POSTS TAGGED : Mobile

iPhone Prophecy

It was July 2008, the iPhone was still a novelty and the second iteration called the iPhone 3G had just been released. The iPhone 3G improved on the Original iPhone in speed and connectivity, but the optics were still deficient and it had one big omission. It couldn’t record video. So on July 16, 2008 I penned a blog post titled – iWant the iPhone Pro!. Here is the gist of my commentary…

“The one achilles heel of the current iPhone are its poor optics. The 3G camera is the same 2-megapixel version that shipped with the original iPhone, and it still does not record video. I’m sure some 3rd-party developer will release an App to get it to record video at some point, but at 2-megapixel quality, it won’t be that usable.

So that leads me to the ‘iPhone Pro’. When is it coming, Steve? Oh, you know its coming. Let’s not forget that Apple is steeped in movie making software. This is a company that pioneered the .MOV QuickTime video codec. This is a company that produces Hollywood studio-quality editing software in Final Cut Pro, and has further leveraged their editing prowess to create iMovie for Joe Consumer. Don’t you think we’re going to see iMovie Mobile on the iPhone?

Sooner or later, Steve Jobs is going to walk on stage at the Moscone Center and he’s going to unveil the iPhone of all iPhones. An iPhone that isn’t just going to continue to revolutionize the cellular handset industry, but an iPhone that makes every digital still and video camera manufacturer quiver with fear. Everything from 8+ megapixels, 30-frame-per-second video, zoom, autofocus, image stabilizer etc., and combine all of this with the ability to edit and compose your photos and videos with Apps like Aperture Mobile and iMovie Mobile. Steve Jobs may even bring Steven Spielberg on stage to help demo it and suggest that we are eventually going to witness full-length feature films edited and shot entirely on an iPhone. Heck, we can’t even be that far off from an iPhone HD.

So when is the iPhone Pro coming? I have no idea, but when it does, you can be sure I’ll be buying my first iPhone.”

Fast-forward 6 years, and while I’ve owned my fair share of iPhones and already moved on to Android, I was reminded of that previous post after watching a new commercial spot for luxury automaker Bentley. Bentley produced a beautiful 4-minute promo that was shot entirely on an iPhone 5S and edited exclusively on an iPad Air while sitting in the back of a Bentley Mulsanne. Check it out…

This is by no means the first ‘all iPhone’ commercial production. Another example would be Burberry partnering directly with Apple for their Spring/Summer 2014 fashion show. Burberry used nine iPhone 5S to shoot and produce video of the show.

While Steve Jobs is no longer with us, Steven Spielberg has yet to release a sequel to E.T. shot exclusively with an iPhone and my original post is 6 years old, there is no denying now that the age of the ‘iPhone Pro’ has most definitely arrived.

Web Video Productions Soon To Rival Hollywood

The ‘Video Game High School’ webseries is a small production compared to big-budget Hollywood. But it’s not ‘shot from my basement with an iPhone’ small. It’s the new Semi-Pro small, with enough funding to make a production look almost as polished as Hollywood-driven content, minus several zeros on the balance sheet. Impressive. It won’t be long before many of the shows on broadcast television are started independently on the web by talented videopreneurs, and eventually get acquired by major studios after they’ve been market and traction tested. Not dissimilar to how tech startups are born, grown, then acquired.

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Smartphone-Zombie Apocalypse

29% of Gen-Y respondents said they check their smartphone so regularly, they lose count. And, let’s be honest, it’s not just Gen-Y. For the foreseeable future the smartphone will rule the mobile universe, but these types of metrics underscore why constant-connect / constant-visual initiatives like Google’s Project Glass have a big future.

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Growing Mobile Landscape

With less than half of U.S. adults owning a smartphone, it means there are still a lot of dumbphones in use and we’re not even at half-time in the smartphone revolution. Tablets are the big story with ownership doubling year over year.

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Smartphones, nomenclature & Siri

“The big trend for the past 10 years has been to pack more and more features into devices: making phones the Swiss Army Knives of gadgets. If you have a smartphone now it’s already your camera, watch, GPS, calendar and music player.

With the next generation of phones, it’s going to become your credit card, train ticket, TV remote control, language translator, toaster controller, it will power the augmented reality glasses that you wear, it could become your ID card and your passport…

Some of the most interesting innovation in mobile tech still comes from these third-party apps…

When the “cloud” becomes more significant our mobile phones will be our portal to the immersive internet that surrounds us, letting us control and interact with other computers and people.

Your phone is only going to get more important. Just don’t lose it.” – LES

Does your company, brand name, web address pass the Siri test?

QR Codes Spearheading Adoption of Mobile Action Codes

The percentage of magazines with at least one (QR Code) code is up from 96% in Q4 2011.

Overall, the total number of action codes printed increased to 1365 in Q1 2012 from 352 in the same period of 2011.

The percentage of advertising pages with an action code may provide the most accurate measurement of mobile action code adoption. For the first time, the percentage of magazine pages containing an action code exceeded 8% each month in Q1 2012.

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via nellymoser

Are barcodes jumping the shark in North America?

Not quite, but it’s getting close.

QR Code Use Jumped 617% From January to December in Top 100 Magazines

A Record 4468 Mobile Action Codes Appeared in Ads and Editorial Pages. QR Code Market Share Reaches 80%.

The monthly count of codes printed in the top 100 magazines grew from 88 in January to 631 in December.

Advertisers contributed heavily to the growth. The monthly percentage of codes from advertising increased from 87% in January to 96% in Q4.

The average number of codes per issue grew – from 2.33 in Q1 to 6.50 in Q4.

QR market share increased from 66% in January to 80% in December.

Almost all codes in Q4 led to product demonstrations, branding videos, sweepstakes, e-commerce and/or social sharing sites.

Is Super Bowl Live Streaming a Touchdown, Field Goal or Just an Extra Point?

One of the primary reasons the NFL and its broadcasting partners have resisted making an online live stream available for the biggest game of the year is viewer cannibalization. However, with big events like the Olympics and March Madness having tested the live stream waters successfully, the NFL and NBC are ready to kick the Super Bowl to the web.

Canadians will be left out of the online party this time, but it won’t be long before that changes. Americans will be able to view two different streams, one with the much-hyped TV ads, and a different stream with ads targeted for the live stream only. While International viewers will be blocked, nobody in US will require a cable account to access the live stream on the web, while Verizon customers will also be granted access on their iOS or Android mobile device.

Of course the one thing everybody will want to know, is how many people will actually watch the game online vs. watching it on that massive flat-panel television you got for the holidays? Time will tell, but I would be surprised if this offering didn’t serve to both expand the audience and provide a pot-pourri of insightful analytics.