Here’s more proof that digital media is moving away from traditional physical devices (desktop computers, DVD’s, CD’s, etc.) and onto the web.
First up Apple recently bought a company called Lala for a reported $85 million. Why? Apple allegedly wants to use their technology to bring iTunes into the cloud. That means instead of using iTunes to download music and video to your computer’s hard drive, iTunes will be accessible through any web browser and all of your music and video files would reside in the cloud, i.e. on Apple’s servers.
And…according to a report just published by the research firm IDC, Internet usage by mobile users is excepted to double in the next four years.
Currently, there are 450 million mobile Internet users in the world. Those numbers are expected to hit the 1 billion mark by 2013.
What are all these mobile users doing online? Visiting search engines, reading news and downloading music and video. As the growth continues, online shopping, blog creation and accessing corporate applications are predicted to join the mix.
So the question is, can any of these 450 million mobile Internet users conduct business with your company while they’re on the go?
In Canada a new carrier has come to town. This carrier is expected to dramtically push down bandwidth costs to consumers. The wide adoption of devices like the Iphone in Canada (A client of mine who is 78 just purchased one) will dramatically increase the presence of mobile video devices in business related searches. Correspondingly, the use of web video (the screens are still hard to read) will give those sites that use video as a marketing tool a strong advantage.
I am with you Dave. Mobile is the future and office rigs w/ really big screens.