mNext

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VR Buzz

Now that the buzz on Apps calmed down, the next buzz is now on Wearables and VR.

Wearables started with Watches and did not turn out to be successful for all existing tech giants like Apple, Samsung etc.

Prior to craze on watches, Google started working on Google Glass and there is no noise of it at the moment.

Now is the time for VR. Oculus has been most popular provider with its product Rift. Silently Facebook acquired Oculus while it continues working independently. Samsung has quietly embraced Oculus and launched Gear VR and Gear VR2. HTC is coming up with Vive and Google announced DayDream after its Cardboard

VR Ecosystem has to get more stronger with content creators seeing the monies in it. Building an app for VR may not be cheaper as current development costs of iOS and Android phone apps. And price points in similar range as Apps may not justify. From VR device penetration point of view Samsung has gone ahead enticing end consumer with low cost and sometimes free Gear VR. One important point in terms of usability is that one cannot wear a VR Headset for more time, which has to be improved for users to be glued in.

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Apps - Where is it going

We are in an age where most of the consumer propositions are making plans to move from Web and Mobile to Mobile Only.

This movement has been from last 2 years only. Before there are few propositions which started as Mobile Only and move to Mobile and Web. Before that, say 8 years ago, there are Web Only as mobile was not much existent.

So, the technology development for consumer propositions has moved from Web to Mobile. Companies start building mobile for consumer and now we have many companies giving  numbers mentioning their mobile traffic crossed web traffic.

Within mobile there is always Mobile Apps vs Mobile Web. For last few years Mobile Apps was the answer and still is, and the challenge of Mobile Apps vs Mobile Web hasnt not closed yet. Later came the challenge within Native Apps vs HTML5 Apps, where Native Apps leads over HTML5 though the debate continues.

Now that Native Apps are leading over HTML5 Apps, Mobile Web and Web, every company have started making their propositions in form of Apps, Native or Hybrid or HTML5. But research has proven that a mobile user though installs apps, the person's span of activeness limits to around 15 apps. Now, the millions of apps are competing to be in that 15-20 active apps. Advertisers are making their money pitching dream numbers of installations to App Owners.

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Consumer Technologies

All consumer technologies and products go through  a cycle of maturity. At initial stages in experimental mode, earlier they used to stay within closed set of users.

During early commercial stages it falls into early adopters. These users look to us common people as geeks or tech savvy. We forget to realize that once proven successful they are going to be common place in our life. Mobile Phone and Internet are two of those I have witnessed going through this cycle.  Earlier mobile phones were used by either elite rich or early adapters. Now even my grandmother who is from era of no phone is seen using mobile phone. I see my mother playing games on today’s touch screen tablets. 

This cycle is bound to happen for all successful consumer products. Two sublets that are under going this cycle now are Smart Phones and Mobile Internet. Soon daily labor are going to user mobile Internet on smart phones. When people ask for difference between Smart Phone and regular phone or which all devices are called smart phones, one thing very clear is if a device is full touch, it is termed as smart phone. Though this may not be the original definition, this definition is in wide usage.

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Twitter Limits To Developers and Businesses

In a haste towards monetizing Twitter, it looks the management at Twitter are making decisions that are dampening interest in new developers. Just recently, Twitter has come up with new Developers Rules of the Road listing limitations for third party developers. 

Going forward there would be Display Requirements instead of Display Guidelines limiting UI Innovations over twitter statuses. And if number of users of a client is limited to 1 Million if your applications needs user tokens to 1 Lakh if your application uses Timeline and Account Settings. Which means Twitter can hold you, if they turn as big as Uber Twitter or TweetDeck or if you found a better monetizing model. It is pretty much evident, there were lots of innovations around twitter dominating the services provided by Twitter themselves. Many companies have proved them too:

Twitter Lists is also a concept of managing tweets first cracked by TweetDeck, Hootsuite etc URL Shortening is a concept that came out of need from Twitter users and was addressed first by third party developers. Embedding a pic in a tweet by Twicpic.  Echofon Firefox plugin made it easy for me to read tweets of people. TweetWhatYouSpend(twys) is a service where when user sends a DM with spending amount, category wise to ‘twys’, all expenses get tracked.  There were also lots of UI Innovations for managing loads of tweets.  Considering the wide spread of usage of Twitter, it has many other options than throwing up limitations to developers. Here are a couple of them.

