Almond Peak Recent Posts

Augmented Reality To Ramp On Mobile

Robert Voogel — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 18:12:00 +0000

By Mark Walsh

Augmented Reality is generating lots of buzz as an emerging platform for mobile marketing and e-commerce, across areas like search, retail and gaming. But AR is still a long way from being a widespread reality on mobile devices. A new report from Juniper Research projects the technology combining the physical world with virtual imagery and information will generate only $2 million in revenue next year.

But the U.K.-based research firm expects that figure to grow dramatically to $714 million by 2014, with revenues derived from paid application downloads, subscription- based services and advertising. Growth will be driven by wider adoption of Android phones and the iPhone as well as the spread of technologies like digital compasses and accelerometers that help to power mobile AR.

Juniper predicts AR will initially gain a foothold through location-based search but that mobile games are where the technology will first show substantial revenue. It should also be increasingly attractive to brands and retailers as user base increases, with AR ad networks able to charge higher CPC and CPM rates because of location relevance.

Separately, Jeremiah Owyang of digital strategy firm Altimeter Partners, suggested in a recent a post that mobile is where AR is mostly likely to go mainstream. "Expect Google to develop a product that maps physical products with their online information, making them yet the middleman for Internet advertising -- again," he wrote. "Furthermore, it gets really interesting when a brand can 'hijack' another company's brand by creating augmented reality experiences on the boxes of their competitors."

For now, he calls AR as "the victim of 'shiny toy' syndrome" since the benefits to brands and businesses aren't yet clear. Most mobile marketers in the near future are smarter to focus on building out mobile-friendly sites and less more basic applications before moving on to more costly AR-centric projects that may not deliver sufficient return to justify the investment.

Mobile Year in Review 2010!

Robert Voogel — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 19:50:00 +0000

Could carriers become the next credit card companies?

Robert Voogel — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 19:06:00 +0000

By Rob Woodbridge

I’ve been thinking about the tectonic shifts that the mobile industry is going through right now. As with every upheaval in the technology cycles there are winners, losers and surprises that come out of left field and mobile is poised for some serious surprises.

One of the things that I’ve contemplated is the crumbled wall that now surrounds the carriers pristine garden. I remember a time when you had to walk on water in order to get a J2ME app or game on a carrier deck – literally. It was the hardest thing to do but, in some cases, the only real way to scale a company and sell product.

Smartphones have put a dent in that revenue for the carriers and we haven’t even reached 30% penetration yet. So what do the carriers do as the number of feature phones dwindle taking their app revenue with them? I think they become micro lenders – a low-balance credit card.

As the ability to pay via a phone becomes easier and easier through technologies like NFC or QR Codes or SMS, the easiest way to pay could be just adding it to your phone bill just as you would when buying an app from the carrier deck.

Applying for credit

How would this work? There are a few easy ways that this could happen but the most realistic would be a small credit facility attached to your account – say $200 to start. It would be similar to a secured credit card with a cap based on your payment history with the company. The other way would simply be prepaid cards – similar to the way prepaid phones work today. If you want to regulate purchases for your children but want to make sure they always have money available to them in case of emergency, this would be an easy way for sure.

Read more here.

Choose your tablet!

Robert Voogel — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 23:52:00 +0000

What Does Google Wallet Need to Succeed?

Robert Voogel — Tue, 31 May 2011 17:08:00 +0000

By Mark Hachman

What does Google need to do to make its Google Wallet mobile-payment system a success? Give people confidence. Then make it a habit.

Think about it. So many slight modifications to our daily lifestyle mean so many millions to manufacturers, especially as they're repeated, day in and day out. And, once established, the cycle self-perpetuates.

Checking email on a BlackBerry. Tweeting. Checking in on Foursquare. A few more actions in CityVille. Planning the fastest route to your destination on a traffic app like Inrix. Keeping tabs on friends in Facebook. All actions that can be performed in a minute or two, several times a day.

The problem with financial applications is that people are afraid of giving up access what they consider to be their most valuable possession: money. My father, an engineer, avoided carrying a pager, a cell phone, or an ATM card until his employer (and his family) dragged him into the twenty-first century. I still haven't joined Mint.com because, deep down, I'm terrified that my financial information will leak out. For Pete's sake, Intuit can't even keep their cloud services up consistently, it seems.

Read more here.