Since Google announced its Project Fi initiative, there has been a lot of chatter about what it means for the mobile operators, and whether Google’s efforts will disrupt the market for the better.

Today’s post is by Richard Goold of Moorhouse, who has 8 years experience as a management consultant including 5 years in executive leadership roles in both owner-managed and corporate (plc) organisations. He specialises in business and customer strategy; business transformation including operating model development; service delivery and high growth and emerging markets in the Telecommunications, Media & Technology (TMT) sectors.

Over to you Richard…

The continued convergence of TMT is causing the industry to change at the most fundamental level. As well as the continued rise of merger, acquisition and integration activity alongside a continued drive by organisations to provide packaged products and services, many companies are disrupting the TMT landscape by moving into sectors that they have not previously entered.

Google announced its first move into the mobile phone network business in recent months. They have differentiated themselves fundamentally as they will only charge Project Fi customers for the data they actually use, offering money back to customers that pay for data they don’t need. This will put even more pressure of data tariffs offered up by the mobile operators.

Project Fi is not a new network and Google will ultimately be reliant on networks built and run by external companies. Their network service will also jump between a mobile network and wifi hotspots rather than being run solely by Google.

This is not an isolated move by Google. EE have recently announced the launch of their own branded smart phone called the Harrier. As the kit makers (Google) become mobile service providers and the traditional MNOs (such as EE) develop handsets, it will be interesting to see if this ever becomes too disruptive for the consumers.

While companies may feel the need to jump on other’s bandwagons in order to grow and gain market share, it is key to get what you currently do right first (including things like customer service) and before extending your offering. Organisations that want to remain dominant must make sure their businesses are truly centred around, and focused on the customer. If they do not then the consequences are likely to be both significant and immediate.

Ultimately, organisations must ensure that they are fulfilling their commitment to their existing customers, staff and investors before looking at significant mergers and acquisitions activity. It is much harder to change a new, larger organisation with significant unknowns than the one you have and know well already.

Mobile Industry Review would like to thank Richard Goold, partner at transformation consultancy Moorhouse, on the launch of Project Fi.

You may also find more details about Richard via his LinkedIn profile.

“Making matters worse, marketers are focusing their efforts on channels such as websites and search, from which consumers have largely moved on, at the expense of developing more valuable skills in far more important channels such as mobile and video,” the report authors tell us.

For the report, “The Talent Revolution in Digital Marketing,” the BCG Digital Capabilities Index (DCI) was created. The index ranks companies on eight digital skills and seven channels against a best-practice score of 100.

BCG surveyed 57 companies in the UK and Germany. The average company in the survey scored 57. While a few companies ranked higher than 70, the majority fell squarely into the 55-to-60-point range. The report makes it clear that some Industries, including retail and financial services, were at the bottom of the pack.

“Marketers’ priorities also reveal a disconnect with consumers’ digital behavior,” notes the firm. “When asked to identify their teams’ top three learning and development needs for the next 12 months, marketers across the board stressed strategy development and planning (an area of broad current strength).”

The problem? The marketers gave lower priority to the areas that actually matter in today’s digital advertising world, such as video, mobile advertising, display media, and testing.

For instance, in terms of video — using the technology to keep consumers engaged with a brand — a mere 13 percent of respondents said their companies are good at this.

“Companies are a lot further behind consumers than they probably thought,” said Dominic Field, a BCG partner and report coauthor. “The good news is that most companies are starting from the same place, and since digital talent is scarce, those that move quickly can open a lead that others will have a hard time closing.”

The BCG report was commissioned by Google Digital Academy. The Knowledge Engineers contributed insights and advice. The report is part of The Talent Revolution Initiative, which includes Google, BCG, and a team of marketing industry experts.

The report can be downloaded here.

Last week, Growmobile was a contributing sponsor at the Gaming Insiders Summit in San Francisco. The event, the largest gathering of professionals in the videogame industry, saw Growmobile demonstrating its enhanced mobile marketing solutions, including its recent addition of Instagram advertising.

“Kicking off October’s events, Growmobile will participate at the National Retail Federation Shop.org digital summit, held at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia on October 5 to 7, as a sponsor and exhibitor,” the company says. “Shop.org has become one of the most important annual events for digital and multichannel retailers. Growmobile’s team (is) led by its Global CRO, Ms. Joanna Sammartino Bailey.”

Growmobile’s user acquisition platform is available as a self-serve or fully-managed solution, allowing advertisers to promote their app across the industry’s top traffic sources, including mobile ad networks, ad exchanges, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and more, all via one operationally-painless interface.

“Our mobile marketing solutions provide some of the world’s best known and respected brands with unmatched user acquisition and engagement capabilities,” said Shai Gottesdiener, General Manager of Growmobile. “We look forward to showcasing our platform at these important events.”

Daniel Saks, co-founder and co-CEO of AppDirect, thinks so.

“One of the aspects of the Internet of Things (IoT) that makes the sector so fascinating — aside from the sheer cool factor of the technology itself — is the mind-boggling predictions that it inspires,” Saks writes in a column on the AppDirect blog. “Almost 40 billion connected devices adding $1.7 trillion to the global economy by 2019? Numbers like those are hard to fathom, but somehow they seem completely realistic.”

Saks knows what he’s talking about.

When AppDirect completed its latest Fortune 500 App Report (it’s annual look at how the top companies in the United States are influencing cloud service distribution and development), it discovered that 70 percent of the Fortune 100 companies now have either IoT initiatives or products.

“Digging deeper, we found that every Fortune 100 company in the telecom, transportation, chemical, automotive, food and beverage, and manufacturing sectors has an IoT program or products,” Saks notes. “Many other industries aren’t far behind, with more than 90 percent of technology companies and 85 percent of retail companies currently focusing on IoT initiatives.”

Saks shared his thoughts in advance of the full report release slated for the coming weeks.

