Follow the Money: Will Wearables Inflect in 2020?
Apple is far ahead with Watch and Airpods, which may have sold 3 million units since Black Friday. Google meanwhile acquired Fitbit to buttress its wearables play. Amazon and Microsoft launched wearables lines in the past quarter, and smaller players like Bose and Snap are planting seeds for a wearables future.
There’s an underlying driver for this activity that goes back to the perennial analyst exercise of “following the money.” This is all about extrapolating product roadmaps based on tech giants’ motivations. This is often to future-proof their core businesses or diversify revenue in the face of maturing products.
December Focus: The Connected Consumer
When looking at several interlocking tech trends — wearables, IoT, smart devices, autonomous vehicles — one common thread emerges: our escalating connectivity as humans. All these technologies are increasingly melded with our senses as the computing “abstraction layer” diminishes.
In other words, device interfaces continue to get more intuitive and automatic. That can be seen in the progression of personal computing from UI milestones like the mouse to mobile-centric touch controls. Now, we have biometric tracking on the Apple Watch and ambient alerts to AirPods.
The “connected consumer” will be Street Fight’s editorial focus for the month of December.
How Wearables Are Changing Perceptions About Location Privacy
While firms that collect location data through mobile apps were once viewed as pariahs, a shift in attitudes has more consumers turning on location services for apps and taking advantage of the benefits that sharing this data can bring. Behind the changing attitude is a growing interest in wearables.
5 Ways Brands Are Using Wearables to Create Unique Marketing Moments
More than 250 million wearables are predicted to be in use by 2018. This presents an incredible opportunity for marketers looking to reach consumers not just based on their locations, but also based on their activity levels and personal interests. Here are five strategies that brand marketers are using.
Street Fight Daily: Handy Eyes Homejoy, Amazon Delivers From Local Stores
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Handy In Talks To Acquire Homejoy As Home Service Startups Consolidate (TechCrunch)… Amazon Now Delivers Food From Local Stores In Under One Hour As Prime Now Expands (GeekWire)… Mobilegeddon A Month Later: Small Business Study Shows…. Nothing Happened (Search Engine Land)…
Street Fight Daily: Online-to-Offline Retail, Pinterest Unveils Ad Products
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Report: More than Half of Offline Retail Sales Now Influenced by Digital, Mobile (Screenwerk)… Pinterest Unveils Flurry of Ad Products, Names Monetization Exec (AdAge)… Why APIs Will Save Your Business From Getting “Uber-ed” (Fortune)…
Street Fight Daily: Nokia’s Map Auction Heats Up, GrubHub Looks Beyond Restaurants
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Uber Joins Baidu as Nokia’s Maps Unit Draws Multiple Bidders (Bloomberg)… GrubHub Looks Beyond the Sit-Down Restaurant for Growth (Wall Street Journal)… New Platforms, Including BrightRoll, Plug Into Placed For In-Store Measurement (MediaPost)…
Street Fight Daily: Foursquare’s New Sales Force, Consolidation at the Counter
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Foursquare Beefs Up Sales Team (MediaPost)… Bigcommerce Set to Make First Acquisition as Rival Shopify Preps for IPO (Recode)… Apple Maps Now Using Wikipedia, YellowPages Group of Canada & Dianping As Data Sources (Apple Maps Marketing)…
Street Fight Daily: Inside Apple Watch, Uber’s Growth Numbers
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…Apple’s New Watch: Here’s What Matters for Local (Street Fight)… Uber Gives Sneak Peak Into Growth (USA Today)… Just 20 Percent Of Retail Consumers Want Location Divulged (Mobile Marketer)…
Street Fight Daily: MaxPoint’s Shaky IPO, Square Eyes Small Business
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…Ad Tech’s Rough Ride on Wall Street Continues With Latest IPO (AdAge)… The Payment Start-Up Square Expands Its Reach Into Small Businesses (New York Times)… Eddy Cue: Here’s how Apple Pay works on an Apple Watch (CNet)…
Street Fight Daily: Lyft Eyes Big New Round, Groupon Sells Beacons
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…… Ride-Hailing Service Lyft Is Said to Be in Talks to Raise $250 Million (New York Times)… Expedia Buying Orbitz for $1.6 Billion (Skift)… Online-To-Offline Metrics Increasingly Available, Important To Marketers (Search Engine Land)…
Street Fight Daily: Google Plans Uber Competitor, Layoffs at eBay and PayPal
Street Fight Daily: Zomato Buys Urbanspoon, Ford Opens Dashboard
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…Zomato Food Portal Buys Urbanspoon to Expand in U.S. (Businessweek)… With Applink 3.0, Ford Lets You Choose Your Navigation App (GigaOm)… 75% Of Small & Medium-Sized Businesses (SMBs) Say Internet Marketing Is Effective (Street Fight)…
Notifications on Apple Watch: How the Onus of Relevancy Will Shift From Consumer to Apps
The release of the Apple Watch puts greater emphasis on the need for contextual and helpful notifications, and if apps don’t answer this need with a more thoughtful approach to notifications, then Apple will very likely force their hand via the introduction of a filter for notifications…