Top 10 Mobile / Digital Developments in April
In the news: Lots of bots and thoughts on bots; Apple vs Facebook's quarterly results and what they mean for Mobile; and more...
Industry News:
1. Apple had its first quarterly result in recent memory when revenues dipped year on year. Benedict Evans has a good piece that covers this, as well as the overall smartphone market saturation.
2. On the other hand, Facebook had a great quarter, with Mobile ad revenue making 82% of total ad revenue, up from 73% in Q1' FY15.
It would seem that the shift in Mobile is happening from hardware to services...
Events:
3. The Facebook F8 Conference was held – the most important announcement being the release of its Messenger Platform and API which will allow businesses to interact directly with its 900 million users on an opt-in basis through Bots and/or integration with CRM solutions. Detailed recap here.
4. We at Robosoft had our own DesignNext event under the auspices of Nasscom and according to them, the feedback was extremely positive.
Thoughts on Bots
A lot of ink was spilled on Bots, with some calling them the end of Apps. The reality is of course more nuanced. Here are some of the best analyses on bots:
5. China is already much ahead in the Conversational UI experiment than the West, and Dan Grover, Product Manager at WeChat (one of the biggest Chinese players) says: "Bots won't replace Apps, Better Apps will replace Apps."
6. Think that bot was unusually smart? A handful of companies employ humans pretending to be robots pretending to be humans.
7. Benedict Evans has another measured piece on bots, conversation and AI as interface.
8. Sundar Pichai's Founders' Letter sums up Google's advances from the time it was a "mere" search engine and predicts for mobile: "The next big step will be for the very concept of the “device” to fade away. Over time, the computer itself?—?whatever its form factor?—?will be an intelligent assistant helping you through your day. We will move from mobile first to an AI first world."
9. Of course, we also chimed in with our thoughts on whether bots will replace traditional apps for brands (original article in the Economic Times, which was featured by LinkedIn).
Reports:
10. ComScore's 2016 Cross-Platform report is required reading for anyone in Digital / Mobile.
That's it for now! Let me know what you think in the comments, and also if I missed out anything important...
Follow me on Twitter @nikunjsanghvi for real-time updates.