You can read the entire study here.
I’ve written numerous times about the growing importance of curation (see Curation and Discovery, The future of Curation, and Context and Curation). Wedding Snap is a service available as an iPhone and Android that curations photos taken around a single event but from multiple devices into a single location.
Pudits like to point to apps (and importantly the availability of apps) as the deciding factor in the success (and failure) of tablets and other app-oriented devices. Most developers have the bandwidth to support at most two (and sometimes three) development platforms. The largest app developers – the Pandoras and Kindles of the world – will allocate resources for greater development. These business models are built on the ubiqitious availability of their offerings, but beyond say the top 20 percent most developers will only be able to support one or two platforms. With this, many suggest only the two largest platforms (iOS and Android) will survive thrive because their users will have access to the lifeblood of mobile computing devices – apps. Other platforms will still see development of course. This development will be focused more on niche applications and then of course the 20 percent who are developing for most available platforms.
But HTML5 is coming (quickly). There is an increasing amount of HTML5 Web app development happening. This will drive the app ecosystem to the cloud and means that any browser-enabled device will be able to compete against devices with large native app ecosystems. This will significantly open-up the battle within device hardware. The recent firesale of HP’s TouchPad tablets highlights the market dynamics at play. Despite selling for $99, the secondary market price for TouchPads is close to $250. Despite the fact that large-scale developement will slow significantly for WebOS devices, these devices have strong video and audio feature sets and a small selection (the 20 percent) of native applications for some of the more popular tablet activities collectively covering most of the services consumers are interested in.
Some facinating findings in some recently released data from Furry:
Games drive 75% of revenue among the top 100 grossing iOS apps and 65% of this revenue were generated from freemium games.
The average purchase from within free-to-play mobile game is $14
As the chart shows, 71% of all in-app transactions happing within freemium games are for amounts under $10, 16% are for spends between $10 to $20 and 13% are for amounts greater than $20.
Over half of the revenue from in-app purchases happening within freemium games are coming from purchases in excess of $20.
By the end of 2011, Flurry estimates that total U.S. iOS and Android game revenue will surpass $1 billion
The following was published in Dealerscope Magazine in December 2010:
The last three years have been a volatile period in the history of consumer electronics. While a recovery is slowly taking shape, I believe the next few years will offer as much change as the in the last year or so. Here are a few trends worth watching:
Store-within-a-Store Model Expands
In the late 1990s, Apple’s presence within major retailers began to change, ultimately transforming into the now familiar store-within-a-store model. This gradual transformation pulled Apple products together within the store. Instead of merchandizing Apple products within the category where the products would sit next to similar devices, Apple products were increasingly merchandized next to other Apple products. The retail presence for Apple changed from an existence within categories to one of brand. As the Apple ecosystem of products expanded, so too did Apple’s store-within-a-store presence. While this trend has yet to catch-on widely within the U.S., it is starting to emerge outside of the U.S. for other brands. We’ll see this trend accelerate in the U.S. and beyond.
To create a 360-degree experience (a combination of hardware, software and ecosystem) for consumers, companies are highlighting how the interoperability of their different devices can provide a seamless experience for the end-user. The store-within-a-store model is also expanding slowly as the more traditional categorical view recedes. When devices move away from conventional category definitions, brand becomes the natural organizational default.
John Battelle writes about Color, a new social photo app. Color creates a visual (user-generated photos) public (anyone sharing photos through Color) timeline of any given location (using a proximity algorithm). (It is worth noting Dave Winer suggested the need of a “social camera” four years ago.) Battelle suggests color matters because of location (“colors has the opportunity to be the first breakout application fueled by the concept of “augmented reality”). Fred Wilson gives his take on Color – suggesting it has promise as a social graph because it implicit. In other words, location is defining the social graph which will minimize the manual curating users have to do. Proximity is clearly a key value of services – especially for mobile services. But proximity should be defined broadly. It is location – a physical proximity. It is also time – proximity to know. It can also be less tangible – proximity to my interests. I often see individuals looking at these in isolation. They focus on location being the killer aspect of services – as in LBS. Or time as in “real-time” recommendations. Or proximity to interests – as in recommendation algorithms. Nearness to what matters includes place, time, order, or occurrence. If Color – and other services and apps like it – show real value to users it isn’t solely because of location.
