Research into Market Trends

Introduction

In 2012 there is likely to be some major changes to the interactive media industry such as the introduction of various new technologies such as HTML 5 which is rumoured to become more popular than flash and cloud computing is likely to become more widely used as internet speeds dramatically increase.

Touch-Screen & Tablets

One of the trends at the moment is the popularity of touchscreen and tablets. Some of the advantages of touchscreen over other uses of device navigation are that touchscreen is very easy to use and also is the fastest type of navigation and a keyboard is not required. The implementation of touchscreen also enables the device to be smaller and more space on the device can be used on increasing the screen-size. One of the disadvantages at the moment with tablets is that they have low screen resolutions as currently the ipad2 has the largest screen resolution of 1028 x 768. I predict the screen resolutions of future tablets to dramatically increase as well as other features. 

Business Marketing & Social Media

On social networking sites such as Facebook the user is required to input personal information such as age, gender, hobbies and general likes and dislikes. This data is then used by Facebook to work out advertisements of products which would seem relevant to you based on the information which you provided willingly. This type of interactive marketing is likely to be more successful than previous types of marketing as the information provided will enable companies to target a customer more accurately in terms of knowing what they want. This method of gaining information is likely to be more widely used and widely shared. I expect Google Account information to be shared with the popular online retailers such as Ebay and Amazon to enable them to notify you on products they have for sale which you may like. This technique of marketing is likely to influence more cooperation between producers.

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is likely to be to future of computing as it will enable us to be less dependent on physical utilities and not having a hard-drive on a device will enable the device to be significantly smaller as physical storage is typically quite large. The implementations of internet technologies such as Fibre Optic Broadband & 4G would enable wired & wireless speeds to be a lot faster than the existing Wi-Fi and 3G. There is also pretty much no limit to the amount of storage you can have and there is likely to be more businesses which will emerge which will specialize in the selling of online storage & security.

Cloud computing has also be implemented into the gaming industry with the introduction of On-Live which enables users to play games through a cloud network as the games are synchronized, rendered, and stored on remote servers and delivered via the Internet.

3D Movies

A recent trend which has occurred in the movie industry is the implementation of 3D. Recently directors have shot their movies in 3D this trend was ignited after the release of the movie Avatar which has become the number one grossing movie of all time. This movies success influenced other directors to shoot their movies in 3D or perform a digital conversion in an attempt to increase revenue.  The release of 3D TVs soon followed and most manufacturers have released their own 3D TVs. 3D TVs are currently the most expensive type of TV you can buy resulting in previous TV technologies such as LCD and Plasma being considerably cheaper.

Android Vs iPhone

The android operating system is becoming increasingly popular and is as close rival to the iPhone. Android phones are typically a lot cheaper than a iPhones and has a very similar app store which enables users to download third party apps. The future releases of the operating systems are called iOS5 and Ice Cream Sandwich. The android marketplace has a very large choice of apps but not as much as the iPhone. I expect that the ioS will remain the most popular as the implementation of HTML 5 on future Apple products will improve functionality when browsing. The app store last year earnt over $4.9 billion while the android marketplace only earnt $330 million. I believe developers would always choose the ioS over the android ioS as there is more profit. Although from the bar chart below you can see that the android operating system has become more popular from 2010 to 2011 while the iOS has decreased.

Paul Morris. (2012). Android Vs. iOS – How Secure Are They?. Available: http://www.redmondpie.com/android-vs.-ios-how-secure-are-they-infographic/. Last accessed 9th Jan 2012.

Future of the Mobile Os Market

Mobile computing, consisting of smartphones and tablets, has been the most exciting part of the computing landscape for the past several years and that promises to remain true in 2012 and beyond. It would be valid to say that smartphones have replaced traditional PCs as the centre of the technology market since smartphone sales overtook PC sales this year.

The new Blackberry Os which is called BB 10 OS will include support for cloud services and support for HTML 5. It will also be implemented with runtime for android apps which enable Google OS developed OS to be run on Rim’s phones and tablets. I expect Mobile operating systems to be the same on both smart phones and tablets and expect these operating systems to build up a strong infrastructure of content and features such a cloud computing and digital communication services. I believe the Mobile OS which would be the most successful would be the one which has a very easy to use interface and a wide range of features.

Operating Systems Mobile operating systems have truly defined smartphones and tablets recently, and that's likely to stay the same. The first big change for next year should be the introduction of many more phones and tablets that run Android 4.0, known as Ice Cream Sandwich. 2012 will also see the introduction of the Lenovo K800 which will be the first Intel powered smartphone.

Social Media Trends

One of the new trends which large companies have adopted is how popular social networking sites are and they are using these popular social networking in which to advertise their products. The best form of advertising a company can ask for is endorsements from customers. When a Facebook user “likes” a product on Facebook this would then result in that company being able to advertise to everyone on that individuals friends list.This technique of advertising a product through an individual the audience is related to be more effective way making products appeal to the audience.

Google + will integrate social media with a search engine so that when you type stuff into Google your search results would then be personalized to stuff which is relevant to the stuff you have “Liked” on Facebook. It is likely that companies will introduce review and questionnaires on social networking sites as it acts as perfect platform in which to obtain qualitative and quantitative information from their customers.

Social networking sites can also act as a platform in which to provide a customer service to their customers and it can potentially result in the customers acting as your customer support service.

Some of the disadvantages which have been identified for Google + are that people believe that the search results which you type in would be biased based on your “Likes” & “Dislikes”. People believe that you would be restricted in what you can browse. Other people consider this personalization as an advantage as it enables you to personalize various elements of your Social networking environment so that it only displays content which is relevant to you.  One feature which Google + has which Facebook doesn’t is the ability to categories your friends into groups such as work colleagues & Best friends. You then have the option to update your status to a certain group which I think is a very cool feature because as in real life there is stuff which you would share with friends but you wouldn’t with family.