The Future of Digital - thoughts Part 2

Further thoughts on the future of Digital, inspired by the Marketing Society's Digital Day 2015.

Q: How have digital channels evolved and what will be the next big digital trend to capitalise on?

The speed of digital change is getting quicker, learn to deal with it. Focus less on the next technology, device or trend and far more on making sure your organisation can complete (this means being innovative, agile and ready to learn from its mistakes). Apple's slogan at its recent product launch was "the only thing that's changed is everything" and this is right.  5 years ago the iPad launched, now I am seeing tablet numbers decline across a lot of client websites compared to mobile traffic.
More shocking is the fact that 52% of all the companies from the Fortune500 in 2000 now don't exist!


Q: Which new technologies are passing fads and which are game changers for their business?
Over time every technology will eventually become obsolete. NFC, wearables, home thermostats (The Internet of Things) connected to your app, etc. will all one day be the equivalent of the fax machine or the telex. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t investigate some and adopt different ones that either take your on your journey of digital maturity or that meet the needs of your customers.


This is the second post on the Future of Digital, the first can be found here.

Is there a future for tablet computing?

I got asked yesterday what I thought about the statement made by Thorsten Heins ,the Blackberry CEO, that tablets are not a good business model. Mr Heins claimed that there will be no need for tablets  in five years and consequently the news sources have said he’s either a complete loony or a wise technological sage. “So is he completely barking?” I got asked by this friend…. Well yes and no.

As you may have read in an earlier blog, one of my future predictions is that technology will become more complex and yet more usable (complex in the number and types of devices and systems, usable in their interfaces), with the speed of change only increasing too. This speed of digital transformation should manifest itself in the ability of technology suppliers to design, build and launch devices much quicker… meaning they are both more responsive to customer demands and able to plug identified gaps in their products portfolios.  In effect… this all means that we should get more devices, more quickly and doing more things in more ways (that’s a lot of ‘mores’!).
 

So what does this mean for the tablet, a market sector that has only really existed in its current form for only 3 or so year? Well in my opinion it means the complete fragmentation of the tablet market into a range of smaller, bigger, wider, slimmer devices that more closely fit the task(s) required of them.  The computing market has been in a state of flux for some while, with different machines rising and fading in popularity as processors, displays and batteries all increased in specification and capacity.  So will the Tablet continue to exist? Yes, in the short and medium-term. But in the longer terms...  the tablet as we know will it evolve and diversify until the word means as little as “personal computer” does these days.

Note: I was wrong about the take-up and scale of the iPad market when it launched. I could therefore well be wrong now...

BT tablet email does work on iPad - sort of

You've gotta laugh. I got an email from BT Broadband recently with the subject title "Get your tablet connected for free with BT Wi-fi".
I assume this would have been a useful newsletter telling tablet users how to connect their device to their home connection to save on mobile data usage.

However, the irony is that when opening and viewing this email on my iPad... I get the view you see. No content and no imagery. Oops!

For me this highlights the need to test any emails you send out across a range of devices and different email clients. Especially the one you want to target.

Note: I am using a first generation iPad which has (purposely) yet to be upgraded to the very latest version of iOS.

The era of tCommerce

It seems that for the last decade, every successive year was going to be "the year of the mobile"....  up until last year, when it actually was! However, if you asked someone 10 years ago when the "year of the tablet" was going to be, they would probably have shrugged their shoulders or maybe muttered something about having "seen some devices back in the 90's that never really took off", etc.

But the tablet has arrived and now is a major platform for the consumption of online content (although perhaps not for the production of content).

This is exemplified by the recent statistics from the BBC, that showed how Olympic viewing on connected devices peaked in the evenings, when the tablet became the most popular device as people settled down either just with one or together with their TV (in the so-called 'second screen experience').

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2012/08/digital_olympics_reach_stream_stats.html

Furthermore.... if you'd suggested to anyone sane, even 3 or so years ago, that ecommerce transactions on a tablet would be a major revenue stream for a lot of businesses, they probably wouldn't have believed you, me included. But as we all know now the tablet, mainly in the form of Apple's iPad device, now makes up a significant proportion of our modern device usage with  a great deal of this activity naturally  online. And online activity for a lot of people means shopping (especially if you're my wife!).

So has the era of tCommerce or tablet commerce arrived?

In my opinion..... most definitely.

Mobile devices and our data consumption

The continued popularity of mobile devices has now driven demand for smartphones, tablets and netbooks. This has consequently had a significant impact upon the type and rate of our digital media consumption.

