silicon valley meets zurich - mobile industry trends from the valley
TRANSCRIPT
Mobile Trends in the Valley(Hot Investment Areas)
Mar 31, 2016
@mobileraj
@mobileraj
Big data is transforming every (mobile) experience. Data Scientist is the new iOS Developer.
Mobile Lifecycle
Facebook, with look-alike campaigns, enable publishers to target ads against users similar to their users whom perform the best (in terms of engagement and retention)
Customer Acquisition
AppSee enables heat maps so you can better understand what a user is doing on a screen vs just a “drop-off” event
User Experience
Example Verticals
Tact and Clari look at historical CRM workflows to assist you in the sales process to close a deal.
Sales
Wealthfront and Betterment use data to better manage your money in an automated way.
Finance
Descartes Labs analyzes satellite imagery to better predict crop yields
Maps
Pindrop uses big data to determine if the call is fraud by analyzing voice and more.
Customer Service
@mobileraj
AI is the new layer. Machine learning is creating new breakthroughs. Every mobile service is thinking about predictive & context.
Google Photos is one of the largest demonstrations of a CV neural network. Sentient has developed a CV cloud.
Computer Vision
AlphaGo beating a Go master was a significant milestone in that a brute-force tree crawl will not work in Go given the number of possible moves.
Machine Learning
Siri, Cortana and Alexa have brought voice & natural language interfaces into the mainstream. Conversational interfaces are next.
NLP
Google Now and Foursquare anticipate based on context. Wearables anticipate based on health data.
Predictive
@mobileraj
Messaging as a platform may potentially be as disruptive as the App Store itself creating new billion dollar opportunities.
Messaging has overtaken social networks themselves in reach and engagement.
Heavyweights
WeChat, Line and others have shown that messaging can be used to drive primary workflows such as commerce and customer service.
Platform
The next gold rush as brands build bots for messaging apps.
App Store
An ecosystem of bot enablers have cropped-up over the past year. Some develop 100% machine conversation, others human/machine hybrid. Some focus on industry verticals, others are industry agnostic and focus on specific platforms. Some are speech only and others messaging only.
Bot Enablers
@mobileraj
VR is the current Silicon Valley rage
25+ VR headsets have launched over the past year, some funded over Kickstarter, many venture-backed. Every major platform company has a VR initiative.
Headsets
At GDC, many smaller game publishers are focusing on VR. Large publishers such as EA, Activision, Blizzard are taking a wait and see approach.
Gaming
Floored provides VR modeling of real estate. Next Galaxy provides instructional VR content for doctors to practice. Esi provides virtual prototyping to automakers like Ford.
Enterprise
Major content producers like Fox have announced new VR groups. Startups have created new tools for production. Pornhub and others have launched VR/360 video channels.
Content / Production
@mobileraj
Substantial investment continues into vertical drone applications
Skycatch is used for mapping terrain for construction.
Area17, spun out of SRI, enables indoor mapping via a drone
Honeycomb allows farmers to survey land.
Skycart like Amazon and others have developed drones for product delivery.
Perceptiv assists with film-making
Lily makes a drone for taking selfies
Vires Aeronautics has kits to convert planes into self-flying planes (similar to Cruise Automation acq’d by GM)
3D Robotics makes drones/software for the enterprise (eg land surveying, farming)
@mobileraj
Privacy is a recent hot topic
vs
The FBI recently asked Apple to help them unlock a criminal’s phone. Case was going to court although it seems FBI has determined a work-around.
Rumor has it that Apple is improving encryption with the next iPhone to make devices that are impenetrable.
Apple’s approach has been to generally keep data and compute on-device. Google, Facebook and others keep user data in the cloud.
Fundamentally different approaches and pros/cons. The cloud enables learning and deeper assistant experiences at the trade-off of privacy.
IOT, self-driving cars and wearablesare collecting substantially more data about one selves. Who becomes the gatekeepers?
@mobileraj
Unicorn valuation markdowns. Increased focus on SAAS metrics and getting to profitability.
@mobileraj
On-demand has created new economies. It is the biggest impact on productivity since the personal computer.
API Economy Access Points Context Gig Economy
@mobileraj
Some investment areas have slowed to a trickle.
Consumer Mobile Apps
Appendix