The growth of AR is a promising concept and the possibility of it impacting all our lives is huge. As of today, the real world is seemingly glad about the outburst of AR apps from android and iPhone. Though the popularity of AR gaming apps is currently leading the contest, educational, e-commerce and manufacturing among other AR applications are not far behind.

Below are four ways this fascinating technological advancement will change our lives-

1. While Behind the wheel

AR since its inception in the world, has been closely tied to and used for the growth of navigation. This means that this field of navigation will definitely be worked on in the near future.

With due course of time, AR will dominate the way we navigate our way through the world; perhaps both indoors and outdoors. In future, AR will most likely give us a view of the street we are driving on-not just in front of the vehicles but, in any direction the drives man-oeuvres. It won’t be surprising if AR tells keeps a watch of pedestrians and other vehicles for us. AR when connected to your car’s sensors, will be able to keep a tab on your fuel tank, your braking distance and speed and perhaps even allow us to see clearly while drive in the dark.

2. The ability to try on/experience items before purchase

Brands like converse and Ikea are already making the most of this technological phenomenon. With AR you can try and see for yourself, how your potential purchase will look on your or in your surroundings.

For instance, you can try different furniture for your house or work space even before you buy it. Just look at your empty living room wearing smart glasses or through your device and arrange the virtual furniture where you please. You can choose the right furniture that matches your room’s size and design. Similarly, in the case of converse and other apparel brands, you place your desired purchase on your foot and see how it looks.

AR will be a boon to online shopping. As of now, Amazon allows you to try on watches on your wrists.

What a treat and benefit it would be to see and make sure that products bought online will suit your purpose-in looks, size and space.

3. Children will learn smarter

Back in the day, learning was not as interesting and easy as it is today. Students were expected to imagine things and then remember the same. A good example will be of studying chemistry. We knew how an atom looked like but did not necessarily know how a nucleus or electron looked like. But today, classes are becoming smart. Schools are using visuals to teach students; students can view how everything thought to them looks like. Students todays, can view videos of electrons moving around the nucleus.

In the near future, kids will see an atom in front of them, they could go around the atom and view how electrons are moving in the 3d space! All thanks to AR.

4. Entertainment and gaming

AR as we all know has maintained a strong hold in the gaming and entertainment industry and does not seem to be one that will diminish anytime soon. Pokémon Go took the world by storm and showed us what mass consumption and craze looked like! It was one of the first apps to make use of AR and successfully carved its name in the wall of fame of the Gaming sector. But with the rapidly moving advancements, AR will without a doubt revolutionize the entertainment industry.

AR headsets like Microsoft HoloLens, Magic Leap, and the Meta 2 are turning our surroundings into digital interfaces. Magic Leap on its part has shown us how gaming in AR would appear, turning your surroundings into an interactive, gaming scene. Virtual reality games have proven to be a great success, but they set a barrier between the player and reality. AR gaming on the other hand allows you to experience and create a reality, making the game-play feel much more natural.

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Mobile innovation is changing the way that companies are communicating with customers and getting work done.

Still, while the greatest value from mobile is drawn from the apps and data being used, many enterprises continue to struggle with how best to handle mobile app distribution in a way that drives adoption of the key mobile apps

Enterprise mobile apps are only effective if they’re being used. That’s why getting them in the used by your dealer network is absolutely important. Organizations with widespread or global networks can generally handle mobile app distribution in one of two ways: publishing to a public app store or publishing to an enterprise app store.

However, despite the overall enthusiasm for mobile apps, widespread adoption and use of apps within the enterprise has yet to occur. A variety of challenges companies experience in building and managing apps also maybe hindering adoption. A few crucial steps for successful mobile application adoption can be:

Focus on the user experience:

Highlight the apps benefits and demonstrate how it enables employees to perform tasks more efficiently. We also recommend incorporating feedback to ensure that the app sufficiently meets employee needs and expectations.

Make speed a top priority:

The reason that top consumer apps are well adopted is because they are simple—you don’t need to be trained professionally to use them. The same holds for the enterprise.