But, in sum, he findings “reinforce the fact that the largest companies in the United States are thinking seriously about connected devices and making investments in the Internet of Things.”

In addition, Saks announced that AppDirect has acquired AppCarousel, the leading provider of app management platforms for connected cars and fleets, smartphones, smart screens, tablets, and other connected devices.

“As part of AppDirect, AppCarousel will continue to grow its business and serve its customers, while we continue to bolster our IoT capabilities and grow our rapidly expanding mobile business,” he said.

BrandID Suite is a visualization of YouTube specifically filtered and organized for brands. It helps marketers better understand the scale, quality, and opportunity of what is the undisputed global video platform champ.

“YouTube is becoming the best place for advertisers, replacing traditional media and TV because of its extensive quality content for the widest variety of topics,” the company said this week during an announcement on BrandID Suite. “However, with so much content — 400 hours of new video uploaded every minute — it can be a challenge for advertisers to know how to harness the potential it offers.”

What does it do?

Basically, BrandID Suite uses ZEFR VideoID technology to identify and organize the best videos for brands on YouTube.

“The result is the visualization of more than 6,000 topics that are grouped into larger packages to give brands and advertisers a comprehensive solution to best target their digital advertising campaigns,” a provided statement explains.

YouTube is a very big place now — but ZEFR has created a map with street signs so marketers can find their way around.

“We’re constantly developing new ways to leverage our technology and data to deliver an advantage for marketers. BrandID Suite was engineered to make YouTube more accessible for brands,” said Tom Furukawa, head of product at ZEFR. “In effect, BrandID Suite merchandises YouTube content like TV, taking a page from media’s past to lay the foundation for its future.”

comScore and Rentrak Corporation have announced that the companies have entered into a definitive merger agreement under which the companies will combine in a stock-for-stock merger.

According to the WSJ, comScore’s acquisition of this rival platform represents a significant consolidation of players — a fusion that could help provide greater insight to advertisers about the type of content that consumers are watching and what types of ads are reaching them (and on which platforms).

Under the deal’s terms, each share of Rentrak will be converted into the right to receive 1.15 shares of comScore, valuing Rentrak at $732 million, compared with Tuesday market value of $697 million. Rentrak stockholders would receive $47.69 per share, a 9.9% premium, based on Tuesday’s closing prices. ComScore currently has a market capitalization of $1.7 billion.

comScore’s current Chief Executive Officer, Serge Matta, will lead the combined company as CEO.

By combining comScore and Rentrak’s products, talent and significant information assets, the new company will provide even more robust measurement solutions to the media and advertising industries, following the consumer whenever and wherever content is consumed.

“With the advent of digital technology, the time has come to offer the cross-platform measurement systems of the future: through which content owners will ultimately be able to quantify their entire audience, and agencies will have access to the cross-platform metrics needed to effectively plan and execute campaigns,” Matta said in a news release. “This merger also recognizes the critical importance of combining digital and TV assets for next generation media measurement, which requires a higher degree of precision at both a national and local market level.”

The merger is expected to close in early 2016.

The report — “Global Mobile Media Forecast: 2001-2021″ — also predicts that mobile could constitute a $425 billion market by 2021.

“Strong growth in smartphone penetration, combined with ubiquitous data connectivity via mobile and WiFi networks, and latent consumer demand to access popular internet services continues to drive the consumption of content on mobile devices,” according to Strategy Analytics. “With advertisers increasingly targeting mobile phone users, mobile advertising is set to account for twenty four percent of total digital advertising expenditure in 2015.”

The surge is largely due to consumer interest in accessing popular internet services and apps on mobile phones, including Facebook, YouTube, Spotify, and mobile games, among others. The growing prevalence of rich media smartphones and improved connectivity are also spurring the move to mobile.

“Mobile operators stand to benefit from rising demand for mobile data,” said Nitesh Patel, Director of Wireless Media Strategies at Strategy Analytics. “The total number of mobile data subscriptions will reach 2.3 billion by the end of 2015 equating to almost half of unique mobile users. Not surprisingly, we are seeing strong growth in emerging mobile data markets, and in particular where smartphone ownership is rising fast.”

Interestingly, Patel noted that by the end 2015, the Asia Pacific region may account for more than half of worldwide data subscriptions.

The entire report can be accessed here.

“As user engagement migrates to mobile devices, the fate of browser-based search is in question, along with that of search market share leader Google,” notes iReachContent.

Now a new Insight Paper by BIA/Kelsey — “Mobile Local Discovery: The Next Era of Search — explores Google’s multipronged strategy for remaining competitive in the mobile era.

For Google, it has meant developing innovative new products like “Google Now” to designing ways to link content between apps. Most of all, Google wants to improve the search experience on mobile. The search giant would like to bring the same level of interconnectedness to mobile that the company established years ago on the desktop.

“Google is working hard to help define the user experience on mobile devices in the next decade, according to the report,” according to the IAB. “The search giant’s focus on mobile is intended both to defend its $50 billion search business and to increase its share of the $2 trillion in offline commerce that is influenced by mobile.”

In the report are thoughts on Google’s effort to improve the quality of the mobile web by penalizing web pages that are not optimized for mobile. In addition, it looks at the potential impacts of the symbolic “four horsemen” of technology that dominate the main competitive areas defining the industry: Apple (hardware), Amazon (e-commerce), Facebook (social), and Google (search).

“The existence of trillions of web pages compelled the creation of Google’s advanced index and its friendly entry point that made all that information and knowledge accessible,” said report author Michael Boland, chief analyst and VP, Content, BIA/Kelsey.

The danger for Google?

“The app-heavy mobile environment — already siloed into neat little packages — doesn’t beg for a search engine,” added Boland. “This is worrisome for Google, whose biggest and most under-recognized challenge will be migrating its dominance into a digital world that has alternate entry points.”

More information about the report, including how to purchase, can be found on the report’s web page here.

