Why Apple’s Announcement this week is More than Just About a New Phone

Apple (NASDAQ: $APPL) will make a splash this week with a number of new product and innovation releases.  In fact if you want to track the announcement you can subscribe to a meeting request and a countdown clock on the Apple website.  For those of us scanning the analyst reviews for trends and earnings directions, the event should reveal the largest one-day announcement of new Apple product in the company’s history.  The new phone, a new watch (these days the proper term is “wearable” since a wristwatch is so passe), and a new “phablet” – a large screen phone not quite the same size and use portfolio as the iPad – will all emerge.

According to Forbes writer Ewan Spence there is a lot of spectacle over this product release:

For fans and followers, journalists and analysts, to pop culture experts, celebrities, and late night chat show hosts, this Tuesday is going to be just like Christmas Day.

For me I am more interested in the location-based service and commercial wallet components that will begin to make their way into the full Apple line of products.  Most users have been accustomed to using apps to provide 2-D and 3-D barcodes to check in to airline flights, buy coffee, or secure reward points in loyalty programs.  This next step is akin to making your phone an actual commercial wallet where the funds are loaded into the wallet via smart chip and app to enable users to make purchases with appropriately enabled point of sale (POS) systems.

I have written about this topic as part of my coverage on #ConvergenceForces last year.  In my opinion, this is the most significant step of a tech vendor to date to really push that vision into a device-ready reality.

Comment or post below your thoughts on the Apple announcement.

Changing Intended Human Behavior, and Liking It

More on my coverage of convergence forces, recently I interviewed a number of customers and executives at the SAP CRM 2014 conference in Las Vegas.  One of the big topics was the focus of location-based services, social, and predictive analytics to offer real-time perks to consumers who have opted-in for such deals.

I’m walking through the park with my wife and I receive a notification on my smart phone.  Because my wife and I enjoy a particular film festival, an offer comes to us for a free ticket with one purchase to an event happening in a nearby venue.  When we finish a lovely movie experience, we receive additional offers for a bite of dinner from three local establishments which we have frequented in the past.  We have taken a leisurely stroll in the park and extended this into a full day of entertainment and relaxation.

Science fiction? Hardly, as we saw this week at the SAP Insider CRM 2014 conference in Las Vegas the citizens of Montreal can live this experience every day with the use of the Societe du Transport Montreal (STM) application.  This location-based customer engagement mobile app identifies where the citizen is, how they can route from point to point inside the city’s transit system, and offer perks and offers along the way by participating establishments which the citizen may or may not already have a customer history with.

This was just one of several customer engagement (CE) scenarios that were discussed with applications across a wide range of product and service industries from public sector, to telecommunications, to discrete manufacturers. Unlike other location based services apps driven by big data where data privacy issues surrounding dynamic pricing my create societal concerns, this fully opt-in community-based approach works.

I am posting the STM promotional video here as well.  For my full report on findings from CRM 2014 check out my blog on the SAP Community Network (login required for comment).

Coffee Break with Game Changers 2014 Predictions Pt 3 – More on Convergence Forces

The popular internet radio talk show program hosted by Bonnie D. Graham returns for its third full season of predictions and trends which will impact business and technology. What will be the disruptive factors in the market in 20-14? I joined Bonnie and the panel during the fourth segment around 56:00 with my take on “convergence forces” to beg the question “can you fish in a tsunami?”

My opening statement – besides my annual holiday Irish Cream recipe which you can find elsewhere on my blog – is summarized below. You can also find more on this blog and on my SCN page.

One of the big news stories in strategy, innovation and tech circles is the growth and convergence of four key trends from the past two years. These trends – social networking, mobile computing, cloud applications and big data – are not new.  In fact our firm covered these extensively in 2012 and continue to advise clients on how to leverage these trends strategically, both individually and collectively. What is occurring now as we move into 2014 is the cumulative effect of these trends into force directions of their own.  These so-called convergence forces – or what Gartner Group calls nexus of forces (NOF) – have a tendency to amplify and extend innovation in new and more powerful directions, much like strong winds, lunar position, and seismic disturbances can affect the behavior of ocean tides.  To put it another way, you might be able to plan to fish based on high tide but planning to fish during a tsunami is, well, a bit more complicated.

You can plan to fish in a high tide but fishing in a tsunami is a bit more complicated.