Once we just used the humble desktop (or laptops if we were fancy and flushed with money), but now at home, at work and on the go we use mobile devices such as: iPhones, iPads and a legion of Google Android powered devices more than ever before.

We’ve apparently now become Digital Omnivores, using Internet data from a variety of sources and many at the same time. I know, because my own browsing and other online behaviour has changed in the lst few years since I've had a smartphone (or few).

As well as sitting down with a laptop most evenings to continue working, I also now regularly burn through over 1.5 gigabytes of mobile data a month on my mobile (mainly accessing email and Twitter through the day, when I'm not within range of a public Wi-Fi node). I also have the fabled "multi-screen experience" when watching the TV at the weekend now, as the iPad tablet comes out to check program schedules, background information on news stories or the Twitter back-channel gossip on the latest pop star wannabies.

And I can only see this trend for increasing data consuption to continue, as devices get faster and deliver a more interactive experience.

Is mobile your company's biggest challenge?

So..... 40% of Fortune 500 companies claim their biggest mobile challenge is developing their online services across multiple operating systems and devices

 do they?

Well fragmentation in the online industry isn't anything new for web developers. We've been living with this since the the days of the Mosaic and Netscape browsers (and if you don't know who they are, then I'd stop reading this blog now if I were you). This confusion was then multipled with the arrival of Microsoft 16 years ago, who then went onto make a complete mess of browser standards, that we've been living with ever since.

However things have got even more mixed-up in the last few years with the growth of the mobile channel, fueled by smartphones and tablets such as Apple's iPhone & iPad, as well as a host of Google's Android mobile OS powered phones. For me 2011 has definately been the long-awaited "year of the mobile". Although this is a title that online marketing consultants have been foretelling for the last decade, in my opinion this year is it and according to research from Gartner.... smartphone sales globally will reach 467m in 2011.

But the fragmented mobile landscape is directly affecting many organisations’ plans to implement an effective mobile channel. No one device or operating system entrely rules the roost (at least not in the UK) and right now if a company plumps for just one.... typically the iPhone... then it is excluding a huge user base. But to try and get comprehensive market coverage is an expensive and exhaustive process....

Sunday Times iPad app

Is an tablet wielding future of news worth hedging your bets on? Well... the Sunday Times released its iPad app today and I'm sure it will be an instant success (as its free to those who have a weekly Times subscription).

http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/public/iPad/?CMP=KNGvccp1-sunday%20times%20iPad%20app

It is perhaps a shame that you now have a second app, with the orginal still able to access The Times news on the move....

Another giant leap for Apple with the iPhone?

With the launch of yet another device this year (the iPhone 4G, of course) Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs has once again brought the media spotlight back to advanced smart phone market and their applications - rather than the tablet format that the iPad created so much hype about earlier in 2010.

Jobs has described the device as "the biggest leap since the original iPhone"... But is it?

Sure, the original iPhone was a jump from the rungs of the traditional lunar capsule of Personal Computing and MP3 players that was Apple's existing domain... but it was hardly the huge step that he is now claiming it was. Others were already in the market with similar and comparably better or higher specification mobile phones.

The giant leap was in the creation of the App Store, the method of distributing small programmes that further enhanced the functionality of the device. This led to a micro-industry of bedroom developers building things they wanted or needed ... then Apple cleverly allowed them to give away or sell their work (provided they gave Apple a cut of the profits).

Lets just be careful . Don't let 'The Book Of Jobs' be the only historical document we refer to in the future.... or we may find that he claims he was first to walk on the moon (or water) as well !

Note: If you are passing an O2 store in London first thing tomorrow morning, you may see me queuing outside for my 4G iPhone

iPad to kill publishing

First there were those who said that the iPad will save the publishing industry (a false prophesy I believe), then there were people stating the opposite.

How about the theory that nether of the above is the case and that publishing will be fine (albeit with an eroding business model) with or without the iPad?

Problems with iPad Wi-Fi?

Well, it seems that Apple has admitted it has iPad connectivity issues with Wi-Fi.

According to PC Pro magazine, the fix is apparently to "Move closer to the router"
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/357085/ipad-wi-fi-problems-move-closer-to-the-router

Apple iPad review

Its here..... well, almost in the USA anyway (the rest of us will have to wait until the end of the month apparently).

Here's one of the first decent reviews of Apple's iPad tablet:

PCMag: Apple iPad video review from PCMag.com Reviews on Vimeo.

Creating moving pictures on the iPad

Following up on my posting on Tuesday,about Video and iPad, the killer content for magazines? I've now found the featurette about the making of this content for Viv, an all digital magazine.