And let’s face it: social media trends are what every brand marketer and advertiser needs to stay on top of to reach consumers wherever they gravitate.

MDG believes there are five key social media trends marketers should be taking seriously.

For instance, “the top three social networks for engaging customers are Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Facebook nabs first place with an impressive 93 percent share of business. Twitter ranks second at 79 percent. And LinkedIn holds a strong third slot at 71 percent,” notes a piece by HospitalityNet.

What about Pinterest? Surprisingly, more men are coming aboard. While women interested in beauty, food, and fashion still constitute the bulk of site users, Pinterest has experienced a 96 percent growth in men’s fashion pins and a phenomenal 118 percent increase in car and motorcycle pins.

If you’re using Facebook (and who isn’t?), you’ll want to know that the post with the most pizazz is video. That’s what is working now. MDG mentions that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg predicted that the social site’s news feed would become mostly video within five years.

“Already, half of Facebook’s daily active users watch at least one video each day,” reveals MDG. “All total, Facebook garnered 4 billion video views per day in 1Q15. That’s a whopping 1 billion increase over 3Q14.”

There’s lots more to take in. Check out the infographic below.

“The deal allows Flashtalking to deliver on the promise of meaningful post-cookie alternatives for data driven marketers by closing the tracking gap within mobile and desktop,” a release shared with MMW reads.

The Hamburg, Germany headquartered Device9, co-founded by Detlef Lorenz, built a digital device recognition solution independent of cookies.

How? By “probabilistically identifying users across desktop, mobile web, and mobile app environments, effectively tying impressions and clicks back to conversions on one device without the need for third party cookies.”

This technology scans more than 50 non PII signals to produce a unique signature, matching across apps and mobile browsers enabling advertisers to match up conversions to cookie-less impressions in mobile and other digital environments.

“By keying on non PII data available on the device rather than cookies, we can effectively span mobile apps and web spaces,” Lorenz said. “Looking forward, device recognition will join cookies in a cascade of attribution strategies that will provide advertisers with a higher resolution picture of their audiences independent of channel or device.”

Flashtalking’s acquisition of Device9 lays out a vision that includes view through mobile conversion, in app mobile conversion, and cross-device ID matching and persistent profiles.

“Flashtalking does not wade into the media revenue stream. Being media agnostic, our ad serving platform is uniquely positioned to be the single source of truth, arming advertisers with unbiased measurement that spans all audience engagements,” said John Nardone, Flashtalking CEO. “In the short term we are concentrating on closing the attribution gap between mobile web and mobile app impressions, enabling strategies like remarketing and sequencing between mobile app and web spaces, before we move on to the other opportunities the technology presents.”

On Monday, Apple announced it sold more than 13 million new iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus models — a new record — just three days after launch.

All told, there was ample hype surrounding the introduction of Apple’s new flagship smartphone. And pre-orders obviously didn’t disappoint.

Then again, we haven’t likely seen anything yet.

iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus will be available in more than 40 additional countries beginning October 9 including Italy, Mexico, Russia, Spain and Taiwan. The new iPhones will be available in over 130 countries by the end of the year.

“Sales for iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus have been phenomenal, blowing past any previous first weekend sales results in Apple’s history,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook. “Customers’ feedback is incredible and they are loving 3D Touch and Live Photos, and we can’t wait to bring iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus to customers in even more countries on October 9.”

One of the more recent iPad apps that has caught our attention is for Meetings, an app by independent Melbourne-based software house Imperative Software. It’s one of those apps that makes it much easier to schedule, manage and organise meetings, as well as publish your meeting notes afterwards.

It seems that people are not averse to exploring Outlook alternatives with intuitive and dedicated apps, especially on tablets.

Judging by the screenshots, the company’s product video, and a bit of limited use over the weekend, for Meetings certainly looks like a genuinely useful meetings app.

for Meetings iPad app

Imperative Software launched the free app last month, purpose-built for the recording of notes, agenda items, actions, remarks and more. It takes a fresh approach to representing and editing meeting notes – select content simply by swiping down the side of the page to move, copy, delete or indent using simple gestures. Attendees can also be visualised around a virtual table – a nice touch (and the table expands when more people are added).

Connecting attendees to content is as simple as dragging them; likewise, you can easily mark people as absent or assign an apology status.

Features

Here’s a quick run down of for Meetings’ main features:-

• Structure content using bullet points and numbered lists
• Record notes, agenda items, actions, motions and more
• Visualise attendees around a table, apologies and absentees
• Drag attendees to connect them to content
• Update multiple lines with a single tap
• Publish content as an agenda, notes or minutes
• Use tags to organise meetings
• Import meetings from the calendar
• Use an existing meeting as a template
• Search meetings by tags, attendees, actions, content or any combination
• Common searches can be saved as presets for fast selection

Why not try for Meetings and let us know in the comments section what you think? We’re always interested in feedback on apps that our readers have recommended and tried themselves…

More information

for Meetings can be found on the App Store free as a free download with a limit of 20 meetings. However, the limit can can be removed with a one time in-app purchase of £18.99.

Now that Apple’s new iPhone 6s and 6s Plus have been released in a number of markets around the world, let’s take a moment to reflect on just how expensive these smartphones (and many others) are to most of the planet. In the UK, it previously took on average 41.2 hours to buy an iPhone 6 (16 GB) before the new models were announced. That’s in sharp contrast to citizens of Kiev…

How long do you need to work to buy an iPhone?

An iPhone 6 is an expensive gadget, no matter where you live. However, if you live in an affluent city with a high gross salary such as Zurich, you might have to work as little as 20 hours to afford one. By contrast, workers in Kiev have to put in an average shift of 627 hours (or 13 weeks) to afford an iPhone 6, according to the Prices and Earnings report, published every three years by Swiss bank UBS. The report takes into account local prices as well as net hourly wages for 15 professions across 11 sectors to illustrate the immense differences in price levels and buying power around the world.

