2011 is clearly the year of social media breakthrough, but what happens when the rapid growth of smartphones and the penetration of social media coincide? Add location-based services plus image recognition and smartphone payments and you have the perfect mix for a new and disruptive marketing channel.
A challenge for business in Europe
Business in Europe does not yet fully understand these megatrends (mobile, local and social).
The Next Web : “Google drives home the point, backed by other technology companies, that businesses across Europe need to understand a series of digital “mega-trends” if they want to be able to reap the full benefits of what the Internet can offer. Recent trends include a shift to mobile, the adoption of Cloud-based technologies and online media could all help encourage innovation.”
When the business embraces these megatrends, it results in a huge improvement in the level of service provided to the user. This improvement in the level of service is created because the apps in HTML5 will provide a uniform standard of presentation and data delivery. Because of this scale, all kinds of independent non-compatible presentation initiatives will disappear and choose to become data suppliers in the cloud. Think of the forest of, often government-funded, touristic purpose websites.
The question is really only how quickly consumer behavior on the smartphone will guatemala phone number list respond to the new technical possibilities that are already available and can all be deployed scalably. I have come up with a number of small scenarios to see how these combined services via smartphones can provide effective marketing. I describe these scenarios using a number of steps of a train journey.
Preparing the trip
On the way on the train
At the arrival station
A visit to the city of arrival
1. Preparing for the trip
app for trains
the NS smartphone app
My app provides me with the departure time of the bus that takes me to the station. The bus sends its GPS position to the cloud, so my app can tell me what time the bus will arrive at the stop. The bus can also be a taxi bus if I live outside the vicinity of major bus routes. Because all orders are received by the bus company via the cloud, departure times are issued in real time for each individual passenger. My app checks my OV Chip balance and ensures that I have sufficient balance if necessary.