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CE Companies Should Focus on Compelling User Interface

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March 20, 2013

About 10 years ago, a battle for control of the living room experience began to play out between various consumer electronics companies. That battle has since given way to a full-blown war for the consumer involving tech giants like Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Samsung and LG. According to P.J. McNealy, founder of Digital World Research, the key to winning is control of the user interface on connected screens. Continue reading CE Companies Should Focus on Compelling User Interface

Not Enough Money to Go Around for Online Video Ads?

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March 19, 2013

Online video continues to rise in popularity and online video advertising rates are falling. Prices for ads on top-tier sites in 2012 last year were down by 10 percent from 2011, according to estimates from video-ad company BrightRoll. And of the 39 billion videos viewed online in December, only 23 percent carried video ads, according to comScore. While there’s room for ad growth, there may not be enough money to go around. Continue reading Not Enough Money to Go Around for Online Video Ads?

New Chip War is Looming: Intel Versus ARM Architecture

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March 18, 2013

According to Wired, a new chip war is on the way. For years, most of the massive data centers that power the Internet have been driven by Intel microprocessors. But in the coming months, a group of chip makers hopes to challenge the company with a new breed of processors based on ARM architecture, which is the same basic chip design found in most of the world’s smartphones. Continue reading New Chip War is Looming: Intel Versus ARM Architecture

Mobile Trends: Should Laptop Makers Shift Their Focus to Tablets?

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December 13, 2012
  • Tablets are set to outsell laptops by 2015, according to a new report from IDC, underscoring the necessity for PC makers to focus on designing attractive slates.
  • “This forecast further emphasizes the massive shift toward mobile, which has been underway for several years: Smartphones began outselling PCs last year and will easily continue to do so as consumers and enterprises do more computing on the go,” reports GigaOM.
  • “Many PC makers were either late to the mobile device game, or not part of it at all, and have watched sales dollars filter to those making smartphones at first, and now tablets,” the article continues.
  • While the IDC report suggests that laptops won’t entirely go away — just as desktop PCs have remained — GigaOM suggests the model of computing that relied heavily on these PCs is changing, and IDC’s predictions could be “too conservative.”
  • The report also notes the decline in unit revenue for mobile devices, compared with the revenue of desktops or laptops. “That means computer makers will have to make up the difference in volume and the best chance to do that is by seizing momentum early, much as Apple did with its iPad,” the article states.
  • “Additionally, tablet hardware is improving quickly, and perhaps more importantly, so are the applications that run on tablets,” GigaOM continues. “Activities that once sounded absurd on a tablet just two or three years ago are now possible on an iPad, Android slate or Windows RT device. Instead of looking back at ‘old-school computing,’ laptop makers should be looking ahead at potential software and cloud services that tablets will benefit from.”

Larry Page Talks Future of Search and Company Projects

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December 13, 2012
  • Google CEO Larry Page, who rarely agrees to interviews, sat down with Fortune to discuss the future of search, clashes with Apple, the company’s numerous Google X projects, and more.
  • Page acknowledges the change in advertising models, but views disruption as a good thing. Google still devotes 70 percent of its effort into search and ads.
  • “The perfect search engine would really understand whatever your need is,” he says. “So one of my favorite examples I like to give is if you’re vacation planning. It would be really nice to have a system that could basically vacation plan for you. It would know your preferences, it would know the weather, it would know the prices of airline tickets, the hotel prices, understand logistics, combine all those things into one experience. And that’s kind of how we think about search.”
  • On Google’s competition with Apple, Amazon and others: “I’d like to see more cooperation on the user side. The Internet was made in universities and it was designed to interoperate. And as we’ve commercialized it, we’ve added more of an island-like approach to it, which I think is a somewhat a shame for users,” Page says.
  • “I think it would be nice if everybody would get along better and the users didn’t suffer as a result of other people’s activities. I try to model that. We try pretty hard to make our products be available as widely as we can. That’s our philosophy,” he notes.
  • The remaining effort at Google is split between apps (20 percent) and new projects (10). “I think investors always worry about this. You know, ‘Oh my God, they’re going to spend all their money on self-driving cars.’ I feel like no matter how hard I try, I can never make the 10 bigger, because it’s actually hard to get people to work on stuff that’s really ambitious. It’s easier to get people working on incremental things.”

The State of Worldwide Intellectual Property: Innovation on the Rise

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December 13, 2012
  • Innovation is on the rise all across the globe, according to the World Intellectual Property Organization.
  • The IP division of the United Nations released a report full of statistics that show IP trends around the world. It found, among other things, that China’s patent office has surpassed the U.S. as the largest, and 2011 set the record for the highest number of patent applications filed worldwide.
  • “Sustained growth in IP filings indicates that companies continue to innovate despite weak economic conditions,” WIPO Director General Francis Gurry stated at a press conference. “This is good news, as it lays the foundation for the world economy to generate growth and prosperity in the future.”
  • The Atlantic highlights numerous interesting findings including:
  • The total number of patent applications filed worldwide in 2011 was 2.14 million, while the estimated number of patents granted reached nearly 1 million. The increase in the total number of patent filings worldwide between 2009 and 2011 was 293,900.
  • China’s patent office received 526,412 applications in 2011, marking a 34.6 percent growth in patent filings.
  • The total number of applications received by the U.S. patent office in 2011 was 503,582 (with 224,505 patents granted). This represents a 9.7 percent growth for the U.S.

