Converging technologies, new content and market potential

This first post is well over two years in the marking. Long before Google launched Google Maps there was little talk of commercial location based services. Well that is not entirely true, whilst I was in the UK working in the mobility space we had been trying to get location based services (LBS) working. The issue at the time was the technology available, mobile networks were trying to push LBS using a technology built into the mobile networks. To cut a long story short this failed and in my opinion for several years the area went quiet. So where are we now and what has changed? This Blog will seek to investigate innovations in the area of converged devices and the types of services which they will enable.

At Indaran we have been quietly working on our market offering for quite sometime and now as we start to ramp up our first public pilot I thought it would be time to start to comment on this great industry we see about to explode.

So the topic for this entry is 'Converging technologies, new content and market potential', what does this all mean and where are we going?

Well quite simply today there are three key mobile devices which the public are using;

• Mobile Phone
• Music Player
• Personal Navigational Device

Within the next 12 to 24 months we will see these devices converged into a single device. No one will be paying the $500 for a standalone TomTom any more, neither will they pay the same amount for their IPOD. These will be a single device and with that single device comes some very interesting opportunities.

To be honest convergence started between these three areas back in 2005 and CeBit 2006 showcased three devices which were to hit the market with three way integration. Since then of course Apple have announce the iPhone which has brought great market awareness to the two way integration of the Phone and the Music player. Apple had to do this because it is playing in one of the fastest growing commodity markets in the world today - the digital media player market. Apple needed to deliver a product which allowed them to keep innovating but more importantly allowed them to keep their premium price tag attached to their devices.

So leaving the history lesson, where are we today? Well today we have a growing number of three way converged devices entering the market. These include Nokia, Samsung, Mio, RIM's Blackberry, HP, HTC and nearly every other Windows Mobile device manufacture on the market.

Market awareness of these devices are growing and people are starting to talk about being able to use your mobile phone to navigate or combining it with the mobile phone features - being able to allow friends and families to know where you are. Also if you look at what we were trying to do back in London in early 2002 and one of the primary reasons (in my opinion) Google bought Keyhole was to allow location based searching and advertising services to end users. Now currently this market is still in the 'Geek Road Test' phase as I call it, IT professionals and early adopters are using the devices but not the mass market - that is where things are about to change.

These types of services are what we will see a lot of in the coming years, that is location specific services allowing users to find people and places more effectively but also allowing companies to find and target users more effectively.

Well that is all well and good but I would like to pose the question: What else can we do, what new opportunities will emerge?

I suggest a dramatic change in the way we consume certain types of content. Take travel content for one, for over 100 years it has remained relatively untouched. If I plan on going somewhere, I go to my local bookstore and purchase a guide to the area. The guide is updated once every two years, is written for a wide demographic and I would suggest contains less than 20% of information valid to that user. This is not to say that the guide contains a lot of space filler, just that to make the guide profitable the publisher needs to target the greatest number of people without writing an encyclopedia (although some guide books are now that size). This process really has not changed since the first travel guides where written back in the mid 1800's.

So here are my thoughts:

• I don't want to carry a 500 page manual around in my bag whilst traveling,
• I want to be able to select content which is pertinent to me and store it on a single digital device,
• I want to be able to have travelers with similar interests to me suggest tour items which I don't know about, in other words I want to experience things I don't know I will like,
• 
  
• I don't want to be looking down at a guide book - how many people do you see in Paris or Florence with their head down in a book and not looking up taking in their surroundings?
• I want to be able to experience a site, head up examining the intricacies of the craftsmen of the era,
  
• I want to be notified when there is something I need to know about not have to rely on thinking I should open a guide book

I honestly believe that we are about to see a fundamental shift in the way travel content is created, selected, purchased and consumed. We live now in what is being called the 'prosumer age', an age where providers and consumers are one in the same. Where communities of interest or social networks are forming and growing to challenge traditional publishing houses. Take WikiTravel for one, what a brilliant idea and what an enormous threat to the traditional travel guide companies.

If you couple this shift in the way content is being created with the three way convergence mentioned above I think you would agree we are in for some interesting times to come.