Chart: Statista.com.

In a demonstration of how algorithms are playing an increasing role in determining user experience, hundreds of millions of Google customers are about to see a change to their voice search and dictation experience. This results not from a fresh set of visual branding tweaks or a further development of its in-app ‘material design’ philosophy, but from an evolution of the neural network techniques employed to process voice input.

“Today, we’re happy to announce we built even better neural network acoustic models using Connectionist Temporal Classification (CTC) and sequence discriminative training techniques. These models are a special extension of recurrent neural networks (RNNs) that are more accurate, especially in noisy environments, and they are blazingly fast!” — Google Research Blog, 24th September 2015.

If you take a few moments to wade through dense language of the blog post, the potential for this change becomes clear: they way in which Google attempts to understand users’ voices is evolving significantly. A user who previously found Google’s voice recognition too slow or inaccurate may now find it has crossed that critical line where latency and success rates are just good enough to make voice input a habitual behaviour rather than an occasional novelty.

Users gravitate towards the input mechanism with the lowest overall latency. It is the reason most users’ primary digital touchpoint is now a mobile device, which can be pulled from the pocket and engaged in less than a second. The same effect will be seen in choosing between keyboard and voice: in most situations (excepting, for instance, where privacy concerns override), speed will win.

This improvement in voice recognition holds the potential for a ripple effect: the ability to dictate documents into a smartphone rather than typing them out on a touchscreen keyboard may mean more business users can leave their laptop behind; the handsfree interactions enabled by accurate voice input may make users more likely to engage with Google in environments like the car or kitchen; looking deeper, it may also mean the messages you exchange with friends and family are input less frequently with your fingertips and more often by speaking them aloud with your voice.

Google’s use of these algorithms extends across its services. The 2015 relaunch of Photos, for instance, relied heavily on advances in the neural network techniques used to identify and organise image content. The overall user experience of Google Photos simply wouldn’t be possible without the algorithm behind it, which is responsible for some of the most meaningful interactions it offers, including the ability to automatically search for colours and objects by simply typing (or speaking!) them into the search box.

This means experience designers must start to think about the previously fixed and predictable framework which underpins the digital environment in a much more plastic way. Just as the arrival of different screen sizes necessitated a responsive approach to visual design, the growing role of algorithms in delivering deeply personalised and contextually sensitive experiences will require a more flexible approach to experience design.

Google is not alone in adopting this approach. Every major name in digital is experimenting with neural networks to govern everything from the products they suggest on shopping sites to allocating resources like taxis and delivery trucks. There are also venture capital firms specifically targeting opportunities in this area, such as London-based Playfair Capital, which held an event (you can watch all the talks on Youtube) in June highlighting advances in machine learning. As these techniques become more widespread, especially in situations such as pre-emptively addressing customer service issues, there is an ever increasing chance of an algorithm becoming the single most important factor in determining customer experience at a given moment.

Image: © Apple

Apple just announced its brand new iPad Pro, a 12.1-inch tablet with a stylus (Apple Pencil), an A9X CPU and 4 GB of RAM, aimed squarely at the enterprise market and well-heeled professionals who need the additional horsepower. The company also updated its iPad Mini, adding a much better screen that matches the iPad in colour gamut and anti-reflective properties (as well as updating it from the A7 chip to an A8 and doubling the RAM to 2 GB). There’s no doubt that the iPad Pro looks like being one of the very best tablets on the market, and impressions so far by the tech press have been largely very positive. But is it enough to revive the tablet market, which is still in a somewhat lacklustre state…?

According to Canalys, tablet shipments continued to wane in Q2 2015, falling 11% year on year to 42.5 million units. After three years of explosive growth, the tablet market peaked in Q4 2013, going into decline a year later. Tablet shipments fell in every worldwide region in Q2 2015, with no reason to believe that growth will return in the short term. Sales in high-growth markets are dwindling as large-screen smart phones grow in popularity to become buyers’ first Internet-enabled devices of choice. In addition, tablets will have to compete against a new wave of two-in-one devices designed to take advantage of Windows 10.

Source: Canalys

“Despite the sudden downturn in shipments, tablets are certainly here to stay. Yes, they have matured and commoditized quickly, but there are still opportunities for vendors to profit from the category”, said Tim Coulling, Canalys Senior Analyst.

“Unlike consumers, businesses have been slow when it comes to mass adoption of tablets. They are willing to spend more on products that satisfy a specific need and meet key requirements, around durability for example. In the consumer space, demand for premium tablets in established markets has noticeably slowed but is not going to disappear. The top five countries accounted for half the world’s tablet shipments and Apple led in all but one, Brazil. It is well placed to continue leading the market for the time being”.

Source: Statista.com

Meanwhile, here are some fascinating tablet statistics, courtesy of Statista.com:

TeleSign, a company that develops mobile identity solutions, earlier this month announced the launch of TeleSign Smart Verify, a new unified API that simplifies end-user verification and two-factor authentication (2FA) for online and mobile app-based accounts to help prevent fraud and stop account compromise. TeleSign Smart Verify uses a proprietary “Smart Decision Engine” that provides a configurable workflow to determine the optimal sequencing of verification and authentication methods – choosing between SMS, voice or push notifications.

TeleSign simplifies end user verification for users and developers

“As online fraud continues to surge, it is more critical than ever to verify the identity of those registering and accessing online accounts,” said Steve Jillings, CEO TeleSign. “Smart Verify brings to bear the full power of TeleSign’s product portfolio with a single API. The end result is that our customers can verify end users and stop account compromise in real-time and in the most reliable, cost-effective manner available.”