Know your user persona, not just your buyer persona:

Because employee adoption is critical to enterprise app success, user expectations and challenges should inform each stage of development. Offer an intuitive user experience, and enhance workforce productivity.

Safe and secure:

This is the most important aspect that need to be considered when embarking on the perfect mobile strategy due to rising incidents of data intrusion, malware or even hacking of accounts.

Promote services evangelism post-deployment:

Enterprise features can provide immediate value for workers, if they are able to use them. Thus, integrating your Support team into the feature adoption strategy is non-negotiable. It is important to be in touch with enterprise mobile app developers who have the experience delivering enterprise app solutions from the conceptualization stage through deployment.

To unlock the value of data, companies have to find ways to let it be easily accessed as part of this supply chain, flowing easily and usefully through the entire organization, and eventually throughout the organization’s ecosystem of partners as well. It is important to be prepared and agile enough to make changes based on what the analysis is showing.

With Fusion Informatics, you can get an edge over your competitors. We empower today’s leading enterprises to compete by rapidly delivering multi-edge mobile apps across the broadest array of devices and systems, today and in the future. We offer ready-to-run business mobile apps to help organizations better engage with customers and partners, as well as increase employee productivity through mobile device access to company systems and information.

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With the advent of wireless technology and an exponential increase in use of mobile phones and tablets for commercial operations, it has become necessary to grasp the concept of enterprise mobility and optimally use it for one’s business processes. In essence, enterprise mobility refers to the adaptation of mobile devices in everyday workplace functions, especially when it involves in-field and out-of-office activities. Sales representatives, human resource personnel, networking team, marketing managers and end users are some of its important dependents.

However, due to bifurcation of workforce into various teams and silos, managing mobility issues has become more complicated; solutions span too many operational domains. For instance, in organisations with BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policy in practice, data security is a big concern. Employees use the same device for personal as well as professional use which makes it difficult for technical team to track malware and assess risks. Companies, therefore, have to be more cautious about the way their mobility solutions are designed and implemented. No one key fits all.

Thus, through well planned customized enterprise mobility management, organisations can open itself to several benefits – efficient data collection, quicker reporting of events, better promotional data, faster updates, improved visibility to remote operations and projects, increased data driven decisions, higher profits and more. From enhanced employee engagement to amplified productivity, everything a company can aspire for in this technology-backed era is made attainable.

Fusion Informatics helps businesses in gaining profitable outcomes from mobility through a holistic approach focusing on strategy, model and technology.

Here’s CIRP’s chart calculating the loyalty rates of smartphone users by the mobile OS they choose. It shows 78 percent of iOS users chose another iPhone, while 67 percent of Android users stayed with Google’s OS. There is some switching among those though: 14 percent of former iOS users went Android, while 27 percent of former Android users crossed over to the Apple mobile ecosystem.

You can also see how iOS and Android are continuing to decimate the previous era’s smartphone champ, Blackberry: 34 percent of former Blackberry users switched to Android, while nearly half, 48 percent, moved over to iOS.

But the real battle that that Google and Apple need to focus on now is winning the feature phone users who have yet to upgrade to a smartphone. So far, Android is winning, gathering 50 percent of basic phone users, while just 39 percent chose iOS. This fight explains why Apple is pushing its iPhone 4 and 4S so heavily (and having pretty good success). It wants to lure in users who don’t mind upgrading to a fancier phone as long as it’s cheap, like the free iPhone 4 or $99 iPhone 4S with carrier contract.

In this chart, you can see a more granular break down of Android device makers and how their individual loyalty rates compare to the iPhone:

Just as the previous graph showed, iPhone owners are pretty loyal, with a 78 percent retention rate — though if they are going to switch, they mostly end up choosing a Samsung device, which speaks to Samsung’s aggressive recent ad campaigns against the iPhone. Samsung performs next best, with 52 percent loyalty to its brand of smartphone. But HTC (27 percent), LG (18 percent), Motorola (9 percent) and Blackberry (10 percent) performed miserably when it came to keeping their customers.