Auto Manufacturers Consider Computer for Your Car Windshield

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December 12, 2012
  • General Motors, Daimler AG and other automakers are working on specially designed windshields that they hope will one day provide drivers with important information about their surroundings while on the road — and make driving safer.
  • “Using a technology known as augmented reality, which overlays real world images with digital ones, these windshields could display driving directions, text messages or impending hazards, all without requiring drivers to take their eyes off the road,” explains the Wall Street Journal.
  • “The goal is to reduce head-down time and maybe make driving a more interactive experience,” says Tom Seder, GM’s chief technologist for human machine interface.
  • The technology would fuse together sensors working outside the vehicle with ones working inside, tracking the driver’s eyes.
  • This could improve safety, writes WSJ, “…for instance, an augmented reality windshield could sense that a driver hasn’t seen a car merging into his or her lane or a sudden traffic slowdown ahead. The windshield might light up red or highlight the potential hazard to cause the driver to hit the brakes.”
  • But these windshields are likely at least five years away from actually appearing in vehicles and pricing remains unknown.

Opinion: Will Mobile Devices Eventually Replace the Big Screen TV?

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December 6, 2011
  • In this opinion piece published on CNET, freelance writer Steve Guttenberg predicts that iPads and other tablet devices will eventually make having a large screen TV a thing of the past.
  • “By 2020 younger people who will have grown up with tablets won’t see a need to ever buy a big display, which will by then seem as obtrusive as a pair of 4-foot-tall tower speakers do to most buyers nowadays,” he suggests.
  • For the naysayers, Guttenberg cites audio technology as an example. Twenty years ago, it was hard to imagine that most consumers would be less concerned about a set of quality speakers and more interested in portability or personalization. Yet that’s where we’ve landed.
  • “With music, everyone except for a handful of audiophiles, listens in their cars, computer, or on iPod,” he writes. “A home hi-fi of any quality now seems irrelevant; the same fate is in the cards for TVs. They will start to look too big, too imposing for the room’s decor.”
  • This is interesting to consider now, as tablet sales are taking off in the consumer market. Will mobile devices such as the tablet kill TV?
  • Guttenberg believes we are heading in that direction: “There will always be a market for big TVs, just as there is for great audio, but big-screen sales will continue to shrink over time. Most people will be perfectly content to watch movies and sports on their iPads.”

Video Ads on the Increase as Online Video Views Reach Record Levels

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December 5, 2011
  • Have you noticed a recent increase in ads that appear in Web videos?
  • We’re watching more Web video than ever before; comScore reports more than 42 billion online video views in the U.S. for October alone. New figures from start-up FreeWheel indicate we’re also watching more Web video ads.
  • According to FreeWheel, which serves and manages video ads for companies such as Turner, Vevo and Fox, there has been a 128 percent ad view growth from Q1 of 2010 to Q3 of this year.
  • Online viewers have also increasingly finished the ads they start watching, especially when accompanied with longer Web videos.
  • “Big picture, the Web video business is still very much a work in progress,” reports AllThingsD. “And there’s still a long way to go: Video ads grew 42 percent in the first half of the year, but still only make up 6 percent of the overall Web ad business. But if it keeps headed in this direction it’s going to quickly make up ground.”

If Consumers Do Not Care about 3D, Why are 3D TV Sales on the Rise?

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November 29, 2011
  • According to the DisplaySearch unit of The NPD Group, 6.6 million 3D TV sets were shipped in the third quarter of 2011, up 27 percent from the previous quarter.
  • The research firm expects shipments to increase 30 percent this quarter, for a total of 21.5 million units in 2011.
  • However, DisplaySearch suggests a “lack of 3D content and services” means buyers are mostly watching 2D video.
  • Additionally, Nielsen released a study last year suggesting consumers were reluctant to wear 3D glasses and nearly 90 percent said that viewing 3D TV would get in the way of checking e-mail or Web surfing while watching television.
  • The article suggests that marketing and aggressive pricing has made the difference. “Television vendors have been pushing 3D sets on customers all year,” reports CNET. “In fact, companies such as Samsung, Vizio, and Panasonic, among others, have made 3D a key component in a large number of their televisions, making it harder and harder to find sets that don’t come with 3D support.”

Disruption: Is a Smartphone or Car the Must-Have Product for Teenagers?