With TeleSign Smart Verify, developers can:

• Build Simple Integration of Intelligent Workflows – With a single API, developers can utilize a configurable verification workflow based on industry best practices and without the need to integrate multiple APIs.
• Reduce Fraudulent Activity – Detect potential fraud with patented real-time analytics of a phone number’s attributes, usage and fraud history to automatically determine if a verification process should proceed.
• Manage Verification Costs – Use the optimal verification methods in each scenario, such as push notifications to mobile app users instead of SMS messages, and eliminating SMS messages being sent to non-SMS enabled numbers.
• Gain Better Visibility – Track user verification and authentication activity as well as costs incurred with a single reporting tool.

Smart Verify combines multiple TeleSign products, including PhoneID, Push Verify and SMS & Voice Verification, into a single, unified API that uses the proprietary Smart Decision Engine to help increase completion rates and better manage costs all while minimizing the development effort needed to get started.

Developers who implement TeleSign Smart Verify also receive access to a world-class global support network and industry expertise, via TeleSign’s “Smart Start Services”. This client service includes integration best practices, user experience consulting, detailed documentation and ongoing 24/7 global support.

TeleSign Smart Verify is available today around the globe and can be easily embedded into new or existing Web and mobile app-based platforms.

Learn more about TeleSign Smart Verify and get full product details by visiting https://www.telesign.com/smartverify.

About TeleSign

TeleSign is one of the leaders in mobile identity solutions, helping customers secure more than 3.5 billion end user accounts worldwide and prevent registration fraud, while improving user experience and managing costs. TeleSign delivers account security and fraud prevention with two-factor authentication based on each user’s mobile identity (phone number, device and behavior) and driven by real-time, global intelligence, including reputation scoring and device data.

Mobile Industry Review would like to thank TeleSign and Rufus Jay of 3-monkeys.co.uk for providing us with the information used in this article.

Here at Mobile Industry Review we’ve already written about the rather fabulous Nest Learning Thermostat as part of our Critical Kit series, and we recently been contacted by Neil Anderson at Smart Finish regarding a rather beautiful Nest “accessory” that makes the device an even more attractive piece of kit…

Beech wood mounts give the Nest a touch of style

It’s always great to hear from people and companies with original products and ideas. Neil tells us that he is a woodworking enthusiast who dreams of leaving corporate America behind to spend his days in the wood shop, designing, creating and selling artisanal decorative mounting brackets for the Nest. It sure looks like he’s well on his way to fulfilling that dream judging by the quality and craftsmanship of the products.

The mounts bring together the traditional style of a classic home with the modern design of smart home technology, and they’ve already been garnering positive reviews and positive feedback – including endorsements from Nest Labs themselves.

Unfortunately none of the Mobile Industry Review staff own a Nest with which to augment with a Smart Finish mount, but Nest owners we have spoken to are very open to the idea of making their Nest look a bit more, well, homely.

The classy mounts are available in a range of finishes ranging from Golden Oak, White, and unfinished wood, as well as two styles (Classic and Modern) for between $45 and $50.

For more information about the Nest Thermostat Mounting Bracket, check out Smart Finish on the web or find them on Facebook.

In our mini “apps to watch” series, we’ve covered a handful of useful or innovative apps for Apple’s diminutive wearable. With WatchOS 2 about to be released in just a couple of days, apps for the device are soon to become even more responsive. However, there are still some great apps available now that no self respecting Apple Watch owner should be without…

Today’s short but sweet post takes a quick look at one of the platform’s most essential apps – Microsoft Outlook. Microsoft was among the first company’s to embrace the Apple Watch, even though the Redmond-based software giant has its own line of wearable products (alright, one, the Microsoft Band). It seems that CEO Satya Nadella is open to the idea of creating apps for the most popular devices out there whatever OS they run whether that’s an iPad, desktop PC, Mac or Apple Watch. And it’s not a bad strategy, getting the company’s products in front of users, even if they are on a competing platform.

Outlook is of course one of the world’s most popular email clients especially for business users, so support for Outlook is pretty much essential if you want quick access to your emails on the go. There’s now an Outlook app specifically for Apple Watch, with notifications that show a couple of preview lines of text, as well as allowing the wearer to archive messages and even schedule replies (nice feature, Apple – can we also have that for Mail?). And just like the native messaging app there are some pre-canned replies to choose from as well as the ability to dictate your own via Siri.

Like many of the Apple Watch apps, there’s also a dedicated Glance screen giving a quick summary of your inbox and upcoming events. On the whole, it’s pretty straightforward, but does exactly what you’d expect in a no-nonsense format. Hopefully with WatchOS 2, Outlook will gain even more new functionality and be updated in the near future as a proper native app, giving even quicker access to emails and notifications.

Do you have any favourite Apple Watch apps? Let us know yours in the comments below…

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Contact Marek Pawlowski (mp@pmn.co.uk or +44 7767 622957) about speaking and sponsoring.

As you’re probably well aware by now, yesterday was Apple’s big event at which the company announced some fairly significant updates, at what proved yet again to be a highly-anticipated event at least in the tech press.

While there were almost no surprises thanks to rumours and leaks over the last few months, there was enough to hold the interest for the 2-hour duration while Jony Ive videos played and developers showed off their latest demos on the new hardware. But is Apple still innovating or did the announcements fall flat?

If you’re anything like me, the annual iPhone event is a reason to stay up late to see what all the fuss is about, but many consumers probably don’t care and may not realise there even was an event.

Apple chose the 7000-seater Bill Graham Civic Auditorium to host its annual show, using the additional capacity for thousands of Apple employees. This time around with so many updates to cover, the usual by-the-numbers update videos and self-congratulatory iPhone sales statistics were dispensed with…

Apple Watch

Tim Cook and co dove straight into the Apple Watch. So what was new? A selection of new casings (gold and rose gold aluminium models) as well as a plethora of new band colours. Apple is also partnering with watch company Hermes to create a special selection of Apple Watch designs with unique (software) faces and attractive leather straps.