According to a recent report from the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, the unfamiliarity and complexity of the mobile device and associated technologies create security concerns for consumers who want to be confident that their personally identifiable information and actionable financial information (e.g., account numbers, PINs, security codes, and passwords) are protected in storage and while being used to process a mobile payment transaction, whether that storage is on the mobile device or in the cloud.

“Consumers aren’t the only ones who need to be mindful of mobile security,” an independent business analyst recently told Yahoo news. “The business owners on the other side of the mobile transaction need to be just as cautious.”

With online and mobile shopping having a banner year in 2013, retailers are rapidly adopting new strategies – and technologies – to make shopping easier for consumers. But with this effort comes the need for retailers to choose carefully the software, technology, and associated vendors that will make this transition to mobile as seamless and secure as possible.

According to countless experts in the field, there are important steps retailers must take to ensure mobile payments made via smartphone credit card processors are as safe and secure as possible in 2014, which is expected to be a turning point year for the growth of mobile payments.

Ensure Your PCI Compliance is Up to Date

Even though security measures are already built into mobile credit card readers, there are extra precautions retailers can take to ensure cardholder data is protected. In fact, retailers that use merchant accounts for processing credit card transactions are contractually obligated to safeguard customers’ credit card information. Every business dealing with credit card processing must meet Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance standards in order to continue accepting cards from their customers.

PCI standards are not laws, but rules that retailers must follow. If they do not retailers may face fines from PCI or lose the ability to accept cards, according to CreditCardProcessing.net (CCP.net), which provides how-to guides and tips about credit card processing for small businesses. Retailers with merchant accounts can review CCP.net’s checklist to ensure they are PCI compliant in order to accept credit cards from customers as payments.

Be Sure to Select Only Encrypted Card Readers

Look for a partner that supports the highest form of encryption technology, preferably end-to-end. All top-of-the-line mobile credit card readers today will have some form of mobile encryption. The top two, PayAnywhere and Square have slightly different security measures in place. PayAnywhere, North American Bancard’s mobile POS solution is Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS) compliant and has end-to-end encryption. While industry competitor Square Inc. also follows PCI and DSS standards the company offers reader encryption mainly for stored and public transmission of data.

With end-to-end encryption, personal data processed on a credit card reader is essentially wrapped in protective security layers until it reaches the processor. Much like shipped products are bubble wrapped so as not to be broken until they reach their destination, end-to-end encryption certifies credit card data is protected so it cannot be accessed until it reaches the processor destination. This encryption ensures personal data safe from a swiped credit card remains safe and secure in the transaction process.

Sharing Isn’t Always Caring

When retailers use credit card processing, it’s important to remember the android or iPhone suddenly becomes much more valuable. Retailers, quite frankly, need to ensure they keep their phone to themselves. Phones processing credit cards should be used by the only by the retailer and dependable employees. Since customers have now come to trust digital computer registers are secure, retailers can begin to instill the same confidence in mobile credit card processing by taking reasonable steps to ensure their card reader is used responsibly for business, as opposed to their child’s YouTube toy.

Work Those Review Sites to Ease Customer Worries

It’s a known fact that when in doubt, consumers tend to look online for reviews. Some studies now suggest customers trust reviews as much if not more than friend recommendations. This provides a unique opportunity for retailers to diminish holiday shopper fears once and for all this year.

Merchant Account Reviews, a Web site that reviews merchant account services and equipment, acknowledges that customers might have concerns about giving out credit card information to be entered into iPhone credit card readers. Retailers can ease customer worries by letting them know that none of their credit information is actually stored on the iPhone via review sites. Explaining that all transactions are transmitted directly to a secure payment gateway will put the customer at ease knowing that the transaction is secure.

Then there’s your general review site such as Yelp.com or Google Places where customers self publish reviews. Use these spaces as an opportunity to address the fact that you are using a credit card processor and why this makes you the best retailer around. Whether it’s a speedy checkout process or a tech savvy staff, retailers can use these review sites as a place to not only emphasize the convenience and safety of using mobile credit card processors, but also to attract customers into their stores and brand themselves as the hippest new retailer in town.

It’s an exciting and promising time for the mobile payments space, experts agree. And as long as consumers and retailers remain educated on best practices and optimal mobile security efforts, this industry is going to see unprecedented growth next ear and beyond.