VIV Mag Featurette: A Digital Magazine Motion Cover and Feature for the iPad from Alexx Henry on Vimeo.

Of particular poignancy to me is Andrew Gant's narrated comments about the content on the iPad being "living art" and "This is not motion for motion's sake. This is still print in spirit. Motion allows us to enhance the story, just like photography, but gives us the ability to take it one step further".

Will iPad save books instead?

In a previous posting I discussed the hype around the potential saving of the publishing (newspaper & magazine) industry by the Apple iPad, which has yet to get an official UK launch date beyond "the end of April". This has led me to come around to considering another potential maket for the iPad, that of an ebook reader.

The iBook Store on the iPad has the potential to sell loads of books. Steve Jobs has already said that five of the six largest publishers — Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster— have all signed on to provide ebook content for the new tablet. In fact Mr Jobs himself said at the iPad launch:

“We think iPad will be a terrific e-book reader for popular books and textbooks”

So will the iPad be a major revenue stream for books?

'Well, not anytime soon' is my prediction. That's because of two things:

1. Suitability
You can't read an eReader in the bath, when you don't have power, when you want something light and tangible to idle away the hours, etc.

2. Total market share and the cannibalisation of sales
If you already have the paper book, will you want to buy the electronic version as well? I doubt it and besides, we've been burnt like this before when CD's came out in the 1980's... as the record companies so lovingly suggested we'd like to re-purchase our collections one final time at the higher quality levels. Also what happens when another "even better" ebook format gets released in a year or so?

I personally don't actually see ebooks growing to become a significant part of the overall book market in the short term. According to the Association of American Publishers, book sales increased in the last year in the USA by about 4% ($11.2bn). However, only about $170m, equivalent to about 3%, of those were ebook sales. But although this is an incredibly small part of the overall amount of total sales, the industry should take some consolation from the 177% growth in this figure over the last year. This growth was fuelled by the increasing availability of the Amazon Kindle, which really has beome the major electronic book distribution platform until the iPad was created. (Yes, I know you have others, such as the Sony eBook Reader, but these really haven't been that popular). Its also no secret that Amazon are worried about the potential for the iPad to steal their market share.

However the one thing that is more likely... is that the price of ebooks themselves will soon reduce in price. Their cost of production and distribution is so low (almost zero thanks to no paper & printing costs and online delivery) that a price war for market share is likely
Note: For more information on this, take a look at the maths done by New York Times in its recent article on iPad prices.

It could therefore end up that the price of an ebook is the factor that most influences sales and therefore the market share of each device. The question for Apple will be whether it decides to first squeeze publishers for its proportion of each (commoditised) sale or just goes for its cut of the overall market by under-pricing Amazon.

Neither of these situations looks to be a good thing for the book industry.....

Video and iPad, the killer content for magazines?

It was almost 2 years ago I wrote a blog posting about how I saw video as the future of the Internet.

Now I've long believed that as the performance of viewing devices (from desktop PC's through to mobile devices) gets better and Internet bandwidth improves, then video will emerge as killer content for more than just TV stations and film makers. As the cost of production reduces, video will eventually come into far more popular usage for other media.

This video, showing the possibilities for new Viv magazine, gives some idea of the capabilities for linking copy and rich images & CGI together in the iPad:

Viv Magazine Interactive Feature Spread - iPad Demo from Alexx Henry on Vimeo.

iPad, the false saviour of the publishing world

"Apple's iPad is the second coming", "iPad is the saviour of publishing", "it will change our lives like the printing press"

Its a frigging big iPhone without a camera and the phone bit.... 'tis all

But in the weeks since Apple announced its iPad computer tablet thingy, the news industry, its viewers and (in particular) the Apple fan boys have been falling over themselves to talk about the fantastic potential of a square computer reader device that will restore journalism and in particularly the fortunes of newspapers and magazines.

This is perhaps summed-up best by this article from the New York Times on the week of the iPad's launch: With Apple Tablet, Print Media Hope for a Payday. This piece stated:

Apple may be giving the media industry a kind of time machine — a chance to undo mistakes of the past.

Oh dear... its all going to end in tears. Big droplets of salty false expectations that a device will save the publishing world from faltering advertising revenues by giving users a device where they will pay money to read content. (Need I remind you that salty water and computer equipment don't mix?)

Now, I'm sure I'm not the first to point this out, but won't the iPad come with either a WiFi or 3G data capability and a browser? So why will iPad users then decide to pay for a newspaper via the Apple store when they can browse the Internet for free and read the article there?