Mobile Fix – Death of Flash
Simon Andrews, founder of the full service mobile agency addictive!, on mobile flash, Siri and futurology…
For many years Flash was the drug of choice for many web developers. At one time it seemed every marketing site had an all singing all dancing Flash Intro – remember them? And the ability to pack lots of animation in a small file made it a key to online advertising. But Steve Jobs hated Flash and was very happy to tell people why. His insistence that the iPhone and iPad wouldn’t use it – and his ability to persuade Google to switch from flash video to H264 on You Tube- have finally had the expected effect; Mobile Flash has been dropped by Adobe.
Given the progress being made by HTML5 not many people will miss Flash, and as Responsive Web Design (so new it’s not even on Wikipedia yet) becomes the norm we’ll see less use on desktop web too. But those tablets where Flash was pushed as a key feature will need to go back to the drawing board.
The momentum of HTML5 continues with Strobe, one of the key firms in this space, acquired by Facebook this week. Given the way Strobe have been developing their platform it adds credence to the idea that Facebook want to be a significant mobile platform
Voice
Three weeks in with Siri and we’re still impressed. It was great on maths homework, giving great detail on how to calculate the area of a right angle triangle. This piece sums up how people are finding value. Of course there are already some cool voice controlled apps on Android too.
Essentially we are still in very early days of voice; right now Siri is like the first Talkies – little more than a novelty – but it doesn’t take long for these capabilities to become the norm.
Futurology
While the new Microsoft’s vision for the future is really shiny, it doesn’t seem to have too much new in there (we covered most of it in our lower budget futurology video back in 2001). Former Apple engineer Bret Victor agrees – he thinks that the focus on touch is misguided. Given the bet that Apple have made on voice, maybe he is right.
eBook wars
With news that Amazon are increasing their orders for the Kindle Fire (no doubt based on research) their old foe Barnes and Noble have reminded them that there are other players with an update Nook tablet. The new Nook has got great reviews but at $50 more than the Kindle it’s going to be a tough fight.
Here in the UK WHSmith have struck a deal to partner on the other significant player Kobo – we wonder who could bring the Nook to the UK? Tesco are rumoured to have sold a lot of Kindles (does anyone know how many?) but that seems an unlikely long term relationship. Could we see Tesco switch allegiance to the Nook?
Meanwhile our friends at Anobii are making good progress with their UK take on eBooks. This start up has some powerful backers and their (software) product is getting really good.
Money
We’re speaking at a financial services event next week and we’re updating the deck we shared at the Google event around mobile and money back in March. There is lots of new stuff going on – PayPal are now working with NFC, Simply Tap, the new payment service from the Carphone Warehouse/Talk Talk team, is now live and Richard Branson has invested in Square.
Square (now handling $10m a day) is fascinating as the service is clearly morphing from a payments system into a tool for dialogue between merchants and customers. They are a perfect example of just how powerful a mobile wallet could become; the place that handles all aspects of your money and the people you spend your money with. What Google, Paypal, Visa, all the mobile operators et al want to be is that gatekeeper – the people brands and business have to go through to sell anything.
The interesting thing about Branson is that he can take Square international. He is already a big player in money, with his UK banking business looking to make a big leap through the takeover of an established player. We’re convinced that innovation in financial services is more likely to come from a Tesco or a Virgin than the established players – especially as they both also have a mobile operator too.
So we should expect to see Square disrupting the UK high street very soon.
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