iOS Users: Welcome to the predictive search future. Google has integrated its Google Now product, previously only found in Android’s post-Jelly Bean releases, into its Google Search iOS app. Google Now is designed to present you with information before you ask for it, tracking packages, flights, traffic, weather, sports, concerts, and dozens of other pieces of information. One limitation of the iOS release is that it is still app-based and does not carry the advantage of being baked-in as it is with Android. This upgrade to the iOS app could be the first in a series of moves to make predictive search ubiquitous on mobile devices.
Tag: iOS
iOS Remains Top Monetising Mobile Platform
According to Opera’s Q1 study, Apple’s iOS remains the top platform for monetising mobile ads, and the iPhone regains its top status over Android in generating Ad traffic to mobile ads. Opera’s data comes from its mobile advertising platform business that serves more than 50 billion ad impressions per month via 12,000 mobile sites and apps. Mobile ad campaigns running on Apple devices achieve the highest average eCPMs, and account for nearly half of all revenue delivered to mobile publishers. At the end of 2012, iPhone lost the number one position in terms of ad impression volume, but Opera reports that that it has regained the number one position with 31.91% of traffic and 34. 24% of all revenue, whereas Android phones clock in at 30.22% and 26.24%, respectively. Including tablets and other devices, iOS has a very clear margin in all categories over Android’s operating system in mobile traffic share.
Twitter #Music App Launches
After a week’s worth of teasing, the Twitter music app finally launched. A service for both discovery and streaming, it’s now available at music.twitter.com, as well as in the iOS app store; of yet there is no Android app. #Music is based around a recommendation engine that pulls data from across Twitter and your followers to offer recommendations from the catalogs of iTunes, Spotify, and Rdio. Of primary importance is the Trending chart, which allows you to view – and listen to via iTunes Preview, Spotify, or Rdio – the top trending songs on Twitter. As well, there are Emerging, Suggested, and Now Playing tabs; Emerging takes data from all of Twitter to identify up-and-coming new artists, while Suggested recommends music based on who you follow, and Now Playing takes stock of the music being played at that instant by the people you follow. Listening to the songs is straight forward as well, just log in with any of the previously mentioned services and you should be able to listen to full songs in the app. You can, however, click the iTunes button and be taken to the iTunes Store to purchase the song. How well this catches remains to be seen, but what is definite at the moment is that you’ll soon get to know how good your followers’ taste in music really is.
SXSW 2013: Swarmly Launches For Android
As if it wasn’t easy enough to find tech savvy people in public by following their trails of tweets and cast-aside year-old Apply products, Swarmly now geolocates packs of them and delivers the information directly to iOS and Android phones. After a quiet iOS launch last September, the Android version launched today on Android to increase its effectiveness and potential user base. Swarmly doesn’t require check-ins. Instead, users enable the app to use their location data to contribute to “swarms” of people nearby, linked to specific locations where groups are likely to congregate. The app is designed to work instantly, instead of relying on historical data patterns like many check-in based applications. Swarmly could be a darling of SXSW 2013, and it will be interesting to see its guerrilla marketing implications.
Bitcasa Launches “Infinite Storage” Cloud
If you’ve been holding off putting your digital life in the cloud, it might be time to go for it now. Bitcasa is shaking up the tech sphere with its public launch offering “infinite storage” to users across multiple devices and operating systems including iOS, Android, Mac, PC and web. The update process is done automatically and every account is unlimited, so users never have to worry about forgetting to update or running out of space. The pricing is competitive as well, with an introductory price of $69 a year – regular cost is $99 for a year.
Tablet Sales Rise as PC Market Stagnates
The world’s going mobile and the PC just can’t keep up. Recent reports indicate that last quarter, the number of tablets shipped was more than half the number of PCs, compared to the 3rd quarter numbers from November, which showed almost 1 in 4 computers sold were tablets. The trend does not show any sign of slowing down, and suggests more than a shift in computing hardware sales. Windows may now be losing its long-lived market dominance. Of all PCs and Tablets shipped in the 4th quarter, a third of them run OSX, iOS, or Android. The definition of “personal computing” is certainly changing. Will Microsoft be able to adapt in time?
Sephora’s Effective Mobile Strategy
For an example of effective mobile strategy, check out beauty supply store, Sephora. Less than three years after first launching a mobile application, Sephora has created two tailored mobile experiences, apps for iPhone and iPad, with different features and content, to encourage purchases. The iPhone app incorporates barcode scanning for in-store product research, while the tablet version features articles and branded content paired with product recommendations and purchase links. The tailoring of the experiences has been highly effective, increasing mobile traffic, orders, and loyalty subscribers dramatically.
Google Maps For iOS Hands-On
Apple continued its mapping walk of shame yesterday as Google Maps rocketed to the top free app spot in the app store on its first night. The lesson to be learned here is that while you may want to crush your competitors and limit their real estate on your device, you better be able to back that up with a great equivalent product. If you don’t, it’s bound to backfire.
Nokia’s Here Maps out now for iOS, the wait for a true Google Maps replacement continues | The Verge
Apple Products Top Holiday Wish Lists of U.S. Kids
This is test copy. Nothing really to see here.