Color also has potential because it makes the social graph linear. Sensors (cameras, microphones, GPS, etc) are becoming ubiquitous which in turn is enabling mass data collection (photos, sounds, location, temperature, etc). Because Moore’s Law drives the cost of data retention to zero we will increasingly see these data archived. Economists love long time series and we are beginning to create a myriad of long time series. What we’ll do with these long time series is just beginning to be uncovered. Take for example, MIT researcher Deb Roy’s work on language acquisition. Roy wanted to explore how his son learned language so he filled his house with video cameras to catch every moment. This exploration was only made possible by inexpensive sensors and the computing power to parse that information (you can see a Ted talk on the topic by Roy here: http://s.dbr.vc/fzXPn6).
One of the key elements of Roy’s work on how language acquisition progresses is his reliance on the linear nature of these data. His work could have implications on the learning process which could help inform and improve our education methods. This is just one example. I’m seeing increasing instances of linear data creation and I suspect we have just begun to see the ways in which linear data will be leveraged and analyzed.
For Color, proximity clearly matters. But more, the linear nature of these data is being overlooked and might in the end represent the most promising aspect of the service.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and fellow Senators Chuck Schumer, Frank Lautenberg and Tom Udall recently wrote to Apple, Google, and RIMM asking them to exclude apps which allow users to identify, among other things, drunk driving checkpoints. In the request, the Senators write, “we appreciate the technology that has allowed millions of Americans to have information at their fingertips, but giving drunk drivers a free tool to evade checkpoints, putting innocent families and children at risk, is a matter of public concern.”
While RIMM has already committed to pull the app, these types of apps should make law enforcement more effective, not less.
These apps – and their underlying services – rely on driver-generated information. These apps place private knowledge into the public domain. By having this information in the public domain, law enforcement should have a better understanding of what the public knows – or thinks they know. Once a checkpoint is registered in the system, law enforcement can simply target a new location that is not yet been logged in the system. In this way, law enforcement have an information advantage and should be able to more effectively enforce the law.
Law enforcement can use public dissemination of private information to more effectively enforce other traffic violations as well. Take for example speeding. Users log known speed traps which then alert future users to the potential of those speed traps. Those alerts will naturally result in drivers slowing down – at least temporaily. Enough alerts on a given road would likely keep drivers’ speed down on the entire route. Law enforcement themselves could even log areas as speed traps where they want to control speeding. Enforcement can be done will less man-power and costs. Inevitably average speeds will drop and the desired results will be achieved.
Information dissemination and market mechanisms – as they will in this case – forces market participants to compete more aggressively – and ultimately more effectively. The argument against these class of apps is that they dissolve information asymmetries and those information asymmetries make law enforcement more effective. On the contrary, I argue these apps and their underlying services exacerbate information asymmetries and thereby should improve enforcement effectiveness.
What apps are downloaded (or conversely not downloaded) tell us much about a given individual’s tastes and preferences. These metrics in aggregate tell us even more about the desired use-case scenarios of hardware.
Last week Apple released their iTunes Rewind 2010 where they highlight the top performing apps for 2010. They did this in 2009, but with the release of the iPad earlier this year there is a new richness to the data that provides several insights into what the masses are trying to accomplish with a suite of devices largely differing only in form-factor…..
Last week I spoke at that the Digital Media Conference where I shared some of the following thoughts on connectivity and Internet accessible devices.
The number of devices connecting to the Web via cellular, wireless, or wired connections continues to proliferate. But many of these devices frame the value of connection within a historical context. More connection in an ambiguous sense means more data. Adding connectivity to these devices is intended to drive more data to the device. Or at least the option of more. But more needs meaning. Tomorrow’s connectivity needs to be more than just greater options and greater flexibility for the end-user. Connectivity needs to be about choice with meaning and context.
Take for example the mobile phone. When we originally brought the Web to the mobile phone it was largely about browsing the Web from the phone. This was the historical context of the time. At this time we largely understood Internet access from the context of a computer browser. The focus at the time was on a better browser experience. A mobile Web experience needed to make it easier for users to get to and between the websites they were most interested in visiting. Websites even got involved by building sites optimized for mobile viewing. During these early years of Internet access on the phone the primary story was still about the phone. Browsing the Web on the phone was secondary to using the phone as a phone….
Much has been written about the “death” of Microsoft’s Kin (see: here, here, and here). The focus of these analyses has centered on what might have gone wrong. I’d like to focus on something slightly different. In the death of the Kin phone I think we see something that has greater implications for technology innovation. Namely, the rate of innovation is accelerating and this puts increasing pressure on products at the intersection of success and time.
Let’s first step back in time a few years. The year is 2004. In the fourth quarter of that year, Motorola introduces the RAZR. By July 2006 it will sell over 50 million units. The Motorola RAZR would go on to sell over 110 million units before things where said and done four years after the initial launch. This record makes the RAZR one of the most successful consumer electronics products of all times and the most sold mobile phone ever (a record it still holds)….