I know I just did a 10 Links post last Monday but I couldn’t help myself. And if there’s one category that’s dominated my 10 Links posts, it’s Mobile.
Admittedly, I love mobile. I love the phones (all of them). I love the apps (not all of them). But what I love the most is the very real impact it’s having on society. The Internet had huge impact on society. Social media has also had huge impact on society. Mobile’s impact on society in bringing both of these into the hands of every consumer plus all the new computing capabilities they bring with them will be even greater, and we’re just getting started.
Today’s 10 links fall into 4 areas: Consumer, Android and specifically the recent patent battle they lost, Tablets and Gaming. I would love your thoughts on any of these links or trends and if there’s anything I missed please leave me a link in the comments.
Consumer: While they may seem random, I thought these three were really important as they exemplify real impacts on consumer life.
1 - Man with no Blog: The Mobile Web is Not Going Away.
May seem obvious to some of us but it Gary Barber (@tuna) hits on something that we’ve all likely experienced:
You know what is becoming a real pain point.
Non responsive designed web sites. The ones that don’t scale well on mobile devices, sadly they are still the norm.
Especially news and information sites.
2 - AllThingsD: eBay Acquires Mobile Payments Provider Zong for $240 Million in Cash
Zong enables consumers to post payments to their mobile phone bills, mostly to pay for virtual goods inside of games.
EBay said Zong will strengthen PayPal’s payment platform, which in the past has focused on microtransactions and digital goods, but did not enable payments to be posted to the mobile phone bill.
3 - Smart Mobs: Mobile communication networks form a new stratum of the city
Mobile communication networks, seemingly the most invisible of infrastructures, have an enormous potential impact on the physical environment of the city. As wireless usage skyrockets, the capacity of the network is pushed to its limits, and the technologies that control and transmit the signals must adapt to meet the demand.
Android: I’m not a big fan of the state of patent law and in full disclosure Microsoft and Windows Phone 7 is a client, but so is T-Mobile, USA and HTC. That being said, things are about to get real for Android. I wish them luck because Apple and Microsoft have a lot of money and armies of lawyers. What I find most interesting is the way Microsoft and Apple can battle each other on so many fronts but still come together for other battles.
4 - paidContent: Why Google And Android Must Deal With The Mobile Protection Racket
Class War—Google has a way of stirring resentment among its peers, sort of like the know-it-all kid in high school who was also quarterback of the football team and just biding his time before waltzing into Harvard. That was evident in the aftermath of the auction, when Reuters posted an account of the bidding process fueled by anonymous quotes designed to make Google look as silly as possible, claiming that Google was “either supremely confident or bored” in making bids equal to famous mathematical constants and was unwilling to go above $4 billion.
5 - TechCrunch: How Apple Led The High-Stakes Patent Poker Win Against Google, Sealing Ballmer’s Promise
If you’ve seen Casino Royale (the remake, not the original campy version), you’ll recall the scene where James Bond loses all his money attempting to call what he believes to be a Le Chiffre bluff. He is forced to exit the game, but then Felix Leiter, the CIA operative also in the game, tells Bond he’ll stake him since he’s clearly the stronger player. Again, that’s more or less what Apple did with this maneuver to Google’s Le Chiffre.
Tablets: These two posts really highlight two important but not often talked about markets. The Asian tech market is always important because it has always been an important indicator of future trends, even more so that in the US. And the business World still hasn’t found a solution they are happy with but they’re going to have to get their act together soon.
6 - iTWire - Media tablets in high demand with upwardly mobile
While countries like Australia, Korea and Taiwan are showing strong interest in media tablets, IDC says that China continues to demonstrate high purchasing power for new tech products. It says, however, that emerging countries in APEJ like Indonesia and Malaysia, by contrast, have more conservative attitudes toward media tablets, and still prefer mininotebooks with better keyboard input and a familiar user experience.
The senior market analyst for client devices research at IDC Asia/Pacific, Dickie Chang, observes that eReaders on the other hand, will carry a lower 18 percent CAGR as eReader are “limited to a single function, one that media tablets cover anyways. In fact, media tablets offer a better reading experience with colour display for magazine content.”
7 - Read/Write Web: iPad for Business Round-Up: Oracle Virtual Desktop Client for iPad and More
“iPad support is now an enterprise requirement,” writes RedMonk co-founder and analyst James Governor in a post about both the Oracle app and the TechWorld article. “From an architecture standpoint it makes little sense for enterprises to develop their own iPad apps - but when it comes to consuming them they’re demanding native from vendors.”
Gaming: And what else can I say about gaming that I haven’t said before? This space is huge and is only going to get much, much bigger. If we are in a bubble, I think gaming will be one of the true winners when the dust settles.
8 - VentureBeat: The road ahead in mobile games
Mobile games could be a $13 billion market in 2014, according to Merel. Mobile and online games together could be a $44 billion market, or 50 percent of the global $87 billion market in 2014. Today, mobile games are around $8 billion, a small slice of the overall game market, which is still dominated by console games, web games, and Facebook games. (IDC estimates mobile games will grow to $5 billion in a few years; Gartner says that mobile gaming was $6.7 billion, or 10 percent of the $67.4 billion game market in 2010; the estimates vary, but few doubt mobile games will have a great growth rate).
9 - GigaOm: As mobile games boom, opportunities abound
Zipline’s Moai game development platform is now in open beta, and the company has announced that it is signing up some noteworthy partners, including Harebrained Schemes, which is building Crimson, the first title to be released by Bungie Studios’ new mobile game program called Bungie Aerospace. Nay Games, which created the physics game breakout hit Bubble Ball, has also signed on. More than 700 developers have requested access to the Moai beta since it first launched in April.
10 - Mashable: Mobile Games Dominate Smartphone App Usage [STATS]
Games are the most popular mobile app category.
App downloaders are most willing to pay for games.
Similar Posts:
- More Trends In Mobile Gaming [10 Links]
- Why My Mom Wants An iPad And I Don’t
- Mobile Should Be Defined By People’s Behavior Not Product Features
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