Mobile Platforms: The New Frontier for Software and Services
Last night I went to a corporate event Mobile Platforms: The New Frontier for Software and Services at Adobe. One thing that really struck me is the capabilities of flash for mobile devices. I saw a demo of a flash movie being played on a not-overly-sophisticated cell phone. The current limitation I see with mp3 and MPEG-4 (audio and video standards for podcasting and videocasting respectively) is there is no adopted standard for inserting hyperlinks into these media files. True, ID3 tags have been around for a while and can contain hyperlinks, but iTunes and Windows Media Player don’t support clickable hyperlinks that fire up a browser - especially not on mobile devices.
Flash does support embedded hyperlinks and the big news here is that flash runs well on the current generation of cell phones. What does this mean for marketers and consumers? One of the limitations of podcasting and videocasting is if you hear/see something you like and you want to buy it, you have to write down or memorize the URL, go to your computer and fire up your browser to get more info or to purchase. Usually doesn’t happen. Marketers have been frustrated that there is no direct link between the content and the point of sale conversion. Now there is. Consumers will like this because if they want to act on something they see or make a purchasing decision, they can do so with little effort. Basically, this is a huge enabler of ecommerce on cell phones. Imagine if you’re watching a show sponsored by Nike and you want to buy an Air Jordan duffle bag. This is just a click away.
It’s a significant development since cell phones are the most ubiquitous device with 4 billion mobile subscribers forecasted for 2011 — you can bet many of them will be media enabled. We discussed the farmer in India who has little technology except for his cell phone where he performs stock trades on Indian fiancial markets from the back of his donkey. That’s the future and that’s where we’re going. For now, we’ll have to dig in some more to see just what Adobe can do on cell phones today.