posted: 02/11/11 by Mobile Future Team
If you’re looking to go beyond the traditional bouquet of red roses and box of chocolates to show your affection this Valentines Day, your smartphone has the answer. Mashable and Refinery29 compiled a list of apps that are sure to spice up your Valentines celebration, but don’t be alarmed if you find yourself gravitating to these heartfelt apps all year long. Included in the run-down are virtual card-making apps, romantic recipe apps and a music streaming app that only plays love songs.
Posted: 02/03/11 by Mobile Future Team
As the smartphone adoption rate continues to increase, we also see consumer-driven demand for the latest and greatest accessories for the smartphone: mobile apps. App store revenues are expected to pass $15.1 billion by the end of this year, up from $5.2 billion in 2010 according to research firm Gartner.
Apps have truly become a culture all into their own. This is evidenced by the fact that this weekend during the Super Bowl a commercial for the upcoming animated bird movie “Rio” will feature an embedded code to unlock a secret level in the Angry Birds game, as reported by Digital Trends.
Posted: 01/31/11 by Mobile Future Team
Several articles out this weekend show how the drive for better mobile apps is generating job opportunities across the country. As Joe Light writes in The Wall Street Journal:
“Times are good for Web- and mobile-application developers. The number of online listings containing the keywords ‘HTML5,’ ‘Mobile app,’ and ‘Android,’ have skyrocketed over the past year, making them the fastest growing keywords in jobs posted online, according to data tracked by jobs search engine Indeed.com.”
Also in The Journal today, Amir Efrati writes about Google’s mobile app hiring spree:
“Google Inc. plans to hire dozens of software developers to create applications for smartphones and other mobile devices…. The Internet company has begun recruiting software engineers, product managers, user-interface experts and others who have ideas for mobile apps….”
Finally, over at CNN, Mark Millan describes the job implications as Google ramps up its tablet efforts. The company recently posted an updated version of its app development kit for the upcoming Android 3.0 operating system. Sometimes called Honeycomb, this is is the first version specifically geared toward tablet computers.
According to the article, developers are scrambling to get their apps ready in time for some high-profile tablet launches by Motorola and Samsung later this year.
Posted: 12/14/10 by Mobile Future Team
We’ve already discussed the role mobile commerce played in early holiday shopping. Today, eBay released groundbreaking numbers that made yesterday the biggest mobile shopping day ever. eBay’s mobile gross merchandise value, the total sales dollar value for merchandise sold through eBay, rose to $5 million in the US and $13 million globally (that’s a 127% and 165% increase respectively) according to the article.
Posted: 12/10/10 by Mobile Future Team
It’s official: The mobile revolution has grabbed another national pastime.
Beginning with Black Friday and carrying into the season of holiday shopping sprees, Americans’ rapid adoption of mobile shopping is pretty remarkable. First, look at a few numbers:
On Thanksgiving Day, shopping site Ruelala.com reported that about 19 percent of sales came from mobile users, up tenfold from a year ago.
Mobile sales from online giant eBay.com nearly doubled from 2009 levels on Black Friday. The company’s Cyber Monday statistics were equally as impressive: Mobile sales increased 146% from the previous year. (And yes, it’s a trend found across the United States.)
Finally, over at BlueNile.com, one customer used his mobile phone to make a $250,000 diamond purchase. (Impressive as it is, it’s still not the coolest item purchased with a smartphone this year.)
In short, the predictions about Americans’ rapid adoption of mobile shopping apps are coming true. On Cyber Monday, National Retail Federation estimated that more than 7 million people used a mobile device for shopping, nearly double the estimated 4 million mobile shoppers on the same day in 2009.
What’s driving this rapid evolution? First, costs are declining significantly. From late 2008 to this past fall, the average handset subsidy increased by almost 50 percent, according to a recent Goldman Sachs report. This has put smartphones within reach of tens of millions of Americans who once saw them as too expensive.
It also puts America on a trajectory where, by 2012, smartphone sales will exceed PC and notebook sales combined.
Service costs are dropping too. A General Accountability Office (GAO) report in August concluded that from 1999 to 2008, average wireless service prices had declined each year. It also reported that average prices in 2009 were half the prices in 1999.