Aside from the updated designs, a brief rundown on Watch OS 2 revealed some of the improvements coming to the smartwatch when the OS is officially released next week. It was also noted that there are now more than 10,000 apps available for Apple Watch.

iPad Pro

Next up was the much rumoured 12.9-inch iPad Pro complete with a pressure-sensitive stylus (an optional accessory), detachable keyboard cover that uses a new magnetic connector for power and data, and the latest “A9x” custom CPU. Audio should also be much improved thanks to four speakers that automatically adjust the balance based on device orientation and tilt.

Apple says the A9x provides desktop-class performance, and while that can’t be validated yet, the apps demonstrated by Adobe and even Microsoft (!) suggest that the enterprise-focused iPad Pro could be attractive for creative professionals, or anyone that needs a keyboard to be their most productive.

Scanning the various Internet forums after the event, the reaction to the Pro model seemed quite positive especially regarding the stylus (Apple actually calls it the Apple Pencil). While the iPad Pro is a very welcome addition to the iPad lineup, the Air skipped the updates this time around, though a new iPad Mini 4 with A8x CPU (identical to that in the Air 2) is available immediately.

Apple TV

Perhaps the most significant announcement was the long-awaited update to the company’s diminutive set-top streamer, the Apple TV. Apple obviously believes that apps on the big screen are the future of television, combined with a touch-sensitive and Siri-enabled remote to navigate and find content (complete with unified search across apps like Hulu, iTunes, and Netflix).

The hardware itself is slightly taller than the current Apple TV and will come with either 32 GB or 64 GB of storage when it’s released next month. Siri + touch is obviously what Steve Jobs was referring to when he said that he’d finally cracked the TV interface, and judging by the videos and demonstrations, it looks like a huge improvement over most set-top-box streaming devices currently on the market.

Apple has finally become serious about television.

iPhone 6s

The main attraction for most was the new iPhone. The iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus seems like a decent upgrade from current models. Despite having the outward appearance of being identical to the iPhone 6 (albeit a fraction of a millimetre thicker), there’s a new “rose gold” (pink?) colour, while the internals and outer case have apparently received a thorough overhaul: there is a 7000 series aluminium exterior (no more Bendgate!?), tougher cover glass developed in conjunction with Gorilla Glass, an A9 64-bit CPU with integrated and always-on M9 motion coprocessor, faster Wi-Fi, faster LTE, faster TouchID, an improved 12 megapixel iSight rear camera and a 5 megapixel FaceTime HD front camera.

Perhaps the most significant new feature on the 6s is a pressure sensitive display using something they’re marketing as 3D Touch. Quite why the term Force Touch has been abandoned for the iPhone is anyone’s guess, but it does seem to provide what looks like an effective method of interaction.

Much like the Apple Watch, pressing harder on the screen activates additional functions and menus, but Apple says it has thought carefully about how and where 3D Touch is used. Rather than having to guess almost randomly (like on Apple Watch) to determine which apps support the new pressure-sensitive gestures, Apple showed ways to ‘peek’ into the content that you’re already looking at (like a web link in a message or email) as a kind of quick-look preview, complete with vibration feedback thanks to the new taptic engine. Pressing the screen even harder in peek mode then screen ‘pops’ the content into full view. Members of the press who have already had a hands-on session with the iPhone 6s claim that it’s quite intuitive and does in fact enhance the user experience quite noticeably…

The iPhone 6s is priced from £539 for the base 16 GB in the UK. The iPhone 6S Plus costs from £619 for the same storage option. In the US however, Apple has launched a monthly mobile plan which basically allows you to lease an iPhone on a yearly basis and receive a brand new model each year for $32 per month (including AppleCare). Apparently the deal will be available in the UK before long, too. Both the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus are set for release in the US, UK and Europe later this month on the 25th, with more markets shortly afterwards.

So do the new products revealed yesterday live up to the hype? Let us know in the comments below…

I was more than happy to tolerate a bit of whooping when the new iPad Pro was announced. But I really don’t like it when the audience claps and whoops almost every bullet point. Although it is always interesting to ponder at those moments when the presenter is expecting a loud whooping cheer but doesn’t get one. I always like to dwell on those points a little longer to examine the disconnect.

I was rather pleased to see Apple has decided to wade straight into traditional operator territory and start offering iPhones on a pay-monthly basis, with a new iPhone every year.

They’ve been doing a little bit of this for quite a while in many different territories, but the consumer has had to manage the end-stage themselves.

So for example, here in the UK you’ve been able to finance your iPhone purchase directly through the Apple UK website. It looks like a bit of a faff. And the rather unpleasant bit is the final logistics bit — once you’ve financed the phone, you’re fine, but then when the new one comes out, you then need to figure selling the phone, settling the existing ‘finance’ balance and then buying your new one.

It looks like Apple has decided to smooth out that process end-to-end. I’m a fan of that. I’ve actually been recommending this approach to multiple handset manufacturers for years. None has listened. So if you’re one of the executives I was haranguing about this … there you go. Told you.

It looks like this is only being offered in the States at the moment based on what I’m reading on the Apple website.

Here’s how it works:

You are given the unlocked iPhone 6S 16GB.

You agree to pay $34/month for 24 months.

This price includes Applecare — which is seriously useful if you crack/lose your phone.

After 24 months, the phone is yours.

However after 12 months, you can swap the existing device and get a new one.

Which is what I’m doing anyway. At the moment, I buy my devices unlocked and then sell them when the new one comes out. If Apple will guarantee and manage those logistics for me instead, great.

This process will make it exceptionally simple for people to stop using their operator to finance their phone purchase. It will also — crucially — ensure that Apple’s customers are able to buy a new iPhone every year, rather than be tied into the now traditional multi-year operator contracts.

It’ll be really interesting to see how many people choose this offering.

And I’d love to see Apple extend this facility to their other products such as laptops…

Arrrgh!

Was anyone else frustrated by the new iPhone tag line launched last night?

“The only thing that’s changed is everything”

I could agree with that kind of reality distortion when they went from iPhone 5 to iPhone 6, but really… dear me.

