Tag Archives: ecommerce

Review of my 2019 predictions

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Time to look back on the 2019 predictions from 12 months ago…. how many of the predictions came true?

1. Foldable/ rollable and other-able screens

Galaxy Fold
The Samsung Galaxy Fold. The only commercial folding screen currently available.

The Samsung Galaxy Fold was released in the first half of 2019 and is currently (at the end of December) available for sale. For the SIM-free (unlocked) version, it’s only £2,110 including VAT.

For context, the iPhone 11 (64Gb) is currently available for £729 on the same website.

Despite its name, the Motorola Razr 2019 is due for release in Q1 2020.

As for rollable, LG have shown prototypes, but there’s nothing for consumer sale quite yet.

Verdict – 5/10. We only have one folding screen available for sale at the end of 2019, and it costs much more than my Microsoft Surface Pro.

2. Citizen Data Science

I predicted that we’ll find data applications that won’t require a degree in data science to make sense of all their data. Nothing obvious is available yet, although I find Google Maps is becoming ever more personalised with its routing and recommendations. Continue reading Review of my 2019 predictions →

Countering fast retail

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Bicycle shop with search bar
A bicycle shop with search bar

I was working on a piece of work recently with a colleague about the retail industry. Our thinking was moving into fast fashion, or more like “fast retail” – a made up term describing the sales of low-cost goods increasingly quickly, probably through subscription channels.

We started to consider the counter this trend, but the following piece was dropped. I recently picked it up again when I saw an article about UK retail sales.

Countering fast retail

The Guardian article “Charity shop and antique purchases drive up UK retail sales” is interesting because it’s such a counter balance to the constant product advertising and marketing culture we live in: “Buy more”, “buy it cheaper”, “buy the latest version”, etc. etc.

There’s usually a counterculture that either stops, or prolongs, a trend. With retail sales it might be a combination of Minimalism, the book and Netflix documentary; and Marie Kondo or KonMari – her process of tidying up to create joy. (If that sentence looks peculiar, then watch one of the programmes to get the picture).

Minimalism and Marie Kondo both recommend buying fewer high-quality goods rather than lots of poor-quality goods.

Maybe this explains the increase in charity shop purchases. In the Guardian article, Paul Dales, chief UK economist at Capital Economics, said “…households still have the ability to spend and remain the strongest part of the economy.” In other words, people are choosing to go into charity shops over buying brand new goods. Continue reading Countering fast retail →

Mary Meeker’s 2019 Internet Trends Report

Site review, Technology, Trends, , , ,

Mary Meeker’s latest annual Internet trends report has been released, and it’s as insightful as always.

New sections for this year include:

  • A new section on the ethics of data usage and regulation
  • Interesting sections on healthcare (expenditure by country, and their focus on preventable deaths); and China (the move from manufacturing, and the totally different user experiences, such as live streaming for ecommerce)
  • New section on education – US university enrolments falling, with online increasing

Here are my highlights (aka abbreviated research notes):

  • Slide 25: [USA-based] advertising purchasing is moving to Amazon/ Twitter/ Pinterest (basically, moving from Facebook or Google at a quicker amount than they are growing)
  • Slide 28 & 29: Balancing Customer acquisition cost with Life Time Value!!
  • Slide 32: Drive conversion from freemium (Spotify & Zoom), rather than seeking new customers
  • #51: Echo devices doubled last year to 47M. There are now 90,000+ skills for Alexa. Why? How are they promoted?

Continue reading Mary Meeker’s 2019 Internet Trends Report →

2017 digital predictions

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This is now the seventh year of my digital predictions for the forthcoming twelve months (see here for 2016).

Supermarket checkouts - RIP in 2017 from Amazon Go?
Supermarket checkouts – RIP in 2017 from Amazon Go?

There are industry commentators and research analysts who release their predictions for the coming year. But I’m the only one brave enough to mark their homework at the end of the year! Last year I scored a respectable 61%.

Although President Trump and Brexit-at-some-point won’t have a direct impact on technology, there will be an indirect impact on consumer prices and investments into startups. Whether this affects the technology market in 2017 or later is difficult to say. Continue reading 2017 digital predictions →

Deloitte TMT Predictions 2016 event

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The cover doesn't exactly scream out "interesting stuff inside"
The cover doesn’t exactly scream out “interesting stuff inside”

The latest Deloitte TMT Predictions 2016 event today was as good as previous years. The author of the report, and Deloitte partner, David Lee, is an excellent presenter (a sense of humour and perspective helps with publishing predictions).