Second, there is the obvious growth of mobile retail apps. Taking BlueNile.com as an example, Forbes reports that mobile traffic on Thanksgiving increased 1600 percent over last year. One key difference: This year, Blue Nile had a mobile app. Among major retailers, we’ve reached the point where mobile apps are only noticed by their absence. Meanwhile, many smaller retailers were quicker to market their own mobile apps and reaped the benefits, leapfrogging over larger, less nimble competitors.
Finally, there is the rapid growth of several truly remarkable mobile apps: ones that make instant product and price comparisons like PriceGrabber, ShopSavvy and eBay’s Red Laser.
Just scan a barcode when you’re at the store and the app immediately scours the web looking for comparable products and prices. It’s the perfect companion when you’re considering that impulse “all sales final” purchase and want to make sure you’re getting a good deal.
This time next year, you may be paying for your holiday gifts just by swiping your smartphone in front of a small scanner. And with industry trends continually pointing to decreased service costs and mass proliferation of mobile apps, stay tuned: The mobile revolution in retail is just beginning.
Posted: 12/07/10 by Mobile Future Team
Mobile apps handle just about everything these days: entertainment, scheduling, home monitoring, cloud computing. But until today, few would suggest that mobile apps are a matter of life and death.
Not anymore. Last week, Eric Cooper, a basketball coach at La Verne Lutheran High School in California, downloaded a $1.99 mobile app that offers CPR instruction.
His timing could not have been better. This week, according to the Los Angeles Times, his star center-- who has a heart condition that causes irregular pumping of the blood-- collapsed on the court. Using CPR tips from the app, Coach Cooper was able to revive the player and keep his heart beating until paramedics arrived.
We’ve written previously about how mobile apps are revolutionizing our lives, especially in healthcare. Mobile technology is making healthcare more accessible and affordable. And whether the technology is a smartphone app or a more complex monitoring system for a home-bound senior, mobile’s potential to save lives is amazing.
Posted: 11/16/10 by Mobile Future Team
By 2015, there will be more mobile Web users than desktop users. Moreover, according to Nielsen, the average smartphone user has downloaded 37 apps.
These two facts add up to a remarkable new business opportunity for companies that are smart enough to seize the advantage, writes Steve McKee, author of When Growth Stalls: How It Happens, Why You're Stuck, and What to Do About It. In the current Bloomberg BusinessWeek, McKee writes:
Unlike the early days of the Internet, affordability is less of an issue with mobile media. Inventiveness is what's required, but in order to be inventive you must first gain an understanding of how the technology is already impacting your industry.
He goes on to outline the economic opportunity of mobile. For example, fashion retailer Steve Madden reports that mobile traffic is now more than 10 percent of the company's total Internet traffic, a 250 percent increase from the previous six months. McKee’s comments also echo what The Wall Street Journal’s Paul Vigna and John Shipman reported recently about the torrid pace of job growth in the mobile economy, demonstrating once again that in an otherwise difficult economic climate, mobile continues to be one of the brightest lights for jobs and investment.
Posted: 11/12/10 by Mobile Future Team
Taking place earlier this week, the 2010 mHealth Summit emphasized the important role technology plays in the healthcare field. Keynotes, breakout sessions and exhibit demonstrations all demonstrated how the marriage of technology and medicine acts as a gateway to better quality of care services and innovations that facilitate healthcare for underserved populations. Bill Gates, one of the keynote speakers at the Summit, called for new efficient innovations to move mHealth forward.
Some of the new technologies and applications discussed at the Summit include GlowCaps from Vitality, a pill bottle that calls your phone as a reminder to take medication and orders refills from the pharmacy, and iTriage- a symptom to provider pathway app that integrates your personal health record, reports live ER wait times, and allows you to view multiple family members health info as well as your own health plan info. Click here to read more coverage of the Summit.
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Tags: Augmented Reality, Consumer Awareness, Consumer Benefits, CTIA, Genachowski, Huffington Post, Innovation, Mobile Applications, News, Smartphone, Spectrum, Wireless Devices, Wireless Innovation