Mobile Fix: Steve Jobs, a great man
Simon Andrews, founder of the full service mobile agency addictive!, on Steve Jobs, the iPhone 4S and what is next for Apple…
This video of Steve Jobs making his commencement speech at Stamford seems like an appropriate tribute to a great man.
We should also remember that he was a family man, who died at just 56. Cancer is a cruel disease and we’re proud to work with Trekstock; a very cool charity focused on raising money to fight cancer. If everyone who had been moved by Steve Jobs made a donation to a cancer charity maybe someone else’s life could be saved.
This sad news rightly overshadows the launch of the iPhone 4S – and perhaps explains just why it felt a little underwhelming.
The empty chair on the stage now makes sense and geek blogger Scoble speculates that some of the announcements due for this event – in particular the Facebook iPad app – were pulled at the last minute.
Having said that the new spec is good – and software innovation like Siri really does move the market forward. And looking at how Apple are using Siri, they create a little advantage of Google in that Apple will now know what their users are searching for – another chess move between the GAFA.
As the smart people at Splatf point out the Apple product roadmap tends to work in two year cycles – so next year should be huge. It seems likely that Apple have some more good stuff to come and we should expect more product news in the coming months.
Sony
Older readers might remember that – before Apple took the mantle – there was another consumer electronics company that was lauded for their innovation and excellent product design. Sony had a great track record but have never been able to nail it in mobile. Many think the tension between Sony and their JV partners Ericcson has thwarted their plans for mobile – and rumours of a break up are back.
It would be interesting to see what a really focused Sony could do with mobile devices. They have lots of advantages – they get design, they really understand content – as big players in the development of music, movies and games – and have a strong user base as their success in this analysis of who has really engaged Facebook fans shows.
Samsung / Google
But it looks like the big news in mobile devices over the next couple of weeks will probably go to Samsung/Google with their new Nexus Prime or Galaxy Prime. The leaked specs look really good, as does the design. Official launch next week.
We’re still waiting for news on what Facebook plan to do with mobile. There are more details emerging of Project Spartan and how HTML5 will be central. Maybe some or all of their plans were to be announced at the Apple event?
Online advertising
As the recession bites we see UK brands are increasing their investment in accountable media, with online ad spend up by 13.5% – putting online as the biggest ad medium in the UK with 27% of all adspend. And given this data excludes the two fastest growing areas ( mobile and Facebook), the true figure is higher still.
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