If you hate your iPhone/Android data plan, you should read this WSJ profile on Masayoshi Son, the dude who just bought Sprint, and cross your fingers.
I can’t come up with a good comparison for Masayoshi Son and maybe it’s just since he might be entirely in his own league so he certainly makes it easy to root for him. Just look at what you’re paying for text messages and you have to imagine he’s thinking it’s a huge opportunity.
Samsung shipped a stunning 57M smartphones in Q3 — twice as many as Apple | VentureBeat (via fred-wilson)
Regardless of how you feel about Samsung’s products vs. Apple’s, Samsung’s ability to pull out of a multi-horse race and make it Samsung vs. Apple is a staggering achievement.
It’s unclear how much longer this status quo will hold but right now, it’s all eyes on Apple and Samsung. Also, Samsung’s all out advertising assault currently dominating every medium easily eclipses the first Droid Does campaign and is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Have you seen anyone unaware of a Galaxy S3?
(via fred-wilson)
In the advertising world, June means thinking about what will happen in the future. Our clients (big brands) essentially pay my salary to think about what’s coming next and come up with a strategy for what to do about it. So I was asked to come up with my vision of what will happen in the next 18 months and where we’ll be at the end of 2013. The strategy part is different for all our clients and confidential so that won’t be very public.
Instead of coming up with quotes and stats projecting where the numbers are predicted to go, I made more of a qualitative POV to facilitate a bit more of a thought provking discussion and place my own personal bets as to where I think things will be. I think it’s absolutely necessary to declare what you believe or else you stand for nothing.
If I were a VC this is what I would bet on, if I were a CEO or CMO this is where I would sprint towards and if I were making a startup then this is exactly where I’d focus on.
This is also mostly a list since this is how I sort my thoughts before I make this into a shiny presentation. The presentation of course would be backed up with dozens of stats but that’s the easier part. I’d love any feedback too: @johnnywon.
—
Media consumption that used to be thick will become very, very wide
Personal computing is changing from everything we’ve ever experienced
A Dramatic Disruption is Inevitable
Cars are essentially becoming a Smartphone Accessory
The Mobile Wallet will explode in usage
Sharing things socially will be almost entirely on smartphones
Everyone who wants to be social is already social
Consumption of video on mobile devices will eclipse all other devices
—
The next 18 months are going to get crazy. Everything as we know it will change.
(via Apple Wins Patent for iWallet: The one that will rule the World - Patently Apple)
Apple’s iWallet patent shows exactly what Apple could do. This is why I’m excited:
Read this patent for Apple’s iPhone integrating NFC for mobile payments with the iTunes Store.
Now look at $AAPL.
The general theory in mobile+NFC has been this: the moment Apple’s iPhone has NFC for mobile payments, the entire world will embrace NFC. Literally, it’ll be almost over night. Like how Apple made smartphones with keyboards completely irrelevant or an iPad to be the standard for tablets; I think this will change everything.
I believe this will happen for several reasons:
The hundred billion dollar wrinkle of all this is simple but crazy. If Apple let users put in their bank information into iTunes, Apple will have invented a better debit card.
Of course, it’s actually way more complicated than that but Apple could offer merchants a lower fee to process the transaction (let’s say Apple takes 2% to Visa’s 3.5%), the user doesn’t have to pay anything extra and iTunes would show a charge that would be pulled at little cost from the bank (credit card fees > debit card fees > direct debit payments).
Users would love the superior experience. Merchants would relish a new competitor to the Mastercard, Visa, American Express card fee oligopoly. And Apple would be able to profit on every transaction.
I don’t think Apple is thinking about a NFC payment system, an Apple iPhone enabled NFC payment system will happen and it’s only a matter of time (this year’s 5 or ‘13’s 5s is my bet). The 2nd part that I wrote about, the disruption to the credit card fee oligarchs, is more of an if but I believe Apple’s interests are strong enough that it will absolutely happen. If this is the case, Apple’s stock is worth billions more than what it is today.
Lastly, it’s important to note a final point about Apple. Apple doesn’t go into markets because money can be made. They go into markets because they can make the experience significantly better than the status quo and find healthy profits. Mobile payments as an industry right now is a total mess (Isis, Google Wallet, Wal-Mart+Target) and the credit card fees charged on merchants make no one happy (take a guess what Apple pays out to credit card fees, this can be calculated). This is why the “iWallet” patent is so exciting, a completely better experience is around the corner.
— Jeffrey Dachis
What’s Holding Back Mobile-Ad Spending? | Digital - Advertising Age
Hmmm. Something worth thinking about.
There is a lot to explore here and I like EA’s freemium push with the Simpsons. A nice proof point showing how it works with Temple Run:
Right before we switched it to free in September, we had a couple hundred downloads/day at 99 cents, with some in-app purchase sales. After switching it to free and settling at No. 100 Top Free app, we had about 50,000 daily downloads, and a whole lot more in-app purchases. In fact, revenue went up 10x immediately upon switching to free, so keeping it free was a no brainer.
— Temple Run developer Imangi Studios’ Natalia Luckyanova in Venture Beat
BRIC for Mobile. Worth Billions of $. Calling it now: (via A VC: Where To Find Your Future Customers/Users)
VentureBeat
This has a nice ring to it doesn’t it?
Just a quick thought.
Asymco has a nice writeup inspired by Apple’s new iPad ad that talks about skyrocketing iPad sales but the ad from Apple really nails the beginning of the end for computing as we’ve known it.
There are no tech specs, no MHz, no RAM. It’s entirely about what people want to do with the things they buy. This keyboard for example, as my hands lumber across from key to key, this represents everything that we’ve known about computing for the past 20 years. It’s never been something that a person has truly wanted to buy, it’s only been the good-enough-for-now system of input.
Hell, I write this on a MacBook Air 11”, which I would argue to be the single best portable laptop ever made, and it’s a complete dud as to how it’s so wrong for the things I want to do. Not everyone agrees that people will abandon their laptops in droves to iPads and tablets (there is no way in hell I could) but I would argue that as the new era of post-computing begins with the iPhone, Android, iPad & such; it’s time to place bets for better making things that people want to do rather than what they can do with today’s computing tech.
Maybe a simpler way to put it would be: either keep up or GTFO.
