The Future of Mobile: Part 1
Episode #044: The Future of Mobile, Part 1
Episode Information
We’re back with a special two-part episode of Mobile Matters and this week we’re talking all about the future of mobile and hearing directly from some of our previous guests on the show. Think of it as your crystal ball into where mobile is headed from some of the brightest marketing and tech leaders. This week we’re hearing from AT&T, Oracle, Crayola, Samsung, and Merkle and next week we'll hear from a few more. Then, we’ll be back with our regular episodes of Mobile Matters and we have some incredible interviews lined up with more marketing and tech leaders.
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Stephanie Cox: I'm Stephanie Cox and this is mobile matters. We're back with another special two part episode of mobile matters. And this week. We're talking about the future of mobile and hear directly from some of our previous guests on the show. So think of it as your crystal ball and wo where mobile is headed from some of the brightest marketing Tech leaders around. This week, we're hearing from AT&T, Oracle, Crayola, Samsung, and Markle and next week we'll hear from even more and then we'll be back with our regular episodes of mobile matters and we have some incredible interviews lined up with more marketing and tech leaders. Now, let's take a look into our crystal ball and see where the president of AT&T Indiana, Bill Swords, believes the future of mobile is headed.
Bill Soards: Oh, that's a good question. I mean, sometimes, some days it feels like it's hard to see what's even two years out down the road but one of the things that's apparent to me is that the speed and advancements of wireless networks are accelerating so fast. I mean there was a day not I'm not too long ago. When many of us thought Nirvana would be the day where we all have fiber directly to our house. And you know, while that's true and there are many companies us included building fiber directly to people's homes. I think there's a lot of Industry analysts and Industry leaders that are now seeing the capabilities of wireless networks and kind of beginning to wonder about you know, how is this going to be adopted, you know, the speed requirements that I have in my home, you know, may or may not require a fiber optic connection today. But at the same time, you know consumers are still changing the way that they're watching video and that tends to be a more mobile experience, but just as all of us have gotten used to watching, you know HD TV for the last decade-and-a-half. Now the market is kind of poised to move to 4K video which is you know, even more massive amounts of data. So, you know, I think the market's going to play out, whether it’s fiber or whether it's wireless. I think there's going to continue to be a business cases for both just kind of depending on the situation but it's going to be really interesting to see how all that plays out in 10 years from now, who knows what we may be on 6G or 7G by then and you know, that's really hard for me to wrap my head around the world awfully excited about 5G here yet this year.
Stephanie Cox: The theme of new technology changing how we View mobile was also apparent and how Dave Galante who is now the senior director of food and beverage at Oracle thinks about mobile. Let's take a listen.
Dave Galante: Well, we’re super excited by RCS. So you know, we've been… I mean, I've been in a SMS marketing business since I… of gosh, since I was at ExactTarget in 2011. I think that we both worked there and we both worked on SMS marketing. Though, it was a great run was a lot of fun and I'm really excited that RCS which is Rich Communication Services is really kind of taking SMS to the next level. A lot of things that marketers want to do in the SMS channel with visual, you know images, of the product and video and conversational logic. All those things were really hard to do in the SMS context and MMS gave us some of those capabilities but the cost were really high and the whole hassle trying to figure out how to get images to load on different phones will kind ruin the whole experience. However, we're partnering very closely with Google to build out the next generation of messaging which is called Rich Communication Services and what’s really interesting about RCS is that it's actually a experience that lives inside the native messaging app on your phone. So for example for Android the default, you know SMS application that you have every single Android device will now actually support RCS. And so what we built actually for Subway is that order ahead experience completely within the Native Messaging application. So that means I can have a transactional or marketing message come into the phone, you know asking the consumer. Hey, you know, we haven't seen you in a while and we have a great lunch special and I can take that kind of marketing message that comes in through the traditional SMS Channel move it to RCS and then convert that to a purchase. And if that consumer comes back and says, you know what I dont have lunch plans, from the messaging app - They can go ahead and and customize their order, find a Subway and have it ordered right from their phone without downloading anything.
Stephanie Cox: Next let's hear from Daniel Appelquist, who's the Director of Web Advocacy for Samsung internet and also co-chairs as the W3C technical architecture group and his thoughts on how Innovation with mobile devices has stalled and what we need to do next.