Although the full report is available on Deloitte’s website, I wait until David’s event each year – he highlights the most interesting ones, and only then do I read the report. This year David chose to focus on 6 specific predictions for 2016:

  • Connectivity
  • Communication
  • Commerce & Mobile
  • Virtual Reality
  • Business Models
  • eSports

Continue reading Deloitte TMT Predictions 2016 event →

2016 digital predictions

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This is the sixth year of my digital predictions for the forthcoming twelve months (see here for 2015).

Many more industry commentators and research analysts are now releasing their predictions, but they don’t mark their work at the end of the year (last year I scored a woeful D) and their ‘predictions’ are actually trends.

So here goes for what lies ahead in 2016:

1. The eyewear war

An unflattering photo wearing Google Glass
An unflattering photo wearing Google Glass

In 2016 we’ll see a new three companies go eye to eye on their product offerings: Microsoft’s Hololens versus Facebook’s Oculus Rift versus Google’s Glass and Cardboard products.

In 2016 the new version of Google Glass will be released, specifically focussed on enterprises. Microsoft will be releasing Hololens to developers from Q1 2016. And Facebook will also be releasing Oculus Rift in Q1 2016.

The ultimate winner of these multi-billion dollar investments will be customers. Devices will still be well into four figures, and we’ll see some incredible implementations from gaming to enterprise. Continue reading 2016 digital predictions →

How Insurance will use Internet of Things technologies

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In October I’m giving a keynote speech at an insurance event and I’ve been asked to speak about new technologies and trends. Separately, one of the readers of this site, Doug, recently emailed me asking whether I had “any insight into the insurance sector, and company’s use of Internet of Things technologies?”

Here are some thoughts which I’ve been thinking about for a while.

In its truest form, Internet of Things, or IoT for short, applies to an electronic device which has Internet connectivity capability – i.e. it can send data to, or receive data from services on the Internet. Continue reading How Insurance will use Internet of Things technologies →

Amazon v Alibaba – the stats

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Last week I posted an infographic about credit cards and since then I’ve been inundated with organisations sending me similar graphics.

Here’s one which I particularly liked, comparing Amazon to Alibaba. It reminded me of a recent BBC article comparing Amazon to Tesco:

Last year its [Amazon’s] revenues hit $88bn (£56bn) , but it made a loss of $240m (£153m). (Just as a comparison, Tesco’s revenues in 2014 were £71bn, on which it made a profit of £2.6bn – though this year it recorded a huge loss after writing down the value of its property. Oh, and right now the stock market thinks Amazon is worth roughly eight Tescos.)

Here’s the Alibaba v Amazon infographic: Continue reading Amazon v Alibaba – the stats →

Favor: This is going to be the next big mobile app

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Favor app. Someone in my office thought this guy looks like me. I'm not so sure.
The excellent Favor app. Someone in my office thought this guy looks like me. I’m not so sure.

Whilst I was in the US last week I heard about Favor, a new app which provides a concierge/ delivery service. Although Favor is only available in half a dozen US cities, it seems to be growing very quickly and it’s only a matter of time before it’s available internationally.

Favor enables a customer to order an item from a nearby shop and have it delivered straight away. The average delivery time is 35 minutes. It costs $5 plus 5% of the product(s). The product can be food, dry cleaning, clothing, groceries, etc., although this being America, they won’t deliver alcohol.

Continue reading Favor: This is going to be the next big mobile app →

20 Internet Trends in 2015

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One of my favourite annual Internet reports is out. It’s the KPCB report, from the Venture Capital company based in the US.

It’s 196 pages of fact-packed charts, and here are my favourites.

The US makes up ‘only’ 10% of the 2.8bn online users. 73% of the World has a phone, of which 40% are smartphones. So there are 2 billion smartphones.

The top 15 Internet companies (by capitalisation) consist only of American and Chinese companies.

The only company featuring in the top 15 companies in 1995 and 2015 is Apple, which has increased its capitalisation by over 190 times! The combined capitalisation of the top 15 has increased by 141 times.

ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) on Facebook is $9.36, based on advertising alone. Continue reading 20 Internet Trends in 2015 →