2012 Trends Report Card, Part VI

Here's Part VI of our report card of how we did with our 2012 predictions. 

Tech Trends

1.     Converging technology, like the “paperless office,” won’t live up to its hype. The real story with converging media is BYOD – Bring Your Own Device to the office. We correctly identified BYOD as a trend but overstated problems with multiple devices as a topic of coverage. Grade: B-.

2.     Data will be bigger in 2012. Big Data did generate a lot of coverage, too many to cite. But we’ll one New York Times article: "The Age of Big Data," which says it all. Grade: A.

3.     Ongoing Tech Trends we expect to continue from 2011:

·         Cloud computing: This trend started in 2010 but continues to go mainstream. Grade: A but we admit this was a gimme.

·         The battle of tablets: Just because the first battle went in Apple's direction does not mean that wannabe iPad Killers have given up the fight. Competitors still want to get into the action and capture some of the marketshare. From the media's perspective, it's a two-horse race between the Kindle Fire and iPad. We expect a third option to gain some traction, but the iPad will continue to dominate. Grade: A.

·         The three most important tech trends will be mobile, mobile, mobile. Unless the three most important trends are social, social, social. For example, enterprise technology now needs not only to have an intuitive interface, it also must be accessible on iPads. Grade: A. 

·         Gaming is not just for kids. Gaming will continue to be integrated into business and training apps to keep people engaged and entertained. Grade: B because while the trend continued it did not generate the kind of media attention we expected.

We'll issue our last set of grades in tomorrow's post.

In the meantime, let us know if you have any questions or comments.

2012 Trends Report Card, Part III

Here's Part III of our report card of how we did with our 2012 predictions. 

Media Trends

1.     More viewers will cut the cable cord. We nailed this one as articles appeared across the media spectrum (print, online, blogs, etc.) with reported and first-person accounts of “cord cutting” as Americans tried to replace cable TV service either as to save money or to try new watch-anywhere apps such as Hulu Plus and Netflix.  Media outlets covering the story included the Wall St. Journal ("Over-the-Air TV Catches Second Wind, Aided by Web," “Cable Firms Making Offers Cord-Cutters Can't Refuse,” “Cable Firms Making Offers Cord-Cutters Can't Refuse” & A Year Without Cable: Is it possible to survive on Netflix and Hulu alone?), New York Times (“Disruptions: TV Makers Ignore Apps at Their Own Peril” & "In Search of Apps for Television"), Bloomberg BusinessWeek (interview with Comcast’s CEO "cord cutting”),  and others. Grade: A+.

2.     Converging media will continue in 2012. We still think lines of cooperation and competition will continue to blur among media properties: radio stations now post photos and text articles on their website while newspapers feature video channels. And with cord-cutting, more people are watching TV shows on anything but a TV, mostly smartphones, tablets and computers. However, this was a bit topic for media coverage. Grade: B-.

3.     E-books will improve their experience by providing new interactive and multimedia content. We said that with “the growing capabilities of e-readers,… expect e-textbooks to include interactive exercises, and nonfiction e-books to include more video, photos, and audio, while fiction books will come packed with featurettes much the way DVDs are packaged.” Bloomberg BusinessWeek validated that prediction with an article, “Easier E-Books with Inkling,” that said, "E-books will improve their experience by providing new interactive and multimedia content." We still think this will happen but we were optimistic to think e-book featurettes would be a regular item in 2012.  We now think that will happen within three to five years.  Grade: C+/B- for being too ahead of the game on this.

We'll issue more grades in tomorrow's post.

In the meantime, let us know if you have any questions or comments.

Birnbach Communications' Top Predictions for 2012, Part 6

Here's Part 6 of our predictions:

1.     Converging technology, like the “paperless office,” won’t live up to its hype. Converging technology was supposed to result in single devices that could handle multiple functions.  The problem: we still need too many chargers and have too many devices to sync.  Although smartphones have killed the wonderful Flip camera, and damaged sales of standalone cameras, dedicated GPS units and watches; convergence hasn’t delivered exactly clear benefits. Instead, we own and carry more devices: laptop or ultrabook, iPhone or Android phone (or, decreasingly, BlackBerry), iPad, iPod, etc. What’s worse are the multiple chargers we need to power those devices: laptop charger, phone charger, iPad charger (at least iPhones, iPads and iPods use the same charger) -- which doesn't take into consideration the separate chargers for all of these devices for your office, car and home.

But the real problem with multiple devices is the need to sync them all. Every device seems to contain an address book for friends, family and work, and those address books all need to be replicated on your cell, your work and home phones, laptops, tablets, etc. – if only because no one ever remembers phone numbers anymore. The same is true with email accounts on different devices and calendars, especially if you need to track activities for your spouse and children. The problem is that not all devices sync well with others. So mistakes and false information creep in, leaving users with zombie appointments that keep updated but can't be killed, um, deleted. Multiple devices require different syncs during the day, which increases the likelihood of some information that you actually need getting overwritten or misinformation getting repeated and reducing the owner's confidence in the info. This gets even more complicated as the workplace increasingly is embracing Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) to the office.  The ability to have devices operating on different platforms sync and communicate to each (techs call that “interoperability”) is critical in a BYOD work environment.  Some companies, like Apple, prefer their own ecosystem so that you're not-so-subtlety pushed to buy only one platform, theirs. B2B tech vendors have tried that before, but their corporate customers don't like to be locked in. While there will always be Apple evangelists, the rest of us want interoperability, and customers will be better served if we get that. If there's truly an app for interoperability, it needs to be simple to use and cost-effective. Otherwise, convergence won’t live up to its promise. And for personal usage, convergence is sometimes more important than the device itself.  This point is perhaps best made by noting that young adults love all the features on their phones, except two: the phone (because they rarely actually use phones to make a call) and voicemail (they prefer texts).

Let us know if you agree or disagree. And check back tomorrow for additional predictions.