Daniel Appelquist: I've been decrying for a while now the fact that we are kind of that we... We've kind of stalled on Innovation when it comes to mobile devices, right. Every single mobile device tends to be indistinguishable these days because you’ve got a flat black plate of glass. Sometimes you got a nod, sometimes you got a punch. Sometimes you don't have either of those but it's still basically the same thing. You’ve got a passive touch, We’ve got very nice screens. But basically it's the same form factor in everybody's hands. I'm interested in things that are breaking that mold. So, I mean, it's like, you know, I guess I might seem like I'm
promoting my employer's products. But I am actually excited about the Galaxy fold and other devices like that, right because they're actually trying to innovate what is a mobile device. Anna’s in the middle of writing a blog post about responsive design. And one of the things that we found is especially important that I think developers will start to need to think about is that if they make an assumption that the screen size doesn't change on a mobile device will that… you know foldable phone throws that out the window. You could your screen size could double the minute that the that the developer or the, sorry, that the person holding phone folds it up and all these things work differently. Right? So I see that I see that finally being a bit of new innovation that's coming to the form factor. I also am still really bullish about IoT. Again I think we’ve had a bit of a stalling of innovation there, but I think… And also I'm worried about the Privacy that we have the privacy issues that we let in the door with IoT. So things like you know, do do I really want a camera connected to Google in my house all the time. I don't personally want that but, you know, are there other ways to think about IoT and think about connected devices that could be more in your home or any kind of other environment that could be more privacy focused. I think that there's still a lot of… A lot of ground to be covered there. I think. So I'm, so that those are a couple of things that I'm excited about.
Stephanie Cox: Now let's hear from Josh Kroo, the VP of Marketing Communications and Interactive Platform at Crayola, and where he thinks mobile is headed and the importance of delivering value to consumers.
Josh Kroo: I think when you think about the future of mobile and all the things you just described. Whether it’s wearables, voice, etc. It’s, What is a consumer going to value out of that? Right. It’s whats the content we’re going to be able to give them to engage them. And so I think if you have, if you understand your brain and your core vision from a content perspective and the value you can deliver to a consumer, you can figure out how to fit that with all sorts of different technologies that are going to be coming. I really believe that at the end of the day. That the technology should be in service of the goal that you are looking to accomplish and how do we engage consumers. I mean you could have the coolest thing in the world that isn’t really delivering value.
Stephanie Cox: Another key topic that came out from a lot of guests was the importance around the mobile experience. Let's hear about that topic from Marcha Villasenor, who leads digital messaging at Merkel.
Marcha Villasenor: I mean, I really think the answer said before the whole the mobile web design. You know what I think that where we're going to look for our favorite brands on our mobile device and expect a fully mobile experience. No, we're not going… We’re no longer going to accept a desktop. That was the desktop platform that was, you know, potentially version for mobile or even a non-mobile web page. I mean, I’m amazed whenever I look something up on my mobile and it’s something that’s not responsive or mobile friendly pops up in this day and age. That’s almost unacceptable from a brand anymore. So, I really think that that full mobile experience where you look for something on your device and it you know immediately pops up in a really great mobile friendly way that allows you to find what you are looking for, order what you want, get your notifications. And you know and everything happens on your device.
Stephanie Cox: Finally, let's hear from Chad White, who's the head of Research at the Oracle Marketing Cloud Consulting. He has some great insights on where he thinks the future of mobile is headed especially around mobile design in the customer experience.
Chad White: The future of mobile is strong for sure. And I think that this past holiday season, we saw that the gap between desktop conversions and mobile conversions has gotten pretty small. I don't think they quite reached parody. But like I remember when that gap was just huge and we had this kind of knuckleheaded discussion about how people don't convert on mobile. So we don't need to have mobile friendly emails. And I think that what's happened over the last several years is proven what many of us were saying at the time is that that gap exists because design and CX is lacking mobile design and CX was locking. Back when that gap was was pretty huge Google had not dropped the hammer on brand saying You must have responses websites, and so once Google did that... things got much better, so you need to have a consistently mobile, you know, friendly approach from email to the landing page and to the website or to the the mobile app or wherever your your point of conversion is. So I think, you know, now we have this this young segment of the population that mainly engages with the internet via their mobile devices and mobile devices are getting pretty big. Like mobile is the web and probably always will be for some of these people in the same way that we kind of see that in Asia and Africa. So I think that that’s a very strong trend, for the mobile connection being a from email to the web not being very strong. I also think that's probably the one of the next pain points around mobile is going to be 4K displays. I know that Sony has at least one phone that has a 4K display and I hope that we don't move too quickly towards 4K display because people are still kind of wrestling a little bit with the retina display, but I have a feeling that within the next few years you’re probably going to see more 4K displays and that's going to have some pretty serious ramifications towards towards email design. You know the resolution of images that we put in those emails and what happens to load times that's going to be pretty significant. And then we… The last thing I would touch on is voice assistance which are not only smart speakers, but obviously our phones. All of our phones have Siri and another voice assistance built into them as mobile phones start to get more more integrated into the in-car experience. We're going to be using voice to interact with mobile devices while we're in vehicles and that's something we definitely should keep an eye on.
Stephanie Cox: Thanks for joining us for another special episode of mobile matters will be back next week with more predictions of where the future mobile is headed from marketing and tech leaders. I'm Stephanie Cox and you've been listening to mobile matters. If you haven't yet be sure to subscribe, rate, and review this podcast until then be sure to visit lumavate.com and subscribe to get more access to thought leader’s best practices and all things mobile.