Twitter should think of working on a revenue share basis for third party developers with more than a million users or whatever limit they set it to.  Twitter could also think of a standard license fee for using twitter APIs if user base of the third party services is more than 1 Million. This way the motivation to develop innovations around twitter is  not killed.Another option is Twitter may look into the Wikipedia model, where it depends on donations of users. Though users would definitely be generous in making donations courtesy the time they spend on twitter, the investors of Twitter may never favour this. Ultimately Twitter needs to understand that all developer or businesses who work on apps around twitter using Twitter APIs also look for monetizing their effort like what Twitter as a company does. So Twitter should rather come up with a standard developer friendly model than evaluating case by case than pilling the plug if users are more than a stated number and have a better monetization model.

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Apple Without Jobs

Apple was never Apple without Steve Jobs and so would it be in future. Whatever Apple is now would be its high and would start moving down now. It’s pretty evident in its new upgrades in products and the magnitude in which Apple devices are throwing up issues.

An year ago at least I never heard an Apple device crashing and if it did it is News. But now it is pretty commonplace.  When an innovator like Apple is going down and now it would be someone else’s turn. It could be anyone and innovation could be in any form factor. 

Let’s hope some good innovations happen for betterment of the way we live.

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Growth in Technology

When I read few articles like this http://mashable.com/2011/09/09/internet-yesterday-today/ I get a thought had I been in 1996 a technology enthusiast, and if I try to predict how is it going to be in next 15 years of internet, I wonder if I would have really predicted it right.  Everything written above is just about thinking and wondering as it is past. So I would come to reality and predict now about technology space for next 15 years.

Few rules, Growth is exponential growth in technology in last 15 years if divided in pieces has grown exponential rather than linear meaning that last set of 5 years has seen enormous growth than 2nd set of 5 years and so on. New transformations  Email -> Social Networking -> Sharing -> blogging -> Microblogging 

New business opportunities are always solutions to problems around us. Ex: Redbus Other way of new business opportunities is to create a new and non-existent dimension to existing solutions or  Ex: Facebook Third form is creating a new space altogether. I am confused if third is always in some form same as the second.

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Flank attack by Facebook

A couple of days ago a friend and I were discussing on how Facebook is doing a flank attack on it competitors. It is aggregating videos, without Youtube knowing it. It is aggregating pictures without Flickr and Photobucket  knowing it. Suddenly, it would announce Public and Private features to videos and would allow search of videos making probably as big alternative to Youtube making possible which any other Internet company wouldn’t have dreamed about .

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Group Texting could be Next

Group Texting is the latest phenomenon since last few months in technology space. Group Texting is alternatively called Private Group Messaging service or Group SMS service. Using this service, one can send messages to a closed group and each of the member in the group can reply and the reply can be seen by all members leading to a conversation. Simplicity is its strength. Since it is not an instant messenger the thrill of waiting for a reply is preserved.

At this point it is popular in the US and few other countries where smart phone usage is high. Major players in this space are GroupMe, Beluga, Fast Society.  There is good traction in this space now with Facebook acquiring Beluga. And Groupme boasts of sending 1 million texts everyday. Fast Society is at a bit low as it is present only for iOS devices. And also another new venture in this space is Yobongo. It specifies its offering as ‘Chat with people Nearby’.

Hope we might see more ventures in this space in other large markets like India too.

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Location Based Services - 1

Location is buzz all over. In last one year lot of Location Based Services (LBS) companies rose up to the Mobile VAS scene. 

Location Awareness Services  Google entered this space by acquiring Dodgeball which is later introduced as Google Latitude. Loopt is also into this space and was found in 2005 with an initial Seed funding from Y-Combinator. Location Based Social Networking Latest offshoot from LBS is the concept of Location Based Social Networking. Competition is very intense with players like Foursquare, Gowalla, MyTown(Booyah), Brightkite, Yelp, SCVNGR in this space.

Adding to these new players, existing internet giants Yahoo, Google, Facebook vouching for their share in LB Social Networking. Yahoo failed acquiring Foursquare and had to satisfy with acquisition of a foursquare clone Koprol of Indonesia. Google is trying to revamp Latitude and also introduced Google Places. Facebook introduced Facebook Places as new feature which is yet to be rolled out in India.

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Mobilla

Expressions are integral to every living being and they go infinite way. Trying to communicate is a form of expression. Or is it the other way expression is a form of communication.

Human being have come a long way when it comes to communicating. We have come from mere signs to communicating via waves I meant telephones. Telephone from wired to wireless.

Mobile phone evolved from a mere communication device to a lifestyle device. We do a lot from just talking to making movies. When mobile phone is combined with power of internet, it made a revolution in communication.

Again various regions in the world are at different stages in this evolution and revolution. Through this blog, I want to log my learnings on the evolution, revolution and many more in mobile and internet space.

It will help Me a lot than anyone. If it helps anyone else too I will be more than happy.

And I named it Mobilla for no special reason but the name was inspired from Mozilla :)