The IAB estimates that the U.S. mobile ad market brought in $3.4 billion in 2012. The IAB didn’t break out revenues for apps vs. the mobile web, but Flurry has estimated that 80% of mobile activity occurs on apps. Comparatively, Kantar Media calculated that TV advertising accounted for $74 billion in ad revenues in 2012. Even if apps generated 100% of mobile ad revenues, the market would still be just 4.5% that of TV.

Meanwhile, Flurry also found that there are now more monthly users of mobile apps than there are for desktop computers and laptops. Yet the the desktop ad market is still 10 times the size of the mobile ad market in revenues, according to the IAB.

Why?

Michael Becker, managing director of the Mobile Marketing Association, says there are several reasons, but the main ones are a lack of a unified buying infrastructure for mobile apps and a comparatively fragmented market. “Reaching this audience isn’t as easy as making a TV buy,” he says. “That’s the big difference.”

To execute a mobile ad buy, you have to choose between various networks and exchanges and real-time bidding platforms. The ads themselves are also different since they’re often designed to prompt users to take action relatively quickly, which mean fewer branding ads and more direct-response executions. To ensure that the ads are effective, it helps to tailor to them to individual users’ demographics and geographic location. To make things even more complicated, while on desktop, there are basically two operating systems, in mobile there are at least 10, Becker says and “hundreds of browsers and screen sizes.”

The disparity between the reach of advertising via mobile apps and the complexity of the buying process is “both the challenge and the opportunity” says Peter Farago, VP of marketing for Flurry.

Flurry projects that the install base for mobile apps will double over the next year, which might lead some to conclude that mobile is a black hole that is eviscerating the TV and desktop market and leaving behind a much less lucrative ad industry in its wake. Yet eMarketer predicts that TV will continue to grow — and outpace digital advertising — through 2017.

One argument is that even though TV ratings are down — Morgan Stanley analyst Benjamin Swinburne recently found that they fell 50% over the past decade — TV is still the last place where you can find 5 million or more people tuned in at the same time to an ad. You may be able to get in front of 5 million people on Facebook, but if you use a display ad, only about one in 1,000 people will click on it.

Paul Gelb, head of strategy at MoPub, a mobile ad exchange firm, makes a more optimistic argument. In Gelb’s view, mobile ad revenues are still low because the industry is so new. Eventually, he says, mobile will be bigger than TV. “The dollars don’t shift in a meaningful way that’s sustainable overnight,” he says. Yet Gelb points out that bigger advertisers are jumping into mobile — Mondelez (nee Kraft) pledged last year to put 10% of its ad budget into the segment — and that both marketers and advertisers are experimenting to see what works. “Sometimes a blank canvas is a challenge,” Gelb says, noting that “even in TV it took the industry years to get to the 15- and 30-second commercial.”

Turns out, it’s an app world, after all.

According to app analytics firm Flurry, which tracks app usage on a staggering 300,000 apps on over a billion active mobile devices, we spend an average of 158 minutes each and every day on our smartphones and tablets. Two hours and seven minutes of that is in an app, and only 31 minutes is in a browser, surfing the old-school web.

A big chunk of that 158 minutes is taken up with games — 32 percent — but it’s almost shocking to see how much time a single app and a single company eats up. Eighteen percent of all the time that Americans spend on their phones is spent in the Facebook app, a figure that by itself dwarfs all other social networking apps.

Combined, the others only take up six percent of our time.

There was a time when developers thought HTML5 would kill the mobile app, with experts like Mike Rowehl saying things like: “We’ll forget that we even passed through another era of native apps on the way to the mobile web.”

In an interesting twist, however, HTML5 is actually being used more as a tool for cross-platform native app development. In fact, it’s now the number one choice for developers building apps for multiple platforms.

Flurry also says that people are now using more apps than ever, launching 7.9 per day in the last part of 2012 versus 7.5 per day in 2011 and 7.2 per day in 2010. Consumers are continuing to try new apps as well, with long-term users adding new apps regularly to their existing stack.

