UNTETHER.tv - Mobile strategy and tactics (video) | Pervasive Computing | Internet of things

A recent study by Edelman Berland on behalf of eBay Enterprise looks at where and what smaller retailers are doing and spending for mobile initiatives this year. Chuck has pulled 2 key stats from the report and discusses them in this episode.

The app stores are littered with the broken dreams of thousands of entrepreneurs from around the planet. The early days brought such incredible opportunity to those with foresight and coding abilities - get a game into market and the magic of the devices will do the selling. Unfortunately, for the most part, those days are gone for good (perhaps to emerge again with wearables?). This doesn't mean that the entire app economy is in a tailspin - in fact, the spoils are greater now and getting bigger all the time.

Martin Macmillan's company, Pollen, has a unique vantage point on what is happening in the early stages of the mobile app world. Pollen helps bring earned revenue forward from the app stores in order to help fill what he calls the funding gap - that spot between earning a dollar from an app and getting paid. This funding gap kills momentum and kills companies.

This episode takes a look at some of the mobile app trends he is seeing from around the world, dips into the disconnect between the old and new world of funding (and why legacy investment models don't work in this new economy) and attacks a question on a lot of app developer's minds: Are mobile gaming companies still good venture investments.

Full show notes can be found here.

The uses of beacons have matured in the last year and are now rolling out for many different uses across almost all industries. Chuck runs down some of the big announcements that are shaping the beacon industry including news from Swirl, Swatch, InMarket, Radius Networks, ShopKick and ShopperTrak.

Welcome to episode #231. On the show: Viewswagen wants to sell ads in Uber and Lyft; Density brings local establishment crowd numbers to mobile; Twitter invests in Swirl; Gannett pours millions on Gravy; Track your luggage with BagJourney; Order your rickshaw in India with Chaloge Kya; MomCo helps mothers connect with each other and local businesses; Voatz hopes to bring the vote to the voters; Leap Transit makes taking the bus the destination; Air Orchard and Ant Man innovate on billboard advertising; LessThan100 adjusts prices based on gender.

Full show notes can be found here.

Mobile's consumptive nature marches forward pretty much unabated when it comes to originating traffic. This is uncontested as the majority of us look to our smartphones and tablets as first screens these days. Traffic is one thing, but what about sales? Is the growth in sales originating from a smaller screen keeping up with the traffic? Chuck highlights the latest quarterly mobile stats from Affiliate Window that answers this question and many more.

There have been an incredible number of mobile commerce studies that have been released over the last month but have no fear - you don't have to read them all. Chuck highlights 8 key data points from these studies that you should know and he does it in under 2 minutes.

Is there a more competitive vertical in mobile than gaming these days? So lucrative for so few yet with so many companies vying for our spare time. If you look through the various app stores these days it is evident that mobile gaming is also a "big brand" battleground. How can smaller, more nimble and innovative game developers compete? How can they attract the bigger brands that have the budget to build great mobile gaming experiences with brands people recognize? In short, can game developers make triple "A" console equivalent games on mobile?

Enter Gigataur (formerly Glitchsoft) and their CEO Andrew Fisher. Gigataur is proving to be a force in the branded mobile gaming world having built the successful He-Man and X-Men games. They have now released the pinnacle of big branded games in Disney's Star Wars Rebels for mobile. How did a boutique, Ottawa-based mobile gaming company secure the rights (and the absolute privilege) to build this game? What is the state of the mobile gaming world today? Can mobile game developers build console-equivalent experiences on the small screen?

We dive in and tackle this and much more in a very open and provocative conversation about the mobile gaming industry.

Full show notes can be found here.

Welcome to episode #230. On the show: WatchQuest for your AppleWatch; Foursquare's PinPoint + Yahoo! rumours; Pay with your Jawbone if you have an American Express; John Moose gives away their music if you are in the woods; Planet Labs' constellation of satellites for humanity closes $118M; BlowUp Media wraps buildings in temporary screens; Toronto Library maps poetry; RetailNext closes $125M; ByHours lets you rent rooms by the hour; Verifone Media's #HelloGeo campaign. Our special guest is Brent Hieggelke, Chief Mobile Evangelist at Urban Airship.

Full show notes can be found here.

In-store WiFi will jump in 2015 - according to the recent Impact of Store Networks and WiFi on Customer Experience study done by IHL Group. The study focuses on a number of in-store technologies but, as you'll see in this episode, the impact of having WiFi in a place of business is hard to argue with. Also, in this episode, Chuck highlights the kinds of information companies are collecting from their WiFi users and how they are using it. Let's just say there is a lot of room for improvement both in connectivity as well as how it is used.

The mobile commerce gap is widening between retailers that get it and those that don't. The logical thinking is that a rising tide raises all ships - especially when it comes to mobile commerce and retail. Of course when the industry advances so should everyone right? Wrong. A recent study by Criteo shows that if you aren't committed to building and implementing a mobile strategy you will fall behind at a rate that, at some point, there will be no recovery from. Watch as Chuck brings these numbers to light and then, do yourself and your business a favour and commit to getting mobile right and right now.