April 24th, 2015 ushers in a new era of the Apple Watch. As many others did, I watched with anticipation, the March 9th Spring-forward Apple announcement that included information about the Apple Watch. Apart from the availability and pricing, little new information was provided that we really didn’t already know. As I review a large number of tweets, opinions, and articles, the first results indicate a very mixed set of views (from extremely positive to extremely negative [“the iFlop”]).
Messaging
Here we go once again: another 2015 prediction article. This is my 8th annual predictions blog posting and I can say it never has been more difficult to prognosticate on where this industry is headed. Mobile in the context of an operating environment has never been more important to consumers and businesses, worldwide. Today, if a business or enterprise does not include mobile engagement as a priority, then I believe they are behind before they even begin.
In the late afternoon on Wednesday, February 19th (Eastern Time, USA), Facebook announced that it was acquiring WhatsApp for $19 billion in cash, stock, and restricted stock. While I’m not a financier, I think $19 billion was a bit much as I’ve read that it roughly translates to $42 or so per WhatsApp subscriber. I think it was a good move, nonetheless.
Welcome to 2014! Before I embark on my 7th consecutive year of mobile industry predictions, let’s wrap up 2013 with a review of last year’s predictions. Overall, it has been another exciting, challenging, but overall profitable year for the mobile industry. We saw some rises and falls, new iPads, a new iPhone, new Samsung devices, new mobile OS’s, consolidations, acquisitions, as well as a myriad of new products and innovations.
We, as a consumer society, are increasingly becoming “mail-order,” or more precisely, online patrons. Online (and Mobile Friendly) mega-sites such as Amazon, Ebay, Overstock.com, and many more specialty retailers are putting increasing pressure on traditional brick and mortar shops. Certainly as all of the successful online retail sites offer mobile-friendly websites all the way to advanced apps and mobile-based customer outreach, using multiple channels, mobile shopping is quickly gaining as the preferred method to buy online.
Worldwide, texting is a very personal activity – not withstanding the texting to short codes and receiving responses or alerts, roughly 90% of texting worldwide is to another person. Globally, we still see SMS (or texting) growing. Our global statistics continue to show worldwide SMS traffic growing, but certainly slowing
… to read the various headlines such as from BBC, or FierceContent, (and quite a few more — not all of them, mind you, but quite a few) you might get the idea that here is something that will be the true “SMS killer.” Notwithstanding the over-imaginative headlines, I think Facebook Messenger is nothing more than an expansion of the popular online-based Facebook “chat” service. I would suspect that this is more of a threat to various Instant Messaging (IM) services than it is to SMS. The problem with IM is that the various communities have never really been interoperable with one another (which makes for good business for products such as Trillian by Cerulean Studios – users may sign into multiple IM communities using a single client or app).