Mobile Fix: Thoughts from the West Coast
After spending the week in San Francisco, Simon Andrews, founder of Addictive!, takes a look at the differences in technology and ways of thinking between the US’s West Coast and the UK, and says that we should really import more Big Picture thinking over here.
I have spent a few days in San Francisco this week – doing a talk at Facebook and meeting a few people to get a sense of what’s happening over there. Now doing the same in LA.
The remarkable thing is how much of what we just read about is normal over there.
One example – car services like Uber and Lyft have become big businesses used by lots of people. So much so that the town cars (or limousines) used by Uber have started to rise in price – with people searching across central states to buy them and bring then to the East or West coast where the service has taken off.
Lyft is a less familiar service over here, but again huge in San Francisco. Anyone with a car can sign up and offer lyfts to other people – use the app to find or offer a ride. The only downside seems to be that you have to stick a big pink moustache on the front of your car so you can be recognised as a Lyft car.
Because of the rapid adoption of this service a Prius that costs $20k can generate $60k a year in revenue – opening up a new opportunity for entrepreneurs. AirBnB is also huge here.
The success of these new businesses and new business models is disturbing some of the incumbents who find they have new competitors, and both car services and the house rental businesses are facing new regulation.
But to someone from Europe it’s fascinating to see these services go mainstream and we should prepare for similar services (like BlaBlaCar) to do well over here – particularly in big cities. It augurs well for Skratch.
And it seemed appropriate that whilst we were there Elon Musk should unveil HyperLoop – his latest science fiction like idea (a tube that moves people at 800 mph).This actually seems quite practical – but again the incumbents are airing their doubts. Along with driverless cars, mining asteroids and colonising Mars there is some really big thinking happening on the West Coast.
We should import more Big Picture thinking.
Content
Microsoft is to remake the old BBC sci-fi show Blake’s 7 for its Xbox network. We believe we will see more platform owners look at custom content to attract an audience. Samsung went big with their JayZ exclusive but the value is being questioned.
The IAB has published an interesting report on content.
By the way – we keep talking about brands taking retail space and building brand cathedrals – places you go even if you are not buying anything because you like the brand so much, i.e. Apple & Nike.
It turns out that Microsoft has one in San Francisco. It wasn’t very busy when we passed by.
Amazon
We didn’t make it to Seattle on this trip but read some good stuff about Amazon. Fast Company has a really interesting interview where he talks a little about Amazon Fresh – the Trojan Horse grocery service they are rolling out – which will also deliver DVDs and books, etc.
This is another good read on Amazon, although we question the idea that anyone has a clue what Amazon will be doing in 2030 (other than maybe Jeff Bezos).
17 years ago (at Poppe Tyson in 1996) we found very few people would accept the idea that people would ever buy over the Internet. Thinking about how people will buy 17 months in the future is a big part of our strategy consulting work.
But there is no one better at long term thinking than Amazon, as this great quote shows;
“Invention requires a long-term willingness to be misunderstood,” says Bezos. “You do something that you genuinely believe in, that you have conviction about, but for a long period of time well-meaning people may criticize that effort, and when you receive criticism from well-meaning people it pays to say – first of all, search yourself – are they right?
And if they are you need to adapt what you’re doing. If they’re not right, if you really have conviction that they’re not right then you need to have that long term willingness to be misunderstood.”
Facebook is a mobile company
On my visit to 1 Hacker Way it was clear that Facebook are totally preoccupied with mobile. New data from the UK shows why;
More than a third of the UK population now visit the site every day, and of the daily users some 20 million – 83% – use a smartphone or tablet to check updates on Facebook.
Given they can deliver that sort of reach – around as quickly as TV – the potential for their ad growth is considerable. The problem is whether their users accept more and more ads. If brands use the targeting opportunities and tailor the creative accordingly, they might get away with it. But if brands just push their TV ads through Facebook, we think users will push back.
We think the big prize for Facebook is in blending video with social – best demonstrated by this YouTube campaign for Desperadoes from a couple of years ago.
Devices
In the week we hear that Blackberry is up for sale data shows that Windows is now the third biggest player in smartphones.
The battle between Apple and Android for the top spot continues. Whilst globally Android is in the lead, the tables have turned in the US and Apple has the top spot again. This is a good look at the battle and gets into some good detail on how the fragmentation of Android we touched on last week could help Apple win in areas like payments.
It also backs our view that NFC is dead and Bluetooth is back.
Interestingly a plan to save Blackberry by moving to Android was proposed last year by a VC – and ignored by the management. The pitch is worth reading.