“We believe that with consumers continuing to try so many new apps, the app market is still in early stages and there remains room for innovation as well as breakthrough new applications,” Flurry says.

Is the mobile web dead?

Not necessarily — we’re only five years into this ongoing mobile revolution. But today, people are talking with their taps, and they’re overwhelmingly choosing apps.

Apple is hitting the road to showcase its new mobile-device advertising capability, dubbed iAd, and has indicated it could charge as much as $10 million to be part of a handful of marketers at the launch, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Ad executives say they are used to paying between $100,000 and $200,000 for similar mobile deals.

Earlier this month, Apple unveiled iAd, a software system to offer ads in the applications available in its App Store. Ads are likely to start appearing in applications on its iPhone and iPod Touch devices in June, and its iPad later in the year, according to the person familiar with the matter.

Apple is making waves on Madison Avenue with its price tag, which comes with initial demands for greater control over advertisers’ marketing campaigns.

“It’s a hefty sum,” says Phuc Truong, managing director at Mobext, a mobile marketing business owned by Havas SA whose clients include Sears, Choice Hotels, Amtrak and Volvo. “What Apple is trying to do is certainly above and beyond what’s been done in the past.”

An Apple spokeswoman said the company will sell and serve the ads and declined further comment, except to reiterate that app developers will receive 60% of the revenue. Apple gets the other 40%.

Apple on Wednesday said it has scheduled a developers’ conference for June 7-11, where it is expected to unveil its next iPhone. It would be up to developers whether they want to include ads in their apps, although the financial incentive is there.

A handful of other companies sell ads that appear in Apple device applications, including AdMob Inc., which Google Inc. announced it would acquire last year for $750 million. AdMob says Apple’s entry into ad selling is going to boost competition and development in the space, says Jason Spero, vice president of AdMob North America.

Zaw Thet, chief executive of mobile ad firm 4INFO Inc., said Apple’s move is likely to spur other mobile ad startups to shift the focus of their developments away from the iPhone to other mobile systems, such as Google’s Android.

Despite the high price, ad executives at agencies from Boston to New York and San Francisco to Los Angeles have crowded into conference rooms in recent weeks to listen to the tech company’s pitch for iAd.

Discussions over possible deals are ongoing but several ad executives said they are beginning to prepare creative ideas for campaigns.

One example Apple has been showing advertisers is an ad for Nike’s Air Jordan basketball shoe, says Baba Shetty, chief media officer at Boston-based ad agency Hill Holiday, owned by Interpublic Group. When a user is in an application, an animated banner ad appears on the border of the screen, along with an iAd logo. If the user taps on the ad, it expands across the screen, displaying a video, an interactive store locator and exclusive offers at local stores, among other features.

“It was very easy to think about the several minutes of interaction time consumers can spend with the ad. It’s incredibly attractive,” Mr. Shetty says.

Apple is planning to charge advertisers a penny each time a consumer sees a banner ad, ad executives say. When a user taps on the banner and the ad pops up, Apple will charge $2. Under large ad buys, such as the $1 million package, costs would rack up to reach $1 million with the various views and taps.

The audience is sizable: Apple has sold 85 million iPhone and iPod Touches so far and estimates that users spend about 30 minutes a day using applications.

Marketers will be able to target ads to groups of users based on consumers’ download preferences from its iTunes store, according to ad executives. For instance, a marketer could choose to show its ads to people who have downloaded financial applications or reggaeton music, horror movies or comedy TV shows.

Marketers also will be able to target ads to users in a general location like a city, although they cannot target ads to individual consumers or access personal details.

Apple is seeking high quality ads from big-name marketers for the launch, ad executives say. The ads will go through an approval process, and Apple will build the ads itself during the first couple of months to make sure they work well and attain a certain aesthetic and functionality, ad executives say. Eventually, Apple plans to create a developer kit so that agencies will be able to design and create the ads themselves.

The process is causing tension among some ad directors, who are hesitant to give up control.

“As a creative director, I can completely understand that they created this new baby and they want to make sure it gets born looking gorgeous. But as a creative director, I don’t feel completely comfortable letting Apple do the creative,” says Lars Bastholm, chief digital creative officer at WPP’s Ogilvy.