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November 28, 2011
  • In a soon to be published survey, Gartner reports that 46 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds would choose Internet access over having their own vehicle.
  • “The car used to be the signal of adulthood, of freedom,” says Sheryl Connelly of Ford. “It was the signal into being a grown-up. Now, the signal into adulthood for teenagers is the smartphone.”
  • “Mobile devices, gadgets and the Internet are becoming must-have lifestyle products that convey status,” explains Gartner’s Thilo Koslowski. “In that sense these devices offer a degree of freedom and social reach that previously only the automobile offered.”
  • Connected cars may help change this emerging trend — cars that can take pictures and make calls and interact with social networks.
  • “In other words, to entice teenagers, Ford and other automakers need to make their cars more like smartphones,” suggests The New York Times.

Shopping Trend: Retailers Find that Consumers Prefer Apps to Websites

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November 22, 2011
  • New iPad apps are rolling out this holiday season to entice the eight percent of online shoppers that own tablets.
  • That percentage may seem small, but Forrester Research found that 60 percent of tablet owners use their devices to shop and many prefer them to smartphones or computers for shopping. For clothing company Anthropologie, iPad shopping accounted for six percent of sales this year and is expected to rise to 20 percent with the introduction of their new app.
  • These new apps aim to provide a more interactive experience and capture some of the in-store essence by revamping their electronic catalogs and adding new features to their shopping pages.
  • Revel Touch has built apps for multiple companies including functions like a “virtual dressing room,” that allows users to create outfits and the ability to share choices on social networks. Apps allow tablet shoppers to zoom in, see videos and find the sizes they want with ease.
  • “You can bring the objects to life on an iPad and you can’t do that on paper — and you don’t have to chop down a tree,” the CEO of Catalog Spree told The New York Times. The company also reported that, on weekends, its users spend almost eight times as long on the retailers’ app as they do on the retailers’ Web sites.

Is Modern Warfare 3 the Most Successful Franchise of All Time?

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November 15, 2011
  • “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3” has set a new entertainment launch record, selling 6.5 million units within 24 hours after its release last week. The first-person shooter raised $400 million in sales revenues in the Unites States and United Kingdom.
  • This marks the third consecutive sales record for game publisher Activision Blizzard with the “Call of Duty” series. “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2” sold 4.7 million copies during its first day of availability in 2009, and last year’s “Call of Duty: Black Ops” hit 5.6 million in its first 24 hours.
  • “We believe the launch of ‘Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3’ is the biggest entertainment launch of all time in any medium, and we achieved this record with sales from only two territories,” said Activision Blizzard chief exec Bobby Kotick.
  • “Other than ‘Call of Duty,’ there has never been another entertainment franchise that has set opening day records three years in a row,” he added. “Life-to-date sales for the ‘Call of Duty’ franchise exceed worldwide theatrical box office for ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Lord of the Rings,’ two of the most successful entertainment franchises of all time.”

Study: 300 Percent Growth in Mobile App Downloads Expected for 2011

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November 14, 2011
  • Mobile analytics firm Flurry has released new estimates based on iOS and Android app-enabled devices.
  • According to the report, 25 billion apps will be downloaded in 2011, marking 300 percent growth from last year’s six billion.
  • Five billion Apple and Android apps are expected to be downloaded in December alone, based on the surge typically associated with mobile shopping and people on break looking for entertainment.
  • Revenue from the U.S. market will reach $2.5 billion, compared with 2010’s $1 billion.
  • The increase in app catalogs has helped the increase. iOS offers about 500,000 apps and Android is around 350,000.
  • ReadWriteWeb also points out that only 43 percent of U.S. consumers currently have smartphones, but the number is expected to reach 50 percent by Q3 2012, which will also fuel app downloads.

Programming across Multiple Platforms: Is HTML5 Changing the Web?

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November 14, 2011
  • HTML5 is quickly becoming the standard online programming technology, with support from the likes of Amazon, Rovio Entertainment, Pandora, Zynga and various online publications. The trend has also been fueled by browser support from competitors Apple, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla.
  • Last week, Adobe announced it would stop development of the rival Flash format for mobile devices.
  • “HTML5 is a major step forward,” says Netscape creator Marc Andreessen. “HTML5 is going to put power back in the hands of creative people,” adds Silicon Valley investor Roger McNamee.
  • “Some 34 percent of the 100 most popular websites used HTML5 in the quarter ended in September, according to binvisions.com, a blog that tracks Web technologies,” reports The Wall Street Journal. “Resume searches by hiring managers looking for HTML5 expertise more than doubled between the first quarter and the third quarter.”
  • “If you want to be delivering a Web experience around multiple devices, you have to be doing it in HTML5,” explains Danny Winokur, Adobe’s general manager for interactive development.
  • The technology is also being used for media-rich ads and games for social network apps. The article suggests this is only the beginning.

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