This week, ImpulsePay, one of the UK’s leading Charge to Mobile providers, was listed as one of the UK’s Top Ten Fastest Growing UK Tech Companies in The Sunday Times Hiscox Tech Track 100.

ImpulsePay is the leading provider of Charge to Mobile in the UK. Charge to Mobile allows consumers to pay for a wide variety of digital goods and services with their mobile phone and is fully backed by all the UK mobile operators. Mobile is the second most ubiquitous payment method after cash, meaning ease of use for consumers and access to an increased audience for merchants.

ImpulsePay’s mobile experience includes working with major international UK and US customers and partners, including working with Hillary Clinton’s 2008 US Presidential campaign. Current Charge to Mobile clients includes Virgin Trains, Spareroom and Cross Country Trains.

Here’ the press release below.

Meanwhile, to read more about Impulse Pay’s founder and CEO, Chris Newell, take a look at our sister site, FinTech Profile, as we are featuring a Q&A with Chris today.  It turns out he’s a reader of Mobile Industry Review and I’m flattered he’s mentioned us as a source of industry news…

Cheers Chris!
Ewan

ImpulsePay in Top Ten Fastest Growing UK Tech Companies
Highest place mobile payments company in the The Sunday Times Hiscox Tech Track 100

Motorola unveils its new Moto 360 smartwatch

This year’s updated Moto 360 comes in several sizes – there are two versions of the 42 mm model and a male-only (says Motorola) 46 mm model. The guys’ version of the 42 mm device fits all 20 mm straps, and the ladies’ version has a smaller 16 mm band. All models are 11.4 mm thick.

Thankfully there will be a decent selection of bands to choose from – metal and leather – all of which use a special quick release fastening mechanism. You can also customise the smartwatch using Moto Maker, with more than 300 available combinations of materials and body styles.

Aside from the aesthetics, the displays are perhaps the most important aspect of the watches coming in at 1.37 and 1.56 inches (for the 42mm and 46 mm devices respectively), both sporting Gorilla Glass 3. That translates to 360 x 360 pixels (233 pixels per inch) on the larger watch and 360 x 325 on the smaller models, which have a slightly crisper screen at 263 pixels per inch. Not to everyone’s taste however is the ‘flat tire’ across the lower portion of the watch’s display, which apparently contains an ambient light sensor.

As far as the internals go, the Moto 360 should be no slouch in the performance stakes thanks to a quad core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 CPU, an Adreno 305 GPU and half a Gigabyte of RAM, in addition to 4 GB of storage for apps, pictures and other content. The watch also packs Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, although curiously GPS is only offered on the Sport range.

Like many other smartwatches, the Moto 360 measures your daily activities via the included Moto Body software, tracking calories burned, steps taken and various other metrics. There is also an optical heart rate sensor to keep a count of your B.P.M during the day.

Motorola says this second generation model is available to pre-order now in the US, Asia, Latin America and Europe and costs between $299.99 and $429.99. In the UK, it’s expected to start at £229, making it a fair bit cheaper than the Apple Watch Sport 38 mm.

Perhaps the most welcome feature of the Moto 360 is that it is now compatible with the iPhone, and even though it’s not quite as tightly integrated as the Apple Watch is with iOS, it will please many people looking to buy a non-Apple smartwatch that can handle notifications, activity tracking, and looks good to boot.

Here’s a link to the official Moto 360 promo video.

User-centred design is becoming a magnet for capital investment. Traditional consulting firms are acquiring design agencies as strategic assets, venture capital firms are appointing partners with design backgrounds and big brands are acqui-hiring design teams to expedite their own digital ambitions.

This new importance attached to user experience has implications for all in the MEX community, whether you own an agency or you’re leading an in-house digital team at a big brand.

Louisa Heinrich, founder of agency Superhuman and previously Head of Strategy for Fjord, described the current climate: “Not only are there a lot of interested buyers out there, but I suspect that, though they won’t say so publicly, a lot of agencies are actively looking to sell.”

For me, it has meant most of my recent meetings with agencies, brands and investors have been focused on permutations of the same question: “Is it possible to buy a sustainable engine for user-centred design and should we try?”

I listen to management consultancies who want to know how they can become more like user experience agencies. Then I talk to user experience agencies who want to know how they can evolve into management consultancies. They’ve been casting envious glances at each other from afar for some time and many are now preparing to invite the other to the dance.

The elusive and intangible asset at the heart of this increasingly intense and competitive flow of deals has many guises: some call it user experience, while to others it is ‘design thinking’ or simply ‘design’. Few can define it, but many want a piece of it.

However, when you strip away the terminology, there is a unifying objective. A wide range of companies are recognising that the ability to understand human behaviour and use that knowledge to guide the development of new technology is a source of competitive advantage. This capability can have an exponential effect on commercial success. Implemented at scale, this ‘design’ effect can represent gains of billions in start-up exit valuations for or hundreds of millions in improved professional services fees for consultancies.

The market is moving. In the last year alone, management consultancy Ernst & Young bought Seren, systems integrator Wipro bought DesignIt and Adaptive Path was purchased by a bank, Capital One. Meanwhile, Accenture marked two years since its acquisition of digital pioneer Fjord by announcing plans to expand to a total of 17 international studios and increase headcount by 30% in the next year.

In Silicon Valley one of the most well known VC firms, KPCB, hired John Maeda, formerly president of the Rhode Island School of Design. Since then several more high profile VCs have followed, appointing experts in user-centred design as partners and advisors. Earlier this year Pinterest, a poster child for ‘designer-led’ start-ups, raised $367m at an $11 billion valuation, Facebook bought agency Teehan Lax and Google bought Gecko in 2014. KPCB’s Maeda has chronicled these developments in a widely shared presentation and blog post of his own – #DesignInTech.

Gus Desbarats, Chairman of agency Alloy and the British Industrial Design Association (BIDA), told me: “It’s long overdue validation of the strategic power of design.”