Marketers have been much slower to buy mobile ads than expected, largely because consumers had yet to visit mobile Web sites in meaningful numbers and the process of creating mobile ad campaigns was a technical and logistical feat.

Apple isn’t making that any easier, with requirements that advertisers use special technologies for its system, says Jordan Rohan, an Internet analyst with Thomas Weisel Partners.

But, ad executives say that if Apple nails its pitch, it could open up the gates for mobile advertising.

“I think the tipping point has come,” says Mark Read, chief executive of WPP Digital. “The absolute revenues now are tiny, but you can see how these things are starting to fit together.”

Resource:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703648304575212411500983040.html?mod=rss_Today%27s_Most_Popular

Developers will have their revenue split decreased by 10 per cent, matching Apple’s structure for applications and games sold on iTunes.

Free apps debuted on App World Australia in December and local developers have been waiting with bated breath for the paid version.

But since then RIM executives have consistently said the paid offering would be unveiled “soon”, without revealing further details.

BlackBerry users in 13 countries have been able to buy applications since April 2009 while 42 countries are with the free-only version.

PayPal was the sole payment method but the paid store will also accept credit cards and carrier billing.

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With carrier billing, purchases would appear on the buyer’s telco bill.

Telstra, Optus and other local telcos are in talks with RIM to provide carrier billing services, said Tyler Lessard, RIM global alliances and developer relations vice-president.

“We’re talking to all our carrier partners in Australia for paid apps,” Mr Lessard said during RIM’s Wireless Enterprise Symposium (WES) in Orlando, Florida.

He refused to say more when pressed for a specific month or quarter, but said paid apps would be available “later this year”.

RIM would still proceed to launch with PayPal and credit card billing if telcos don’t come to the party in time, he said.

The current revenue split of 80:20 will change to 70:30 later this year.

The move will help RIM expand App World’s payment options and enter new markets.

“This changed about a week ago and we’ve briefed our developers,” Mr Lessard said.

BigTinCan CEO David Keane welcomed the move despite the 10 per cent cut.

“It takes the headache out of billing for developers … this is a pretty fair move,” Mr Keane said.

The Sydney-based mobile application development firm already has several apps for sale on the US App World site such as BuzzMe.

Resource:
http://www.itwire.com/it-industry-news/strategy/38635-google-growls-at-groggle

Australians’ ownership of internet phones now sits at 43 per cent, with 29 per cent regularly using it to search, email, find maps and to share their lives on Facebook, Twitter and MySpace.

Even though people have an internet-enabled handset, some people aren’t necessarily using it. According to Nielsen’s online business managing director Matt Bruce some still own older 2G smartphone models, while others are afraid of bill shock.

“The older models are not as easy to use. You have to find your way through the phone to find the browser, then go from there. The iPhone makes it easier,” he said.

Internet searches are the most popular online activity on the phones. Some 73 per cent of users conduct online searches by mobile now, compared with 30 per cent a year ago.

Other common uses include checking news and weather (59 per cent, up 18 points), email (58 per cent, up 20 points), maps and directions (56 per cent, up 24 points) and social networking (39 per cent, up 25 points).

The adoption of internet phones has been growing steadily since the introduction of mobile data cap plans in Australia, which go some way to reducing the risk of bill shock for users. People’s infatuation with the iPhone has also driven mobile internet adoption worldwide.

Nokia still maintains a solid lead on internet phones in Australia with a 35 per cent market share, however, the iPhone has made significant gains in the past year, more than doubling from just 13 per cent to 28 per cent market share. Intention to purchase an iPhone also remains high, with Apple set to triple its share this year, Bruce said.

With an overwhelming majority of the share of mobile social networking, Facebook is by far the most common social networking site accessed via mobile (98 per cent), followed by Twitter (20 per cent) and MySpace (17 per cent), the report said.

According to Nielsen, Telstra has seen mobile data traffic on its Next G network double every eight months for the past two years.

Resource:
http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/mobiles/australians-take-to-mobile-internet-20100429-tszn.html