The industrial internet, or “internet of things” is not there yet – lots of work still needs to be done in terms of m2m communication and standard protocols, as well as integrating the right amount of memory, processing power and wireless communication capability in a small die at a minimal cost – and of course, on the server farm side, make sense of the exabytes of unstructured data generated every month. I’ve quoted @benedictevans in my june 2013 “mora on mobile internet, M2M and IoT update”. [Reproduced form MIT Technology Review] The spread of mobile computers, in numbers [From Benedict Evans 03.15.13] Smartphones have created a bridge between two previously separate industries—wireless networks and personal computing. For Internet firms and device makers, this means access to the world’s largest network of people. As can be seen above, the wireless telephone business is large compared to personal computing. In 2012, the world’s mobile operators did $1.2 trillion in business and served around 3.2 billion people, versus perhaps 1.7 billion people who used PCs to access the Internet. By comparison, the combined revenue of Microsoft, Google, Intel, Apple, and the entire global PC industry was $590 billion. Online advertising, the main driver of the consumer Internet, generated only $89 billion in revenue. PCs still represent a majority of personal computing devices in use globally. But not for long. As smartphone and tablet sales increase rapidly, they are replacing PCs and Microsoft Windows as the dominant personal-computing paradigm. At right are the number of PCs, tablets, smartphones, and all mobile phone handsets in use, as well as the number of each sold in 2012. Growth in smartphone sales are coming largely at the expense of older-style “feature phones,” as people replace them, typically once every two years. As can be seen, two-thirds of the mobile phone market has yet to convert to smartphones. Close to a billion smartphones will be sold in 2013, while PC sales will gradually decline. Smartphones have greatly increased the profitability of the mobile phone handset business. The average selling price of all mobile phones rose from about $105 in 2010 to $180 at the end of 2012, largely driven by Apple’s iPhone. In 2012, Apple sold 136 million iPhones for $85 billion, averaging $629 per phone. By comparison, the average selling price of a PC is about $700. With a further $33 billion in revenue from iPads, Apple’s annual revenue now exceeds the combined business of Intel and Microsoft. Sales by other companies of Android smartphones (not shown) reached 480 million units in 2012, generating an estimated $120 billion in revenue at an average selling price of $250.
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Big Data and Natural Language Processing: Remember Max Headroom ? Think the financial report your read on Forbes is written by a human ? Think again. Narrative Science is already disrupting people who work in media by automating the process of describing big data. More or less, anything on a chart or excel sheet can now be narrated using natural language. Now the CIA is interested: while visualizations have gotten plenty of attention as options for getting good stuff out of data, In-Q-Tel’s investment in Narrative Science suggests information in paragraphs could work too.
[Reproduced from GigaOM] The CIA takes an interest in Narrative Science’s quick summaries of big data [ Jordan Novet 06.06.13] Narrative Science has attracted media attention because it has the potential of disrupting people who work in the media. The company’s technology can take heaps of data about, say, a sports game, a company’s quarterly earnings or a person’s life and surface the most important stuff. Now it appears Narrative Science’s capability would be of use to the U.S. intelligence community, with the company announcing Wednesday a “strategic partnership and technology development agreement” with In-Q-Tel, the investment firm with roots in the CIA. The partnership will help Narrative Science whip up a version of its Quill artificial-intelligence tool for government users. And it looks like the technology won’t be sitting on a shelf. In-Q-Tel invested in company in order to help the intelligence community within 36 months, according to its website. In other words, the CIA and others might see an immediate need for this technology. It’s not the first time investors have seen value in Narrative Science. Battery Ventures, SV Angel and others have put up more than $10 million in funding and debt rounds, according to a spokeswoman. [more] Computex 2013: Meet the OS Google and Apple should worry about
Microsoft and Blackberry are desperate to cement themselves as the No. 3 mobile software maker. Don't look now, but here comes Firefox. Announced and previewed at MWC in Barcelona earlier this year, Firefox OS is a lightweight, inexpensive operating system for phones being developed by the Mozilla Foundation, the group that makes the popular Firefox web browser. Why is Firefox going in this direction? After all, Apple and Google combined control over 90% of the mobile OS market. Attempts by Microsoft (and Blackberry to cement third place - with market share in the low single digits - have proved expensive and not-so-successful. Firefox OS isn't going after the top of the market -- at least not yet. Introduced earlier this year, the operating system is initially aimed at low-cost handsets in developing markets. Firefox OS is based on Linux and is open source. It is designed to allow web-like HTML apps to directly control a device's hardware using JavaScript and so-called web API's. Mozilla's interest is in establishing or cementing web technologies, as opposed to some of the closed approaches of other big players. So far, initial Firefox phones have been low-frills affairs. But Taiwanese giant Foxconn -- the world's largest manufacturer of electronic devices -- is going to put some weight behind Firefox OS. [reproduced from CNET] Foxconn taking Firefox OS to tablets, not just phones [by Stephen Shankland 06.03.13] Computex, Taipei. The Chinese electronics manufacturer plans multiple devices, including tablets and phones, as part of a strategy to supply software and services along with hardware. Foxconn and Mozilla announced a partnership Monday under which the Chinese electronics manufacturer will build not just Firefox phones, as others have announced, but tablets, too. The rumored partnership was confirmed as Mozilla and Foxconn announced their tie-up at the Computex show in Taiwan. By including software in its devices, Foxconn gets to sell a more complete and therefore potentially valuable product to those companies that actually will attach their brands to the hardware. Meeting the needs of the mobile-only user doesn't mean agonizing about "the mobile use case," trying to determine which subset of content would be most useful to users "on-the-go": If you're trying to reach customers who only shop, bank, and socialize on their mobile devices, you're missing out.
[Reproduced from Harvard Business Review] The rise of the mobile only user [By Karen McGrane 05.28.13] "They can just use their desktop computer to do that." One of the most persistent misconceptions about mobile devices is that it's okay if they offer only a paltry subset of the content available on the desktop. Decision-makers argue that users only need quick, task-focused tools on their mobile devices, because the desktop will always be the preferred choice for more in-depth, information-seeking research. But what about people who don't have a desktop computer? What about people who have access to a PC, but prefer using their mobile device? Those users want and need access to the same information, just presented in a different form factor. The mobile-only user is your customer too. Reaching the mobile-only user The rise of smartphones means that more and more people are going online from a mobile device. According to Pew Internet, 55 percent of Americans said they'd used a mobile device to access the internet in 2012. A surprisingly large number — 31 percent — of these mobile internet users say that's the primary way they access the web. This is a large and growing audience whose needs aren't being met by traditional desktop experiences. [more] |
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