It is a very different climate to 10 years ago, when I launched MEX as an initiative to champion best practices in digital user experience design. In 2005, we had to first convince a diverse constituency of device, software and services companies why user-centred design should even matter to them. It was only then we could begin in earnest our ongoing efforts to improve its methods through events, publishing and advisory work.

However, some things have remained constant: the nuance of the user-centred design process – and how it is positioned within an organisation – are critical to its effectiveness. With companies beginning to put their money where their mouths are, and make significant capital investments in user experience skills, the management of its implementation is becoming more important than ever.

As competitors inevitably copy each others strategies, a great deal of money will be wasted acquiring user-centred design agencies over the next few years only to see their effectiveness diminished by poorly thought out integration strategies.

“There is no doubt buying a ‘UX’ firm is a nice sexy growth strategy for the senior teams of management consultancies,” confirmed Gus Desbarats. “The bigger issue is whether this adds adds value for the talent and clients.”

A good user experience agency functions as a sustainable engine for creating new ideas. It does this by motivating a team of talented individuals to observe human behaviour, make tangential leaps in understanding what that behaviour really means and applying that knowledge to make better design decisions. Done right, it is a process with the potential to transform existing businesses and maintain competitive advantage.

Gus Desbarats stated: “‘Design thinking’ isn’t enough, it needs to be connected to ‘design doing’.” He continued: “While UX excellence requires a strategic ‘service layer’ overview, it also require deep, deep attention to detail. The whole point is that you don’t stop at workshops and Post-it notes. UX consultants need to roll up their sleeves and go in to the operational bowels of the client organisation to really get things done. It’s a role that requires innovation leadership skills from even quite junior consultants. This can be hard to nurture in very large, multi-tiered organisations.”

It is easily mismanaged, notably by an unwillingness to invest in its strategic importance for the long-term and by mistaking it for a separate function which can be placed in a non-core corporate silo like the ‘design group’ or the ‘innovation hub’.

It’s no coincidence that the ‘Aha!’ moment for management often comes when they realise user-centred design isn’t something exclusively for people with a design degree or who know how to build mobile apps; at its heart, user experience is just good business sense: investing in your ability to stay ahead of customer needs. If you’re intent on acquiring in the carefully honed practitioner skills which good user experience agencies espouse, they need to be put to work at the heart of the business.

The challenge is to sustain the culture of ideas – the hallmark of great agencies – during the acquisition. Sofia Svanteson, founder of agency Ocean Observations, stressed the importance of this: “You’re buying a culture; a way of working together to solve problems and coming up with nifty solutions. This culture is made up of people, their abilities, experiences and knowledge. The major question is: would this culture survive after an acquisition?”

Furthermore, Svanteson believes the combined entity must find ways to become greater than the sum of its parts: “You must ask: would the acquired agency be able to maintain innovative working practices, and would they be allowed to spread throughout the organisation? Another aspect is about learning from each other – does each party value what comes with the new entity? Going back to 1997, when I was working at companies like Razorfish, I saw both successful and unsuccessful acquisitions. My belief was that the successful ones included companies sharing a common vision, how to reach it and why one should move in that direction.”

Louisa Heinrich described the paradox facing larger companies which acquire smaller digital agencies: “Culture can be very difficult for a corporate to replicate, which is why creative teams are often housed separately from the rest of the business. But if all that design thinking is kept separate from the core business, is the core business reaping the full benefit? I’ve seen lots of clients build or acquire in-house agencies, but that isn’t enough to embed design thinking in the organisation. The teams often become demoralised because they no longer trade in ideas; they become a production house for whatever the business teams bring them.”

A variety of scenarios are likely to play out in the near future:

• Professional services firms acquiring design agencies to meet demands from existing clients for greater digital expertise and to cross-sell other services. e.g. Ernst and Young’s purchase of Seren and Accenture’s acquisition of Fjord.
• Major traditional brands acqui-hiring agency teams to boost their in-house digital skills, e.g. Capital One buying Adaptive Path and BBVA buying Spring Studio.
• Tech industry companies acqui-hiring agencies to solve talent shortages, e.g. Facebook acquiring Teehan Lax.
• Large marketing services firms acqui-hiring to expand their digital teams, e.g. WPP buying Effective UI.
• Small and medium-size agencies merging to achieve competitive scale or add specific capabilities, e.g. digital agency Foolproof buying industrial design boutique Knit.

Each of these holds the potential for success and failure, with the benchmarks depending more on the intangible nuances of integration than on a predictable formula of industry type, headcount or office location.

Last year I wrote a MEX framework for building agencies capable of sustaining good quality user experience work. It placed primary importance on nurturing a culture and engine of idea development, spanning client work, independent thought leadership and open engagement with the wider user experience community. I stand by the assertions of this piece and, in particular, would highlight the 4 questions it posed.

I asked those running agencies to consider how someone joining their organisation today might perceive it:

1. If you were joining the agency as an employee today, would you see it as a place where your creativity will have a public profile outside of day-to-day client work?
2. Where do the ideas – life blood of the agency – come from? Does it actively monitor the quality and variety of idea sources, from encouraging employees to diversify their interests on company time, to reviewing the way in which it records, develops and re-uses ideas generated during day-to-day work?
3. Is someone in the company dedicated to nurturing ideas and developing new channels for their use? Are they represented at board level?
4. If the agency continues working the way it is today, what will its legacy of ideas be in 20 years? Will its reputation extend beyond tactical client work and stand for something more?

As capital investment in user experience increases, we are entering a period when there will be multiple exit routes for valuing an agency’s ability to connect good design with good business. These 4 questions can help to clarify paths to long-term quality, whether as an independent business or as a more attractive acquisition target.

With thanks to Gus Desbarats, Louisa Heinrich, Sofia Svanteson and several others in the MEX community who made valuable, anonymous contributions to the research for this piece.